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Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread: Manufacturing Crises in EducationBy Gregory J. Cizek The model that appears to guide current policy development in education -- constructing crises and crafting solutions -- has a long and not particularly productive history. Mr. Cizek suggests a different approach. Illustration © 1999 by Mario Noche |
THERE IS a crisis in American education. Or maybe there isn't. There used to be. Several, actually. But maybe there weren't. Maybe there always is.
Policy making in American education seems to be made up mostly of responding or reacting. When a problem, issue, or situation arises that is not adequately addressed by existing mechanisms (e.g., legal, procedural, regulatory), policies are revised to better respond to the new context. The more serious the issue, the more far-reaching the policy making. A problem that reaches crisis proportions cries out for remedy by legislators and policy makers.
Unfortunately, from the perspective of those who comment from within the field, American education seems to be in a pervasive and continual state of crisis. This state of affairs has profound implications for the field of education, for the crafting of education policy, and for the promise of education reform.
What Is a Crisis?
On 22 October 1962 President Kennedy revealed that an offensive military build-up was occurring in Cuba. The subsequent air and naval blockade of Cuba created a tension between the United States and the Soviet Union so serious that the two countries began preparing for nuclear war. Six days later, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev negotiated a diplomatic solution that eventually ended the crisis. The now famous Cuban Missile Crisis looms in American history as a clear illustration of a true crisis: an event or set of circumstances that threatens significant, irreversible harm.
However, a crisis need not portend only harm. A crisis can also be a "turning point" for better or worse, or simply a "decisive moment." In American education, decisive moments -- or at least claims of crises -- are legion; decisive responses are far fewer; documented solutions are even rarer.
Education in Crisis
Researchers in all fields address problems, both theoretical and applied. Speaking specifically about education, Gene Glass stated the matter succinctly: "Researchers do not solve problems, they set them."1 If that is the case, educational researchers are prolific indeed. If it seems that "crisis" is an overused term in the vocabulary of the education profession, there is good reason: it is. Even a cursory review of the literature reveals that the claims of crisis are enduring, omnipresent, and multifarious.
The extent of crises in education. To gauge the extent to which educational problems are cast as crises, one can consult the writings of those within the profession. As part of a recent research project, I had occasion to review both published books and the ERIC database.2 The ERIC search encompassed materials published since 1966; the sample of books included materials from the 1930s to the present.
A keyword search of ERIC entries revealed a total of 6,024 writings in education since 1966 that contain the keyword "crisis." Using the same keyword, I identified 3,314 library holdings. Not all of these related to academic matters. For example, the search returned entries for crises related to such topics as energy, health care, mid-life, and so on. Refining the search using the combinations "crisis and classroom," "crisis and education," and "crisis and school(s)" produced a list of 4,027 ERIC citations and 260 library materials.
Varieties of crises from A to W. Even limiting the search yielded hundreds of books and journal articles describing crises in American education. I divided these materials into logical sets. For example, some authors compared education problems in the U.S. with those in other countries. The American education system is apparently not the only one in crisis.
A second group of materials dealt with educational crises in the U.S. but placed them in a larger context. For example, a book by George Bereday reported on the proceedings of the International Conference on the World Crisis in Education.3 Other writers on education problems spoke of a planetary crisis, a cultural crisis, or even an "age of crisis."4
A third group of materials addressed the slightly less general crises of Western education, liberal education, and Catholic education. More than 20 books and journal articles described a general crisis in American elementary and secondary education. More than 50 books and articles addressed crises in American higher education. Some writers identified educational crises according to specific subgroups of students, including adolescents, African American males, Chicano/Latino students, and homeless children. Several authors narrowed the crisis to that of American secondary education. The narrowest of these general crisis works focused specifically on a crisis in curriculum reform.
Three other groupings of research and writings about education crises in the U.S. could be discerned. One group of materials targeted highly specific crises in such areas as school food service, liability insurance, home/school relationships, school boards, scheduling, and learning styles, as well as crises precipitated by site-based management and the need for an additional fourth-grade classroom. A second group described what the authors referred to as "identity crises." According to these writers, all the following experienced (or are still experiencing) identity crises: art education, physical education, early childhood special education, elementary and middle school social sciences, inorganic chemistry, school psychology, the social sciences, higher education generally, and community college instructors specifically.
