A Nation At Risk?
Top industrialists in the United States began fearing that the U.S. economy would crash when it's products weren’t selling as well as products being sold in Britain or Germany. These industrialists began noticing that Germany had more highly skilled students graduating technical schools and working than that of the United States. Thus, an alliance among American business leaders, top public officials, unions, & progressive educators pro traditional education began. Their goal, especially progressive educators, where to get students involved in their learning plans and therefore begin a vocational education movement which could prompt teachers to allow their students to be involved in their own academic planning & real life tasks. In 1917, the vocational education Coalition for the first succeeded in securing federal subsidies for industrial courses in American schools (Larry Cuban, pg.175). Not only did they plan for that, but many reformers also started planning to come up with solutions to help boost schools and the economy. They based these solutions on establishing clear national goals and high academic standards, giving parents more schooling choices, increasing testing, issuing report cards, rewarding staff members, schools, and students and punishing those who fail to meet standards. By 1930, progressive reformers turned school boards into smaller business operations without partisan politics.
However, by the mid 1970s, the economy began to fail and the blame fell on public schools. Corporate & public officials organized political action groups called Business Roundtables to find solutions. Reformers came up with solutions to help boost schools & the economy based off of, “setting clear goals and high standards for employees, restructuring operations so that managers and employees who actually make the product can decide how it should be done, and then hold both responsible for the overall quality; rewarding those who succeed and punishing those who fail” (Cuban, pg.178). Yet, the real question that never got answered is whether all the testing, all the required courses, and penalties and rewards motivate teachers to teach better and students to learn more.
Around the 1980s, more children were enrolled in school and finishing their degrees but there just seemed to be a lack of purpose or excellence. America’s public schools, “ had aimed to educate citizens to live in a democracy. They were the melting pot in which immigrants embraced the American dream” (Pg.184). Overall, the future of a democracy truly relies on educated people and it must be taken into consideration because it solely relies on our support. This nation must supply its students with the necessary tools like books, transportation, opportunities, grants, loans, scholarships, etc,., in order to succeed at an educated democracy.
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