Over the last several years, much has been written about the surge in mental health problems among American youth, reinforced by the 2021 public advisory from the U.S. surgeon general that labeled this situation a “crisis.”

The concerns are valid, but too often the focus has been on treating the symptoms instead of attacking the root causes of this crisis.

To address this problem, we need not only to provide more counseling services for youth suffering from mental disorders but also to understand a key part of the social structure generating these ailments: the standards-driven pressure cooker of public schooling.

Here’s the backstory: For the last four decades, “A Nation at Risk,” a report issued by the U.S. Department of Education in 1983 decrying the dire condition of public schools, has served as the primary engine for mobilizing the standards-based school reform movement. 

The report used striking language that has resonated throughout the educational policy realm ever since it was written, declaring in the opening paragraph that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” 

The primary evidence for this claim was a decline in test scores, and the standards-driven reform movement has been obsessed with test scores ever since. 

The report, however, was grounded in a statistics-laden lie. 

They looked at SAT scores from the 1970s to 1989 and found that, yes, the overall average score had declined. But when they looked at individual subgroups of test-takers, they found that scores for almost every subgroup — including those at the bottom and those at the top of the income and achievement levels — actually remained steady or increased. 

They found the same phenomenon true for scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the subject areas of science, math and reading.

What could explain this seeming contradiction? Statisticians refer to it as Simpson’s paradox. It occurred because more students with lower academic skills were taking these tests and planning to enroll in college. 

That brought down the average score even as it increased the diversity of college applicants. The “rising tide of mediocrity” was in fact a rising tide of opportunity.

In fact, efforts in the standards-driven reform movement of the past several decades have built on the misleading report, including the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, the Common Core standards and the associated tests mandated by individual state departments of education. Many local school districts also use tests to demonstrate accountability to the standards. 

The standards-driven reform movement has been a key driver in shaping the educational world our students now inhabit, one that is test-based and generating so much stress in their lives.

Test-based standards put pressure on teachers to teach to the test in order to protect both the students and themselves from the stigma of educational failure. This means trimming back the curriculum to the subjects tested more heavily — literacy, math and, to a lesser extent, science — and sidelining social studies, music, art and literature.

And even literacy has taken a huge hit. Literacy testing focuses on reading at the paragraph level, so reading books is seen as a waste of time, and reading is only about doing well enough to pass the test. All work and no fun.

In conclusion, history shows that “A Nation at Risk” spawned the standards-driven reform movement that created a public-school culture focused on teaching to the test, preparing for the test and taking the test — that is, “drill and kill.” That focus has taken away from opportunities to experience learning for learning’s sake and to pursue intrinsic interests vs. extrinsic rewards, which has had a negative impact on student health and well-being. 

By lifting the veil of the report’s deceptive analysis and shining a light on its terribly harmful consequences, we hope to inspire educators and parents to call for the transformative change in our public schools that our young people deserve and need to thrive in these unprecedented times.

David Labaree is a sociologist, author and emeritus professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. Deborah Malizia is an attorney and mediator who studies mediation training as an approach to increasing emotional well-being among lawyers and young people.