Monday May 1, 2023

COMMENTARY: The Report That Started It All | PODCAST UPDATE

COMMENTARY: The Report That Started It All

Editor’s Note: Spotsylvania County has become Ground Zero in the education culture wars. That this is the 40th anniversary of the publication that launched the education reform movement, it’s worth taking time to explore the serious roots of the movement, and how it has gone horribly wrong.

by: Martin Davis

The year 1983 is far removed from us in ways beyond time. America itself was a very different place then. No internet (at least, not in any form that the general public could access), personal computers were just starting to be talked about, mobile phones were unheard of, and America’s clear and present threat was the Soviet Union.

It was also the year that the idea of “school reform” first entered the national debate.

The National Commission on Excellence in Education released its report: A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. The history of the report itself is an interesting journey through happenstance and unintended consequences.

As this is the 40th anniversary of the report, there has been no shortage of bloviating and opining on the study and its impact. As someone who has written about education for more than two decades, taught at both the university and K-12 level, and been in the middle of the policy battles in Washington, D.C., over education reform, I certainly have some opinions about the report - what it did and didn’t say, where it was right and wrong, and about the movement that it set in motion that we still deal with today. A movement that is both earnest (See the works of Diane Ravitch and Frederick Hess), and filled with hucksters and fearmongers (See Moms for Liberty, the Spotsylvania County School Board, and No Left Turn in Education).

In reviewing the report this past week, however, it wasn’t the history of the report or the impact it had on the U.S. Department of Education, or its subsequent impact on what we now know as the education reform movement.

Rather, it’s the people who served on the commission. (The full list of committee members appears at the end of this piece.)

Members came from the university world (four university presidents and two esteemed university faculty members, including Nobel Laureat Glenn Seaborg), and the business world (including Bell Laboratories chairman William Baker).

The former leaders oversaw the institutions that trained educators and understood the problems from the training perspective, while the latter were aware of the issues associated with hiring young high school graduates.

From the political world was a former governor, a member of a state board of education, and a former education commissioner.

But most notable were members with boots on the ground. A classroom teacher, two principals, and a superintendent. The National School Boards Assocation also had a seat at the table.

As late as the George W. Bush Administration, the effort to gain input from a variety of education stakeholders - including those who are daily in the classroom - when tackling K-12 issues remained a feature of our national debate.

The No Child Left Behind Act received truly bipartisan support, with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) leading the charge for NCLB’s passage on Capitol Hill. In the House, NCLB received 381 yea votes against 41 nays. In the Senate it was 87 to 10.

The Department of Education under Bush was led for a time by Rod Paige, the former superintendent of Houston City Schools, and an early advocate of KIPP Academy schools.

Compare this to where we stand today.

Under former President Donald Trump, the 1776 Project was launched not as a way to tackle the serious issues of school success as “A Nation At Risk” did, but rather was a blatantly political diatribe established to replace American history with what can fairly be described as pro-Western propaganda.

The commission was charged with identifying the "core principles of the American founding and how these principles may be understood to further enjoyment of 'the blessings of liberty'."

The members were politicians and conservative political activists, but there was nary a teacher or superintendent or principal to be found. In addition, while there were academics on the committee, none had expertise in American history.

In no way could this report be considered serious. It was born of a cynical and narrow-minded worldview that is more interested in entrenching white power and a particularly slanted view of history then in expanding the minds of young people.

The same mindset that was responsible for the 1776 Project, which was riddled with errors, is the same mindset that is roiling local school boards and turning parents against teachers. It’s the same mindset that Gov. Glenn Youngkin brings to dealing with education in Virginia.

People will disagree how to label this mindset, but of this there is little debate - it’s not a serious effort to address education.

In the 40 years since the “A Nation At Risk” report was released, we’ve moved from a serious discussion about the problems those who work in the education world face and how to address them, to a political movement that has pushed those who actually work in education to the sidelines, and has elevated advocates and ideologues who understand little of K-12 learning, but a great deal about playing people’s fears off one another.

Glenn Youngkin, Mark Taylor, the Spotsylvania School Board, Moms for Liberty, book banning activists like Jen Peterson, and Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears have mastered the art of playing on fear. And at times, it seems there’s no way to crack through.

But there is hope. A video making the rounds on social media shows a Moms for Liberty school board member being asked respectfully to explain her aversion to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program in her school system. After confessing she really doesn’t know the tenants of DEI in her school system, she offers this explanation for why she opposes it:

“I’m just very fearful {there are} going to be children that are made to feel bad of who they are {because they are |not part of what other children are,” children of color.

It’s a start.

I respect her for saying what is painfully clear to many of us. The attack on DEI and Critical Race Theory isn’t really about these ideas at all. In fact, most people who are attacking these programs and ideas have no substantive understanding of DEI or CRT.

Rather, people are afraid because white children and children from privileged backgrounds may be made to feel uncomfortable.

Let’s start there, and have an honest and respectful discussion about this very misplaced fear.

And then let’s turn back to the issue of addressing the real problems that confront our children and the schools charged with teaching them.

The Nation At Risk Report has been hijacked by ideologues to wage a culture war. A war that is helping no one, and doing significant damage to education across the country.

On the 40th anniversary of this seminal report, let’s step back, take a collective breath, and get back to the real task at hand. With educators and intellectuals - both public and academic - leading the way.

Members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education

David P. Gardner (Chair) President University of Utah and President-Elect, University of California Salt Lake City

Utah Yvonne W. Larsen (Vice-Chair) Immediate Past-President San Diego City School Board San Diego, California

William 0. Baker Chairman of the Board (Retired) Bell Telephone Laboratories Murray Hill, New Jersey

Anne Campbell Former Commissioner of Education State of Nebraska Lincoln, Nebraska

Emeral A. Crosby Principal Northern High School Detroit, Michigan

Charles A. Foster, Jr. Immediate Past-President Foundation for Teaching Economics San Francisco, California

Norman C. Francis President Xavier University of Louisiana New Orleans, Louisiana

A. Bartlett Giamatti President Yale University New Haven, Connecticut

Shirley Gordon President Highline Community College Midway, Washington

Robert V. Haderlein Irnmediate Past-President National School Boards Association Girard, Kansas

Gerald Holton Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts

Annette Y. Kirk Kirk Associates Mecosta, Michigan

Margaret S. Marston Member Virginia State Board of Education Arlington, Virginia

Albert H. Quie Former Governor State of Minnesota St. Paul, Minnesota

Francisco D. Sanchez, Jr. Superintendent of Schools Albuquerque Public Schools Albuquerque, New Mexico

Glenn T. Seaborg University Professor of Chemistry and Nobel Laureate University of California Berkeley, California

Jay Sommer National Teacher of the Year, 1981-82 Foreign Language Department New Rochelle High School New Rochelle, New York

Richard Wallace Principal Lutheran High School East Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Podcast Update

This Thursday, Shaun Kenney and I will be recording the first episode of the New Dominion Podcast. We’ll be recording at Curitiba Art Cafe, and our first guests will be Curitiba’s owners, Cori and Megan.

The drop date for this episode is to be determined, but F2S will ensure that you are the first to know when it does.

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