Reforming America’s schools 1980‐2000
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578239810238438 |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| Pages | 426-444 |
| Author | Joseph Murphy,Jacob E. Adams |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Journal of
Educational
Administration
36,5
426
Reforming America’s schools
1980-2000
Joseph Murphy
Professor and Chair, Leadership, Organizations and Policy,
Vanderbilt University, and
Jacob E. Adams Jr
Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy,
Vanderbilt University
In the USA, major cycles of reform constitute a well documented dimension of
the educational landscape. During the last half century, for instance, major
reforms occurred in the late 1950s when the Soviets beat the USA into space,
during the 1960s and 1970s as the nation struggled to address the economic and
social costs of poverty and racism, and in the 1980s and 1990s as policy makers
responded to profound changes associated with the rise of global markets,
shifting demographics, and increasing public disaffection with government. It
is the latter era of reform that is of interest here. Dubbed the “excellence era” in
US educational reform, the period from 1980 to the turn of the century
delineates a generation of educational policies intended to enhance student
learning. Our purpose is to outline the broad sweep of US educational reform
during this period. We attend to this task by reviewing causes of the excellence
movement, outlining major school improvement strategies, and analyzing the
dynamics of this reform cycle.
Reform etiology
As has been the case throughout our history, the animating forces for reform
today reside in the educational environment – in the web of economic, social,
and political forces in which the educational system is ensconced. We examine
each of these areas in turn.
Economic forces
The economic forces powering the current reform movement materialized in
two forms, namely, as profound concern about the health of the economy and,
later, as worries about the nation’s readiness to fit into a transformed global
economy.
Crisis in the economy. Throughout the 1980s, the central dynamic was a
sense of economic crisis, the perceived deterioration of our economic wellbeing
as a nation. Throughout this period, there was a pervasive feeling afoot that the
USA was losing, and perhaps had already lost, its foremost position in the
world economy, that its “once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry,
Journal of Educational
Administration,
Vol. 36 No. 5, 1998, pp. 426-444,
© MCBUniversity Press, 0957-8234
Reforming
America’s
schools
427
science, and technological innovation” (National Commission on Excellence in
Education, 1983, p. 5) had taken a terrible battering. Evidence of this belief is
omnipresent in the reform documents that fueled early reform initiatives of the
1980s:
Today, however, our faith in change – and our faith in ourselves as the world’s supreme
innovators – is being shaken. Japan, West Germany and other relatively new industrial
powers have challenged America’s position on the leading edge of change and technical
invention. In the seventies, productivity in manufacturing industries grew nearly four times as
fast in Japan, and twice as fast in West Germany and France, as in the USA.
The possibility that other nations may outstage us in inventiveness and productivity is
suddenly troubling Americans (Education Commission of the States, 1983, p. 13).
America’s ability to compete in world markets is eroding. The productivity growth of our
competitors outdistances our own. The capacity of our economy to provide a high standard of
living is increasingly in doubt (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986, p. 2).
The prevailing sentiment held that economic troubles could be traced directly to
the school house, a sense that poor schooling was responsible for the enfe ebled
economy. The solution was clear to many analysts as well: reform American
public education. Indeed, the Carnegie Forum (1986) argued that:
the 1980s will be remembered for two developments: the beginning of a sweeping
reassessment of the basis of the nation’s economic strength and an outpouring of concern for
the quality of American education. The connection between these two streams of thought is
strong and growing (p. 11).
Preparedness for the global economy. The economic rationale for educational
reform in the 1990s arose less in claims about the anemic state of the economy
than in accusations that the nation is ill-prepared for the emerging twenty-first
century economy. As before, the link between the economy and schooling has
been tightly drawn. On the critique side of the equation, the educational system
is pilloried for its perceived inability to keep pace with the increasing demands
of a changing economy, for failing to enhance levels of productivity to meet the
needs of a changing workforce. On the change side of the equation, educational
reform is seen as the best avenue to address these shortcomings.
One side of the problem these critics discuss is the belief that systems that
hold steady in today’s world are actually in decline. While others see stability,
they see “increasing obsolescence of the education provided by most US
schools” (Murnane and Levy, 1996, p. 6). The other side of the productivity issue
raised by these reviewers is the claim that because of the changing nature of the
economy, the level of outcomes needed by students must be significantly
increased.
Today’s schools look much like Ford in 1926. The products they produce – student
achievement levels – are not worse than they were 20 years ago; in most respects they are
slightly better. But in those 20 years, the job market has changed radically. Just as the Model
T that was good enough in 1921 was not good enough in 1926, the education that was
adequate for high-wage employers in 1970 is no longer adequate today (Murnane and Levy,
1996, p. 77).
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