Skip to main content

Mobile Navigation

  • National
    • Policy
      • High Expectations
      • Quality Choices
      • Personalized Pathways
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Gadfly Newsletter
      • Flypaper Blog
    • Events
    • Scholars Program
  • Ohio
    • Policy
      • Priorities
      • Media & Testimony
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Ohio Education Gadfly Biweekly
      • Ohio Gadfly Daily
  • Charter Authorizing
    • Application
    • Sponsored Schools
    • Resources
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board
    • Staff
    • Career
Home
Home
Advancing Educational Excellence

Main Navigation

  • National
  • Ohio
  • Charter Authorizing
  • About

National Menu

  • Topics
    • Accountability & Testing
    • Advanced Education
    • Career & Technical Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Curriculum & Instruction
    • ESSA
    • Evidence-Based Learning
    • Facilities
    • Governance
    • Personalized Learning
    • Private School Choice
    • School Finance
    • Standards
    • Teachers & School Leaders
    • Think Again
  • Research
  • Commentary
    • Gadfly Newsletter
    • Flypaper Blog
    • Gadfly Podcast
  • Events
  • Scholars Program
Flypaper

Happy twenty-fifth

Coby Loup
4.24.2008

This Saturday A Nation at Risk turns twenty-five.

As with most birthdays after one's twenty-first, the occasion is bittersweet. As Fordham president Checker Finn reflects in today's Education Gadfly, the lessons of A Nation at Risk, despite the report's landmark status for sounding "an overdue and much-needed alarum," still struggle to be heard over the din of misguided deniers. That's a shame, he says, for the "biggest single reason, I believe, that America's education reform efforts of the past quarter century have yielded such meager returns is that we haven't given them our all."

Indeed, the country's general failure to absorb A Nation at Risk has been the source of many a frustration for Checker:

A Nation at Risk

Tags: A Nation at Risk

Coby is a policy analyst for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He also maintains the Institute's website. By a happy turn of events, Coby landed at Fordham via the Institute for Humane Studies, where he was a Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in political science.A Colorado native, Coby enjoys hiking and running outdoors. He also enjoys the indoors--especially bookstores,…

View Full Bio
Fordham Logo

© 2026 The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Privacy Policy
Usage Agreement

National

P.O. Box 110
Burke, VA 22009

202.223.5452

[email protected]

Ohio

P.O. Box 82291
Columbus, OH 43202

614.223.1580

[email protected]

Sponsorship

130 West Second Street, Suite 410
Dayton, Ohio 45402

937.227.3368

[email protected]