Reaffirming Reagan administration policies on education and educational reform, the author proposes three priorities and four performance goals for American education over the next five years focusing on literacy, mathematics skills, civic instruction, the "five new basics," standardized test scores, dropout rates, and professional…

At the same time that NCLB has given states a mandate to staff their classrooms with "highly qualified teachers," the federal government is pushing a dangerously narrow definition of the knowledge and skills that today's teachers need. Over the last decade, policy makers and business leaders have come to realize what parents have always…

Comments on "Kappan's" practice of presenting essays by Presidential candidates concerning their mission for education. (MLH)

President George Bush claims to have increased federal spending on education and favors readiness goals, school choice, voluntary national examinations, and increasing Pell grant awards. (MLH)

Presidential challenger, Governor Bill Clinton, critiques President Bush's record, promising to scrap the existing student loan program and deliver a workable educational reform package. (MLH)

Discusses the latest Supreme Court decisions on State aid to parochial schools. (JF)

Our present factory-model educational system, now desperately undergoing "restructuring," was never intended as a social equalizer but as a great American academic and social sorting machine. The archaic, restrictive goals of America 2000 are doomed, along with narrowly defined intelligence quotients. A more revolutionary, restructuring…

Authors discuss seven findings from a number of studies of local, state, and federal performance-based accountability systems conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at Harvard University. (PKP)

The director of the National School Safety Center describes the operations of the center and joins three co-authors to discuss the relationship between school climate and school discipline. The authors define six conditions essential to positive climate and explore methods for involving local agencies in achieving these conditions. (PGD)

Current federal efforts to reform U.S. education overemphasize competition, measurement, and the education-work relationship; distract educators and educational policymakers from tackling structural inertia problems besetting schools; and engender cynicism and passive resistance in already overworked teachers. America 2000 fails to use serious…

With the 1996 funding concessions, financing of private schools in Australia has come full circle. Australians seem prepared to accept educational democracy and pluralism as a way to pass on distinctive forms of cultural capital. However, the 1996 legislation may encourage an exodus from the state school system. (Contains 16 references.) (MLH)

Public education is not highly supported by the American public, who put economics first. The GI Bill and Cold War era prove that point. Schools have suffered from bad press, ultraconservatism, provincialism, teacher nonprofessionalism, commercialism, gambling, student fundraising, misplaced government/parental priorities, an uninviting work…

Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State College, surrounded by rapidly expanding African American, Asian, and Hispanic populations, was awarded a 1990 federal Student Literacy Corps grant to initiate a Literacy Corps Program. The program created and fostered literacy opportunities for area children, adolescents, and adults and helped participants develop…

Intent of "A Nation at Risk" was to call attention to erosion of students' family lives, not to excoriate teachers. Reforms affecting only six hours of children's daily lives cannot succeed. Schools must reach out to help parents, and child-care workers become skilled at incidental (informal) teaching. Other concerns include technology,…

Between 1980 and 1986 federal support for education fell by 11 percent and number of disadvantaged students grew to 20 percent. In 1986 federal support for children had fallen to its lowest level in 20 years. Evaluates congressional turnaround that began to increase federal support. U.S. business leaders expressed concern over U.S. educational…