Education Week - May 17, 2023 - 16

President Ronald
Reagan and U.S.
Secretary of Education
Terrel H. Bell, left,
during a meeting in
the Cabinet Room,
Feb. 23, 1984, where
they discussed school
discipline.
AP
The Lies America Tells Itself
About Black Education
'A Nation at Risk' created a faux crisis to usher in the right's education agenda
By Bettina L. Love
T
he 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. "
This sentence, rooted in misleading and
skewed data, changed education forever.
Forty years ago, starting in April 1983, this
country manufactured an education crisis that effectively put
targets on the backs of its children, especially Black children.
U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell, under the direction
of President Ronald Reagan, released a 36-page report titled " A
Nation at Risk. " It told the world that not only were American
children failing academically, but " 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. "
The authors claimed that data proved American children
were lagging behind those in other industrialized nations
in student achievement, citing, among other references,
plummeting SAT scores and a functional illiteracy rate
among minority children as high as 40 percent. The report
kindled education reform as we know it. However, the
National Assessment of Educational Progress, tests that are
the most widely respected yardstick of student achievement
nationally, reported that from the 1970s to the early 1980s, the
performance of elementary and secondary pupils increased
moderately on some examinations while dropping slightly
on others. The report intentionally omitted such positive
educational data, but why?
When Reagan took office in 1981, some of his education
goals were to cut federal spending on education, abolish the
U.S. Department of Education, put prayer in schools, and allow
school vouchers so that public dollars could be spent at private
schools. Reagan and the right wing needed a report to show
the American people that public education was failing in order
to advance their educational goals and military spending. For
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 17, 2023 | www.edweek.org/opinion
instance, Reagan had an interest in showing that the United
States was falling way behind the Soviet Union so that more
resources would be made available to win the Cold War. With
that in mind, the administration was happy to see cherry-picked
data that villainized America's public schools. According to
education historian Diane Ravitch, Reagan wanted the report to
" make American public schools look as bad as possible. "
Although the report said little about race, in America, it did
not have to. Immediately following its release, Heritage Today,
a publication of the conservative Heritage Foundation, covered
" A Nation at Risk, " stating,
" The most damaging blows to science and mathematics
education have come from Washington. For the past 20 years,
federal mandates have favored 'disadvantaged' pupils at the
expense of those who have the highest potential to contribute
positively to society. ... By catering to the demands of specialinterest
groups-racial minorities, the handicapped, women,
and non-English speaking students-America's public schools
have successfully competed for government funds, but have
done so at the expense of education as a whole. "
Heritage Today said out loud what " A Nation at Risk " could
only imply.
The report created a faux national crisis to usher in the right's
education agenda. Prominent scholars Bruce Biddle and David
Berliner wrote, " 'A Nation at Risk' merely gave public voice to
charges about education that right-wing ideologues had already
been telling one another. " They note that it was all a " politically
inspired hoax. " But it did not stop there.
" A Nation at Risk " was propaganda used to merge education
with the attack on Black lives under the Reagan administration.
The report was released a year after Reagan manufactured
another crisis, the War on Drugs, which many have called a
War on Black People. The War on Drugs and " A Nation at Risk "
worked in concert, providing cover and encouragement for
the labeling of Black children as crack babies and Black young
people as thugs and superpredators.
" A Nation at Risk " also laid the foundation for one of the
most punitive education reforms of the last 40 years, the
No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB allowed officials to punish
schools through closings, funding cuts, and the firing of
teachers and school administrators. In short, education and
crime reforms worked in unison, spurring the disposal of
Black children without a pang of conscience and ushering
in the emergence of high-stakes standardized testing
that pushes students out of school, the DARE program
that functions as the education arm of the War on Drugs,
charter schools like KIPP where the strict discipline of " no
excuses " functions like zero tolerance, " broken window "
theories of criminology, metal detectors, police patrolling
school buildings and arresting and assaulting students, and
truancy laws that fine parents and in some cases put them
behind bars.
The same playbook is in use today. Banning critical race
theory and certain books and curricula about Black and queer
people are responses to a new politically inspired hoax-
the hoax that educators are creating hatred and division by
acknowledging the wrongs of racism and endorsing the full
humanity of queer people. And once again, Black children are
being punished as are queer students.
We must see these bans as part of a larger plot to destabilize
public education, sow distrust in America's belief in it, and
make Black and queer students feel as if they do not belong in
schools or this nation. The end goal is to pick up where Reagan
left off and privatize education. To achieve that aim, people
must believe that public education is failing their children, that
the institution is so corrupt it can no longer serve the people.
These book bans are not the end; they are an essential
component of the plan to undermine and ultimately destroy
public education. Such a formula has been in motion for the last
40 years, relentlessly punishing Black children.
LOVE is an award-winning author and professor at Teachers
College, Columbia University. She is the author of the
forthcoming book Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform
Harms Black Children and How We Heal (St. Martin's Press,
Sept. 23, 2023). Visit Bettinalove.com for more information.
http://www.Bettinalove.com http://www.edweek.org/opinion
Education Week - May 17, 2023

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