Nation at Risk
EDU 7371: Education Reform
Fall 2014
Webex #1
History of Reform
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1889 - Jane Addams and her college friend Ellen Gates Starr found Hull House in a Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of recent
European immigrants. It is the first settlement house in the U.S. Included among its many services are a kindergarten and a
night school for adults. Hull House continues to this day to offer educational services to children and families.
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1890 - The Second Morrill Act is enacted. It provides for the "more complete endowment and support of the colleges"
through the sale of public lands, Part of this funding leads to the creation of 16 historically black land-grant colleges.
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1892 - Formed by the National Education Association to establish a standard secondary school
curriculum, the Committee of Ten, recommends a college-oriented high school curriculum.
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1896 - Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old African American, challenges the state of Louisiana's "Separate Car Act," arguing that
requiring Blacks to ride in separate railroad cars violates the 13th and 14th Amendments. The U.S. Supreme Court upholds
the Louisiana law stating in the majority opinion that the intent of the 14th Amendment "had not been intended to abolish
distinctions based on color." Thus, the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson makes "separate but equal"
policies legal. It becomes a legal precedent used to justify many other segregation laws, including "separate but equal"
education.
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1898 - The Spanish American War makes Theodore Roosevelt a hero, and the United States becomes an
international power.
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1900 - The Association of American Universities is founded to promote higher standards and put U.S.
universities on an equal footing with their European counterparts.
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1901 - Joliet Junior College, in Joliet, Illinois, opens. It is the first public community college in the U.S.
1892 Committee of Ten
• Appointed by National Education Association
• It is considered the early approach to standardization of curriculum.
• Twelve years of education were recommended, with eight years of
elementary education followed by four years of high school. The
committee was explicitly asked to address tracking, or course
differentiation based upon postsecondary pursuit. The committee
responded unanimously that "...every subject which is taught at all
in a secondary school should be taught in the same way and to the
same extent to every pupil so long as he pursues it, no matter what
the probable destination of the pupil may be, or at what point his
education is to cease."
Teacher Training-1893
• In addition to promoting equality in instruction, they stated
that by unifying courses of study, school instruction and
the training of new teachers could be greatly simplified.
• These recommendations were generally interpreted as a
call to teach English, mathematics, and history or civics to
every student every academic year in high school. The
recommendations also formed the basis of the practice of
teaching biology, chemistry, and physics, respectively, in
ascending high school academic years.
• However, these recommendations were found to have had
modest impact on direct instruction after ten years' time.
History of Reform
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1905- The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is founded. It is charted by an act of Congress
in 1906, the same year the Foundation encouraged the adoption of a standard system for equating "seat time" (the amount
of time spent in a class) to high school credits. Still in use today, this system came to be called the "Carnegie Unit."
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1913 - Edward Lee Thorndike's book, Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning, is published. It describes his
theory that human learning involves habit formation, or connections between stimuli (or situations as Thorndike preferred
to call them) and responses (Connectionism). He believes that such connections are strengthened by repetition ("Law of
Exercise") and achieving satisfying consequences ("Law of Effect"). These ideas, which contradict traditional faculty
psychology and mental discipline, come to dominate American educational psychology for much of the Twentieth Century
and greatly influence American educational practice. (RESEARCH DRIVING REFORM)
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1916 - Louis M. Terman and his team of Stanford University graduate students complete an American version of the BinetSimon Scale. The Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale becomes a widely-used individual intelligence test, and along
with it, the concept of the intelligence quotient (or IQ) is born. The Fifth Edition of the Stanford-Binet Scales is among the
most popular individual intelligence tests today.
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1916 - John Dewey's Democracy and Education. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education is published. Dewey's
views help advance the ideas of the "progressive education movement." An outgrowth of the progressive political
movement, progressive education seeks to make schools more effective agents of democracy. (AMERICAN MORALITY
DRIVING REFORM)
History…(cont’d)
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1917 - The Smith-Hughes Act passes, providing federal funding for agricultural and vocational education. It is
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repealed in 1997.
1919 - The Progressive Education Association is founded with the goal of reforming American education.
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1919 - All states have laws providing funds for transporting children to school.
1921 - Louis Terman launches a longitudinal study of "intellectually superior" children at Stanford University. The study continues
into the 21st Century!
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1922 - The International Council for Exceptional Children is founded at Columbia University Teachers College.
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1922 - Abigail Adams Eliot, with help from Mrs. Henry Greenleaf Pearson, establishes the Ruggles Street Nursery School in
Roxbury, MA, one of the first educational nursery schools in the U.S. It becomes the Eliot-Pearson Children's School and is now
affiliated with the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University.
