In 1981, Reagan's Secretary of Education commissioned a report that became the 1983 A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform. It opens with a jump scare: Our nation is at risk. Political, but not polemical, the report bypasses academic framing and goes straight for national alarm to ensure that the reader comes away with the right conclusion. Nation's diagnosis was a "rising tide of mediocrity," and the resulting fervor led to reform efforts, both in K-12 and higher education.
[Schools] are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve. We must understand that these demands on our schools and colleges often exact an educational cost as well as a financial one.
This is the problem of "departmentalism" that probably goes back to 2000BC Mesopotamia. Here's how it goes. (1) identify a problem and give it a name, like "emergency management," (2) create an organization with staff, budget, and paperwork assigned to handle the problem, and--here's the problem--(3) blame the department for any failures. I suppose this is natural: once you have a sign hanging on your door that reads "educator," any failure of education must originate there, right? Departmentalism ignores external causes of problems and continually adds new issues to the portfolio of the department as they arise.
But Nation dodges that trap by warning against departmentalism: it's not just the schools (Coleman would have agreed). A short time later the report dives into the national angst of the era: being out-competed by Asia and Europe. The old world had been rebuilt and America no longer had a lock on production. The "malaise" of the Carter years lingered on. Yet the appeal for action was deeply patriotic, channeling Thomas Jefferson.
A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom.
For our country to function, citizens must be able to reach some common understandings on complex issues, often on short notice and on the basis of conflicting or incomplete evidence.
The rhetoric would warm the heart of any president of a liberal arts college. The means is what we might call "guided bootstrapping."
All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself.
There are two strands of classical liberalism here (see Fukuyama's Liberalism and its Discontents). One is that a fair society gives everyone a chance. The other is more radical, that everyone can achieve the same level of competence. The political winds had shifted so that the more practical first version is adopted throughout Nation. That doesn't seem to have been the case a few years earlier.
Prelude to Nation
The 1966 Coleman Report was a research project on education during the LBJ administration. It had reached the politically-incorrect conclusion that school conditions alone could not account for differences in student achievement; a gap at first grade expanded over time under the same conditions.
[O]ne implication stands out above all: That schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context; and that this very lack of an independent effect means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school.This Matthew Effect seems to be common in education, e.g. in college student writing. A recent example concerns the economic benefits of college degree: "going to college has become regressive, offering more to kids the richer they are," as reported here. This early stratification of futures seems vaguely unamerican and is counter to the utopian end of the classical liberalism spectrum, where social engineering levels the playing field.
One retrospective notes a secondary effect of the Coleman report.
Before Coleman, a good school was defined by its “inputs”—per-pupil expenditure, school size, comprehensiveness of the curriculum, volumes per student in the library, science lab facilities, use of tracking, and similar indicators of the resources allocated for the students’ education. After Coleman, the measures of a good school shifted to its “outputs” or “outcomes”—the amount its students know, the gains in learning they experience each year, the years of further education graduates pursue, and their long-term employment and earnings opportunities.It's worth reading that whole article if you have time; it provides nuances to the original report as well as an update on data relevant to the central claims. My reading of the history is that LBJ's agenda was school integration, and he was looking for support that amounts to departmentalism: integrating schools will largely close the racial achievement gap.
I'd reframe the basic question that we still face in education as how do we use data analysis to understand the Matthew Effect and use government to maximize the potential of every student? If we only focus on schools, not--for example, poverty--there's only so much than can be done to close gaps. In fact, the later we start in a young person's development, the more our effective efforts might widen achievement gaps. To see this imagine an oversimpified model where each student i has achievement X_i, and new policies produce a maximum achievement five years later of Y_i = L*X_i. The rich still get richer, and at a faster rater because of the boost. Everyone ends up better than they would have before the change, but the Matthew Effect is accelerated as a result. I'm not saying this is inevitable, or that proportional growth is the right model, but it's plausible.
Academic Expectations
The next section of Nation gives statistics of decline in learning. This is known to be untrustworthy, for example failing to account for selection effects. A wider swath of high-schoolers took the SAT in 1980 than in 1963, so the test-taking population was less elite. It's not surprising that the average scores declined. Cathy O'Neil has a chapter in Weapons of Math Destruction on this topic. A little later the authors illustrate this flaw in their logic without irony.
[T]he average graduate of our schools and colleges today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 or 35 years ago, when a much smaller proportion of our population completed high school and college.After the statistics there's a quaint-sounding appeal to the importance of the humanities, warning against an "overemphasis on technical and occupational skills," that would warm the hearts of any liberal arts faculty. Then the authors describe what they heard from interviews, including this.
What lies behind this emerging national sense of frustration can be described as both a dimming of personal expectations and the fear of losing a shared vision for America.The lowering of expectations is easy to understand--it's straight out of Ibn Khaldun, where the fall of a civilization stems from the laxity that civilization provides. The "fear of losing a shared vision for America," on the other hand, gave me a flash of nostalgia. That idea seemed more wholesome in the 1980s, or maybe that's just the glow of my college years. However, unlike the current politicization of education--as as shared vision problem--the emphasis in Nation was on rigor and the economic consequences of dumbing-down.
