South Carolina's Educator Improvement Act provides for a "cradle-to-grave" system of training, certification, employment, and evaluation of teachers. The author fears this type of legislation is the precursor of a nationwide shift in the locus of policy making. (Author/WD)

National education goals are admirable, but achieving them democratically will be challenging, in the face of growing child poverty and current standardization efforts. Contributors to this special issue are "transformationists" advocating new definitions of school curriculum; new organizational arrangements to promote diversity;…

America 2000 is the first serious policy initiative in U.S. history to consider enlargement of the federal education role. The program is vigorous, upbeat, and demands hard work, private initiative, self-reliance, and freedom from bureaucratic intrusion. The U.S. public supports underlying concepts: choice, higher standards, radical reform, and…

Business should participate in school reform but has too narrow a perspective to guide it. Nationalizing education through comparative testing is a move to cut spending for social services, to increase accountability and efficiency without increasing financial responsibility or equity. Imposing private-sector rules on public education undermines…