Forty years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a report entitled “A Nation at Risk.” The report warned that the country’s global influence would be diminished if improvements weren’t made.
Attendees of the Reagan Institute’s Summit on Education said the Nation’s Report Card for 2022 indicates the challenges still exist.
“We’ve got some really hard issues ahead of us, not only in education but as a society,” said Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state and current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
The Nation’s Report Card is put out by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have exacerbated a downward trend in test scores that was already underway.
“’A Nation at Risk’ was a wake-up call. I’m not sure that we didn’t at some time hit the snooze button,” Rice said.
The report card showed that American 8th Graders scored an average of