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1924 - Max Wertheimer describes the principles of Gestalt Theory to the Kant Society in Berlin. Gestalt Theory, with its emphasis
on learning through insight and grasping the whole concept, becomes important later in the 20th Century in the development of
cognitive views of learning and teaching.
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1925 - Tennessee vs. John Scopes ("the Monkey Trial") captures national attention as John Scopes, a high school biology
teacher, is charged with the heinous crime of teaching evolution. The trial ends in Scopes' conviction. The evolution versus
creationism controversy persists to this day. 1968 - The "Monkey Trial" revisited! In the case of Epperson et al. v. Arkansas, the
U.S. supreme Court finds the state of Arkansas' law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in a public school or university
unconstitutional.
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1926 - The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is first administered.
History …(cont’d)
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1938 - Ladislas Biro and his brother Georg patent the ballpoint pen.
1939 - Frank W. Cyr, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, organizes a national
conference on student transportation. It results in the adoption of standards for the nation's school
buses, including the shade of yellow.
1939 - The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (first called the Wechsler- Bellevue Intelligence Scale) is
developed by David Wechsler. It introduces the concept of the "deviation IQ," which calculates IQ scores
based on how far subjects' scores differ (or deviate) from the average (mean) score of others who are the
same age, rather than calculating them with the ratio (MA/CA multiplied by 100) system. Wechsler
intelligence tests, particularly the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, are still widely used in U.S.
schools to help identify students needing special education.
1941 - The U.S. enters World War II after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on December 7. Education is
put on the back burner as many young men quit school to enlist; schools are faced with personnel
problems as teachers and other employees enlist, are drafted, or leave to work in defense plants; school
construction is put on hold.
1944 - The G.I. Bill of Rights officially known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, is signed by
FDR on June 22. Some 7.8 million World War II veterans take advantage of the GI Bill during the seven
years benefits are offered. More than two-million attend colleges or universities, nearly doubling the
college population. About 238,000 become teachers. Because the law provides the same opportunity to
every veteran, regardless of background, the long-standing tradition that a college education was only for
the wealthy is broken.
1945 - World War II ends on August 15 (VJ Day) with victory over Japan. International dominance of US!
(Cont’d)
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1946 - At one minute after midnight on January 1st, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling is born, the first of nearly 78-million
baby boomers, beginning a generation that results in unprecedented school population growth and massive social
change. She becomes a teacher!
1946 - In the landmark court case of Mendez vs. Westminster and the California Board of Education, the U. S. District
Court in Los Angeles rules that educating children of Mexican descent in separate facilities is unconstitutional, thus
prohibiting segregation in California schools and setting an important precedent for Brown vs. Board of Education.
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1946 - The computer age begins as the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), the first vacuum-tube
computer, is built for the U.S. military by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly.
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1946 - With thousands of veterans returning to college, The President's Commission on Higher Education is given the
task of reexamining the role of colleges and universities in post-war America. The first volume of its report, often
referred to as the Truman Commission Report, is issued in 1947 and recommends sweeping changes in higher
education, including doubling college enrollments by 1960 and extending free public education through the
establishment of a network of community colleges. This latter recommendation comes to fruition in the 1960s, during
which community college enrollment more than triples.
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1946 - Recognizing "the need for a permanent legislative basis for a school lunch program," the 79th Congress
approves the National School Lunch Act.
(Cont’d)
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1947 - In the case of Everson v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court rules by a 5-4 vote that a New Jersey law which
allowed reimbursements of transportation costs to parents of children who rode public transportation to school, even if
their children attended Catholic schools, did NOT violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
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1948 - In the case of McCollum v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court rules that schools cannot allow "released time"
during the school day which allows students to participate in religious education in their public school classrooms.
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1950 - Public Law 81-740 grants a federal charter to the FFA and recognizes it as an integral part of the program of
vocational agriculture. The law is revised in 1998 and becomes Public Law 105-225.
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1954 - On May 17th, the U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the case of Brown v. Board. of Education of
Topeka, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," thus overturning its previous
ruling in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Brown v. Board of Education is actually a combination of
five cases from different parts of the country. It is a historic first step in the long and still unfinished
journey toward equality in U.S. education.
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1955 - Rosa Parks, a Montgomery, Alabama seamstress, refuses to give up her seat on the bus to a Caucasian passenger and
is subsequently arrested and fined. The Montgomery bus boycott follows, giving impetus to the Civil Rights Movement. A
year later, in the case of Browder v. Gale, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregated seating on buses unconstitutional.
