National Education Summit of 1989
The National Education Summit of 1989 was a significant event in American education reform, convened by President George H. W. Bush with forty-nine state governors in Charlottesville, Virginia. This summit arose from growing concerns about the state of U.S. education, particularly highlighted by the influential 1983 report, *A Nation at Risk*, which warned of declining educational standards in the face of global competition. During the summit, six national education goals were established, aimed at enhancing early childhood education, improving basic skills across grade levels, increasing high school graduation rates, elevating student performance in key subjects, boosting college participation, and addressing teacher recruitment and status.
Though the summit garnered bipartisan attention and aimed to tackle systemic issues in education, many of its goals were not fully realized in subsequent years. Nevertheless, the objectives set forth in 1989 continued to be referenced in later educational reform efforts, highlighting their enduring relevance. The summit marked a pivotal moment in recognizing the necessity for comprehensive educational reforms that included a commitment to equity and excellence in education for all students, reflecting a collective national aspiration.
National Education Summit of 1989
The Event President George H. W. Bush and the nation’s governors discuss problems in America’s schools
Date September 27-28, 1989
Place Charlottesville, Virginia
The 1989 National Education Summit focused national attention on U.S. education programs, resulting in bipartisan reform efforts that led to the development of national education goals.
The ebb and flow of Americans’ interest in education reform has been a recurrent pattern in the history of American education since the early twentieth century, a focus that resurfaced in the century’s last decades. Although successfully extricated from Vietnam, Americans in the 1970’s faced other national crises, including the Watergate scandal (1972), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo (1973), the Iranian hostage crisis (1979-1981), and more ambiguous problems such as rising inflation. In education, touted programs like Head Start had not achieved anticipated levels of success, and controversies over bus zoning and desegregation efforts were debated before the Supreme Court.
By 1983, concerns about America’s schools led to a national education study, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. This report, authored by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, presented a bleak outlook on the future of U.S. education, arguing that the nation’s “once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.” Perhaps because it so accurately reflected the nation’s perceptions about a “crisis” in education, A Nation at Risk became enormously influential and played an important role in elevating education concerns into the national spotlight. In September, 1989, President George H. W. Bush met with forty-nine of the nation’s governors in Charlottesville, Virginia, to discuss problems that existed in America’s school systems. (Bill Clinton, the Democratic governor of Arkansas, was one of the governors who participated in the summit.)
The National Education Summit of 1989 resulted in the announcement of the following six national education goals (a figure that was eventually expanded to eight): First, the number of children served by preschool programs would increase annually; by 1995, all at-risk four-year-olds would be served. Second, all American students were to have basic skills commensurate with their grade level; by 1993, the gap in test scores between white and minority children would be reduced. Third, high school graduation rates would improve every year, and the number of illiterate Americans would decrease. Fourth, the performance of American students in mathematics, science, and foreign languages was to improve until it exceeded that of students from “other industrialized nations.” Fifth, college participation, particularly by minority students, would be increased by reducing the contemporary “imbalance” between grants and loans. Sixth, more new teachers would be recruited, particularly minority teachers, to ease “the impending teacher shortage”; other steps would be taken to upgrade the status of the profession. In addition to these six recommendations, the governors and President Bush agreed “to establish clear, national performance goals.”
Impact
The National Education Summit of 1989 represented a unique, bipartisan effort to reform American education. Furthermore, the summit attracted national attention to the problems that existed in U.S. schools. Few of the summit’s goals were met, but they remained agreed upon as crucial goal to achieve, and later governmental attempts to reform the U.S. educational system often made reference to the same goals agreed upon in 1989.
Bibliography
Bush, George. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union, January 31, 1990.” Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Record Administration, 1990.
Vinovskis, Maris A. The Road to Charlottesville: The 1989 Education Summit. Michigan: National Education Goals Panel, 1999.