The educational reform movement has proven largely irrelevant to urban minority students' needs. Dropout prevention programs have bestowed meaningless diplomas, while side-stepping the root causes of failure and underachievement. Urban high schools are large and impersonal and have a sour, dispirited atmosphere that discourages learning. Clearly,…

Publicly supported public/private educational choice can succeed if states and federal government passed legislation that immediately extends all regulations affecting public schools to all private schools receiving public funds. Applying the same extension to new regulations and statutes may be more feasible. This article illustrates by…

Hirsch, author of "Cultural Literacy" (1987), wishes that progressive instructional methods were carefully monitored to see whether kids are actually learning. An "anti-subject-matter" orientation suits middle-class students better than kids from less educated families. Most elementary curricula stress "tool skills"…