David T. Gordon, Editor, Harvard Education Press
January 2003
This is the first of what will doubtless prove to be numerous efforts to observe the 20th anniversary of A Nation at Risk, with a stocktaking of what has and has not been accomplished. (The Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force presents its version on February 26.) Published by the Harvard Education Press and edited by the Harvard Education Letter's David T. Gordon, it contains a preface by Patricia A. Graham and ten essays by well-known education thinkers, most of them ed-school professors, as well as a reproduction of the text of the 1983 report. There is no collective view or group statement here, just a collection of individual pieces. On the whole, they are glum assessments, perceptive about why change comes slowly to U.S. education but not very helpful about what to do differently. Individual authors make their own pleas - the three-point formula suggested by the Efficacy Institute's Jeff Howard is the sagest of these - but it adds up to no roadmap or blueprint. Note, too, that this volume is deeply system-focused and school-centered. Next to nothing is said about empowering consumers or the potential of competition-style reform to do what traditional power relationships have been so sluggish in accomplishing. Still, an hour with this book will add to your understanding of why little has been achieved in the two decades since America was told to get serious about its K-12 education system. For ordering information, go to http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~hepg/nationreformed.html.
