The American Prospect By Anthony S. Bryk et al. Across the country, the war against public education proceeds apace, and in many states the anti’s are winning.
Forty-one years ago, in “A Nation at Risk” (1983), a blue-ribbon national commission decried “the rising tide of mediocrity” in public schools. The report’s rhetorically masterful opening salvo drew widespread attention to what otherwise would likely have been a file-and-forget document: “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.” “A Nation at Risk” made education a hot-button issue on the nation’s political agenda and turned the bashing of public schools into a national pastime.
As James Harvey, a senior staffer on the commission, pointed out years later, “The argument of wholesale school failure has been an essential bulwark of the effort to privatize public education by diverting public funds into school vouchers and unaccountable charter schools, particularly the scandal-plagued for-profit charter sector.” Fast-forward to 2024: “Public Schooling in America,” a survey of state policies nationwide, concludes that seemingly distinct attacks on public education—through expanding charter and voucher programs; cutting funds for public schools, while providing added support for homeschooling; censoring what educators can teach and students can learn—are in fact in.