The basic goals of most fundamental schools include mastering basic skills; knowing and understanding one's history, heritage, and governmental structure, and reasoning in a logical and objective manner; challenging each child to do his best; ensuring accountability; and reinforcing parental teaching of citizenship, respect, discipline, and…

The Essential Learning Skills television project is a series of 60 quarter-hour programs for the fifth and sixth grades being produced by the Agency for Instructional Television for a consortium of Canadian and American education organizations. (Author/IRT)

Discusses four important issues influencing the current state of mathematics education: what should be taught, how to evaluate students' learning, the role of technology, and the preparation of prospective teachers. Provides a list of five questions to help administrators evaluate their schools' mathematics program. (MLH)

The schools cannot assume that they can do for children what home and church and other segments of society are unwilling or unable to do. (Author/IRT)

Outlines the Council for Basic Education's leadership and goals. (IRT)

Although many employers are dissatisfied with the level of basic skill performance in students generally, work experience programs such as those under the sponsorship of work-education councils created by the Work Education Consortium are praised. (IRT)

Technology is allowing people with differing venues and schedules to meet and form powerful teams. To succeed, virtual teams must hold some synchronous, real-time meetings, follow a five-step continuous-improvement model, provide coaching and support, encourage face-to-face contact, and expect trial and experimentation. (MLH)

Certain states and local districts are setting up performance criteria a student must meet before he can graduate from high school. (IRT)

Although the movement toward minimal competency testing has gained enormous momentum, a number of people are pointing out hazards and difficulties in implementing such tests. (Author/IRT)

Explains how to set up a testing program to measure student achievement of basic skills. (IRT)

Suggests that teachers and administrators from our colleges and schools voluntarily investigate a new sequence of study--one that would focus on our common heritage, highlight the shared experiences of the present, and focus on human prospects for the future while teaching basic skills. (Author/IRT)

Describes a computer-assisted instruction program used to enhance adult students' basic skills in the Jefferson County Schools (Kentucky). (MD)

Project Alternative Rooms, a program developed in the Kansas City (Missouri) schools, provides basic skills instruction to Chapter 1 students using a team-teaching approach with the students and the teachers in alternative classrooms. (MD)

Schools need staff-development programs focused on teaching children to read. Students must read effectively by the end of third grade. The Success for All curriculum is effective, is transportable, focuses on basic literacy, uses formative assessment, and provides continuous, onsite assistance and support to schools. (MLH)