ABSTRACT
This declaration, from the National Governors’ Association, makes clear the concern of state-level policymakers regarding the level of academic achievement of American students. The overview provided in this chapter will suggest how public education in the United States reached this impasse. In each state and locality, the story is somewhat different. Yet general patterns can be recognized. Beginning over a century ago, a never-quite-resolved national debate on school reform has led many would-be reformers to spend much of their energy fighting one another instead of tackling shared problems. As a result, attempts to improve US. public schools have recently been proceeding along two different paths, with each set of reforms based on assumptions that proponents of the other set of reforms do not share.
