Solving the Wrong Education Crisis?
How the testing and accountability movement misdiagnosed what was actually wrong with American schools
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For most of American history, education policy was not a national political issue. Schools were built, funded, and governed almost entirely at the state and local level. Communities decided what their children would learn, how schools would operate, and how much money would be spent. It was widely believed—wrongly in my view—that the Constitution prohibited the federal government from playing a role in education.
For much of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, this arrangement appeared to work reasonably well. States and localities gradually expanded schooling, high school attendance increased dramatically, and the United States developed one of the most educated workforces in the world.
Over the past half century, however, the limits of this decentralized system have become increasingly clear. Regional inequalities persisted. Some communities built excellent schools, while others lagged badly behind. As the economy became more technologically sophisticated and global competition intensified, policymakers began to ask whether the nation needed a more coordinated national approach to education.
Brown, the Great Society, and the Federal Role in Education
The first major challenge to the state and local monopoly on K–12 education came not from Congress, but from the Supreme Court. In 1954, the Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racially segregated public schools violated the Constitution. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Brown did more than overturn segregation. It reframed education as a national issue tied to civil rights and democratic citizenship. If equal access to education was a constitutional principle, then the federal government inevitably had a role in protecting it.
That involvement expanded dramatically during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, himself a former teacher. In 1965 Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, directing new funding toward programs designed to support poor and disadvantaged students. A decade later, Congress expanded federal involvement further with legislation aimed at helping schools educate students with physical and learning disabilities. Although the federal government provided only a small share of total school funding, these laws established a national commitment to reducing educational inequality.
A Nation at Risk and the Education Crisis Debate
Things took a disastrous turn the following decade. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration, responding to continuing concerns about education inequality and declining academic performance, established the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Many conservatives expected the commission to confirm that American schools were performing reasonably well and that calls for major federal intervention were unnecessary. But events did not unfold that way.
In 1983, the commission released its report, A Nation at Risk. It painted a bleak picture of American schools, warning that declining educational performance threatened the country’s economic competitiveness and national security. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today,” the report famously declared, “we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
The report had an enormous impact on public debate. Education policy, which had rarely occupied the center of national political discourse, suddenly became a top-tier issue for policymakers, journalists, and voters alike.
Yet the story was always more complicated than the report suggested. In many parts of the country, American schools were—and remain—excellent. Wealthy states and districts often produce students whose academic outcomes rival those of the best education systems in the world. The deeper problem was that the American system has long been profoundly unequal. When the performance of outstanding schools is averaged together with that of struggling districts, the national results appear far worse than the reality in many communities. The system was not uniformly mediocre; it was deeply bifurcated.
The report nevertheless triggered powerful reform movements. The commission itself recommended adopting stronger curricula and higher academic standards, while also emphasizing the need to increase teacher compensation. Underlying these recommendations was a vision of education grounded in the liberal arts and sciences—a system designed to provide students with the knowledge necessary to participate as informed citizens and to understand the increasingly complex scientific and political debates shaping modern society.
Unfortunately, rather than embracing that broader vision, conservatives and progressives each adopted only those recommendations that aligned most closely with their preexisting philosophies. In doing so, neither side seriously grappled with the deeper challenge: preserving what had long made the American education system strong while addressing its real weaknesses. At a fundamental level, schools socialize young people while providing them with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in economic life and civic participation. But the best education systems go further, cultivating habits of mind—curiosity, analytical reasoning, and critical thinking—that allow individuals to adapt to new technologies and ideas. Historically, American schools often excelled at these tasks, especially compared with national systems that focused more narrowly on memorization or examination performance.
The Era of Standards and Testing
The policy response to A Nation at Risk, however, gradually moved away from that broader understanding of education. Instead, over the next several decades the reform debate narrowed to a set of policy tools—standardized testing, accountability systems, and school choice—that sought to reshape American schooling around measurement and compliance rather than learning itself.
The watershed moment came with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under President George W. Bush, with support from key Democratic leaders. The law required states to measure “adequate yearly progress” through standardized testing and imposed escalating penalties on schools that failed to meet performance targets. Students in low-performing schools were supposed to gain new options through school choice—such as charter schools—or by transferring to a different public school, while struggling schools would face sanctions or restructuring.
In theory, the approach aimed to strengthen accountability and raise academic standards. In practice, it fundamentally reshaped how American schools operated. Standardized testing became the dominant organizing principle of many school systems. Because schools were judged primarily on reading and math scores, those subjects began to crowd out other areas of the curriculum, including history, science, civics, and the arts.
Many educators quickly warned that the system was distorting education rather than improving it. Teachers increasingly felt pressure to “teach to the test,” focusing on narrow exam preparation rather than deeper learning. Subjects that were not tested received less instructional time, even though they were essential to the broader intellectual development required in a rapidly changing economy.
By the mid-2000s it had become increasingly clear that the results were disappointing. Standardized testing expanded dramatically, but the gains in student learning were modest at best—even in literacy and math, the subjects that were the supposed focus of the approach. In many cases the reforms simply encouraged schools to reorganize their instruction around test preparation. At the same time a large private industry emerged around tutoring services, test preparation programs, and accountability consulting—often generating profits without delivering meaningful improvements in educational outcomes.
Even more troubling, some of the most valuable features of the American education system were weakened in the process. Creativity, intellectual curiosity, and critical thinking—qualities that had long distinguished American schooling—became harder to cultivate in an environment dominated by standardized assessments.
None of this meant that the concerns raised in A Nation at Risk were entirely misguided. Education does matter profoundly for economic competitiveness and national strength. But by focusing on the wrong problems, policymakers pursued solutions poorly suited to the realities of the American education system.
COMING NEXT WEEK: We will examine how the emergence of two very different education systems—one serving affluent communities and another serving poorer ones—has become the central problem facing America’s K–12 education system.