A. Graham Down, who served as executive director and president of the Council for Basic Education from 1974 to 1994, died on Aug. 30. He was 85 years old.
Down was a proponent of high academic standards and a strong liberal-arts curriculum in schools, which the Council for Basic Education advocated for until it closed its doors in 2004.
A graduate of Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Down also formerly served as acting director of the College Board鈥檚 Advanced Placement Program. Over the past few years, he wrote online , a journal published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was an accomplished concert musician, specializing in piano, organ, and harpsichord.
For more on Down鈥檚 work, see this Commentary he wrote for Education Week in 1983 titled 鈥�Inequality, Testing, Utilitarianism: The 鈥楾hree Killers of Excellence.鈥欌赌�
A. Graham Down in a 1993 file photo