Winning with Moderate Structural Reform: Goals 2000 and the Improving America’s Schools Act

In 1993-1994, President Bill Clinton and a group of elite education bureaucrats enacted the first truly national education policy in U.S. history: standards-based reform. Drawing on New Public Management, Clinton’s team aimed to modernize educational management by creating clear educational goals for every child and a system measuring how well schools prepared students to meet those goals.1