The final identifiable set of writings addressed subject-specific crises; I identified 108 titles as focusing on subjects taught in American elementary and secondary school classrooms. I arranged these into 27 categories, ranging from agricultural education, art education, and biology education at one end of the alphabet to special education, vocational education, and writing at the other. The list included nearly every subject taught in American elementary and secondary classrooms. And of course, the design of my search procedure did not identify many additional works about educational crises that did not use "crisis" in the abstract, summary, or title.
Evidence of crises in education. In real life, evidence accompanies the pronouncement of a crisis. For example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, American intelligence reports from within Cuba, U.S. military surveillance photographs, diplomatic contacts, and other sources of information provided an accumulation of data to support the dire declaration of a crisis.
How well are all these claims of crises in American education supported? To answer this question, I reviewed a subset of 35 published works that addressed the 27 categories of crises in American elementary and secondary education that were specific to subject areas. The results provided a good news/bad news message.
First, the good news. Of the 35 publications, 30 (85.7%) included some evidence in support of the claim that a crisis existed; only five offered no evidence. Of the works providing any type of evidence, the most frequently offered evidence was quantitative (37.1%), followed by qualitative (31.4%) and a combination of the two (17.1%).
An article by Andrew Molnar illustrates the typical presentation of quantitative evidence, which is predominately descriptive in nature.5 In 1978 Molnar predicted a coming crisis in computer literacy based on the proliferation of publications related to science and technology. He reported that nearly 100,000 scientific and technological journals were being produced worldwide and that 80,000 technical reports were being produced in the United States each year, with that number increasing at a rate of 14% per year.
An example of a typical presentation of qualitative evidence is found in an article that chronicled complaints from college professors about the "new illiteracy" among high school students.6 One interesting exception to the typical presentations of qualitative or quantitative support for a claim of crisis is found in an article by Sidney Miller, who buttresses his argument regarding a crisis in special education by pointing to a lack of data on the topic.7
Some authors have presented both quantitative and qualitative data. One example is found in a discussion about a crisis in gifted education. The authors summarize large-scale data collections that show average Japanese students achieving higher than the top 5% of American students in college-preparatory mathematics; they also present an anecdote related to the inability of a small group of children to solve problems from a fifth-grade mathematics textbook.8
Now the bad news. By and large, the appropriateness of whatever evidence was provided was rarely explained. In many of the published works, the authors offered no internal evaluation of the evidence, and the evidence presented often did not support the claim that a crisis existed. This problem is illustrated by the article by Molnar, cited above, that focused on an impending crisis in computer literacy and presented quantitative evidence concerning the burgeoning number of periodicals in science and technology.9 A tacit assumption was that an increasing number of periodicals would produce a negative consequence -- i.e., a crisis -- although that case was not made. Indeed, it might be even more likely that a decrease in the number of scientific and technological journals would be cause for concern, as would stagnation in the number of journals under certain conditions. Moreover, it is not clear that an increase in technological publications necessitates wider computer literacy; it is conceivable that the publications in question target audiences that already possess the type of literacy needed.
A related problem with quantitative evidence in support of a crisis claim is the use of discrepancy data. For example, crises in teacher education have been declared because a difference exists between the proportions of teachers and of students who come from various racial and ethnic groups.10 However, differences do not automatically translate into crises. By themselves, data showing such discrepancies or deviations from prior trends do not signal that a decision point is at hand that portends great benefit or harm. Unfortunately, in the literature of educational crisis, authors frequently proffer -- and readers uncritically accept as evidence -- data for which no link to a claim of crisis is demonstrated.
Proposed solutions for crises. Altogether, 31 of the 35 publications I reviewed offered some advice about how to address the crises they had identified; a total of 61 recommendations were made. On the surface, this would seem to fall on the "good news" side of the ledger. But a closer look proves otherwise.
Not surprisingly, authors tended to perceive teachers as central to a satisfactory resolution of the purported crises. An article titled "The Crisis in Mathematics Education" is a good example of recommendations related to teachers.11 The author suggests improving conditions for math teachers by providing higher salaries for practicing teachers and more favorable loans for teachers in training. Other examples include recommendations that teachers teach more passionately, be more responsive to high-ability students, and integrate computers more completely into the educational process.
A careful analysis of all the proposed solutions to educational crises reveals that they share a "top-down" perspective. In the articles I reviewed, not a single author mentioned factors related to students, families, or sociocultural factors -- arguably three of the most powerful variables in the mix.
