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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nationals right fielder Jayson Werth is fine with manager Davey Johnson's plan to shuffle the lineup after the team dropped below .500 with its ninth loss in 12 games.

Even told Johnson he'd be OK moving out of his No. 2 slot in the batting order after Washington's 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday completed a three-game sweep.

Something needs to change, Werth knows.

"We need to jumble it up, and we need to switch the `mojo' a little bit," Werth said, sitting in front of his locker in the home clubhouse at Nationals Park. "I think somebody was talking about (former NBA coach) Phil Jackson the other day. We need to call him up, have him come in here and burn some sage or something. We're not very `feng shui' right now."

Johnson said he would insert bench player Steve Lombardozzi in the lineup Thursday against Cincinnati and make other changes for a club that scored four runs in three days against St. Louis and is averaging 2.9 runs over its last dozen games.

"It's frustrating. We're just not doing the things we're capable of doing," Johnson said. "Guys are trying to do too much. (Ian Desmond) looked like he was trying to hit the ball to the light tower. Little things where guys are trying to create something that's not there yet."

"It'll change, but I'm going to have to jumble things up a little bit," he added. "Try to light a fire."

Johnson's players seemed open to the idea of giving that a shot.

"If it works tomorrow, then it works," second baseman Danny Espinosa said.

The Nationals went 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position Wednesday, after falling behind 3-0 in the first inning as Stephen Strasburg (1-4) lost his fourth consecutive start. It's the longest such stretch of the All-Star ace's young career.

The game's very first batter, Matt Carpenter, got it started against Strasburg by stretching a single into a double when Bryce Harper's throw to second base was bobbled and fell to the dirt.

One out later, Matt Holliday singled. Carlos Beltran walked. Then Yadier Molina delivered a two-run single. And a throwing error on Daniel Descalso's fielder's choice grounder padded the score.

Just like that, 23 pitches in, the Cardinals had a lead that would hold up.

"It was good to get on Strasburg early," Cardinals shortstop Pete Kozma said. "That's what we were trying to do from the get-go, before he starts to settle in."

Jaime Garcia (2-1) allowed a run on Harper's sixth-inning groundout, but otherwise added to the offensive struggles of the Nationals, who have lost six consecutive home games while falling to 10-11.

Trying to generate something for Washington's slumbering offense, Desmond bunted for a base hit with one out in the second. He then stole second and advanced to third on a flyout to the warning track. But rookie third baseman Anthony Rendon struck out to end the inning.

Strasburg actually was the one who got Washington going at the plate, grounding a single up the middle to lead off the sixth. Denard Span followed with a single, and Werth's groundout moved the runners up for Harper. He grounded out to second, but at least that got Strasburg home with a rare run to make it 3-1.

A walk to Tyler Moore ended Garcia's day after four hits in 5 2-3 innings. Righty Joe Kelly entered to face Desmond, who struck out swinging and flung his bat and helmet.

In the seventh, a pair of singles put runners at the corners with one out, but Kelly got out of that jam when pinch-hitter Lombardozzi struck out and Jhonatan Solano, taking off from first on a hit-and-run, was thrown out at second by catcher Molina.

Werth's fourth homer, a solo shot to left off Trevor Rosenthal with one out in the eighth, gave Washington its second run. But that was too little to stop the Nationals from dropping below .500 for the first time since finishing the 2011 season 80-81.

"Somebody said last night it feels like we're 0-20, but it's not that bad. We're only one game under .500, and it's April. We'll be all right," Werth said. "What we're going through, it's the first time this team has dealt with expectations, and there's something to be said about that. But we'll adjust. The league has adjusted to us, we'll adjust to the league."

NOTES: The Nationals are hitting .235 as a team with a .299 on-base percentage and .402 slugging percentage. ... Washington is 1-8 against teams that entered Wednesday with winning records this season. ... Washington begins a four-game series against visiting Cincinnati on Thursday, when Nationals LHP Gio Gonzalez (1-1, 5.85 ERA) faces RHP Bronson Arroyo (2-1, 3.54).

--- Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at HTTP://TWITTER.COM/HOWARDFENDRICH

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. students are falling behind their international rivals. Young people aren't adept at new technology. America's economy will suffer if schools don't step up their game.

"A Nation at Risk," the report issued 30 years ago by President Ronald Reagan's Education Department, was meant as a wake-up call for the country. It spelled out where the United States was coming up short in education and what steps could be taken to avert a crisis.

But its warnings still reverberate today, with 1 in 4 Americans failing to earn a high school degree on time and the U.S. lagging other countries in the percentage of young people who complete college.

"A Nation at Risk" spooked the public, urged an overhaul of how and what children are taught and sparked the school reform movement in the country. Current reform advocates such Michelle Rhee, the former District of Columbia schools chancellor, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush can trace their work back to the report.

"We opened the genie from the bottle and said, `You aren't doing so well,'" said Xavier University of Louisiana President Norman C. Francis, a member of the commission that produced the dire warning. "For us, we felt good about the fact that we wrote something that needed to be said. We had the research. And we hoped we would have a greater measure of return."

At times, President Barack Obama has seemed to take his cues from the report.

"What is at stake is nothing less than the American dream," he said in 2009, calling for education overhaul to keep pace with other counties.

"Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us," he said.

Russ Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and a former senior Education Department official, calls the report prescient. "The themes that it stressed - the increasing role of technology, globalization - is now the everyday stuff of education. But it wasn't at the time."

"I can't think of anything that painted with quite as broad a stroke as `A Nation at Risk,'" he added.

Its impact, however, was not as broad.

The commissioners urged extending the school year from 180 days to up to 220 days. The report also suggested an 11-month contract for teachers so they could spend their summers preparing for the next year. Neither recommendation has been put into widespread use.

The commissioners also said teacher salaries should be increased to be "professionally competitive." Again, there hasn't been near the movement commissioners sought. In today's dollars, the average teacher earned $46,700 in 1983 and $54,900 in 2010, according to the Education Department.

But some of the commission's other recommendations were put into practice, including a more rigorous curriculum. For instance, students graduating in 1982 had an average of 2.2 science credits on their transcripts. In 2009, that average number rose to 3.5 credits.

And the class of 1982 left high school with 2.6 math credits, compared with the 2009 graduates' 3.9 credits, according to Education Department data.

"The results are mixed," said William Bennett, who served as Reagan's second-term education secretary. "We have progress being paid to the right things: content, accountability. ... It was right about how we needed to beef up courses and how we needed to be stronger."

But when Bennett compares U.S. results with those of other nations, there's no reason to celebrate.

"If you look at those numbers, you get the story for 30 years," he said. "If there's a bottom line, it's that we're spending twice as much money on education as we did in '83 and the results haven't changed all that much."

American fourth-graders are 11th in the world in math in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the measure of nations against each other. U.S. eighth-graders ranked ninth in math, according to those 2011 results.

The Program for International Student Assessment measurement found the United States ranked 31st in math literacy among 15-year-old students and below the international average. The same 2009 tests found the United States ranked 23rd in science among the same students, but posting an average score.

It's impossible to compare the rankings before 1995, when these international math and science tests were first given. The first international math literacy and science tests were given in 2001.

Yet domestic tests show there have not been major changes in students' scores.

Between 1980 and 2008, 13-year-old students posted only a 2-point gain in reading scores and 17-year-old students saw just a 1-point gain during that time. The tests were scored on a scale of 0 to 500, meaning the change was statistically insignificant.

Similarly, 13-year-olds saw a 12-point gain in math scores between 1982 and 2008. Seventeen-year-old students saw an 8-point gain during the same time on math scores. Again, the tests followed a scale of 0 to 500.

"We haven't yet gotten near the payoff that we want and need in terms of achievement in 30 years," said Chester Finn, a former senior Education Department official who now heads the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank.

