School Reform Hailed Amid Teacher Protest

As President Reagan and Education Secretary William J. Bennett marked five years of school reform with a White House ceremony, hundreds of protesting teachers rallying across the street heard their leader proclaim that the nation needs “a secretary of education more interested in leadership than in showmanship.”

The ceremony and rally in Lafayette Park came exactly five years after the National Commission on Excellence in Education delivered a broadside called “A Nation at Risk,” which decried “a rising tide of mediocrity” in U.S. schools.

Federal Role Ignored

Addressing the protesters, who say Bennett’s follow-up report ignores the federal role in improving schools, Mary Hatwood Futrell, president of the 1.8-million-member National Education Assn., said:

“We are at risk. America’s future is at risk. . . . The time has come for Secretary Bennett and President Reagan to get out of the grandstand and into the game.”

The ceremony across Pennsylvania Avenue, she said, marks “five years of neglecting the messages that the ‘Nation at Risk’ report boldly delivered. . . . We shall overcome. Together we shall rescue America from risk.”

“I guarantee you we will seize the opportunity to elect a pro-education President of the United States,” she said. “Only then will we have a secretary of education more interested in leadership than in showmanship.”

‘Secretary of Ignorance’

Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.) told the NEA rally, “Mr. Bennett is not the secretary of education; he is the secretary of ignorance.”

The NEA was one of the few major education groups not invited to the ceremony.

“A Nation at Risk” made headlines and laid the groundwork for moves in virtually every state to raise graduation standards, boost teacher salaries and, in many instances, impose new accountability on educators.

Bennett’s follow-up report, “American Education: Making It Work,” was to be released as part of today’s ceremony until it became public over the weekend. Several prominent educators said they agreed with Bennett’s conclusion that there have been only modest improvements from reform efforts to date, if not with the entire report.