Competency-based education asks educators and the public to give up decades of habits and assumptions regarding the structures and methods of schooling. (Author/IRT)

Argues that the role of the assistant principal may be dysfunctional as a training ground for secondary school principals because, as presently defined, it permits assistants to learn virtually nothing about management and improving instruction. Presents an outcome-based model for preparing the assistant for a principalship. (KH)

U.S. educational systems and schools are now organized primarily for student custody and administrative convenience. This article describes how to redesign schools to achieve better educational results by focusing on an outcomes-based paradigm, illustrated by the High Success program being tried in various high schools. Includes four figures and…

Although state policy makers have been setting new standards for public school promotion and graduation under the rubric of Competency Based Education (CBE), they have used the concept of CBE in two different ways; one involves focusing school activities and graduation requirements on various competencies, whereas the other specifies how education…

This article briefly interprets the major findings of Peters and Waterman's themes about corporate excellence; describes the theoretical framework of two outcome-based education programs; discusses the messages common to excellence in management and in education; and interprets key elements in the emerging excellence paradigm. (JL)

Deplores inconsistencies between the realities of today's technologically driven, information-age world and the static, constraining boxes in which state-initiated, accountability- focused reforms hold American education. We must reconceptualize schooling, curriculum content, time, grade levels, and achievement to allow more informal,…

Several major reports on the status of education in the United States have been presented to the public and to educators and government bodies in recent years. Nine of these reports provide the source material for this document on the state of the search for educational excellence: Adler's "Paideia Proposal,""A Nation at…