Recommends six steps to improve the quality of public education: (1) reestablish schools as learning places, (2) make teachers responsible for the program of studies, (3) permit those responsible for performance quality to remove inadequate teachers, (4) don't remove students from school unless it's essential, (5) have a common goal, and (6) stop…

The author develops the opinion that schools must be restricted to the enterprise of learning and that politics should be practiced elsewhere. He also discusses what the research priorities in the 1980s should be for education. (CT)

Asserts that self-discipline, the outgrowth of structure in schools, is a much more important factor in effective education than is often argued. Reconstruction of American schools will require awareness and analysis of schools as a set of experiences, a system of rewards and punishment, and as a structure. (JOW)

Discusses the charge given to the National Commission on Excellence in Education by Secretary of Education T. H. Bell when he created it on August 26, 1981. Includes a summary of the report, "A Nation at Risk." (JOW)

Education research is, or should be, the systematic investigation and solution of critically important problems affecting what and how children learn. This is a complex undertaking, given the size and complexity of American education. Critically important educational problems can be dealt with by supporting a systematic, national effort to examine…

Makes suggestions regarding the responsibility of governors, lawmakers, board members, administrators, teachers, students, parents, representatives of higher education, the private sector, and the federal government to education in America. (JOW)