WASHINGTON -- When he was elected president in 1980, Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, saying that schooling was a local and state responsibility.

But three years later, his administration issued a 36-page report that actually highlighted the need for a U.S. education agency and paved the way two decades later for the new "No Child Left Behind" law.

In stern tones, the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" report called the public's attention to what the panelists believed was the dismal state of American public schools, especially compared with the educational systems of other countries.

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war," the commission said in the introduction to its report, written as a "An Open Letter to the American People."

To counter this "rising tide of mediocrity," the commission recommended tougher high school graduation requirements, higher educational standards, a better-trained and better-paid cadre of teachers, a longer school day and school year, and more homework for students.

"The report was a wake-up call to our country about how our students compared to the rest of the world," said John Thompson, superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools. "However, the goals and recommendations in the report still have not been reached."

Unlike many federal reports, which are released with great fanfare and then gather dust and fade away, "A Nation at Risk" actually galvanized people to take action, said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on education for low-income and minority students.

"In the space of no more than a year, almost every state had its own equivalent report. All kinds of stuff happened as a result of this shove into the future."

States raised standards and toughened graduation requirements. Local school districts experimented with "master" teacher programs. The federal government increased its funding for education and carved out a greater policy role.

Yet, student test scores, especially for those in high school, have barely budged.

High school seniors in the United States, for example, remain "essentially at the bottom" of the primary international test given every four years, although U.S. fourth-graders continue to rank near the top, said William Schmidt, distinguished professor of applied statistics at Michigan State University.

"We don't start out behind; we fall behind. It's not that our kids are fatally flawed, but that our educational system is not serving our children well," Schmidt added.

"A Nation at Risk" focused mostly on high school. But the education reforms that it spawned over the next 20 years -- including "No Child Left Behind" -- centered on elementary school, Haycock noted.

"That's where the dollars have gone, the theory being that we should get it right early on," Haycock said. "The assumption has been that, if kids came into high school better prepared, then high schools could really go to town and do their job. That hasn't happened."

Meanwhile, "A Nation at Risk" has had its share of critics, who complained that its authors used highly charged language and selectively chosen statistics to make a political point. They say the reforms inspired by the report have masked the real problems in American education, including the effects of income inequality and lingering discrimination.

Both critics and supporters of the "Nation At Risk" report agree on one thing: The scathingly critical document helped put -- and keep -- education in the nation's political spotlight. The White House release of the report was a major national news event, generating hundreds of news stories and columns and capturing the public interest.

Reagan attempted to use the release of the report as a way to push his own education priorities, including vouchers, school prayer and the abolition of the Education Department. None of those issues was included in the report, and Reagan's remarks were mostly ignored by reporters.

Once Reagan saw the public groundswell of interest in the report, he used it to help fuel support for his ultimately successful 1984 re-election, traveling around the country with Terrel Bell, the education secretary who had commissioned the report.

In his memoir, "The Thirteenth Man," Bell recalled that he wanted the report to "jar people into action on behalf of their educational system."

After the report was released, efforts to abolish the U.S. education department died quietly during Reagan's second term. Since then, Reagan's three White House successors have pushed a variety of federal fixes for education, many of which grew directly out of the "Nation At Risk" recommendations.

The latest of these federal efforts, President Bush's "No Child Left Behind," answers the 1983 report's call for "more rigorous and measurable standards, and higher expectations, for academic performance and student conduct."

Under the "No Child Left Behind" law, passed in 2001, all states are required to set educational standards and then measure student progress in meeting those standards with annual tests in grades three through eight.

In addition, virtually all states have gradually beefed up high school graduation requirements, said Charles Coble, vice president of policy studies at the Education Commission of the States.

But other recommendations contained in the "Nation At Risk" report haven't been followed. For example, the report called for increased teacher salaries that are "market-sensitive and performance-based" as well as for "career ladders" to reward the best teachers.

"Twenty years ago, we learned from 'A Nation at Risk' that we were metaphorically at war; 20 years later, teachers are still fighting for professional recognition and respect," writes Stanford University Education Professor Pam Grossman in a recent issue of the Harvard Education Letter.

Meanwhile, student test scores -- a variety of which were cited by the "Nation at Risk" authors as evidence of the nation's educational decline -- haven't made any dramatic improvements. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, which measures student achievement in math, science, reading and writing, have shown improvement in some areas and stagnation in others, Haycock noted.

In addition, high school graduation rates haven't gone up. But a larger percentage of high school seniors who do graduate go on to college, Coble said.

Scores on college entrance tests, such as the SAT and the ACT, are mixed. The SAT math scores are the highest in years; but SAT and ACT reading, writing and grammar scores are basically flat.

And there's a persistent "achievement gap" between white and minority students. The gap, which narrowed during the 1970s and 1980s, hasn't budged in a decade.

"Are our kids more knowledgeable today, more competitive internationally? Are we leaving fewer children behind? The answer is 'no, not really.' We've made a few gains, but that's it," said Haycock.

But Bruce Hunter, the chief lobbyist of the American Association of School Administrators, remains upbeat about the future of American education.

"People need to wrap their minds around the fact that there has been a paradigm shift in American education," Hunter said. "We've gone from a push for universal access to universal proficiency. 'A Nation at Risk' was the first report to grasp the beginning of that shift.

"Now we've got to focus on this new mission of making sure that all kids achieve at a fairly high level."