"Much has happened in the last 30 years. But let's fast forward, past the 1989 Charlottesville Education Summit and past President Clinton's "Goals 2000" legislation in 1994. Let's jump right to the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001. That law, along with the current administration's Race to the Top policies, has placed American school reform on a stark path best defined as "test-based accountability reform" - just as was called for 30 years ago in A Nation at Risk."

"It is common among education reformers to describe the country's current education crisis as "the civil-rights issue of our time." For Ryan, that is literally so: the crisis stems from the failure to desegregate public schools after the Supreme Court would not let remedies for reform cross the line between city and suburbs, a fundamental divide of geography, race, and class."