Regulation and legislation make the role of the classroom teacher more bureaucratic. Legislators can contribute to the improvement of education by policy analysis and by making teacher salaries more competitive with the alternatives available to competent people. (MLF)

Research findings suggest that methods used to improve teaching are as important as the goals. Solutions sought should be those that professionalize the practice of teaching and make education sufficiently attractive to recruit and retain talented people as teachers. (MLF)

Taking as examples the issues of improving students'"high order thinking skills" and arriving at more equitable teacher salaries and school budgets, the author discusses the need for compromise solutions to widespread problems. (JBM)

To educate children for a civil society, teachers should work to raise (noncollege-bound) students' skills to the levels that good jobs require. Maintaining the status quo and educating children to participate in Jeremy Rifkin's "third sector" are misguided options. The new basic skills should include hard skills (in basic mathematics,…

Compares and contrasts the composition of the Carnegie Task Force and the Holmes Group, their reports on teacher education, and their effect on the reform movement. Both groups recommend abolishing undergraduate degrees in education, raising teachers' salaries, increasing the number of minority teachers, and other improvements in the teaching…