ABSTRACT
In large measure the tone for educational policy in the closing two decades of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first century was set by President Ronald Reagan. The President and the Department of Education Given Ronald Reagan's stated goal of abolishing the Department of Education, the fact that the Secretary of Education was the last Cabinet officer he selected in his first administration was not surprising. Economically, the school choice plans institutionalize the essentials of a free market system in education. Public education, seen as a monopoly undisciplined by the forces of supply and demand, allows poor schools to continue functioning, even if they fail to educate their students. As an antidote to educational decline, the Excellence supporters advocated a return to basic academic subjects and to traditional disciplinary policies in the schools. An equally plausible motive was that the most educationally active governors also had a sincere, if somewhat educationally naive, interest in school improvement.
