This in itself has become a multimillion-dollar industry. Well before the widely remarked Nation at Risk study was published in 1983, we knew we had a serious problem. The Growth of Public Education Let us look at the real record. But in the 1980s, education spending per pupil rose by 400 percent. That kind of phenomenal increase is continuing in the 1990s.
Public education is, quite simply, America's top growth industry.
The answer to all these questions is a resounding no. Between 1963 and 1989, average national SAT scores fell an incredible 77 points, from 980 to 903. Iowa achievement tests for junior and senior high school students fell at a similar rate. It is just as bad at the college level. One half of all students who enter college never graduate.