Report Card Nation - by Charles E Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

"In the winter of 2003, a presidential mandate thrust a dozen dedicated public servants onto the national stage. Charles Smith, former UT chancellor and Tennessee's former Education Commissioner, was one of them. The task was to take the Nation's Report Card, a relatively obscure but highly respected national assessment, to the forefront of George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative, amid a renewed scrutiny of public education and a controversial reliance on standardized testing. Smith takes readers behind the scenes of the 2003 assessment that would pave the way for public school successes and budgetary windfalls but also resulted in inner-city school failures and closures, a rise in private school enrollment and the public funding of private schools, and, later, the implementation of the ill-fated Common Core"--

Book Synopsis

In Report Card Nation, Charles E. Smith offers an insider's perspective on a pivotal moment in American education reform. In 2003, under the mandate of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative, Smith and a team of public servants brought the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--also known as the Nation's Report Card--to the forefront of federal education policy. Once a respected but relatively obscure measure, the NAEP quickly became the primary tool for assessing the successes and failures of public education across the country.

Smith's account details the complexities of implementing a national assessment program with far-reaching consequences under intense political scrutiny. As the Nation's Report Card became a centerpiece of federal accountability measures, its impact reverberated throughout the educational landscape. While the reforms led to budgetary windfalls and documented successes in some areas, they also exposed deep divides, particularly in urban school districts where standardized testing policies contributed to school closures and increased private school enrollments.

Drawing on his thirty-two years in Tennessee state government and six years as executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, Smith explores both the promises and the pitfalls of the No Child Left Behind era. He provides readers with an honest, behind-the-scenes account of the shifts in American education policy during this transformative decade, including the groundwork for implementation of Common Core standards. Smith's clear-eyed, well-researched narrative provides an essential look at how national policy shaped local realities, and how one of the most controversial periods in public education still reverberates today.

About the Author

CHARLES E. SMITH began his career as a newspaper editor in Sparta, Tennessee, and later served in leadership roles at both the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee Board of Regents. In 1987, he joined Governor Ned McWherter's cabinet as commissioner of education. After thirty-two years in Tennessee state government, Smith served six years as executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board during the George W. Bush administration.