ABSTRACT
At both the local and federal levels, movements for accountability, competency-based teacher education and testing, systems management, standardized textbooks, mandated ‘basics,’ academic standards, and so on are clear and growing. Elementary, secondary, technical, college and university education, coupled with special attention being paid to the training and evaluation of teachers, are no longer topics that politicians, government officials, pressure groups, business, union members, newspaper columnists, academics, parents, and others talk about when ‘important’ things are over. School policies and the curricular, teaching, and evaluative practices they entail have historically had important connections with economic pressures. School policies and the curricular, teaching, and evaluative practices they entail have historically had important connections with economic pressures. Teachers and the curriculum will be blamed for a large portion of our social dislocations and economic and ideological problems.
