ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the differences among the reports: their analyses of current educational practices; their prescriptions for change; and what agencies they believe should be responsible for bringing about reform. It provides a context for discussing reform and rethinking both the direction of education and the role of government and the courts. The reports reorient policy away from social justice goals that had dominated education in the 1960s and 1970s to new goals of employment, productivity, national defense, and "excellence". The reports discusses whether government should play a major role in education at all, or whether the business market and individual parental demand should determine who goes to what school, for how long, and what kind of education schools should make available. The federal government's Commission on Excellence labeled the primary and secondary schools of the United States a state of disaster that put the "nation at risk".
