A Nation Reformed?

A Nation Reformed? takes stock of twenty years of school reform. Was the nation really ever ""at risk"" and, if so, is it still? Which reforms have made a difference and which haven't? And where do we go from here?

On April 26, 1983, the blue-ribbon National Commission on Excellence in Education issued "an open letter to the American people" on the state of our nation's schools. "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" was one of many such reports that year, but its title and incendiary language set it apart almost immediately. We were warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" in our schools that imperiled the nation's future. The symbolic opening salvo in a two-decade-long struggle to improve schools, A Nation at Risk helped put education reform at the top of the national agenda.