Raising academic standards and eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are America's prime national educational goals. Current federal and state policies, however, largely ignore the fact that the childhood poverty rate in the United States is 21%, the highest in the industrialized world, and that poverty…

The evaluation of a Goals 2000 initiative in New York state is explored through these four dimensions: focus, innovation, involvement of teachers in program evaluation, and the relevance of program evaluation to educational practice. In central southern New York state, seven public and six nonpublic schools are collaborators in the Goals 2000…