N
Nation at Risk, A
Identification Government report critical of
American education
Date Released on April 26, 1983
The highly publicized release ofA Nation at Riskset in mo-
tion a school reform movement during the 1980’s. The re-
port continued to be a catalyst for educational change be-
yond the decade.
During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald
Reagan proposed the elimination of the Depart-
ment of Education, established just a year earlier by
President Jimmy Carter, as part of his promise to re-
duce the size of government. Terrel Bell, appointed
by President Reagan in 1981 to be secretary of edu-
cation, accepted the position with the goal of reex-
amining the appropriate federal role in education.
He appointed a commission, the National Commis-
sion on Excellence in Education, which was given
eighteen months and a broad mandate to examine,
among others things, the quality of the nation’s
schools and colleges. The commission was to make
recommendations on how to improve the educa-
tional system of the United States, with special em-
phasis on better serving teenage students. The com-
mission held dozens of meetings and hearings
around the country, commissioned numerous re-
ports, convened regular meetings of its members,
and released its final report,A Nation at Risk: The Im-
perative for Educational Reform, at a White House cere-
mony that included President Reagan, Vice Presi-
dent George H. W. Bush, educational leaders from
across the country, and a large group from the press.
The report was written not in educational jargon
but rather in an accessible language whose power
Secretary Bell recognized immediately. It included
an introduction that was reprinted in newspapers
and magazines across the country, declaring in no
uncertain terms that the U.S. educational system was
in such disrepair that the future of the nation itself
was in danger. If nothing changed, the United States
could soon be expected to lag behind other coun-
tries in commerce, industry, science, and technolog-
ical innovations. One often-quoted phrase, “a rising
tide of mediocrity,” pointed to the erosion of the ed-
ucational foundations of the country.
The publicity surrounding the report only in-
creased once it was released to the public. More
than 400,000 copies were distributed, andTimeand
Newsweekboth devoted lengthy articles to education.
Secretary Bell convened twelve regional conferences
to disseminate the report throughout the country.
President Reagan gave the keynote address at the fi-
nal such event. Any discussion of abolishing the De-
partment of Education soon ended. States across the
country created their own education commissions,
governors called for educational reform, and by the
1988 election, President Bush had declared himself
the “Education President.”
Impact Not since the launching of Sputnik by the
Soviet Union in 1957 had the topic of education fig-
ured so significantly in American life as it did in- The national conversation continued for years,
as the nation’s problems did not disappear, and
each successive president sought to claim the mantle
of the Education President. Little consensus was
reached on the best manner in which to fix Ameri-
can education, but in the wake ofA Nation at Risk,it
was universally agreed that something had to be
done.
Further Reading
Hayes, William.Are We Still a Nation at Risk Two De-
cades Later?Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Education,
National Committee on Excellence in Education.A
Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Re-
form—A Report to the Nation and the Secretar y of Edu-
cation. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1983. Also at
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS3244.
Spring, Joel H.American Education.Boston: McGraw-
Hill, 2004.
John Boyd