The deregulation critique of the federal role in education asserts that education can be as productive with less federal intervention. This critique can be broken down into three groupings of separate criticisms. The first group denies the value or feasibility of federal goals. These criticisms insist either that federal goals are not worthwhile or not properly federal or that federal programs are unnecessary or ineffective. The second group of criticisms addresses the basic forms of federal intervention and implies the need for different means or policy instruments. Reduction not of aid but of the strings attached, through block grants, is one implication of such criticism, as is the suggestion that the federal role emphasize assistance in reaching goals rather than the monitoring of legal compliance. Finally, the third group of criticisms seeks to reduce "legalisms" in the techniques of federal intervention. However, not all legalisms are wasteful and some are as unrestrictive as possible, so wholesale "delegalization" may reduce programs' effectiveness. To benefit from deregulation without reducing effectiveness, deregulation at the levels of goals, forms, and techniques must be selective, reordering some federal priorities, maintaining conditional grants, and specifying contexts for the reduction of legalisms. (Author/RW)