At one point in his 1988 book The Thirteenth Man, the former Secretary of Education Terrel Bell speaks of the decline of secondary education in America. “If we are frank with our selves,” he writes, “we must acknowledge that for most Americans . . . neither diligence in learning nor rigorous standards of performance prevail. . . . How do we once again become a nation of learners, in which attitudes towards intellectual pursuit and quality of work have excellence as their core?”

With these words Bell echoes two qualities common to educational reformers since World War II: nostalgia and amnesia. They look back through a haze to some imagined golden era of American education when we were “a nation of learners,” forgetting that a century ago the high school graduation rate was about 3 percent, and it didn’t exceed 50 percent until mid-century, whereas today it is 83 percent (if you include those who receive equivalency diplomas or who drop out but then return for diplomas). They forget, too, that until after World War II it was assumed that no more than 20 percent of American youth could handle a college curriculum at all; now 62 percent of all high school graduates enroll in college the following fall.

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