America’s Schools Are Worse Than Mediocre

Four decades after a landmark report warned of a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ overtaking our schools, reform is needed more than ever.

‘A rising tide of mediocrity” — that’s how a group of education stakeholders and reformers described the state of America’s K–12 schools after an 18-month study. The group’s report, A Nation at Risk, noted that we might have viewed this mediocre education system as an act of war had it been imposed upon us by a foreign government. “As it stands,” they wrote, “we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”...