For example, some research has revealed the importance of student volition, along with the fact that, in the U.S., effort receives less emphasis than ability, while in Japan, families encourage a belief in effort within a climate of interpersonal cooperation.12 If it is desirable for students to spend more time on tasks related to educational achievement, it may be necessary for schools to concentrate more on developing students' interest in education and their sense of confidence in their own capabilities in order to "solve" general educational crises.13 Other studies suggest that any general educational crisis in the U.S. might be more social than academic. One 1992 study of Indochinese refugee families in the U.S. found that families, including siblings, played a significant role in inculcating a sense of personal efficacy and love of learning in children.14
In summary, top-down solutions may be no solutions at all. Increasingly, research is demonstrating that a successful education system needs to take into account the ways in which student motivation to succeed can be strengthened with the help of teachers and families. Schools cannot function merely as academic systems; they are also part of a larger social context that must be addressed as part of crafting solutions to educational crises.
Crisis Ownership and the Politics of Policy Making
The ubiquity of crisis claims in education has reached crisis (sorry) proportions. In just the past 30 years, thousands of documents about crises in education have been disseminated -- a baleful bonanza of epistles on emergencies. Published works have described crises in virtually every aspect of the system of schooling: enrollment, personnel, curriculum, funding, organization, and functioning. With just one notable exception, my review of the literature revealed no counterclaims or rebuttals. Only occasionally has an author expressed even mild dissent or sought to refocus a claim of crisis.15 Given the intensity of debates on nearly every other aspect of education policy, it is difficult to imagine that debates have not arisen regarding the crisis state of American education.
The singular exception is a recent book by two education researchers, David Berliner and Bruce Biddle, who dispute that a crisis exists. They assert that the woes of American education are a "manufactured crisis."16 Berliner and Biddle do not focus on a specific crisis, such as the subject-specific crises I alluded to above. Instead, their work is simply a thoughtful reaction to the lingering sense of a general crisis in American education.
Berliner and Biddle's work is unique on several counts. First, they present the case that nearly all aspects of American schooling labeled "in crisis" by others -- including student performance, international comparisons, educational spending, shortages of scientists and engineers, the quality of teaching and textbooks, the decline in civic and moral virtue, and public discontent with American education -- are not nearly so troubled as the critics have suggested. In addition, Berliner and Biddle's work relies as much on data and logical analysis as it does on rhetoric or undersubstantiated claims.
However, their assertions about American education are also at odds with much of the research evidence. For example, although many recent education reformers and policy makers have discovered much to emulate in the educational practices of other countries, Berliner and Biddle begin their book by condemning Japanese schools "for brutality and for promoting overachievement."17 They also reject many of the recommendations frequently offered as remedies for educational crises, such as curriculum reform or additional time spent by students on school subjects. Instead, they suggest more research and more compassion as the most efficacious routes to school improvement.
But Berliner and Biddle's most curious thesis is that perceptions of crisis in American education are not merely unfounded but are the product of "organized malevolence" on the part of neoconservative federal policy makers who have been "throttling research and misusing evidence about education."18 They identify the first publicly malevolent act as the 1983 release by the U.S. Department of Education of A Nation at Risk. They contend that a loose conspiracy of media elites, unelected bureaucrats, industrialists, and other Right Wing malcontents were responsible for creating, disseminating, and perpetuating diverse and sundry myths about a fictitious crisis in American education. Named co-conspirators include newspaper columnist George Will, former Assistant Secretary of Education Chester Finn, University of Chicago sociology professor Allan Bloom, evangelist Pat Robertson, and the philanthropic foundation of beer maker Adolph Coors, among others.
According to Berliner and Biddle, the conspirators were abetted by the nation's mass media. They argue that perceptions of crisis in American education and the potential strategies derived from international comparisons are mere illusions: "For more than a dozen years, this groundless and damaging message has been proclaimed by major leaders of our government and industry and has been repeated endlessly by a compliant press. Good-hearted Americans have come to believe that the public schools of their nation are in a crisis state because they have so often been given this false message by supposedly credible sources."19
It is surely plausible that the public sense of a general crisis in American education may have been heightened in the 1980s following the release of A Nation at Risk. Berliner and Biddle also demonstrate that some of the folklore of American educational crisis makes for sensational headlines and is capable of arousing a sense of doom. For example, they cite the dubious origins of surveys that supposedly compared "the public's lists of top school problems" from the 1940s and 1980s.20 The root of the comparison is shown to lie more in urban legend than in historical fact.
