Washington • In 1994, the Clinton administration decreed a bright shining future for education. Its Goals 2000 legislation proclaimed that by that year America’s high school graduation rate would be 90 percent and American students would lead the world in math and science achievements. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., was unimpressed: “That will not happen.” It didn’t, to the surprise of no one with an inkling of reality’s viscosity.
Bill Clinton's (then Congress') goals, which Moynihan compared to the Soviet Union's penchant for delusional grain quotas, illustrated what the senator called the "leakage of reality from American life.