The Heritage Foundation's Ed Feulner is a heckuva smart guy and he's usually right (as well as Right). His take on A Nation at Risk, and the country's response to it, however, is only half right.
Yes, we're spending pots more money on public education today--close to twice as much per kid in constant dollars--than in 1983 when ANAR was issued. But that kind of spending increase was happening for decades and decades before ANAR, too. Indeed, public education spending has risen for as long as we've had public education. (See page 200 of my book.) No, spending more doesn't solve any problems or boost achievement, but neither was it America's main response to ANAR.
Rather, the main responses were in fact to do a lot more of the two things that Ed praises: lots more school choice (though not enough, and not good enough choices) and lots more accountability (though not enough and it's not working as well as it should). He decries NCLB as overzealous federal intervention, and I don't disagree, but it's not as if repealing it (which only residents of cloud cuckoo land imagine happening) would lead to tons more school choice or accountability. Ed and his Heritage colleagues have a slight tendency to see Uncle Sam as the root of all evil. There's plenty to criticize in American public education--but the federal government is among the lesser culprits.
