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>> POINT OF VIEW “No! It is an opportunity to garner some state rev- enue by selling tests for teachers and students,” said the fifth man, who was a test-maker. “You’re all wrong! It is a way to make sure all chil- dren learn what they need to know. It will create aca- A Nation at Risk demic equality,” said the sixth man, who was an aca- demician. Then they began to argue about education reform, And the Blind Men and every one of them insisted that he was right. They were growing agitated, when a wise man was passing by and heard the commotion. When he had learned the When A Nation at Risk appeared, cause of their troubles, the wise man calmly explained, everyone saw school reform through “All of you are right, and all of you are wrong.”

a lens of preconceived ideas about THE PARADOXES IN EDUCATION teaching and learning. Like the six blind men, every part of the land of edu- cation reacted differently to A Nation at Risk. And dur- ing the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, that report spawned an outpouring of other reports on various aspects of BY SALLY BLAKE education. Some saw the problem as “bad teachers,” which immediately raised the question of “bad schools of education” where they were trained. Today, a simi- NCE upon a time, there lived lar perception is at least partly responsible for the surge six blind men in a faraway in alternative teacher certification programs that has country. They were revered as been taking place over the past 25 years. leaders, and one day the vil- Other observers — even some members of the pan- lagers said to them, “We need el that wrote A Nation at Risk — saw the problem as education reform in this land.” low standards. Their subsequent labors led to the de- The six men, having no idea velopment of what came to be known as the standards what this “education reform” movement — a broad enough term to encompass the Owas, decided to set about finding out. All of them went efforts of the individual disciplines to set out a body of to where the reform lived, grabbed hold of a portion, knowledge and skills in each field along with the ef- and described what seemed most salient about it. forts of those who pushed for high school graduation “Lo, education reform is a way to catch the pub- exams, which are now facts of life in the majority of lic’s attention and help us get elected,” said the man states. With regard to the disciplinary standards, Diane who wanted to further his political agenda. Ravitch said in a 2006 interview, “When they [the stan- “No! Education reform means educating citizens to dards documents] are overwhelming in bulk, they can’t support democratic values,” said the man who lived be taken seriously. Then they are just a wish list.” The on a $3-million houseboat. jury is still out on the high school graduation tests, though “Oh, no! It means all students must learn basic skills concerned observers such as Anne Wheelock in Mas- and how to follow directions,” said the man who owned sachusetts have been collecting and analyzing data on the factories. school dropouts before ninth grade.1 “Not at all,” said the fourth man, a strong believer Nor was higher education exempt from criticism in in testing. “It is a chance to test children at least twice A Nation at Risk, though, as an institution, it has proved a year, and the more tests the better. We can finally less willing to go along with the various proposals that hold teachers accountable.” spun off from the original report than has K-12 edu- cation. A Nation at Risk cautioned against grade infla- tion and recommended that four-year colleges “raise I SALLY BLAKE is an associate professor in the Department of In- struction and Curriculum Leadership and the research coordinator admissions standards” and that students be tested at for the Barbara K. Lipman Early Childhood School and Research major transition points, including movement from high Institute at the University of Memphis. school to college or work.

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But apparently there were aspects of A Nation at more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are Risk that either no one noticed or that proved unable made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions to hold the attention of reformers. The report called at- change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well tention to the need to “meet the needs of key groups require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when of students such as the gifted and talented, the socio- a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen economically disadvantaged, minority and language mi- of their barbarous ancestors.3 nority students, and the handicapped.”2 But that plan ran off the rails soon after the standards movement began We must ask ourselves if the education reforms that to pick up steam. And No Child Left Behind (NCLB), followed A Nation at Risk have furthered the progress perhaps the most recent of the aftershocks of A Nation of the human mind or moved us in the opposite di- at Risk, has made efforts to meet children’s special needs rection. The reforms coming from A Nation at Risk that much more difficult. have seemed less concerned with producing genera- The largest numbers of children failing the assess- tions of critical or creative thinkers than with satisfy- ments required by NCLB, of course, are minority chil- ing a range of competing agendas. If we develop edu- dren from lower socioeconomic status homes. The num- cation systems that produce independent thinkers, not ber of these children labeled as special education has parrots of facts and ideas, we should be better prepared increased, their schools are hard to staff and have high as a nation to confront an unknown future. attrition rates for teachers and students, and the achieve- 1. Diane Ravitch, “Reconsidering National Standards, Curricula, and ment gap between socioeconomic groups is still pain- Tests: A Talk with Diane Ravitch,” Education Week Chats, Lynn Olson, fully evident. moderator, 18 January 2006. Some recent information on dropouts in Thomas Jefferson summarized the reasons we must Massachusetts as well as contact information for Anne Wheelock can be continue to search for answers to education’s problems: found at www.massparents.org/news/2005/mass_dropout_rates_rise.htm. 2. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and con- The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Depart- stitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand ment of Education, 1983), p. 32. with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes 3. Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1810. K

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602 PHI DELTA KAPPAN File Name and Bibliographic Information k0804bla.pdf Sally Blake, A Nation at Risk and the Blind Men, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 89, No. 08, April 2008, pp. 601-602.

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