Educating Students Placed at Risk It Ain’t Brain Surgery: Restructuring Schools to Improve the Education of Children Placed at Risk

Our Nation is at risk.... [T]he educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of medioc-rity that threatens our very future.... If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre edu-cational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.... We have, in effect, committed an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983, 5) With the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, a “culturewar ” against public education in the United States com-menced. Education was linked to the nation’s economic competitiveness and blamed for declining productivity, and the flag of higher standards and greater accountability was raised. Over the past twenty years both the generals and the casualties of this war on public education have been many. The generals include a long list of the lead-ers of business and industry and the legislative and executive branch commanders; the casualties include truth, our teachers—and most of all