This was an important report, as its findings about the Title I (formerly Chapter 1) program fed into the congressional discussions to rework the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 into the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

You can download a copy at https://eric.ed.gov/?q=title%3a%22promising+results%22&id=ED434418.

Per the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), “The primary purpose of the Digest of Education Statistics is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from prekindergarten through graduate school.”

You can download this particular volume at https://eric.ed.gov/?q=title%3a%22digest+of+education+statistics+1982%22&id=ED225272. Copies of volumes from the early 1980s through recent years can be found at https://eric.ed.gov/?q=title%3A%22digest+of+education+statistics%22. NCES offers copies (1995-present) online at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/.

The annual Digest of Education Statistics and the annual Condition of Education (copies here) are go-to volumes for anyone studying the state of American schooling.

This 1998 report was publiched by the Council for Basic Education, an organization that was founded in 1956 to promote classical liberal education. It closed in 2004. A copy can be downloaded on Eric.gov at https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED416080.

(Interestingly, CBE’s last leader, the late A. Graham Down, was my neighbor and was the teacher of Christopher DeMuth, who led the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008.)

It was one of many reports of the day that argued for rigorous education standards.

While in graduate school in the late 1990s, I was tipped off by one of my dissertation advisers that MetLife insurance company produced thick annual surveys of teachers and former teachers on all sorts of interesting questions. This was pre-World Wide Web, so to get copies I wrote a letter to MetLife to ask if they could sell me any copies.

To my delight, a few weeks later a box showed up at my Brooklyn apartment, and inside was a colection of reports covering many of the years between 1985 and 1990. I was astonished at this largesse, and generally amazed that Metropolitan Life thought it worthwhile to drop dollars every year to produce these surveys, which had no direct connection to their line of business. Three cheers for corporate responsibility and good citizenship!

These days, you can find PDF copies of these volume on ERIC at https://eric.ed.gov/?q=title%3A%22metropolitan+life+survey%22. After 20+ years, I am donating my paper copies to the education policy team at the American Enterprise Institute.