Few Gains Seen in Nation’s Schools : Education: Ten years after critical study found U.S. system ‘at risk,’ its authors reunite in Berkeley to focus on need for additional reforms. Some see bright spots.

Ten years after the landmark report “A Nation at Risk” declared that America’s schoolchildren were trapped “in a rising tide of mediocrity,” key players in the study held a reunion Thursday, saying that not enough has changed.

“Our results have been disappointing. I can’t say that we’ve had a dismal failure. But it’s been a long, long way from what many of us thought we would have,” said Terrel Bell, who commissioned the report when he was U.S. Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration.

Somewhat less pessimistic was David P. Gardner, the former president of the University of California system who chaired the 1983 commission that urged national reforms in elementary and secondary education, including tougher curricula, longer school days and more homework.

Gardner said that modest progress had been made in improving schools but that “surely there is more unfinished than finished business.” He suggested that more-radical steps might be studied, such as school choice and national standards for teachers and students.

Bell and Gardner were among 60 national and state education leaders who gathered at UC Berkeley for an all-day symposium titled, “A Nation at Risk 10 Years Later: An Unfinished Agenda?” Others included Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Glenn Seaborg, the Nobel laureate in chemistry and former UC Berkeley chancellor who was on the commission. The event inaugurated a new think tank at Berkeley--the Consortium for the Study of Society and Education--that will study international trends in schooling.

In April, 1983, the “Nation at Risk” panelists never dreamed that their report would be seen 10 years later as a seminal event for America’s schools. Although some educators criticized it as being elitist and too conservative, the report is widely credited with influencing the adoption of standardized testing in many states and focusing attention on teacher training and licensing around the country.

The 36-page study by the National Commission on Excellence in Education stirred the nation by contending that “the 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. . . . 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.”

In one of its most followed recommendations, the report urged that all high school students be required to take four years of English and three years each of mathematics, science and social science, plus a semester of computer science. Excluding the computer studies, the national share of high school graduates who follow that pattern has risen to about 40% from the 9% in 1982, according to Milton Goldberg, who was executive director of the commission. That is a solid achievement “but still 60% are getting less” than the recommendation, he added.

Other proposals, such as lengthening the school day and year, have had little acceptance, primarily because of money problems in states and local school districts, participants in Thursday’s conference said. And some measurements of student skills, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, are not encouraging; out of a possible total of 1,600 points, the national SAT average last year was 899, up only 6 points from a decade ago, but still 60 or so points below scores from the mid-1960s.

Shanker, the union president, conceded that some progress was blocked in the 1980s by difficult social issues such as immigration, recession, poverty, drugs and broken families. Still, he said, that is no excuse for lack of gains in well-to-do suburban schools.

“Why it is that kids who are not only well-fed but probably overfed, and who are among the most affluent kids who ever walked the face of the earth, are learning very, very little compared to youngsters in other industrialized countries?” Shanker asked. He said many reforms were instituted in a halfhearted way, requiring more courses, for example, but ignoring the report’s call for enriched and more difficult content.

On the other hand, Stanford University education professor Michael Kirst contended that too much emphasis on the discouraging signs might paralyze further reform efforts. So, he used Thursday’s meeting to issue a report that purposely looked at only good news. “Despite rhetoric in the press, which continues to espouse doom, there are numerous positive indicators,” he said in his report, sponsored by the Policy Analysis for California Education, a group of experts at UC, Stanford and USC.

Among Kirst’s examples: The number of high schools participating in the rigorous Advanced Placement examination program almost doubled nationwide, from 5,253 in 1981 to 9,786 in 1991. Although SAT averages are basically unchanged, blacks have shown significant improvements. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests showed gains among students who previously had scored the lowest.

But even the optimistic Kirst said there has been no basic change in pedagogy, the way students are taught. “The last major change in American pedagogy was when we unbolted the desks from the floor,” he quipped.

Bell, who is now a private education consultant, said that politicized school boards and overly large school districts are roadblocks. Referring to proposals to divide the Los Angeles Unified School District, the former education secretary said: “I think you can break L.A. up into 10 school boards and they’d still have 10 school systems that are almost too large. Our huge school systems, if you look at them, are the ones that don’t work.”

Other participants included UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien; James Kelly, president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; Delaine Eastin, (D-Fremont) head of the state Assembly’s Education Committee, and Meredith Khachigian, head of the UC regents.

Education’s Report Card

A decade ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued “A Nation at Risk,” which declared that U.S. schools were trapped in “a rising tide of mediocrity.” Educators say reform efforts inspired by the report have not brought enough improvement.

Here are some national measures of changes in school quality:

SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE TEST

1982 1992 Average verbal 426 423 Average math 467 476

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HIGH SCHOOL ATTENDANCE

1982 1990 Dropout rate 16.3% 13.6% Completion rate 80.6% 82.8%

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MATH PROFICIENCY Results of national tests with scaled score ranging roughly from 150 to 350.

1982 1990 Age 9 219 230 Age 13 269 270 Age 17 299 305

SOURCE: “The Condition of Education, 1992,” U.S Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.