Twenty years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education delivered a shocking report called A Nation at Risk, which awakened millions of Americans to a national crisis in primary and secondary education. But today, while reverberations from that report are still being felt, solid and conclusive reforms in American primary and secondary education remain elusive. Why?
In Our Schools and Our Future, the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education looks at the response to the commission's report and analyzes why it produced so much activity and so little improvement. Among their findings, the members of the task force reveal how many bold reform proposals have been implemented in limited and piecemeal fashion. They conclude that fundamental changes are needed in the incentive structure and power relationships of schooling itself and offer recommendations based in three core principles: accountability, choice, and transparency.
Accountability, they explain, will mean that everyone in the system will know what results are expected, how they will be measured, and what will happen if results are not attained. Choice will bring freedom, diversity, and innovation. Transparency will yield the information needed to assure both top-down accountability and a viable marketplace of methods and ideas. The results of these three taken together, they assert, will be a reinvigorated yet very different system that will rekindle Americans' confidence in public education.
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Paul E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task force on K-12 Education. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and the director of the Program on Education, Policy and Governance at Harvard University. His current research interests include educational policy, federalism, and urban policy, and he is currently evaluating the effectiveness of school voucher plans around the country.
The Future of School Choice
Our Schools and Our Future
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
vii
John Raisian
Contributors
xi
Preface
xvii
Paul E. Peterson
. . . ARE WE STILL AT RISK?
Findings and Recommendations
3
Koret Task Force on K–12 Education
PART ONE: “A NATION AT RISK”: THEN AND NOW
1. A Historic Document
25
Diane Ravitch
2. Little Gain in Student Achievement
39
3. What Has Changed and What Has Not
73
Caroline M. Hoxby
4. Minority Children at Risk
111
Paul Hill, Kacey Guin, and Mary Beth Celio
5. The Importance of School Quality
141
Eric A. Hanushek
PART TWO: WHY SO LITTLE WAS REFORMED
6. The Politics of the Status Quo
177
Terry M. Moe
7. Teacher Reform Gone Astray
211
Chester E. Finn Jr.
8. The Curricular Smorgasbord
239
Williamson M. Evers and Paul Clopton
9. Neglecting the Early Grades
281
E. D. Hirsch Jr.
PART THREE: GETTING SERIOUS
10. Real Accountability
305
Herbert J. Walberg
11. Real Choice
329
John E. Chubb
Index
363
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the thirty-first president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.
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Hoover Institution Press Publication No.516
Copyright © 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
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First printing 2003
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Our schools and our future : are we still at risk? / edited by Paul E.Peterson ;contributing authors, John E.Chubb ... [et al.]
p.cm.
“An assessment by the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education”—Cover. ISBN 0-8179-3921-0—ISBN 0-8179-3922-9 (pbk.) 1. Education—United States. 2. Educational change—United States. I. Peterson, Paul E. II. Chubb, John E.
LA217.2 .O87 2003 370'.973—dc21 2002191907
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