National Education Summit of
1989
The Event President George H. W. Bush and the
nation’s governors discuss problems in
America’s schools
Date September 27-28, 1989
Place Charlottesville, Virginia
The 1989 National Education Summit focused national
attention on U.S. education programs, resulting in biparti-
san reform efforts that led to the development of national ed-
ucation goals.
The ebb and flow of Americans’ interest in educa-
tion reform has been a recurrent pattern in the his-
tory of American education since the early twentieth
century, a focus that resurfaced in the century’s last
decades. Although successfully extricated from Viet-
nam, Americans in the 1970’s faced other national
crises, including the Watergate scandal (1972), the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) oil embargo (1973), the Iranian hostage
crisis (1979-1981), and more ambiguous problems
such as rising inflation. In education, touted pro-
grams like Head Start had not achieved anticipated
levels of success, and controversies over bus zoning
and desegregation efforts were debated before the
Supreme Court.
By 1983, concerns about America’s schools led to
a national education study,A Nation at Risk: The Im-
perative for Educational Reform. This report, authored
by the National Commission on Excellence in Edu-
cation, presented a bleak outlook on the future of
U.S. education, arguing that the nation’s “once un-
challenged preeminence in commerce, industry,
science, and technological innovation is being over-
taken by competitors throughout the world.” Per-
haps because it so accurately reflected the nation’s692 National Education Summit of 1989 The Eighties in America
President George H. W. Bush attends the second working session of the National Education Summit of 1989.(NARA)