The Forum for Education and Democracy released a report last week, Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education [pdf], to commemorate the release of the landmark A Nation at Risk report, issued 25 years ago by the Reagan administration. A Nation at Risk claimed that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people….If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Shocking rhetoric, which has been repeated time and again in think-tank wars during the last few years. It got quite a bit of attention from media and policy makers. Richard Rothstein’s analysis of its warped conclusions seems about right:

The diagnosis of the National Commission on Excellence in Education was flawed in three respects: First, it wrongly concluded that student achievement was declining. Second, it placed the blame on schools for national economic problems over which schools have relatively little influence. Third, it ignored the responsibility of the nation’s other social and economic institutions for learning.

…which isn’t to say that we should turn a blind eye to our problems. From the executive summary of Democracy at Risk:

  • Nearly one-fourth of U.S. children live in families below the poverty line, more than in any other industrialized nation;
  • The U.S. ranked 21st of 30 OECD countries in science and 25th of 30 in mathematics — a drop from a few years earlier;
  • High school graduation rates have been stagnant for a quarter century and have recently begun to decline;
  • About 30 percent of an age cohort in the U.S. gains a college degree, as compared to nearly 50 percent in OECD countries;
  • Growth in state spending on prisons far outstrips growth in education spending;
  • Studies reveal declines in voter knowledge and participation.

Although A Nation at Risk did say, “…public education should be the top priority for additional Federal funds” and that, “A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society,” those statements regarding the need for, and proper role of federal support have been largely lost in the discourse of choice, achievement, and accountability. Democracy at Risk is an attempt to highlight the lack of progress toward the goals that were laid out 25 years ago, and outline some recommendations for federal involvement in education, to include

  • Rectifying inequalities in access to quality education, investing in out-of-school learning supports;
  • Investing in the recruitment and training of new teachers and school leaders;
  • Supporting education research and innovation by disseminating information about promising practices, including assessment and data reporting mechanisms that will inform instruction;
  • Engaging local communities by placing schools at the center of community education.

The authors of the report note John Glenn’s observation that “our public education system is ‘the personnel office for democracy.’ And when our schools are unsupported, that democratic future is at risk.”

Interestingly, A Nation at Risk was written the year I began teaching. I can’t recall ever discussing it with anyone. Teachers typically don’t concern themselves too much with the politics of policy. The proverbial Chinese expression, “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away,” might be a guideline for practice in a complex decentralized system where decisions are made in response to ever-changing conditions.

One of the core issues in current policy discussions is from what level curriculum control should emerge. Top down program administration too easily misses the fine print and messy details that come with the teacher’s territory. The only people who are surprised by a billion dollar per year program bust are the clueless pundits and policy pushers who believe that “scientifically based reading research” is about science and reading, and not about ideology and profiteering. I knew when I started this job that I’d become a cynic. It only hurts when I care, which is most of the time.

The top-down/bottom-up disagreement was explored recently in a fascinating story, Liberating the Schoolhouse. A researcher from UCLA, Wellford Wilms, documented the tenure of a new principal who took control of a troubled school in S. California, and managed by several measures to pull the school out of its tailspin, only to be replaced by a more traditional administrator. Her unusual approach to leadership was to require the school’s dispirited staff to run their own meetings and begin making significant decisions that would affect real change.

By the end of 2004, Infante’s vision began to show results as the school—administrators, teachers and students—began to emerge as a single community. The campus was cleaner as students started picking up after themselves; tardies and cuts dropped in frequency; and the school’s test score index shot up an amazing 95 points in less than two years, a gain that placed Baldwin Park High School among the schools with the greatest increase in scores. Infante recalled of her staff, “at first they thought it was a mistake. They didn’t believe in themselves.”

Another teacher leaned over the table and whispered, “It was like an invisible takeover, a secret government that never actually took power.”

But something happened to take the shine off the apple. Infante was reassigned and removed from her principal position by a school administration that wanted to maintain a more conventional hierarchy of control. They didn’t understand the steps this principal had taken to empower her teaching staff. According to Wilms, the board and superintendent were “blinded by their own ambitions.” Stephen Smoliar sees this as a cautionary tale, and comments that reformers can’t afford to wear blinders to the larger context within which their innovations might be executed.

That’s right, if your goal is to work and survive within the system. But who wants to do that these days?