1983: A Nation at Risk: The Report that Changed the Arc of Education

Special commissions on education are common, but none have had the same transformational impact as the National Commission on Excellence in Education.

Convened by U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel Bell just seven months into President Ronald Reagan’s first term to “help define the problems afflicting American education and to provide solutions,” prevailing wisdom suggested that this 18-member body would advance two of newly-elected president’s educational priorities: abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, and advancing private school choice through vouchers, tax credits, and educational savings accounts.  Instead, all indicators showed a decline in educational quality. The commission’s report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, showed that curricula had “been homogenized, diluted, and diffused”; national expectations of student performance were in decline; that “the professional working life of teachers is on the whole unacceptable”; and that textbooks were being written “to ever-lower reading levels in response to perceived market demand.”

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today,” reads the report, “we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

A Nation at Risk mobilized a generation of scholars, policymakers, media, and school leaders not only to improve education but to think differently about the public school system. This mobilization included thinking differently about parents. Recognizing that parents are their children’s “first and most influential teacher,” A Nation at Risk affirmed that parents have the “right to demand for your children the best our schools and colleges can provide.” These simple acknowledgements bent the arc of American public education towards excellence for all students and choice among schools — two of the foundational principles of charter schools.