Still A Nation at Risk

by U.S. Reps. Bob Schaffer (R-Colorado)

Thursday, April 26 marks the eighteenth anniversary of "A Nation at Risk." The sobering report on declining student performance in American public schools was first published in 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE). Its impact on the American education empire has been tragically negligible.

Created in 1981, the NCEE was appointed by then Secretary of Education T.H. Bell, was comprised of university presidents, high school principals, teachers, a former governor, and school board members. The commission's purpose was to "help define the problems afflicting American education and to provide solutions," according to its chairman, David Pierpont Gardner.

In its report entitled, "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform," the NCEE noted the United States, which once enjoyed "unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation, is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world." Eighteen years later, the United States is still a nation at risk.

Last October, a subcommittee of the U.S. House attributed the nation's stagnant student achievement to the government's failure at prioritizing student performance and its reluctance to reward results. America's poorest children are too often trapped in schools that can't teach. Moreover, the Congressional "Education at a Crossroads" report exposed rampant waste, fraud and abuse within the U.S. Department of Education. While states and local schools are held to strict standards for use of federal funds, the Department cannot account for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Despite the NCEE's early warning that America's education system is at risk, little has changed. The government's monopoly on public school services remains unchallenged. Except for poor children in a few courageous communities, real school choice is a privilege only for the rich.

Yet while state and local schools receive billions more in federal spending, they are constrained by new burdensome regulations, unfunded mandates and paperwork requirements which divert scarce resources from classrooms. Today there are more than 760 education-related programs administered by 39 federal agencies at a cost of $120 billion a year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The federal government's first big offensive into local school management occurred in 1965 with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Since that time, federal policy has consistently expanded its bearing on America's classrooms and has tied the hands of state legislators and local school board members, despite the U.S. Constitution's suggestion of state and local primacy of authority. Results have been pathetic.

For example, the federal government's most massive program, Title I, was designed to improve the academic level of poor and underserved students. Federal investments totaling $118 billion since 1965 have left 19% of Title I schools still failing to make adequate annual achievement gains, officially classified as "in need of improvement."

In testimony before Congress, Colorado's state schools chief, Dr. William Moloney explained the government's failure: "ESEA has remained as always a neutral phenomena based on inputs rather than results, more on accounting than accountability, an entity always more interested in what you were rather than what you were doing."

Eternally hopeful for their children's futures, taxpayers have shown remarkable patience with the government's education monopoly. So have Republicans. Since capturing the majority in Congress, the GOP has substantially outspent Democrats pumping billions into government-owned schools. In 1983, the average expenditure per student was $3,300, while the average today tops $8,000. Still, American students trail their international peers considerably.

According to the 1999 Third International Mathematics and Science Study Repeat (TIMMS-R), American students have not improved in the areas of math and science since the first TIMMS test in 1995. The comparison included students in 38 industrialized countries. According to the Center for Education Reform, American 8th graders are outranked by 18 other nations in math and by 17 others in science.

President George W. Bush has boldly called on Congress to "leave no child behind." He outlined his desire to empower parents, emphasize local control of schools, send dollars to the classroom and improve basic academics. Incredibly, Congress has so-far drafted a 900-page thick bill, translating Bush's sensible objectives into sizable new programs, fresh mandates, scant choice, and an outrageous 11.5 percent increase in federal education spending over the last year.

Before another year of dust begins to settle on "A Nation at Risk," President Bush and the Congress should reassess Washington's education spending and regulatory frenzy. Republicans should stake their majority on free-market solutions to school reform, dramatically shrink the bureaucracy, and give real decision-making power -- money -- to parents of school-aged children.

America's schoolchildren deserve to be treated like real Americans; like they matter. So long as Republicans look to the federal education empire to rebuild the nation's academic prominence they do nothing to distinguish themselves nor maintain the public trust. They will only become a part of the problem further betraying America's children to languish in a nation at risk.

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