Following are the topics, as well as individual points within each topic, to be discussed at the President’s education summit in Charlottesville, Va.:
Teaching: Revitalizing a Profession
- Identifying, recognizing, and rewarding excellence in teaching.
- Enriching the teaching profession by providing more flexible routes to certification.
- Attracting enough qualified teachers for elementary and secondary schools.
- Meeting the nation’s needs in science and mathematics instruction.
- Increasing the number of minorities entering teaching.
The Learning Environment
- Providing appropriate preschool and early-childhood experiences to prepare children for primary school.
- Identifying at-risk youths and reducing the number of dropouts.
- Creating safe, violence-free schools.
- Establishing and maintaining drug-free schools.
- Assessing student performance and establishing appropriate goals.
- Engaging teachers, students, parents, and the community in partnerships.
Governance: Who’s in Charge?
- Defining the appropriate role of the federal government in education.
- Defining the appropriate role of state governments in education.
- Defining the appropriate role of local school boards in education.
- Reforming federal and state education guidelines.
- Ensuring that schools are publicly accountable for their performance, that there is adequate opportunity for innovation, and that exceptional performance is recognized and rewarded.
- Ensuring parent and citizen involvement in local governance.
Choice and Restructuring
- Evaluating the experience with choice across the nation.
- Assessing transportation and equity issues involved in choice.
- Considering ways of expanding choice and strengthening accountability.
- Evaluating the experience with magnet schools across the nation.
- Instituting performance-based restructuring initiatives.
- Evaluating the experience with site-based management and program restructuring.
A Competitive Workforce and Life-Long Learning
- Ensuring that adult Americans are sufficiently literate to perform effectively as parents, workers, and citizens.
- Determining what institutions, public and private, bear responsibility for various aspects of worker training.
- Enhancing public-private partnerships in education.
- Communicating the needs of consumers of the products of the nation’s education system.
- Creating incentive programs to produce more high-school graduates.
- Enhancing the quality of training and vocational education.
Postsecondary Education: Strengthening Access and Excellence
- Enhancing opportunities for disadvantaged youths and their access to higher education.
- Strengthening science, mathematics, and engineering teaching in American universities.
- Strengthening university entrance requirements and reducing the need for remedial courses.
- Recruiting and retaining more minority students and faculty in higher-education institutions.
