In the decade since, education has become a permanent fixture on the national agenda, no longer simply the purview of local districts. Two presidents made educational excellence a cornerstone of their campaigns. And the business community, weary of having to run its own remedial programs, joined the crusade for a bettertrained work force to compete in a global economy.
On the local level, many states and districts have raised academic standards and instituted new testing programs. The dialogue has become increasingly sophisticated, with everyone from local school-board members to President Clinton bandying around such jargon as “apprenticeship training” and “cooperative learning.” On these four pages, some voices from the front speak out.
Sadly, despite all the talk of reform, real change has been remarkably slow. Money-the lack of it-has been the biggest obstacle. In 1989-90 the federal government contributed only a paltry 6.1 percent of the funds spent on K-12 education, nearly a percentage point less than it provided in 1983. The burden on states and local districts is greater while the recession, new immigrants and a growing number of poor children have strained resources from California to New York. “It’s not just the bottom level that’s hurting,” says former education secretary William Bennett. “It’s the middle and upper levels as well.”
Conservative critics of the education establishment like Bennett blame unions and entrenched bureaucracy for the failure to change. Others say there’s been a critical lack of support for teachers. “We can debate curriculum and graduation requirements,” says Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, “but in the end, what we have to do is find a way to hold on to our talented teachers.”
No school is an island, and the everyday tragedies of the outside world–drugs, street violence, teenage pregnancy-have made the job of training young minds even more difficult. And even more crucial. Ten years later, the nation is still at risk, still looking for answers.
Former president of the University of California, he chaired the panel that wrote “A Nation at Risk.” “I think we profess to have high expectations for our students and our schools, but we’re willing to settle for much less. We talk a good fight about wanting to have excellent schools when in fact we’re content to have average ones.” Gardner worries about the perception that public schools are not salvageable. “What I see is a slow, steady erosion of public regard for the public schools and in some respects a psychological abandonment.” Still, he says, “I think we ought not to be discouraged. We were 20 years going down and it shouldn’t be surprising if we’re 20 years coming back. We’re only halfway there.”
A professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Gardner is a leading curriculum innovator. “Most communities still think that the success of the school is someone else’s concern-and that school problems occur in ,other persons’ districts. Bond issues are regularly voted down. Teachers are universally bad-mouthed, even though the wretched conditions under which many work are not known.” If he could do one thing to improve kids’ minds, he’d ban TV. “The amount of time American youths-and their parents–spend watching … is obscene.”
Glover, a 15-year-old freshman, is bored by her sophomore-level courses at Morgan Park High School on the South Side of Chicago. “I come and the teachers talk. Really, I feel that I come there to get homework. It’s not like they’re teaching anything. I’d be better off if they’d just send me a sheet of homework to do… I’d rather have a class teaching me how to play an instrument or how to bring my thoughts together. Just something different from reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. I need a break.”
Kester has taught science, math, English and social studies at Sennett Middle School in Madison, Wis. “The days of stand-up teaching in the classroom are gone because the kids don’t listen,” she says. “You would have too many behavior problems. It has forced us to evaluate how we teach.” But her kids are burdened with self-doubt. “We have a much higher percentage of kids who come in and don’t see themselves as achievers. I’m not sure kids are actively taught to be failures, but they’re not actively taught to be successful, either.”
Professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard (photo, right), he was a key member of the “Nation at Risk” panel. Teachers need better training and more power in school, but parents have to do more, too, he says. “Parents. . . are convinced that their own children are going to come through, just because they’re good kids-no matter how little work they actually do. That’s very different from the Japanese, or Chinese, or Taiwanese, Israeli parents, where no matter how well the kids do, the parents are after them to do better.”
Codding, principal of California’s Pasadena High School, thinks “A Nation at Risk” was misguided because reform must start at the local level. “Excellence comes because of the people who are most closely involved in teaching and learning.” The panel treated kids as “widgets,” she says. “Where were the kids who come hungry, lives, who don’t even speak our language, move frequently, see their friends shot, get pregnant? Where was the child in the report?”
She just finished four years as president of the Atlanta Council of PTAs. “I think somewhere down the line the curriculum changed. Things such as simple writing, spelling skills aren’t emphasized anymore. Putting more focus on standardized testing does no good when kids don’t know how to write. When a young person goes to fill out an application, they don’t know how to do it. Even computer technology may be taking away the very thing that they need to survive-writing skills. I don’t see the spelling books anymore; I don’t see the writing books.”
Principal of Detroit’s Pershing High School, he was a member of the “Nation at Risk” panel and has worked in the Detroit schools for 35 years (photo below). Pershing High scrapes by on $4,400 a student (an increase of only $700 in 10 years), he says. “The quality of education is based upon where a kid happens to reside, not on a kid’s ability.” His students are growing up in an increasingly poor and violent environment. “Our school is the most stable institution we have now in our society,” says Crosby. “They have no place else to go.”
Educated in the Chicago public schools, she’s president of the Chicago Region PTA. “The biggest disappointment is the violence in the schools and how our kids are killing themselves. The metal detectors are not the answer. It takes three periods to get all our kids in the building. You’ve got one metal detector. Now the teachers have to be police officers.” The financially pressed city is planning to close a special-education high school where her 20-year-old son flourished and she’s worried that schools are being improperly skewed. “We’re tending to go toward the kid that already has it. It’s easy to take the top students and give them a fantastic education. [But] if you take average students and turn them into top students, then you’ve done something.” Her wish: enough money to give all the children an “equal opportunity for education.”
As president of the American Federation of Teachers, he’s been a leading spokesman for national reform (photo below). What three changes would make schools better? “I’d find a substitute for school boards-basically, what we need to have is superintendents and principals who will let the professionals [teachers] do what works. We need to get the political interference with teachers off their backs. And we need to really professionalize teaching by making it much tougher to get in and increasing the rewards.”
SAT scores have remained fairly constant; in reading tests, whites outscore blacks and Latinos, and girls do better than boys.
School Year Verbal Mathematical 1983-84 426 471 1984-85 431 475 1985-86 431 475 1986-87 430 476 1987-88 428 476 1988-89 427 476 1989-90 424 476 1990-91 422 474 1991-92 423 476
SOURCE: COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATION BOARD
Race/Ethnicity 1983-84 1989-90 White 218.2 217 Black 185.7 181.8 Latino 187.2 189.4 Sex Male 207.5 204 Female 214.2 214.5
ON THE NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS SCALE, A SCORE OF 150 INDICATES THE ABILITY TO CARRY OUT SIMPLE DISCRETE TASKS, WHILE LEVEL 250 MEANS THE STUDENT SEARCHES FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION, INTERRELATES IDEAS ADN MAKES GENERALIZATIONS, THE SCALE GOES TO 350.
Washington provides only a small fraction of the money spent on schools. The burden on state and local governments is increasing as per-pupil expenditures rise.
1983-84 1989-90 Local 45.4% 46.9% State 47.8% 47.2% Federal 6.8% 6.1%
