Editor: Paul E. Peterson, Hoover Institution Press, February 2003

This book assesses the changes that have occurred in the twenty years since A Nation at Risk, which urged major reforms in American education, was issued by the National education Commission. It offers recommendations based on three core principles—accountability, choice, and transparency—that can reinvigorate the system and rekindle America's confidence in public education.

In Our Schools and Our Future, the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education looks at the response to the commission’s report and analyzes why it produced so much activity and so little improvement. Among their findings, the members of the task force reveal how many bold reform proposals have been implemented in limited and piecemeal fashion. They conclude that fundamental changes are needed in the incentive structure and power relationships of schooling itself and offer recommendations based in three core principles: accountability, choice, and transparency.

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Book Contents (PDFs):

• Foreword
• Contributors
• Preface
• Findings and Recommendations
• Chapter 1: A Historic Document
• Chapter 2: Little Gain in Student Achievement
• Chapter 3: What Has Changed and What Has Not
• Chapter 4: Minority Children at Risk
• Chapter 5: The Importance of School Quality
• Chapter 6: The Politics of the Status Quo
• Chapter 7: Teacher Reform Gone Astray
• Chapter 8: The Curricular Smorgasbord
• Chapter 9: Neglecting the Early Grades
• Chapter 10: Real Accountability
• Chapter 11: Real Choice
• Index

Book Description:

Twenty years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education delivered a shocking report called A Nation at Risk, which awakened millions of Americans to a national crisis in primary and secondary education. But today, while reverberations from that report are still being felt, solid and conclusive reforms in American primary and secondary education remain elusive. Why?

In Our Schools and Our Future, the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education looks at the response to the commission’s report and analyzes why it produced so much activity and so little improvement. Among their findings, the members of the task force reveal how many bold reform proposals have been implemented in limited and piecemeal fashion. They conclude that fundamental changes are needed in the incentive structure and power relationships of schooling itself and offer recommendations based in three core principles: accountability, choice, and transparency.

Accountability, they explain, will mean that everyone in the system will know what results are expected, how they will be measured, and what will happen if results are not attained. Choice will bring freedom, diversity, and innovation. Transparency will yield the information needed to assure both top-down accountability and a viable marketplace of methods and ideas. The results of these three taken together, they assert, will be a reinvigorated yet very different system that will rekindle Americans’ confidence in public education.

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