However, Berliner and Biddle's analysis is demonstrably incorrect on other counts. First, as the review of research on educational crises demonstrates, the sense of crisis in American education predates the release of A Nation at Risk by several decades. One canon of science is that the suspected cause of a phenomenon must occur prior to it. Thus A Nation at Risk is most accurately seen as merely one of a continuing stream of published works claiming crisis for American education.
Perhaps "stream" is not the best choice; to say "river" or "torrent" might be more accurate. Influential educators have described educational crises for most of this century. Indeed, Louis Filler compiled writings from the 1800s by Horace Mann in which the notion of crisis is prominently featured.21 John Rury and Frank Cassell chronicled the crisis of public schooling in a single urban center since 1920.22 In the 1930s, William Heard Kilpatrick addressed Education and the Social Crisis in a book of the same title.23 In every decade since the 1940s, books have described the entire American school system -- from elementary schools to universities -- as being in crisis.
Given this long history of crisis, a more recent book titled To Save Our Schools, To Save Our Children: The Approaching Crisis in America's Public Schools seems a little tardy in predicting what has been proclaimed for more than half a century.24 A quotation reproduced in Charles Silberman's influential 1970 book, Crisis in the Classroom, illustrates the longevity of the sense of crisis: "For more than a hundred years much complaint has been made of the unmethodical way in which schools are conducted, but it is only within the last thirty that any serious attempt has been made to find a remedy for the state of things. And with what result? Schools remain exactly as they were."25 The duration of the sense of crisis is highlighted not simply by the fact that the problem is described as more than 100 years old, but also by the fact that the quotation is attributed to John Comenius, an educator writing in 1632. Though more recently and more subject-specific, one author has brought the temporal dimension of educational crisis to its highest point in an article titled "Art Education in (Perpetual) Crisis."26
Overall, a thorough review of literature related to perceptions of crisis in American education demonstrates an abiding penchant for claims of general crisis, with hundreds of books and articles bemoaning whatever is the current state of affairs, cutting across political ideologies, written by those inside the profession, and beginning long before many of those identified as co-conspirators were even born. In addition, although a willing press and an ignorant public might be culpable for convoluted conspiracy theories about everything from the assassination of President Kennedy to alien landings at Roswell, New Mexico, they don't seem to help much in explaining the pervasive sense of crisis about American education. An alternative hypothesis seems more likely: public perceptions about the state of American education may have been formed by the claims of crises made by educational researchers -- in research reports, in books, in journal articles, and in commentaries -- spanning almost a century and covering nearly every aspect of the American schooling system.
Conclusions and Conjectures About Crises in Education
As Berliner and Biddle suggest, the message of educational crisis has been drummed into the heads of Americans for several decades. However, if Berliner and Biddle have seen the enemy, it is probably us. Educational crises are owned by their creators -- educational researchers, policy analysts, practitioners, and commentators within a profession enmeshed in a culture of crisis.
If policy making in education is the business of responding to crisis, there has been no lack of stimulus. A crisis orientation is woven throughout decades, perhaps even centuries, of the literature on American education, produced primarily by those within the system. Educational crises appear to be proliferating at an alarming rate, with a greater variety and frequency springing up in the 1980s and 1990s. Is education alone in facing so many crises? It may be illuminating to calculate an annual "claimed crisis density index" and compare how the proliferation of crises in education compares with that in other disciplines. We can only guess what this would reveal.
What is known is that education is sorely afflicted. Claims of crisis infuse published writings in education journals, books, and magazines. These sources reveal crises to be omnipresent, undifferentiated, and intractable. The literature within the field reveals that crises are rarely foreseen, never reported as being prevented, and, despite an apparent multitude of opportunities, almost never solved.27 Despite an abundance of available research and literature on crisis prevention and crisis management, educational crises do not appear to be tackled as these guidelines would recommend. It is most common for crises to be merely claimed and for the claims to be accompanied by evidence of questionable quality and recommendations of unknown efficacy.
