35 Years After 'A Nation at Risk': 36 Pages that Bent the Arc of Education

‘THEY CERTAINLY HAD NO IDEA THAT THE RISK WAS THE SCHOOL:’ No, they (the Reagan administration) or we (the American people) didn’t. That revelation landed like a nuclear bomb, which, as former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt points out, is what most Americans thought they had to fear 35 years ago, with the release of “A Nation at Risk.” In this gripping 74 video, key players recall how they went about determining that “the condition of American education K-12 had deteriorated badly in the previous 25 years” and the essential promise they extracted from President Reagan beforehand that the report would be published regardless of what it revealed about America’s schools.