U.S. Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett, expressed concerns about the condition of U.S. education in the areas of content, character, and choice. This document comprises the papers of 12 scholars on the public policy and the research implications of this theme. Three addresses were given on the issue of content by Russell Kirk, Thomas Fleming, and Paul Vitz. Kirk proposed that the two fundamental purposes of education are the cultivation of wisdom and virtue and the teaching of responsibility and opportunity in a civil social order. Fleming suggested that it is a mistake to think of the present debate as a backlash against plummeting test scores. Vitz discussed his study of the role given to religion and traditional values in the basal readers and social studies texts used in U.S. schools. Papers by Joseph Adelson, Joel J. Kupperman, Richard A. Baer, Jr., and William Kirk Kilpatrick addressed the issue of character. Adelson argues that the paradigms by which the social sciences study the realities of human existence may be derived from ideological preoccupations of the times. Choice in education is discussed by William B. Ball, Mary Anne Raywid, Thomas Ascik, Michael Casserly, and Robert L. Woodson. Raywid outlines her research findings on "Success Dynamics of Public Schools of Choice," and Ascik examines the arguments attributed to opponents of choice in education. (SM)