PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 79(11), 7-35 Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc A Nation at Risk Revisited: Did “Wrong” Reasoning Result in “Right” Results? At What Cost? James W. Guthrie and Matthew G. Springer Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations Peabody College of Vanderbilt University A Nation at Risk (NAR; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) proclaimed in 1983 that U.S. K-12 educational achievement was on a downward trajectory and that American technological and economic preemi- nence was consequently imperiled. Both assertions were incorrect. American education achievement was not then declining and the nation’s economy continues today as the most powerful in the world. Despite being wrong on these measures, NAR motivated much that is right for American Education The report propelled a move from measuring school quality by resources re- ceived and onto plane where performance is judged on outcomes students’ achieve. This article asserts that this shift in the education appraisal paradigm is likely, in the long run, to render the nation’s education system more effec tive for students and more useful for the larger society. Hence we arrive at a major postulate with which this article is concerned, “Can a report that is wrong result in new policy conditions that are right?” However, we raise a larger issue, NAR also contributed forcefully to a vastly enhanced federal government presence in American educat n. A centuries-long American tra- dition of state plenary authority and local operating discretion is now giving We express our appreciation for the constructive criticism and additions of Richard Rothstein. Requests for reprints should be sent to James W. G hrie, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, Peabody #514, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN. 37203-5721. E-mail: jwgxiii@bellsouth.net xJ. W. Guthrie and M. G. Springer way toa pressing national uniformity of federally imposed accountability re- quirements. Whether or not this will prove a fruitful long-run avenue is less clear. A Nation at Risk (NAR; National Commission on Excellence in Education [NCEE], 1983) is among the most influential public policy polemics in the hi of the United States. The purpose of this article, and that of its com- panions in this special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education, is to com- memorate the 20th anniversary of the report's 1983 publication, to explain its significance, and to explore its consequences. NAR posited as its principal thesis that downwardly spiraling pupil performance had rendered the U.S. education system dysfunctional, thereby threatening the nation’s technological, military, and economic pre- eminence. The report further asserted that only by elevating education achievement could the United States avoid subordinating itself to its edu- cational superiors and economic competitors. In retrospect, it is apparent that the report was wrong on both counts. The U.S. education achievement was no lower in 1983 than it had been at previous points in history. The U.S. economy wasnotatany long-term risk, at leastnot due to an ineffective education system. Still, the repercussions of NAR’s publication have proven of historic proportions. The report motivated more significant changes in the manner in which American K-12 public schools conduct business than virtually any event or condition preceding it. We ar- gue that some of these changes were positive. Others were harmful. Ana- lysts disagree about whether positive outcomes outweigh the negative or vice-versa. Itis one of our purposes here to summarize these effects, leaving it to readers to decide which weigh heavier in the balance. But beforeattending to this purpose, we wish to give emphasis toamatter of publicethics. Itis not acceptable fora democratic society to base policy on flawed analysis, even if the policy (or parts of it) thatresult turn out to be ben- eficial. Afterall, policies thatnow appearbeneficial may ata atertime, when their consequencesare more fully recognized, turn out to be less benign than they earlierappeared and these erroneous policies may have beenavoided if the analyses undergirding them had been more accurate. Was NAR a demagogic exercise? Did authors of the report, believing so strongly that American schools must be dramatically improved, con- sciously propagate falsehoods that were sufficiently inflammatory to arouse the public to support their campaign? We do not conclude that this ible, indeed plausible, that members of the NCEE truly believed thatschool mediocrity was “rising” and that this mediocrity threat- ened the nation’s security—despite the paucity of evidence in support of these claims. But even if the commissioners themselves believed theseA Nation at Risk Revisited: “Wrong” Reasoning claims, history must still judge them harshly. The NCEE included men and women of such stature in the educational and scientific communities that it isreasonable to expect them to have imposed a high standard of evidence for their claims. That they did not, we are convinced, is because they were se- duced by the opportunity to gain the ear of the president of the United States and believed they could do so only by making claims that were so sensa- tional that the required standards of evidence they normally applied to their own scientific and scholarly work were thrown overboard. They may have believed their own claims, but they should have known better. From today’s vantage point, the most positive result of NAR seems to have been that it triggered a move away from measuring the quality of schools by the resources they receive and onto a plane where school perfor- mance is judged on outcomes students’ achieve. This paradigm shift in perceptions regarding the relation of inputs to outcomes of education could, in the long run, render the nation’s education system more effective for students and more useful for the larger society. For the nation to focus on student achievement rather than on school funding alone is a good thing, There was a second positive result, although indirect. In the last 20 years, the nation has increasingly focused on the achievement gap, the failure of low-income and minority children to achieve at the levels of White middle class children. In fact, NAR barely mentioned this issue. It was concerned primarily with preventing damage to the nation’s productivity and scien- tificand military prowess by improving the skills of graduates who went on to work in technologically advanced industries. But the report's emphasis on test scores as a measure of the nation’s strength inexorably led toa more intensive examination of the performance of students whose test scores were typically the lowest—socially and economically disadvantaged youth. So, although it was not the NCEE’s primary intent, it would be fair to credit the report with spurring a trend thatalso led to demands for improv- ing education for children at the bottom of the achievement distribution. There were also negative results of the report. One was the federaliza- tion of education policy, a trend that accelerated with NAR and that now threatens the creativity and diversity of local school systems that have been among the nation’s greatest strengths. Another has been the willing- ness to define student achievement exclusively by standardized tests, a trend that was spurred by NAR‘s flawed analysis of test score declines and that may have foreclosed reform of policies regarding other, equally im- portant aspects of student achievement. A third was the “crowding out” of social reform by school reform, the belief that all of the nation’s social prob- lems canbe solyed by improving schools alone and an accompanying will- ingness to tolerate failures in other social institutions. 9