Commentary | A Nation Indefinitely at Risk? Educational Reform in the U.S.

The U.S. educational system is at a critical juncture. We’re pouring more money into our schools than ever before—an average of $8,701 per student in 2005, according to the Census Bureau--and outspending all but one OECD country in education. Yet despite this investment, the performance of U.S. students is steadily falling behind that of students in other countries. By some standards, the quality of our public schools is approaching a nadir.

The U.S. has discovered that more money doesn’t necessarily buy better results. After the failure of No Child Left Behind to improve public education, citizens, teachers, and policy-makers agree that our educational system still needs substantial reform. But this has been a refrain for decades. The question remains, what kind of reform? And the tough follow-up is still, how do we implement the necessary changes?

When it comes to the quality of our educational system, the numbers almost speak for themselves. A university education is prohibitively expensive. The price of attending the most elite institutions in the U.S. is nearly $45,000 per year, sometimes more. At the same time, it’s becoming harder for many students to make it to any university, not just top-flight schools. According to Strong American Schools (SAS), more than 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year. In some areas, drop-out rates are as high as 70 percent. With odds this poor, it’s hardly surprising that “out of 24 countries, the U.S. was one of the only two that showed no increase in bachelor's degree attainment between 2000 and 2004.”

The shortcomings of U.S. schools have an early effect on student performance. SAS notes that 70 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in reading and will never catch up to their peers. Even our best students are falling behind. The United States’ highest-performing math students rank 24th when compared with top performers in 29 other countries. While aggregate U.S. spending on education outstrips that of most other OECD countries, we devote a lower-than-average percentage of our education budget to primary and secondary education. This is a critical deficiency of our education policy. The early years of school determine students’ prospects for future success. It’s precisely during these years when schools are failing to meet our students’ needs.

The solution is not simply more funding for secondary education, although that will be an essential part of the cure. In A Stagnant Nation, published this past spring, SAS calls for substantial, systemic reform of our educational system. The report’s proposals might sound familiar. Each recommendation comes directly from 1983’s A Nation at Risk, which launched a movement to fix our broken schools—or was intended to, anyway. The most distressing point A Stagnant Nation makes is that in the last twenty-five years, public schools have failed to enact almost all of the proposals made by A Nation at Risk. If 1983 was supposed to be the eleventh hour, what time is it now?

Sadly, some of the groups that should have been most instrumental in effecting change have only impeded progress in education. Politicians, local school boards, and teachers’ unions are responsible for thwarting a number of changes proposed by both reports. In light of this, some reformers have chosen to go outside the traditional—that is, slow and often ineffective—channels to bring change to U.S. schools. One such group is Teach for America (TFA), which has proven its ability to recruit the best university graduates, send them to teach at the worst secondary schools, and help students achieve significantly better results in the classroom. A paper published by the Urban Institute finds that the students of TFA teachers achieve markedly higher levels of performance than students of traditional instructors.

Although TFA is playing a key role in revitalizing schools throughout the U.S., it too is a partial fix. Fortunately, while improving some of our neediest schools, TFA has raised an urgent call for reform now echoed by many throughout the U.S. Granted, this call is hardly a uniform proposal for action. It’s a typically strident debate featuring a wide range of ideas. At one pole are critics who advocate uniform, national standards for our schools (). At the other are staunch supporters of local control as the last hope for rejuvenating public education. We have been mired in these debates for a quarter century. Perhaps we’re finally slouching towards consensus. If any good has come out of this ideological gridlock, it’s the accumulating evidence that local control of schools is a disaster.

With numerous challenges ahead of us, including an economy that’s on the ropes and an ascendant Asia, we’re recognizing (once again) that top-quality education is crucial for our prosperity, even our national security. November looms on the horizon as a rare moment when we’ll be positioned to reformulate key policies. Colin Powell prioritized education while helping to launch CSIS’s Next America Project, which seeks to discuss major policy challenges for the youth generation. Some of these issues—our sputtering economy, two wars, a broken health care system, and an environment in crisis—are already defining issues in the ongoing presidential race. The trouble is, both candidates pencil education in at the bottom of the list. This is too familiar. Now is the time for Obama and McCain to put education reform where it belongs: at the forefront of our policy debate. When that happens, perhaps we’ll finally muster the political will to implement the recommendations of A Nation at Risk. We can’t afford to talk about them for another twenty-five years.