How Did We Get Here and Where Are We Going?

How Did We Get Here and Where Are We Going? Keynote Speaker: Edward FisL·, Education Editor, The New York Times Wr re're in the midst of a major school reform movement. When future historians write about American education in the 20th century, they're going to look at the period of the early to middle '80s as one of the great periods of tumult and concern about the quality of education. To put some of the important issues in perspective, I'd like to talk a little bit about the school reform movement: where it came from, what I see happening now and what seems to be on the horizon. I'd like to back up a little bit because if you look at the historical pattern of school reform in this country, certain features come immediately to mind. First of all, it tends to be sporadic. Educational reform is the kind of issue which captures our imagination for a brief period of time; we put enormous efforts into it then—perhaps we're a little bit fickle—we tend to move on to other subjects. The most obvious example, of course, is the Sputnik period . After the Soviets put the spaceship Sputnik into orbit in 1957, we went through an enormous period of putting national resources into improving education, especially science and math. It captured the imagination of the country of course, because we could go out in our backyards at night and see that little speck moving across the horizon; we had a visible symbol of our problem. Then, after achieving a number of major reforms, especially the writing of curriculum in science and math, the country moved on to other things. Reform also tends to occur for reasons that don't always have very much to do with education. I think of the Land Grant College act during the Civil War. That had enormous impact on American higher education, but it was essentially conceived by Congress as a way of getting rid of some excess federal land and a way of getting agriculture out on the frontier. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the early '60s had a big impact on elementary and secondary education in this country, but it was essentially conceived as an anti-poverty program. Education became the vehicle. You might even say the same thing about PL. 94-142, which was conceived in a political context of looking for equity. The issue was equity—not education per se. Reform tends to be sporadic. It tends to occur for noneducational reasons, and perhaps following logically out of that, it often bypasses educators. It's enacted by Congress without a great deal of input from educators. As a matter of fact, sometimes the educators are opposed to these kinds of reforms. It seems hard to think back now and imagine it, but the GI Bill was opposed by most leaders of American colleges and universities. They thought, "Well, there will be all these older students who will be married and they'll have kids. We're not prepared for them. We don't really want them." So, here was a piece of legislation which had enormous impact on American higher education, and at the time higher education officials for the most part opposed it. So, these are the patterns that we see in education reform generally . If you look at the current reform movement, you'll see some of these same characteristics. I don't know whether it will prove sporadic, but educational reform as an issue certainly burst on the consciousness of the country very suddenly . It was in the spring of 1983 when the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its report, "A Nation At Risk." Interestingly, the Secretary of Education, Terrei Bell, had formed this Commission to study American schools. Their report said that the schools were in very bad shape and that significant improvement had to be made if we as a country were going to turn out the people who could compete with the Japanese and West Germans and other developed countries . The report, as it was written, had very little to do with the Reagan political...