Foundations for Change
School reform heads the list of national priorities as we enter a new century, partake in another presidential- election process, and publicly acknowledge the increasing disparity between rich and poor in the midst of the longest peacetime economic boom in our history. So important is the issue of school reform that corporate and private foundations are, individually and separately, now investing hundreds of millions of dollars to accomplish what federal, state, and local governments have failed to do in the latter half of the 20th century. But these foundation efforts and considerable dollars will be wasted if they continue to follow a strategy of each foundation's going its separate way.
America's concern about its public schools is not new. The 1957 launch of Sputnik I catalyzed attempts at education reform in the 1960s. The national report A Nation at Risk , more than two decades later, responded to an inadequate schooling system that trailed miserably in international educational achievement. Today, we lament failed family life, permit an inordinate amount of television viewing by children, and ignore the powerful and often corrosive influence of the student peer group. We witness increasing childhood and adolescent pathologies of violence, depression, alcohol and other drug abuse, as well as the abject failure of millions of youngsters to gain even basic literacy.
As we enter this new century, we are a nation at greater risk because we understand that schooling excellence is a necessary condition for democratic citizenship, social justice, and individual as well as collective economic security in a global and technologically sophisticated world. Individuals who cannot read or write well, who have no sense of the major human questions, who cannot think critically or act morally, and who show little interest in continuing to learn will be the severely disadvantaged of the future, as will the larger community. The consensus is that systemic school reform is needed, but that has proven resistant to government and academic efforts. In response, politicians claim education as their platform while putting forward myriad solutions under the ubiquitous "school reform" mantra, most with the promise...
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