Education writers fail to make distinctions between the varieties of crisis; the need for an extra fourth-grade class in the 1990s and the need to address explosive racial hostility in the schools of the 1960s are made to seem on a par with each other. Moreover, children are enculturated into the ethos of crisis. One social studies journal article provided a simulation game for elementary school students called "The Chocolate Milk Crisis" to help them understand how to deal with a shortage of chocolate milk in their cafeteria.28
The problem is not that educational researchers or practitioners have failed to suggest strategies for attenuating the many crises. For example, one book's subtitle offered a straightforward (and conspicuously confident) précis of its contents: A Blueprint for Fixing What Is Wrong and Restoring America's Confidence in the Public Schools.29 As I mentioned above, one problem is that the solutions tend to be of the ineffective top-down variety. A second problem is that the works of writers who claim to have solutions to share are apparently overlooked, ignored, judged impractical, or simply passed by as attention turns to yet another crisis. A third problem is that the literature on educational crises contains little in the way of follow-up reports that assess the efficacy of proposed courses of action.
In such a state of affairs, it can be tempting to view educational crises as mere fodder for political cannons. Chicken Little said, "The sky is falling!" and reiterated the claim. Education writers cry, "A crisis of this sort!" and later cry, "A crisis of another sort!" Both are easily ignored, and both seem genuinely distressed when no one believes. If Chicken Little has the quality of consistency, writers in the field of education can boast of variety.
Real challenges do exist in American education. They range from the mundane matters of configuring fourth-grade classrooms to the societal conundrum of race relations in a multicultural democracy. We do face real decision points, and policy makers can craft strategies to respond to them. However, only some situations are truly crises. I offer the following recommendations to further the goal of responding to all crises, great and small.
1. More accurate classification. An easy recommendation is that education writers refrain from invoking "crisis" in most situations. Vexing situations exist along a continuum, with crisis anchoring only one end. Temporary uncertainty about the place of inorganic chemistry in the science curriculum is an issue; bureaucratic regulations are a nuisance; the rising cost of liability insurance is a financial problem; lunchroom scheduling may range from an inconvenience to a difficulty; reductions in the rigor of school textbooks are a concern; the absence of civic and moral virtue in students and of vision in educational leaders is a shame. There may indeed be crises in U.S. education, but they are qualitatively different from these dilemmas. The level of deprivation represented by the absence of chocolate milk from an elementary school cafeteria hardly compares to the austerity described in a 1989 United Nations report on education in Tanzania: "It is not uncommon to find a teacher standing in front of 80-100 pupils who are sitting on a dirt floor in a room without a roof, trying to convey orally the limited knowledge he has, and the pupils tak[ing] notes on piece[s] of wrinkled paper using as writing board[s] the back[s] of the pupil[s] in front of [them]. There is no teacher guide for the teacher and [there are] no textbooks for the children."30
More accurate categorization and less frequent invocation of crisis might also have the desirable effect of increasing the status of educational research. Educational researchers have openly lamented their inability to translate research findings into effective legislation and classroom practice. The impotence of educational research has recently been highlighted by Carl Kaestle, who described "The Awful Reputation of Education Research" in an article with that title.31 Whether in place of or in addition to factors identified by Kaestle, it seems likely that a terrible convergence of three reasons explains the comparatively poor reputation of educational research: excessive claims of crisis, inadequate evidence, and insufficiently demonstrated solutions.
2. Apply the "so what?" test. A second recommendation is that authors of publications illuminating problems in education should be more critical of the evidence when claiming a crisis. Consumers of such publications must also read with the same critical eye, constantly asking the rather frank question, So what? Application of the "so what?" test can be illustrated using one of the articles uncovered in my literature search, titled "The Crisis in Biology Education," in which dramatic changes were proposed for secondary school science programs, materials, goals, and instruction. The author listed the following "evidence" to support the claim of crisis:
Application of the "so what?" test might disqualify all this evidence from having any bearing on the possibility of a crisis in high school biology. For example, no rationale was provided for the expectation that there ought to be increasing interest in science across the four years of high school; there is no evidence that interest in other subject areas is increasing at the expense of science; there is no reason to believe that students' greater interest in technology is a bad thing; no "index of attentiveness" is provided, tempting readers who have not been in recent close contact with large groups of adolescents to infer that 10% is a low value; and only modest percentages of high school graduates pursue any given career, with no evidence offered for deciding whether the "right" numbers of students are pursuing science careers. It may be that industry forecasts of shortages exist, specifying the need for a certain number of scientists compared to projected numbers of graduates. Yet even with such predictions in hand, a crisis may never materialize.