"The fact that 30 years later, despite all of the reforming, the gains are so modest, they ought to serve to energize and even panic today's policymakers," he said.

Of course, stagnant scores don't automatically mean stagnant learning; higher standards could yield lower scores.

Domestic measurements comparing U.S. students to one another are relatively new and tests aren't given every year. Also, tracing changes isn't as simple as looking at the United States' standing compared with other countries today.

What is clear is that "A Nation at Risk" cast the United States as on the precipice of collapse, not unlike the warnings that followed the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite, which caught Americans by surprise.

While other education studies urged action, none was as intentionally alarming as this one.

"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 commissioners wrote. "As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. ... We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."

In a brisk 36 pages, the authors warned that schools were not preparing students for their future and cautioned that the country would suffer. In some ways, the same warnings have appeared in most reports on education in the last decades.

The report continued, "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."

Last year, another commission borrowed that indictment of mediocrity in similar language.

"The sad fact is that the rising tide of mediocrity is not something that belongs in history books," concluded a Council on Foreign Relations panel led by former New York City schools chief Joel Klein and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

When the Reagan-era commission began its work, no one expected the report to be so critical. In fact, Reagan campaigned for president on a pledge to dismantle the same Education Department that convened these leaders.

Instead, the commissioners brought together experts and original research to make the case for an expanded role for education. They wrote a document that Reagan eventually would wrap himself in, travel the country to promote and use as a rhetorical prop during the final decade of the Cold War.

"This was much more a political document. ... A lot of this was just bombastic, plug-and-play rhetoric," said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Where it excelled at language, it came up short on specifics, he said.

The data the commissioners used to reach their conclusions and recommendations 30 years ago pale in comparison to what researchers today have. The report sparked volumes of tests and rankings now common to measure students.

"Gosh, I think they got the message right, but the facts weren't strong enough to back them up," said Whitehurst, the Brookings scholar who was the first chief of the Education Department's current research arm. "A report trying to draw the same conclusions today would have more research."

Even so, the report has its place in history.

"It's been the most influential report on education in my lifetime. It was so blunt," said Michael Rebell, a professor of law and education at Columbia University's Teachers College. "It gave us the whole standards movement."

Francis, a member of the original commission, said the report should have scared Americans into much more sweeping action.

"We were saying in 1983, `This is a global society emerging and you need to worry about this now,'" he said.

Yet, despite the urgency, the report yielded no significant legislation and many of the problems it identified have not been solved.

"I still think we made a contribution," Francis said. "But maybe it could have been much more. But you never look back."

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- We're in denial: Americans underestimate their chances of needing long-term care as they get older - and are taking few steps to get ready.

A new poll examined how people 40 and over are preparing for this difficult and often pricey reality of aging, and found two-thirds say they've done little to no planning.

In fact, 3 in 10 would rather not think about getting older at all. Only a quarter predict it's very likely that they'll need help getting around or caring for themselves during their senior years, according to the poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

That's a surprise considering the poll found more than half of the 40-plus crowd already have been caregivers for an impaired relative or friend - seeing from the other side the kind of assistance they, too, may need later on.

"I didn't think I was old. I still don't think I'm old," explained retired schoolteacher Malinda Bowman, 60, of Laura, Ohio.

Bowman has been a caregiver twice, first for her grandmother. Then after her father died in 2006, Bowman moved in with her mother, caring for her until her death in January. Yet Bowman has made few plans for herself.

"I guess I was focused on caring for my grandmother and mom and dad, so I didn't really think about myself," she said. "Everything we had was devoted to taking care of them."

The poll found most people expect family to step up if they need long-term care - even though 6 in 10 haven't talked with loved ones about the possibility and how they'd like it to work.

Bowman said she's healthy now but expects to need help someday from her two grown sons. Last month, prompted by a brother's fall and blood clot, she began the conversation by telling her youngest son about her living will and life insurance policy.

