All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself.

After 20 Years of Educational Reform, Progress, But Plenty of Unfinished Business

The news about American education that morning in April, 1983, was not good, and no doubt a lot of coffee got cold as Americans, their attention riveted on the morning headlines, tried to fathom just how bad things were. According to a report to the U.S. Secretary of Education by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, the poor quality of American education had helped put the nation gravely at risk. Without major educational reform, the Commission warned, America’s future as a global leader in commerce, industry, science and technology could no longer be treated as a given.

The report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, famously warned that “. . .[T]he educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” The report further cited appallingly high rates of functional illiteracy among adults and 17-year-olds; a decline in College Board SAT and achievement test scores; significant percentages of 17-year-olds lacking “higher order” intellectual skills; complaints from business and military leaders about the high cost of providing remediation to workers and recruits who lacked basic verbal and computational skills; and, significantly, growing evidence that American students performed behind their international counterparts in most measures of academic achievement.

Written by: Anne Grosso de León. De León writes about education. Formerly the director of public affairs at the College Board, she has also held positions directing public relations and development at the SUNY College at New Paltz and at Hostos Community College, CUNY, in the South Bronx.

Editor’s Note: Andrew Carnegie created Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911 to “promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” a mission that has often led the foundation to support in-depth research and analysis of issues that affect the life of our nation and our interactions with other countries in an increasingly globalizing world. But we are also concerned with funding projects that can help us understand, in a more immediate way, trends and changes that may influence both domestic policy and international relationships. This issue of Carnegie Results highlights three current Corporation grantees whose efforts illustrate how scholarship and dialogue can add breadth to our perspective on current events while also contributing to our ongoing struggle to understand the roots of conflict and explore solutions that may lead to peace. Work is ongoing at all three organizations, but as these profiles suggest, the results are already having an impact on those at the frontlines of policymaking.

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