1983: "THE HINGE OF HISTORY" FOR REFORM

The First Call: A Nation at Risk.

The catalyst for the serious reform movements during the 1980s was the Reagan administration's National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE), a bipartisan group of business, political, and education leaders who addressed what they referred to as a "rising tide of mediocrity." Their report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, published in May 1983, called for reform which would address the twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling. Commission members insisted that both goals have profound and practical meaning for society and the economy; that the United States could not permit one to yield to the other in principle or in practice. It was imperative, they said, that our educational system develop the talents of all students to the fullest extent. This commission was particularly distressed that the number of students taking the general (nonacademic) track in high school had grown from 12 percent in 1964 to 42 percent in 1980, a pattern that had resulted when graduation standards had been relaxed in every state. The report bemoaned widespread easy grading, easy admissions to college, too little homework, watered-down textbooks, too little writing and reading, poor teaching, and few incentives for excellence among teachers. Commission members suggested there was a legitimate, if unproven, concern that the observed declines in educational performance were being translated into lower productivity in the workplace. Recommending a massive federal effort to create national standards for teaching and learning, the commission also called for a significant increase in federal spending for education. Ernest Boyer, a strong voice for educational reform, foresaw that these recommendations for national standards could be resisted by some local authorities. The central dilemma of reform, he warned, was that "Americans want local control but national results. They like the idea of localism, but how do they know their schools are doing a good job unless they have a national yardstick to measure by?"

The Next Wave of Reform Proposals

In June 1983 a group of the nation's governors, the Education Commission of the States, issued their plan for reform, titled Action for Excellence: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nations Schools. This report, sometimes called the Hunt Report, after Gov. James B. Hunt of North Carolina (who chaired the group), suggested the same reforms at the state level that the NCEE had proposed at the federal level. In September of that year the National Science Board issued "Educational Aims for the 21st Century." This effort hit the math/science crisis head-on with estimated costs for reviving technology in the schools at __BODY__.5 billion the first year alone. The panel suggested that $5 billion more would be needed in the coming decade to train teachers, buy hardware, and revamp curricula to keep up with the burgeoning technology field. The Reagan administration, which had set aside only $50 million for science programs in 1983, was silent in response. One important finding of this group was that the basics in the 1980s now included communication skills, higher problem-solving skills, and scientific and technological literacy. The National Science Board warned that defining basics in the sense of merely reading, writing, and math would assure Americans of falling further and further behind developing industrial nations. Within months, the College Board issued a key (though some-what misnamed) report, "Academic Preparation for College," which echoed these findings. They cited six basic academic subjects, including computer competencies, which all students should take during high school: English, math, arts, science, social studies, and foreign languages. Arguing that leaders in business want workers with academic training, the College Board recommended an academic experience for every student, whether he or she attended college or chose to go into technical training.

More Alarms

By fall 1983 the Carnegie Foundationsponsored study "The Condition of Teaching," by Emily Feistritzer, presented a state-by-state analysis of the teaching profession and its shortcomings. Her conclusions were grim. "Far fewer persons are choosing teaching as a career, and the academic caliber of those who are is decreasing.…Over half the teachers in a 1981 survey said they certainly would not become a teacher again," Feistritzer reported. In December John Brademas, chair of a National Commission on Graduate Education, issued the committee's report on graduate education in the United States as a "warning to all who care about America's future: our graduate enterprise is in trouble; so is our national capacity to face and master change, to chart and define the future, and to enjoy the rich blessings of democracy secure in the knowledge that others will create the future for us." Brademas ended his report agreeing with the Business-Higher Education Forum's claim that "We stand at the hinge of history, requiring the kinds of sacrifices a nation makes in wartime." As the year came to an end, the American public had ample information about the sad state of education and no shortage of dire predictions about the future. The stage was set for reform.

Convergence of Opinions

There was a remarkable convergence of opinions about ways to institute reform—a consistently moderate, centrist agenda. From the many 1983 documents and those that followed, nine general recommendations emerged: 1) Raise academic requirements for high-school graduation so that students read and write more. Replace electives with math and science courses and replace the general, vocational track with academic requirements for all students; 2) Provide computer education for all students. This basic literacy must be taught from K to 12; 3) Provide more opportunities for development of higher-order reasoning skill. Students must have more problem-solving practice to adjust to the new work demands; 4) Students must spend more time on learning tasks. The school year should be 200-220 days, and the day should go from 6.5 hours to 8 hours as teachers are freed from noninstructional duties to concentrate only on teaching; 5) Enforce stricter discipline. Unruly students must be expelled or separated from the general population; 6) Colleges must make it more difficult to enter. They must send an academic message to the high schools that more academics are neccessary to succeed in higher education; 7) Explore the concepts of merit pay for teaching excellence and a master-teacher career ladder for those who succeed in the classroom but do not want to move into administration; 8) Improve teacher quality, first through changing teacher training, requiring fewer education courses and more in subject matter, next through competency testing for new teachers, and finally through crash programs to train science, math, and engineering teachers; 9) Target state and federal funds to programs committed to increasing student performance in academics, so that federal aid focuses on quality, not just equity.

Reality versus Rhetoric

The year 1983 was a land-mark in educational reform. Because of the significant number of calls for change in the system—coming simultaneously from the established education community, the business world, liberal and conservative politicians, as well as parents and taxpayers—a national consensus for reform emerged. As New Jersey governor Thomas Kean summarized the process, the nation began a process to "reinvent the school for modern times." Unfortunately, during the decade changes resulting from the reforms enacted were not nearly as dramatic as the rhetoric of 1983. However, every state did enact some form of educational reform, ranging from modest changes in attendance requirements to sweeping administrative and curricular changes.