3. Demonstrate the effectiveness of "solutions." A third recommendation is that educational researchers offer policy makers a firmer foundation for action. My review of the literature shows that evidence to support proposed plans for addressing crises is often absent, skimpy, or equivocal. Policy makers should demand that specific, well-reasoned, and realizable remedies accompany thoroughly substantiated claims of educational crisis.
Unfortunately, it is too common that researchers suggest that better funding or "more research" is needed. Moreover, to proffer solutions touting improbable results, such as universal literacy, 100% graduation rates, and the like is self-delusional. It is also too easy -- and insufficient -- to say that "we must get serious" about this or that problem.
Proposals for change should also be accompanied by statements regarding reasonably expectable results. For example, in the case of the high school biology crisis, what results might be expected if the curriculum, pedagogy, and resources were changed as suggested by the author? Might we expect interest in science to exceed interest in technology? Would the "attentiveness" of students in biology classes reach 20%?
In addition, the research conducted for this article reveals a marked tendency for proposed solutions to be predominantly of the top-down variety. Proposals for a more integrated curriculum, for increased pay for teachers, or for a longer school year, to name just a few, might each contribute to an improved education system. However, policy makers might do well to ask first what effect these changes would have on student learning. For example, Berliner and Biddle reviewed the evidence for a longer school year and found that such a change might result in no student gains without dramatic changes in textbooks, which ultimately constrain what students are exposed to in any academic year.33
Top-down solutions also fail to take into account what is known about the most powerful influences on student learning. Even if all the solutions mentioned earlier were carried out, there would probably be little impact if students were uninterested, resistant, or absent. It is important, therefore, that policy makers seek solutions that take into account the complexities of the educational process, among them, student motivation, parent involvement, and community and cultural support for education. For example, if more scientists are needed, it might not be enough to change the curriculum or teaching methods. It might be necessary to find out why students are inattentive, attracted to other fields, or not profoundly affected by their science programs.
4. A new model for education policy making. A more fundamental recommendation is that education policy making be radically reconceived. The model that appears to guide current policy development -- constructing crises and crafting solutions -- has a long and not particularly productive history. The starting point for a reconceptualization is also a stopping point: eschewing a crisis orientation.
Beyond avoiding the temptation to cast each decision point as a crisis, a new approach to policy development would not involve reacting to events. Instead, it would focus on innovation and anticipation of what challenges the future holds. Policies might always be needed to respond to problems in the current functioning of schools. But effective policy development should be targeted not simply at rectifying past or present ills but at identifying and refining the roles schools can perform well. Advances in education policy development will also accrue from refining systems that are apparently already functioning smoothly today.
2. I included in my ERIC search only materials coded as "EJ." This code is used for materials appearing in education-related periodicals and does not include other unpublished educational documents, coded "ED." I used the holdings of a medium-sized public university for reviewing books and other nonprint materials. Obviously, the holdings of a single library do not capture the universe of published works on the topic. However, if a bias existed, it would be in favor of including more popular and influential works.
3. George Z. F. Bereday, Essays on World Education: The Crisis of Supply and Demand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).
4. To provide citations for all the writings my search on crises yielded would unnecessarily clutter this article. Interested readers can find these citations, as well as more detailed information on the study design, in Gregory J. Cizek and Vidya Ramaswamy, "American Educational Policy: Constructing Crises and Crafting Solutions," in Gregory J. Cizek, ed., Handbook of Educational Policy (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), pp. 497-519.
5. Andrew R. Molnar, "The Next Great Crisis in American Education: Computer Literacy," AEDS Journal, Fall 1978, pp. 11-20.
6. Robert A. Gundlach, "Is There a Writing Crisis in the High School?," Momentum, December 1981, p. 14.
7. Sidney R. Miller, "A Crisis in Appropriate Education: The Dearth of Data on Programs for Secondary Handicapped Adolescents," Journal of Special Education, vol. 15, 1981, pp. 351-60.
8. Joseph S. Renzulli and Sally M. Reis, "The Reform Movement and the Quiet Crisis in Gifted Education," Gifted Child Quarterly, vol. 35, 1991, pp. 26-35.