[T]he knowledge base continues its rapid expansion, the number of traditional jobs shrinks, and new jobs demand greater sophistication and preparation.
That sentiment would have be recognizable for decades to come, through Obama's college for all push, which arguably lasted until 2024. This argument has flipped; see the Lightcast report on the future of labor, for example, and the flawed but fascinating The Case Against Education that argues college degrees are nothing more than market signals.
Nation was arguing for quantity and quality both, but there's evidence that academic excellence has not been maintained in the intervening years. There's a case to be made that college is getting easier, flooding the labor market with a surfeit of bachelor's degrees, many of whom end up underemployed. As the signaling power of the degree erodes, dissatisfaction increases. If so, this goes back to Coleman's Matthew Effect (he didn't call it that) and the idea that we can have either high standards or a lot of graduates with lower average abilities. If we want a lot of graduates, then we have to reduce the bar so they can graduate (~40% still don't graduate, so the bar could be lower yet). The limitation is that many students in first grade are already set on a path that's unlikely to lead to completion of a rigorous college degree.
Matching Abilities to Outcomes
A fair and efficient education system lies somewhere between the extreme "every student tracked from birth into fixed opportunities" to "no filtering or tracking at all." The latter describes what we have in the US, a caveat emptor philosophy that fails those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Those least prepared for college are also less savvy at picking a college. By contrast, Germany's education system nudges students into career tracks. Given where American higher ed ended up today, it seems likely that incentives have been misaligned with outcomes. In particular, I suspect that colleges and universities got addicted to enlarged student populations and lowered filters to accommodate. See the brand new book on this topic Capitalizing on College. From the blurb:
[The book] reveals how three of the strategies these schools adopted--growing a traditional endowment, pioneering a periphery market, or even creating a network of multiple markets--were initially successful but ultimately fell short in raising enough revenue to support operating a residential campus. Only a fourth accelerated strategy of going to scale raised the necessary funds--but at the cost of undercutting their mission by leading them to view students as dollars.
While Nation has a political message, it's not after simple solutions, seeking to "avoid the unproductive tendency of some to search for scapegoats among the victims, such as the beleaguered teachers." Here again we see the wise resistance to what I called Departmentalism. The scapegoating would unfortunately return with a vengeance under G. W. Bush and No Child Left Behind. The prescription for educational problems involved students as much as institutions.
At the level of the individual learner, [excellence] means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and in the workplace.This is nuanced in that it tacitly admits the problem Coleman identified and leans into the idealism of the country's boot-strapping myth and Reagan's cowboy image. It's calling for a new generation of strivers and dreamers.
Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them. Excellence characterizes a society that has adopted these policies, for it will then be prepared through the education and skill of its people to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
The prescription to schools is "challenge and support," which is a reasonable middle path between the student tracking poles. It means we are flexible with college entry requirements, for example. To err on the side of over-admitting applicants, and then make up for any deficiencies that leak through with extra support. At least, that's a practical way to read it from a school's perspective. Indeed, if we look at the rhetoric produced by colleges and those who lend them credibility, this is apparently the model we have now. The problem with the last forty years of this challenge-and-support idea is that the support part was "solved" with Departmentalism (i.e. formally, but not actually), and the challenge was not maintained; it went the other way to accommodate unprepared students. The federal engineering to make colleges competitive by awarding aid to students directly means that students are often seen as dollars, and admissions requirements are set by financial goals.
Risk and Reward
Nation is pointing to an ethical trade-off between university finances and the risks borne by students. This is more of a problem now than it was in the 1980s because of the cost of college. To implement the challenge-and-support philosophy effectively, many colleges would have to make fundamental changes. We'd have to admit that while remediation may be part of the solution, equally important is matching learning to motivation and ability. Colleges shouldn't admit students without a clear idea of what success for that student looks like. For many colleges currently, this would be financial suicide.
In Nation we find a commitment to value diversity and maintain equity and excellence at the same time. It translates to a goal that implicitly acknowledges the Matthew Effect, but seeks to optimize outcomes within that constraint.
Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities.
In other words, it doesn't claim that all students have the same capabilities, but that we should help each reach his or her potential. To accomplish this without placing the whole burden on teachers would require social engineering. LBJ had his Great Society. Reagan's proposed version was the Learning Society.
