Taking the Measure of American Education Reform: An Assessment of the Education ReportsHigh School: A Report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Ernest L. BoyerAcademic Preparation for College: What Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do. College BoardA Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. National Commission on Excellence in EducationAction for Excellence: A

Abstract

The reports that have poured forth in the last year show that the nation is focusing extraordinary attention on American public education. That attention is overdue, for our education system has grave problems. Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) have recently stabilized, but they had been dropping for decade and half. American students are not performing well in comparison with students in other industrialized nations. For example, on achievement tests (sponsored by the Dallas Times Herald; see Walton 1983) recently administered to sixth graders in eight nations, American students ranked 4th in geography, 6th in science and dead last in mathematics. Perhaps the most disturbing sign of all is that too many of those who are about to become teachers rank in the bottom of their college classes-a situation that, if uncorrected, will make it impossible for us to improve our schools. The simple fact is that we have been neglecting our education system for far too long and starving it for funds. Unless we start taking the necessary steps to strengthen American education-such as increasing teacher salaries, raising academic standards, and attracting academically superior college graduates into the profession-this country will remain, as one study labeled it, a nation at risk. The realization has struck home that people-not oil or goldrepresent our most precious national resource, one that must be fully developed in each generation to ensure that there will be the political leaders, business entrepreneurs, computer whizzes, research scientists, charismatic teachers, skilled workers, and farseeing humanists we need to guide us in an increasingly complex and highly competitive world. In fact, students and the teachers who educate them constitute the of our society, an underpinning just as critical to American strength and stability as the system of roads, bridges, and tunnels that bind us together as nation. Our current efforts to fortify this human infrastructure are part of third of redevelopment that is sweeping over America. The first wave began several years ago, when we realized that America's factories and industrial plants had deteriorated and become outmoded;