Article 6: A Nation at Risk and Sputnik: Compared and Reconsidered

Recent scholarship has suggested that: “A Nation at Risk had put education on the nation agenda” (McGuinn 2006, 52), that it “catapulted education near to the top of the national political agenda” (Davies 2007, 5), and that it started “an ambitious and well-publicized elementary and secondary education reform … that has already lasted for more than a quarter of a century, spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations” (Vinovskis 2009, 1). The appearance of the 1980s’ reports, including A Nation at Risk, is said to have “spurred the greatest national debate on education since the launching of Sputnik in 1957” (Stedman and Smith 1983, 85). It proved to be a government report on education that “pave[d] the way for a further extension of the federal role in the nation’s school districts” (Davies 2007, 5) that began in 1958 when Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (Wagner 2006, 23).