1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.
When the Soviets made it into space with Sputnik, US media panicked in support of Democrats and announced education needed to be fixed in USA. New Math was born. New Math had been the belief that kids could learn math by abstract forms which adults understand. If it could be shown subtraction and division were related operations, then children could do both. Only, that is not how children learn, generally, or within the diverse expressions that learning takes. Press did not care. They praised 'forward thinking' Kennedy for panicking and successive administrations spent big on Math and Science. The result being that high schools got physics and chemistry laboratories and Math courses were tested against international standards.

A curious thing happened early in the first Reagan administration. Bad measurement which supported the media narrative of falling education standards resulted in $billions of dollars going to new science facilities and stricter math standards. Only, a rates illusion obscured the fact that standards had risen.

We need to be blind to race, but racists insist on racist discrimination so as to measure inequity. The idea of addressing inequity through any other measure than race, or gender, doesn't seem to register on those racists. So standards were reported over all, and by ethnic subgroups Black, Hispanic, White, Asian, Indigenous and other. Over all standards had fallen, but every single subgroup had improved. Even 'other.' We may never know the specific measures which addressed the needs of 'other' students best. It is probably wrong that we don't do it more. I believe I could measure and address the shortfall if only I were paid better than Gore, Clinton, Obama, Fauci, Biden, Pelosi, Warren etc etc.

The reason for the illusion is to do with the math rule of never adding rates of unlike measures. Black and hispanic students had improved, but their populations were rising from a lower base than Asian and White students, and the number of Black and Hispanic students had increased disproportionately. So even though every subgroup had improved, because there were more of students who were from back grounds which had had lower achievement, the over all results fell. It was not a complete loss. The needs of 'other' students were met better than any Democrat administration has managed since.
https://conservativeweasel.blogspot.com/2021/09/15th-sept-review-of-historical-and.html