The 1980s Education: Overview

The course education in America took in the 1980s was through a battlefield. Student scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT; the measure by which most colleges evaluated applicants) had been on a downward spiral since 1962. That trend continued at the beginning of the decade. Studies showed that American elementary and secondary students consistently tested lower in science and math than their counterparts in Japan, and in what was then West Germany and the former Soviet Union. Evidence was clear that students were learning less in school environments filled with rising drug use and violence.

Democratic and Republican politicians agreed that the nation's schools were not delivering a quality education, but they could not agree on how the U.S. government should act to solve the problem. The administration of President Ronald Reagan wanted to remove the federal government's presence from education. He and other Republican leaders also wanted to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Democrats countered that the continued role of government behind programs such as bilingual education was important for the nation as a whole.

Most education critics agreed the quality of education began to suffer in the 1970s when colleges lowered their entrance requirements and most high schools abolished strict course requirements. The common curriculum was lost when an array of electives replaced more academic courses in science, math, and English. High-school curricula, packed with courses such as values education, moral education, death education, consumer education, drug education, and driver education, failed to emphasize fundamental academic skills.

Many parents and politicians, angered over the state of education, pointed a collective finger at teachers. Even professional education organizations admitted teachers had a problem. Because of low pay and little professional esteem, the teaching field was drawing fewer and fewer quality applicants. Those who did enter the field found their competency questioned by parents and local school boards. Faced with tests to prove their basic abilities in the classroom, many teachers resisted. In the end, the majority of states passed measures requiring such tests. To reward those teachers who demonstrated their worth, school boards decided to establish merit pay systems. Lacking the money to fund such systems, however, many school boards soon abandoned the idea.

Students also were faced with tests. Because the nation began to believe that a high-school diploma no longer represented a level of academic achievement, many school districts adopted minimum competency testing for graduation. In a controversial move, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA; national organization that administers inter-collegiate athletics) adopted Proposition 48 in 1984. This set academic levels that graduating high-school students had to meet in order to participate in collegiate athletic programs.

Perhaps the greatest controversy surrounding education in the 1980s concerned religion in the classroom. Supported by President Reagan, who wanted prayer to be part of the curriculum in all schools, some parents and religious groups fought to change the textbooks used by students nationwide. They filed lawsuit after lawsuit, hoping to have their religious views adopted in place of established scientific and historical information. In almost every occurrence, the courts eventually ruled against them.