President Obama recently described America's current economic, societal, educational, and technological circumstances as "our generation's 'Sputnik' moment." If history repeats itself in the twenty-first century, music educators may face a situation similar to that which developed in the 1960s concerning the impact of education reform on…

In the United States, as public demands for quality teachers have escalated, there has been a corresponding increase in national policy efforts to tie the standards of student success to teacher preparation, licensing, and evaluation. This conceptual paper examines how national authorities used specific policy tools to usurp the state's…

Under No Child Left Behind, the federal government requires school districts to use 1 percent of Title I money to fund programs that involve parents in the schools and provides another $39 million annually for 62 Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRCs) that provide training and information for both parents and district personnel to…

Congress's role in defining and promoting equality of educational opportunity has evolved over the past 55 years since "Brown v. Board of Education." Most recently, all three branches of the federal government have focused more on equality of educational opportunity for "individual" students rather than for protected classes.…

This document reports on the design, purpose, implementation, and outcomes of an October 1994 policy forum on the impact of the Goals 2000 program on students with disabilities. Conclusions and recommendations of the forum identified 31 critical activities grouped into six major strategies to ensure the inclusion of students with disabilities in…

Discusses the controversy surrounding the National Standards for World History and the National Standards for United States History. Maintains that people are finding out how unjust the criticism of the History Standards is. Includes supportive quotes about the standards from teachers and historians. (CFR)

Pregnant and parenting teenagers account for a sizable and growing proportion of the population served by public schools. Pregnant and parenting students face significant barriers to academic achievement, largely because traditional school environments often conflict with the competing demands of pregnancy and child rearing. Moreover, the children…

Discusses the organizational development of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) during the years 1982-1995. Describes the effort to establish national social studies standards in response to the national Goals 2000 movement. Describes the reorganization of the NCSS committee structure and central office staff. (CFR)

The article explains briefly the provisions of Goals 2000, emphasizing its support of ongoing educational change at the state and local levels and state flexibility to develop diverse approaches to reform. To illustrate this flexibility, the article describes reform activities in Vermont, Delaware, and Oregon, and explains how these states are…

Notes the passing of the deadline for fulfillment of the national education goals in the United States, the beginning of the year 2000, and indicates that pressures on schools to solve social problems will continue to make school reform a politically opportune and very visible issue. (SLD)

Maintains that the effort to develop and implement national standards in the arts is politically correct but not free of psychological or pedagogical viewpoints. Asserts that educators must formulate the right questions and assess objectively the potential outcomes of an arts education program in reformed schools. (CFR)

This paper describes a project that examined the six national education goals established by the National Governor's Association in 1990 and then included in the Goals 2000 Educate America Act. As part of a graduate seminar, 20 classroom teachers and 1 student teacher undertook to determine if these goals were attainable and how they could best be…

Education reforms such as "A Nation at Risk" and "Goals 2000" have come and gone. However, educators can be confident that the goal of student improvement shall not pass if the core mission is student learning. The true mission of learning has prompted educators to ponder the following questions: (1) How should each student to…

Discusses two related dilemmas: (1) the tension between the Western view of historical progress and the realities of modern society; and (2) the tension between old and new approaches to teaching and learning about the arts. Argues that the end result of implementing the Goals 2000 program might diminish the teaching of the arts as discrete…

Reviews the impact of federal education reform measures, particularly Goals 2000, on Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools. The Office of Indian Education Programs organized a school support team process to assist BIA-responsible schools with the development of consolidated school reform plans, curriculum content standards, opportunity-to-learn…