The Fourth Turning -- real or imaginary?

Okay, I’ve finally gotten to a point in the book where the authors make specific short-term predictions.

The book was published in 1997. The authors predicted that around the year 2000, the news weeklies would be running stories “brimming over” with praise for modern youth, saying how much better today’s youth are than the youth of 5-15 years ago in terms of their scholastic achievement and general attitude.

Did anybody see anything like this happen?