Bell Promotes His Own Alternative to America 2000

By Julie A. Miller

WASHINGTON--Terrel H. Bell thinks the Bush Administration's strategy for revitalizing American education focuses too narrowly on long-term planning, and the former Secretary of Education says he can help address that shortcoming through his own reform blueprint and consulting firm.

Creating 535 innovative model schools, as the President's America 2000 plan has proposed, is a worthy idea, Mr. Bell said in an interview here last month, but it "won't help the 110,000 schools we have today."

"We need an action plan, and we have to pursue it aggressively. We can't wait until the year 2000," said the former Secretary, who visited Washington to promote his new, self-published book, How To Shape...