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On April 26, 1983, the blue-ribbon National Commission on Excellence in Education issued “an open letter to the American people” on the state of our nation's schools. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform was one of many such reports that year, but its title and incendiary language set it apart almost immediately. We were warned of a “rising tide of mediocrity” in our schools that imperiled the nation's future. The symbolic opening salvo in a two-decade-long struggle to improve schools, A Nation at Risk helped put education reform at the top of the national agenda. A Nation Reformed? American Education Twenty Years after A Nation at Risk (Harvard Education Press / January 7, 2003 / $42.95 le / $21.95 pb) takes stock of twenty years of school reform. Was the nation really ever “at risk” and, if so, is it still? Has all the time, money, and effort been well spent? Which reforms have made a difference and which haven’t? And where do we go from here? As Patricia Albjerg Graham notes in her foreword, reforming schools to help all students achieve academic success has been slow and difficult for a variety of political, societal, and ideological reasons. Factors include a shift in the focus of graduate schools to research from practice; debates over the primary emphasis of American schooling; and disagreements on the best methods for measuring student success. A Nation Reformed? examines the various steps and missteps resulting from the efforts and innovations of school reform over the past twenty years. The influential education scholars and practitioners assembled in the book present a balanced, thoughtful look at the past, current, and future effects of school reform on our nation’s students, teachers, and communities. Contents include:
For More Information The Harvard Education Press, located at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, publishes innovative, authoritative books covering critical issues in education practice, policy, and research. For more information, visit http://gseweb.harvard.edu/hepg. Respond to this press release with an e-mail to the editor HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education | ||||||||||||||
