In a report for the libertarian Cato Institute, former New York Times education columnist Richard Rothstein, takes the 25th anniversary of the Reagan Administration’s A Nation At Risk report to analyze its flaws; how it perpetuated the lie that public schools were collapsing; and how warped the public’s view of the relationship between schools and the economy.
Rothstein illustrates three fundamental flaws in the arguments presented in A Nation At Risk. First, the report wrongly concluded that student achievement was declining. Second, it placed the blame on schools for national economic problems over which schools have relatively little influence. Third, it ignored the responsibility of the nation’s other social and economic institutions for learning.
Rothstein concludes:
A Nation at Risk was well-intentioned, but based on flawed analyses, at least some of which should have been known to the Commission that authored it. The report burned into Americans’ consciousness a conviction that, evidence notwithstanding, our schools are failures, and a warped view of the relationship between schools and economic well-being. It distracted education policymakers from insisting that our political, economic, and social institutions also have a responsibility to prepare children to be ready to learn when they attend school.
There are many reasons to improve American schools, but declining achievement and international competition are not good arguments for doing so. Asking schools to improve dramatically without support from other social and economic institutions is bound to fail, as a quarter-century of experience since A Nation at Risk has demonstrated.
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