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1956 – The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; Handbook I:
Cognitive Domain is published. Often referred to simply as “Bloom’s Taxonomy” because of its primary author,
Benjamin S. Bloom, the document actually has four coauthors (M.D. Engelhart, E.J. Furst, W.H. Hill, and David Krathwohl).
(cont’d)
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1957 - The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is voted into law in spite of Strom Thurmond's filibuster. Essentially a voting-rights
bill, it is the first civil rights legislation since reconstruction and is a precursor to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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1957 - Federal troops enforce integration in Little Rock, Arkansas as the Little Rock 9 enroll at Central High School.
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1958 - At least partially because of Sputnik, science and science education become important concerns in the U.S.,
resulting in the passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which authorizes increased funding for
1957 - The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. Occurring in the midst of the
Cold War, it represents both a potential threat to American national security as well as a blow to national pride.
scientific research as well as science, mathematics, and foreign language education.
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1959 - The ACT Test is first administered.
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1960 -First grader Ruby Bridges is the first African American to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New
Orleans. She becomes a class of one as parents remove all Caucasian students from the school.
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1962 - First published in 1934, Lev Vygotsky's book, Thought and Language is introduced to the English-
speaking world. Though he lives to be only 38, Vygotsky's ideas regarding the social nature of learning
provide important foundational principles for contemporary social constructivist theories. He is perhaps best
known for his concept of "Zone of Proximal Development."
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1962 - In the case of Engel v. Vitale, the U. S. Supreme Court rules that the state of New York's Regents prayer violates
the First Amendment. The ruling specifies that "state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require
that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day. . . "
Historical Events Drive Reform
• 1963 - In response to the large number of
Cuban immigrant children arriving in Miami
after the Cuban Revolution, Coral Way
Elementary School starts the first bilingual
and bicultural public school in the United
States.
Morality/Ethics Drive Reform
• 1965 - The Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) is passed on April 9. Part
of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," it
provides federal funds to help low-income
students, which results in the initiation of
educational programs such as Title I and
bilingual education.
Legal Rulings Drive Reform
• 1971
• Pennsylvania Association for Retarded
Children (PARC) v. Pennsylvania,
• federal court rules that students with mental
retardation are entitled to a free public
education.
Law Drives Reform
• 1972 - Title IX of the Education Amendments
of 1972 becomes law.
• Though many people associate this law only
with girl's and women's participation in
sports, Title IX prohibits discrimination based
on sex in all aspects of education.
Politics Drive Reform: Power Struggle?
• After Nation at Risk, education reform became
one of the most politically popular agendas for
governors, regardless of political leanings.
• Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Jim Hunt of North
Carolina, and Richard Riley of South Carolina
accepted the challenge of reforming education
and led the country.
• President Reagan, who was (R) believed in the
responsibility of education as a states’ right,
embraced the new energy of the governors.
Politics
• National Governors' Association (NGA), released
its own report on the state of education.
• The NGA report reaffirmed the NCEE position
that without reforming education the nation
would not continue to be economically
competitive on a global level.
• This theme was especially noticed by American
business leaders, who began to call for
improvement in the schools.
History of Reform: 1983
• A Nation-at-risk.
• Are we still at risk? According to whom? Indicators?
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What were the goals of this reform? Did they work?
How do you know? Are we still working on them?
What motivates the reforms that were recommended?
How has the vision of this reform- A Nation at Riskchanged American education?
• From your study of the Nation at Risk initiative, how
might this reform serve to inform your leadership of
educational reform?
Power Struggle
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Secretary Bell proposed the creation of a independent presidential commission to investigate the
state of education in the United States in a fair and balanced manner.
Reagan, who saw little value in presidential commissions, turned down Bell's proposal. As a result,
in 1981 Bell commissioned his own cabinet-level panel, to be called the National Commission on
Excellence in Education (NCEE), to review education.
The eighteen-member panel was composed of representatives from a wide spectrum of political
perspectives.
The panel produced the report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education
Reform, which stands as perhaps the most important document in the late twentieth century's
history of education reform. A Nation at Risk became the impetus for two decades of standardsbased reform. Ironically, once the report's themes became known at the White House, Reagan
adopted the report as his own.
The seminal report came in the form of an open letter to the American people and President
Reagan in April 1983. The report was a serious indictment of education in the United States.
It stated, "Our nation is at risk…. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted
to impose on America the mediocre education performance that exists
today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war" (p. 5).
