In addition, the commission recommended two years of foreign-language study for the college bound. Not a bad diet for a high-school graduate who is eligible to vote on his or her eighteenth birthday. Consider what happened. By 1992, 29.4 percent of all high school graduates had taken the recommended array of academic courses, including two years of a foreign language and half a year of computer studies. These are nonincremental changes and nontrivial improvements.
Standards really do make a difference.
They actually induce people to change their behavior. Also encouraging are enrollment figures in advanced math and science courses, which have risen sharply for all groups-racial and ethnic, male and female. We find these trends heartening and attribute them to changes spurred by A Nation at Risk. And we have long believed, contrary to a cherished shibboleth of the education profession, that higher standards for students would not lead to an increase in the dropout rate. In fact, we surmised that many youngsters dropped out not because school was too hard but because they correctly understood that dumbed-down courses in the general track were a waste of their time.