"I need to plan eventually," she acknowledged.

Those family conversations are crucial: Even if they want to help, do your relatives have the time, money and knowhow? What starts as driving Dad to the doctor or picking up his groceries gradually can turn into feeding and bathing him, maybe even doing tasks once left to nurses such as giving injections or cleaning open wounds. If loved ones can't do all that, can they afford to hire help? What if you no longer can live alone?

"The expectation that your family is going to be there when you need them often doesn't mean they understand the full extent of what the job of caregiving will be," Susan Reinhard, a nurse who directs AARP's Public Policy Institute, said. "Your survey is pointing out a problem for not just people approaching the need for long-term care, but for family members who will be expected to take on the huge responsibility of providing care."

Those who have been through the experience of receiving care are less apt to say they can rely on their families in times of need, the poll found.

With a rapidly aging population, more families will be facing those responsibilities. Government figures show nearly 7 in 10 Americans will need long-term care at some point after they reach age 65, whether it's from a relative, a home health aide, assisted living or a nursing home. On average, they'll need that care for three years.

Despite the "it won't happen to me" reaction, the AP-NORC Center poll found half of those surveyed think just about everyone will need some assistance at some point. There are widespread misperceptions about how much care costs and who will pay for it. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed underestimated the cost of a nursing home, which averages more than $6,700 a month.

Medicare doesn't pay for the most common types of long-term care. Yet 37 percent of those surveyed mistakenly think it will pay for a nursing home and even more expect it to cover a home health aide when that's only approved under certain conditions.

The harsh reality: Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, is the main payer of long-term care in the U.S., and to qualify seniors must have spent most of their savings and assets. But fewer than half of those polled think they'll ever need Medicaid - even though only a third are setting aside money for later care, and just 27 percent are confident they'll have the financial resources they'll need.

In Cottage Grove, Ore., Police Chief Mike Grover, 64, says his retirement plan means he could afford a nursing home. And like 47 percent of those polled, he's created an advance directive, a legal document outlining what medical care he'd want if he couldn't communicate.

Otherwise, Grover said he hasn't thought much about his future care needs. He knows caregiving is difficult, as he and his brother are caring for their 85-year-old mother.

Still, "until I cross that bridge, I don't know what I would do. I hope that my kids and wife will pick the right thing," he said. "It depends on my physical condition, because I do not want to be a burden to my children."

The AP-NORC Center poll found widespread support for tax breaks to encourage saving for long-term care, and about half favor the government establishing a voluntary long-term care insurance program. An Obama administration attempt to create such a program ended in 2011 because it was too costly.

The older they get, the more preparations people take. Just 8 percent of 40- to 54-year-olds have done much planning for long-term care, compared with 30 percent of those 65 or older, the poll found.

Mary Pastrano, 74, of Port Orchard, Wash., has planned extensively for her future health care. She has lupus, heart problems and other conditions, and now uses a wheelchair. She also remembers her family's financial struggles after her own father died when she was a child.

"I don't want people to stand around and wring their hands and wonder, `What would Mom think was the best?'" said Pastrano, who has discussed her insurance policies, living will and care preferences with her husband and children.

Still, Pastrano wishes she and her husband had started saving earlier, during their working years.

"You never know how soon you're going to be down," she said. "That's what older people have a problem understanding: You can be in your 60s and then next flat on your back. You think you're invincible, until you can't walk."

The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey was conducted Feb. 21 through March 27, with funding from the SCAN Foundation. The SCAN Foundation is an independent, nonprofit organization that supports research and other initiatives on aging and health care. The nationally representative poll involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,019 Americans age 40 or older. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

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Associated Press writer Stacy A. Anderson and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

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Online:

Government long-term care primer: HTTP://LONGTERMCARE.GOV

AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research: HTTP://WWW.APNORC.ORG

© 2013 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED. Learn more about our PRIVACY POLICY and TERMS OF USE.