Goals
• What were the goals of this reform? Did they work?
• Everyone in the US deserved, was capable of,
and should be required to receive academic
instruction through high school regardless of
race, economic status, or post–high school
plans.
• Second, academic standards needed to be
raised considerably for all students.
How do you know?
Are we still working on them?
• (1) that "five new basics" be added to the curriculum of America's
schools. The basics included four years of English, three years of
mathematics, three years of science, three years of social studies,
and half a year of computer science in high school; DRIVER: a
desire for American superiority;
• (2) that more rigorous and measurable standards be adopted;
DRIVER: perception of mediocrity;
• (3) that the school year be extended in order to make more time for
learning the "New Basics"; DRIVER: a desire for American
superiority
• (4) that the teaching be improved with enhanced preparation and
professionalization; DRIVER: globalization and economic
competitiveness; jobs
• (5) that accountability be added to education. DRIVER:
globalization
What drove these recommendations?
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Power struggle- Reagan and Bell
Sputnik
America on international stage
Accountability-economics and costs of
schooling
How has the vision of this reform- A Nation at Risk-changed American education?
Change
Indicator
Challenges that
continue
Successes to
celebrate
4 yrs of English, 3
yrs of math, three
years of science,
three years of
social studies, and
half a year of
computer science
in high school;
HS grad
requirements
indicate these
standards +;
RIGOR in these
subjects;
Exceeded
recommendation of
NAR
Access to new and
adequate
TECHNOLOGIES
Embed
technologies across
curriculum
Teacher quality as it
relates to
technologies
Infrastructure of
technology
Nation at Risk Goal 2
Change
Indicator
Challenges that
Continue
Successes to
Celebrate
that the school year
be extended in
order to make more
time for learning
the "New Basics”
School calendars;
Very little change—
5 days added;
Extended school
day in many
cases—extended
hours;
Less summer
programs –budget
cuts;
Board decisions
about use of
schools;
Grants with
technology? Extend
time for learning
beyond “school”
day;
Personalized
education—able to
diagnose and
prescribe learning
more specificallyefficient with our
focus; time is no
longer fixed
variablepersonalized
curriculum;
Nation at Risk Goal 3
Change
Indicator
Challenges that
Continue
Successes to
Celebrate
that more rigorous
and measurable
standards be
adopted
Testing more using
measurable
standards-based
assessments;
Lots of $$ spent on
testing;
Standards from all
national
organizations; ISTE;
Psychometricians
are employees of
school districts;
Defining rigor;
Balanced
scorecards;
Mediocrity ensues
when we teach to
tests;
Well-designed
assessments;
Knowing why we
give tests;
Helps us see
children as
individuals, or at
least subgroups;
Get to see how ALL
subgroups are
performing;
greater
accountability;
Have identified or
are trying to
identify indicators
of performance;
Nation at Risk Goal 4
Change
Indicator
Challenges that
Continue
Successes to
Celebrate
that the teaching
be improved with
enhanced
preparation and
professionalization;
NC Teaching
Standards;
Protected planning
time for teachers;
some duty-free
schools;
Using instructional
coaches now to
impact teacher
growth;
EC teachers with
double certification
better prepared to
teach; practices in
higher training
programs have
placing student
teachers with
effective/strong
teachers is
CRITICAL;
Elimination of
programs/incentive
s to attract top HS
grads to the
teaching profession
– teaching fellows;
New Teacher PLC;
Success: New pay
incentive for new
teachers;
Nation at Risk Goal 5
Change
Indicator
Challenges that
Continue
Successes to
Celebrate
that accountability
be added to
education
EVAAS/ standard 6
& 8;
Grad rates;
Test scores;
attendance and
discipline;
Hard to quantify
“high quality;”
Understanding data
and USING data to
make change;
Data directed,
rather than data
driven;
People operate
from fear;
Cheating;
innovation requires
risk taking that acct
discourages;
can more easily
coach ineffective
teachers out; know
where your holes
are and try to fix
them in systems
thinking approach;
makes ed more like
other professions;
Provides a way of
advocacy for new
initiatives;
30 years Later
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R9WMI703WrA
• Are we still at risk?
• According to whom?
• Indicators?
• Let’s listen to Bill Bennett, Commissioner of
Education in 2009 address Nation at Risk..
• 30 years later
Where are we headed?
• the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India,
where children can explore and learn from
each other —
http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2013/Non
e/SugataMitra_2013-480p.mp4
Reflection
• From your study of Nation at Risk, how might
this reform serve to inform your leadership of
educational reform?