In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a report calling for the total reassessment of policy and curriculum governing American education. The commission's findings were met with impassioned interest and volcanic debate. "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war," set the tone of the views expressed in the report.
Seemingly overnight, the "education crisis" became a battleground on which citizens, education professionals and numerous...