In April 1983, U.S. Secretary of Education Terrell Bell created the National Commission on Excellence in Education, directing it to "Examine the quality of education in the United States." The panel found that "The 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."
The report famously asserted, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war." It also insists that "Academic excellence [is] the primary goal of schooling [and it] seems to be fading across American education."
"Edward B. Fiske, education editor of the New York Times at the time, described the report as"35 pages that "Shook the U.S. education world [becoming] one of the most significant documents in the history of American public education."
While it's true that the average teacher has more education than the average private sector worker, much of the added study is in our schools of education, which the renowned economics professor Walter Williams referred to as "The academic slums of most any college." A 2011 paper in the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives backs up Williams' assertion, finding that education majors are subject to considerably "Lower grading standards" than other college students.
The National Council on Teacher Quality reports that California and most other states aren't doing enough to support and train teachers to teach literacy effectively.
Heather Peske, president of NCTQ, explains, "While states are rightly prioritizing literacy, they are not focusing enough attention on teacher effectiveness and teacher capacity to teach reading aligned to the science. If these efforts are to succeed the state needs to ensure that teachers are prepared and supported from the time that they are in teacher preparation programs to the time that they enter classrooms."
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network - a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.
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