Although in the 1950s and 60s expanding the federal government's role in education (albeit only slightly) was preferable to allowing what could have been a major challenge to the existing socio-economic hierarchy, by the time Reagan took office in 1981, a powerful movement had developed, in opposition to the past decades of Keynesianism, devoted to "reducing the size" of government. Although this monetarist approach (which was actually inaugurated during Carter's term) resulted in stark economic decline and Keynesianism had to be resumed as a last-ditch effort, Keynesianism was pursued in the form of massive military spending and the ideological commitment to cutting government programs and agencies remained.
What happened with education at this point is a good lesson in how the government is not a unified entity. While members of the Reagan administration were eager to get rid of the Department of Education, those who were employed by the agency, of course, were dependent on its existence. I mentioned previously that the creation of problems often serves as a strategy to garner human and material resources in the service of some end. What happened in the Department of Education is a great example of how this can work. The Department commissioned a study of the state of education in the U.S. Conveniently, considering the fact that they were being threatened with non-existence, the department found that there was a crisis in American education, one that jeopardized the very future of the nation and necessitated action, thus re-establishing the importance of the Department of Education. The report that it distributed with great fanfare in 1983, A Nation At Risk, used hyperbolic language and was designed to create hype and engender fear.
The first of the report's main arguments was that achievement levels were dropping from what they were in the past. Statistics based on SAT and other standardized test scores were used to support this claim. The problem with these statistics, however, is that they are comparing different people in different contexts. For example, college was becoming less exclusive and more people were taking the SAT. Furthermore, as times change, so do the skills and knowledge that are relevant to current conditions. Tests necessarily have to change over time (the same test is never used repeatedly without updates), and so not only are different people being compared, but they are being compared with different tests!
The second major claim was flawed for similar reasons. The report argued that U.S. students were not performing as highly as students from other countries, and that threatened our economic future. Using extreme rhetoric, the report warned, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Once again, the comparisons being made (this time global rather than historical) are not valid. The tests from which these global comparisons are drawn are not administered to comparable groups of people in each country. In the U.S. all students take it, whereas in countries like Japan, only the best-performing students do. Furthermore, in some countries students face consequences for their performance, while in the U.S. they do not, and are thus less motivated to do well. Finally, and most importantly, the U.S. has a much more diverse population. In particular, it has one of the largest income gaps in the world. Because educational achievement gaps are reflections of income gaps, one would expect measures of average academic achievement to be lower in the U.S. than in other places, because the average is brought down by these disadvantaged groups. On the other hand, it does not seem reasonable to assume that the American education system is significantly worse than other countries, as the nations with supposedly better systems still do not dominated the global domain of academic research in higher education, as the U.S. does in many fields. The fear of "falling behind" other nations in terms of the quality of education has been salient ever since Sputnik was launched. But that does not mean it is anything more than fear.
If there is any problem with American education it has only and always been the achievement gap. However, as argued in my previous post, this is a problem that has roots entirely outside of the educational system, and therefore cannot be resolved via education reforms. It is not a problem of education, it is a problem of poverty and inequality, and that requires full-scale systemic change.
The idea that there is some sort of "problem" that needs to be fixed has, however, been persistent in the history of education. Earlier, it was mainly used as justification for educators to tinker around and try out new ideas. But now the idea has become a fixture of the public consciousness. It has reached the level of common sense, unquestioned hegemony. Because we take for granted the "fact" that our educational system is failing and in dire need of reform, we waste time debating, discussing, researching, and trying out all the new ideas and latest fads. No one thinks to stop and consider what the "problem" really is, and what evidence there is that any problem exists.
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