Spring 2003: Vol. 3, No. 2

Assessments of the state of American education on the 20th anniversary of the A Nation at Risk report

A Nation at Risk emphasized the importance of learning so-called “higher-order skills” in the early grades. But even chess grand masters need to learn the basics first.

The effort to push underprepared students into academic courses has driven the rigor out of many textbooks and classrooms

Illustration by Stuart Bradford. A Nation at Risk foreshadowed the modern accountability movement. While the word “accountability” never appears in Risk, its call for higher academic standards and its focus on student achievement … Read more

Photograph by Stephanie Kuykendal. A Nation at Risk‘s most fatal flaw was its faith in the American education system’s ability to act on its recommendations. The authors of Risk believed that the system … Read more