Recent scholarship has suggested that: "A Nation at Risk" had put education on the national agenda," that it "catapulted education near to the top of the national political agenda," and that it started "an ambitious and well-publicized elementary and secondary education reform ... that has already lasted for more than a quarter of a century." The…

Patricia Graham's recent defense of public education in the United States shows that public education has been responsive to society's demands and supports the earlier observation of Charles Burgess and Merle Borrowman that the dominant educational ideology is a function of the nation's need for human resources. When the nation has clear and…