1980-2004

From 1980-2004 many people realized that public education needed to be reformed in some way. How to best do that is still up for debate today. The document that brought national attention to the situation or ‘crisis’ as the article says was A Nation at Risk. Basically what the article said was that America was experiencing unilateral educational disarmament and that if a foreign power had done to us what we have done to ourselves it would be an act of war. Economy is not a global one and America now needs citizens who can compete with the foreign market. The reason why America has fallen is because of the schools. Ronald Reagan championed strengthening local control of schools and decreasing federal funding for them. He wanted to increase competition in school. Public schools should compete at the same level with private enterprise and that the reason public education was not meeting standards was because the government held a monopoly. Public education was selling something that no one wanted. In the end school should be about one thing: the bottom line. In education the solution is high stakes testing and the bottom line are test scores. Without competition schools feel no pressure to raise student test scores and achievement.
In east Harlem there was an educational experiment. In one school district students was divided into 52 different schools within existing buildings. Each school emphasized different things like music, math, or discipline. Students chose which school they wanted to attend. Based on the performance of the students in academic achievement schools added students or were closed altogether.
In 1992 ‘choice’ was introduced as a new solution. Students could choose which schools they wanted to attend and their tuition would be paid by the public. But there were so few alternative schools and even fewer that could get there so little changed.
Other solutions were magnet schools which basically was save the best of everyone from diverse backgrounds and bring them together because a particular common interest. In 1990 President George Bush enacted vouchers that allowed low income students to go to private nonreligious paid for by tax payers. A problem arose because many private schools are religiously affiliated but the government has always been very clear about the separation of church and state. No public funds are allowed to support a religious affiliated school. Another movement was led by the Christian right to home school children. They succeed. It is legal to home school children in all 52 states. The EAI tried to run a school based as a business but the students did not do well. So it was a failed experiment. The lesson learned from this situation is that competition is important. The free market is not a perfect mechanism in public schools. The vast majority of students still depend on public education. Unfortunately the bar is being raised while schools are overcrowded, underfunded, and teachers undertrained. However, on the whole public education is a success. In 2000-2001 47.8 million students are in the public school system which makes up 90% of America’s children. The real test is to have excellent with equity. Not only to have them both but to have the sense that they are connected, you can’t have one without the other.

I know I wrote a lot in the summary section but that is because this is all so recent and relevant to where the educational situation is today and where it is headed. It is clear that our students do not match the test scores of other students in other countries. Something obviously needs to be done about this if America is to remain at the top of the totem pole in the world economy. What is to be done no one is sure. I suppose different solutions will be tried until one is found that works.