9. Molnar, op. cit.
10. For examples in which authors rely primarily on discrepancy data to support claims of crisis in proportional representation of various ethnic groups in the teaching profession, see Sabrina H. King, "On the Limited Presence of African-American Teachers," Review of Educational Research, vol. 63, 1993, pp. 115-49; and Xue L. Rong and Judith Priessle, "The Continuing Decline in Asian American Teachers," American Educational Research Journal, vol. 34, 1997, pp. 267-93. For a critique of the use of discrepancy data in support of these claims, see Gregory J. Cizek, "On the Limited Presence of African American Teachers: An Assessment of Research, Synthesis, and Policy Implications," Review of Educational Research, vol. 65, 1995, pp. 78-92.
11. Max A. Sobel, "The Crisis in Mathematics Education," Educational Horizons, vol. 61, 1983, pp. 55-56.
12. See Lynn Corno, "The Best Laid Plans: Modern Conceptions of Volition and Educational Research," Educational Researcher, March 1993, pp. 14-22; and Susan D. Holloway, "Concepts of Ability and Effort in Japan and the United States," Review of Educational Research, vol. 58, 1988, pp. 327-45.
13. Edward L. Deci et al., "Motivation and Education: The Self-Determination Perspective," Educational Psychologist, vol. 26, 1991, pp. 325-46.
14. Nathan Caplan, Marcella H. Choy, and John K. Whitmore, "Indochinese Refugee Families and Academic Achievement," Scientific American, February 1992, pp. 36-42.
15. Refinement of a claim of crisis or mild dissent can be found, for example, in William Ayers, "Can City Schools Be Saved?," Educational Leadership, May 1994, pp. 60-63, in which the author describes a selective crisis in American education. Dona Kagan and Deborah Tippins explored the benevolent aspects of an educational crisis in "Benefits of Crisis: The Genesis of a School-University Partnership," Action in Teacher Education, Winter 1993/1994, pp. 68-73. And Mario D. Fantini, "Toward a National Policy for Urban Education," Phi Delta Kappan, April 1982, pp. 544-46, urged an end to the crisis-oriented approach to problems in urban schools. Dissent is also evident in Paul D. Houston and Joe Schneider, "Drive-by Critics and Silver Bullets," Phi Delta Kappan, June 1994, pp. 779-82, though the authors did not directly refute the notion of trouble in the American education system but objected to the process used for the U.S. Department of Education's state-by-state ranking of academic performance. Until the publication of David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1995), the strongest voice of dissent had been Gerald Bracey's. His annual commentaries on the condition of public education have been published in the Kappan since 1991 and reflect the same ideas presented in Berliner and Biddle's book.
16. Berliner and Biddle, op. cit.
17. Ibid., p. 2.
18. Ibid., p. xiii.
19. Ibid., p. 3.
20. Ibid., p. 171.
21. Louis Filler, Horace Mann on the Crisis in Education (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1965).
22. John L. Rury and Frank A. Cassell, Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee Since 1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).
23. William Heard Kilpatrick, Education and the Social Crisis (New York: Liveright, 1932).
24. Marshall Frady, To Save Our Schools, To Save Our Children: The Approaching Crisis in America's Public Schools (Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon Press, 1985).
25. Charles Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 158.
26. Harlan Hoffa, "Art Education in (Perpetual) Crisis," Art Education, January 1979, p. 712.
27. One notable exception is Joyce E. Reid, "School Lunch: A Crisis Overcome," School Business Affairs, November 1988, pp. 24-29.
28. Patricia Derrico and A. Thomas Karsotis, "The Chocolate Milk Crisis: A Consumer Economics Simulation Unit for Grades 1-6," Social Studies Journal, Winter 1981, pp. 18-21.
29. Robert Haggerty, The Crisis of Confidence in American Education: A Blueprint for Fixing What Is Wrong and Restoring America's Confidence in the Public Schools (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1995).
30. Joel Samoff, Coping with Crisis: Austerity, Adjustment, and Human Resources (New York: Cassell, 1994), p. 5.
31. Carl F. Kaestle, "The Awful Reputation of Education Research," Educational Researcher, January/February 1993, p. 23. In response to Kaestle's observations, several writers offered additional reasons or suggestions for improving the awful reputation. See, for example, Gerald Sroufe, "Improving the 'Awful Reputation' of Education Research," Educational Researcher, October 1997, pp. 26-28.
32. Robert E. Yager, "The Crisis in Biology Education," American Biology Teacher, September 1982, p. 334.
33. Berliner and Biddle, pp. 184-86.
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