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FOUR A NATION AT RISK AN UNLIKELY PROSPECT Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected president of the United States in November 1980. To the astonishment of his party and perhaps himself as well, in the latter part of his first term he traveled to public schools across the nation , advocating their cause and seeking to improve both the work of and support for education in kindergarten through grade twelve. He abandoned the Republican Party’s education platform and his own electoral campaign commitments to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, to return prayer to the schools, and to enact tuition tax credits and/or school vouchers. How this unlikely prospect unfolded is the subject of this chapter. The president’s personal involvement in and commitment to the nation’s schools and the vital work in which they were engaged came about during his first term from the surprising choice of Terrel H. Bell to serve as the secretary of education, the last and thirteenth cabinet member to be appointed. The Secretary of Education Ted Bell was a very humble person but had very little to be humble about. He was a seasoned and knowledgeable educator, sophisticated in the ways of the nation’s capital and capable of making hard decisions. Much to their later dismay, his critics and detractors often mistook his self-effacing manner for weakness at best and ineptitude at worst. 104 In the four years he served as U.S. secretary of education, he managed against all odds to increase the presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and legislative interest in and support for American public schools. He helped to move education to the top rungs of the country’s domestic agenda, bested only by public concern for the then high levels of unemployment . And he launched a broad-based and long-lasting effort to improve the nation’s schools and the quality of education offered to America’s young. This remarkable outcome startled Reagan’s more conservative White House advisers, who were in an intense struggle with Bell throughout his four-year tenure for the ear of the president and even more for his heart. Bell won in Reagan’s first term, and his antagonists in the White House did in the second. Bell had been a leader in Utah education for more than three decades, serving as Utah’s superintendent of public instruction and as commissioner of higher education. When he was commissioner for higher education and I was president of the University of Utah, we worked well together. Even when we disagreed, I liked and respected him not only for what he had accomplished , but also for his fairness and honesty when he made a decision. He was always willing to listen to reason rather than worry about whose influence was the most telling or whose threatened sanctions were the most onerous or who made the most noise. The president’s invitation to Bell did not surprise me, but given the Republicans ’ agenda for education, his acceptance did. Bell was a moderate Republican in disagreement with much of the party’s views on these matters . He was, however, no novice when it came to understanding the machinations of Washington, D.C., having served under both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as deputy commissioner for education and then (1974–76) as commissioner of education, in which position his responsibilities encompassed the “education” in HEW. He reported to the secretary of HEW, Casper Weinberger, who was later to serve as Reagan’s secretary of defense. When Ted had been offered the secretary’s position but before he accepted it, he called me seeking advice and information about Reagan, whom I had known during my years at UC. He was also interested in whatever information I could share with him about several of the president’s top aides and advisers and members of his “kitchen cabinet”: I knew UC Regents William Wilson, later U.S. representative to the Vatican, William French Smith, later Reagan’s pick for U.S. attorney general, and Glenn Campbell, director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who also served on Reagan’s intelligence advisory committee. I told Bell that Reagan would be quite easy to work with, but only if he could get to him. I explained that Reagan was an honest person who believed in his principles and was committed to the rightness of his views, that he was A NATION AT RISK 105 [3.139.97.157] Project MUSE...

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