A Nation at Risk or a Nation in Progress

Complete article

Recent results of national and international assessments of student achievement often trigger media and policy comments to the effect that efforts to improve education in the United States are “disappointing” (e.g., Goldstein, 2019). The disappointment comes in part from high, probably unrealistic, claims about how fast change happens. As a case in point, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) called for all students to be proficient within a dozen years, an aspiration that researchers have called unrealistic (Linn et al., 2002).
From another perspective, the modest gains on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) should be seen in the context of decades in which financial incentives to enter and stay in teaching have declined (Allegretto & Mishel, 2018), with accompanying declines in students entering teacher preparation programs (Partelow, 2019). Moreover, given the challenges of health care, nutrition, and poverty, it is unrealistic to expect the educational system in general, or teacher education in particular, to lift student achievement dramatically.
One pessimistic takeaway might nonetheless be that the achievement results are evidence that teacher educators are not improving their programs, perhaps because they do not know how to make productive changes. This dour assessment ignores the wealth of knowledge, published in journals such as this one. Some of that knowledge has found its way into teacher preparation programs and efforts to support practicing teachers.
Although the changes that come may be gradual, we should keep in mind that although slow progress is to be expected, that progress represents a glass half full, not half empty. Remember, A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) claimed that we were falling behind, with economic collapse imminent. While economic, social, and educational progress in the United States in the past three decades may be less than we hoped for, the current situation is better than A Nation at Risk led us to expect.