The Nation : U.S. Schools on the Mend, Reagan Says

President Reagan said that American schools are on the mend thanks to a restoration of discipline, homework and basic skills, but “we still have a long way to go.” At a White House ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the landmark “A Nation At Risk” report, Reagan said a new critique from Secretary of Education William J. Bennett “will help us find the way.” But outside the White House, several hundred teachers rallied in Lafayette Park to protest the Reagan Administration’s policies and heard Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.) call Bennett “the secretary of ignorance.” Reagan said the National Commission on Excellence in Education, whose 1983 report warned of a calamity approaching from “a rising tide of mediocrity” in U.S. schools, “helped heighten and accelerate a wave of education reform in states and communities all around the country.”