At the heart of such a society is the commitment to a set of values and to a system of education that affords all members the opportunity to stretch their minds to full capacity, from early childhood through adulthood, learning more as the world itself changes. Such a society has as a basic foundation the idea that education is important not only because of what it contributes to one's career goals but also because of the value it adds to the general quality of one's life.The authors could hardly have imagined the power of the internet, online classes, and AI for life-long learning. The means to implement the vision described in that passage have become abundantly available. The cultural change--that Learning Society--is not obviously in evidence nowadays. It wasn't in evidence in 1983 either. The report is short on diagnosis, but does suggest that too many students do the minimum necessary, and "In some colleges maintaining enrollments is of greater day-to-day concern than maintaining rigorous academic standards," which is prescient in pointing out the ethical dilemma I mentioned above.
Call to Action
Nation's call to action is to everyone.
Thus, we issue this call to all who care about America and its future: to parents and students; to teachers, administrators, and school board members; to colleges and industry; to union members and military leaders; to governors and State legislators; to the President; to members of Congress and other public officials; to members of learned and scientific societies; to the print and electronic media; to concerned citizens everywhere. America is at risk.Despite this generality, much of the detail about student learning naturally centers on schools, because that's where the data comes from. There are a couple of pages of findings about a curriculum that's too loose, declining rigor, class time, and study time. The findings for classroom teaching are specific and actionable.
The Commission found that not enough of the academically able students are being attracted to teaching; that teacher preparation programs need substantial improvement; that the professional working life of teachers is on the whole unacceptable; and that a serious shortage of teachers exists in key fields.The report mentions low salaries as a contributing factor. And the diversity of the student body is associated with tracking.
We must emphasize that the variety of student aspirations, abilities, and preparation requires that appropriate content be available to satisfy diverse needs. Attention must be directed to both the nature of the content available and to the needs of particular learners. The most gifted students, for example, may need a curriculum enriched and accelerated beyond even the needs of other students of high ability. Similarly, educationally disadvantaged students may require special curriculum materials, smaller classes, or individual tutoring to help them master the material presented.This is followed by a general statement about high expectations appropriate to each group. In light of the Coleman Report and more general instances of the Matthew Effect, this isn't a strategy to minimize learning gaps between groups, but to increase the learning of each group to its maximum potential. Policy recommendations support this in the pages following.
We recommend that schools, colleges, and universities adopt more rigorous and measurable standards, and higher expectations, for academic performance and student conduct, and that 4-year colleges and universities raise their requirements for admission. This will help students do their best educationally with challenging materials in an environment that supports learning and authentic accomplishment.
As I observed above, the success of this program would tend to enlarge achievement gaps because of the Matthew Effect. To close gaps, changes would have to start before students are born.
The report's general statement about academic excellence is followed by specific recommendations. The first two are striking in the context of higher ed's current state.
1. Grades should be indicators of academic achievement so they can be relied on as evidence of a student's readiness for further study.
2. Four-year colleges and universities should raise their admissions requirements and advise all potential applicants of the standards for admission in terms of specific courses required, performance in these areas, and levels of achievement on standardized achievement tests in each of the five Basics [English, math, science, social studies, and computer science] and, where applicable, foreign languages.The first of these should be read in light of the recent research of Jeff Denning and colleagues, who found that recent grade inflation is linked to lower academic standards, so that colleges were graduating more students, but who had learned less on average. Incredibly, for decades accrediting agencies have actively discouraged the use of grade data to inform learning improvement efforts. This was a huge lost opportunity.
Other recommendations support academic rigor through standardized tests, improved textbooks (including addressing learner diversity), and the development of pedagogy and teaching materials using good research. At the societal level, the recommendations support higher pay and status for teachers. Much of this is tasked to state and local governments, with some federal support.
[W]e believe the Federal Government's role includes several functions of national consequence that States and localities alone are unlikely to be able to meet: protecting constitutional and civil rights for students and school personnel; collecting data, statistics, and information about education generally; supporting curriculum improvement and research on teaching, learning, and the management of schools; supporting teacher training in areas of critical shortage or key national needs, and providing student financial assistance and research and graduate training.As noted earlier, the authors avoided the Departmentalism trap, and acknowledge that although government can make important changes, that's not the whole picture. The report then addresses students and parents directly.
You have the right to demand for your children the best our schools and colleges can provide. Your vigilance and your refusal to be satisfied with less than the best are the imperative first step. But your right to a proper education for your children carries a double responsibility. As surely as you are your child's first and most influential teacher, your child's ideas about education and its significance begin with you. You must be a living example of what you expect your children to honor and to emulate.
Concluding Thoughts
Teachers tend to be handled as interchangeable units in an educational assembly line. The best teacher and the poorest in a school may teach the same grade and subject, use the same textbook, handle the same number of students, get paid the same salaries and rise in salary at the same speed to the same ceiling.It was this thread--treating education as an assembly line--that has had the most staying power. Its attraction is magnified when combined with the emphasis of measuring outcomes (sparked by Coleman). Rather than customizing education to the potential(s) of the student, a minimum competency mindset seems to have prevailed. It probably isn't coincidental that this is the cheapest way to deliver education. Consequently, the problems identified in Nation (and preceding research) still exist, and gaps still exist.
