THE 1983 LANDMARK REPORT A Nation at Risk reminded educators that schools cannot be unchanging institutions, ignoring changes in the world, insisting on doing business in the same old way. A decade later concerned and creative educators and parents have shown that there is a multitude of new ways to look at education. Ideas for reform are surfacing every year. Only time will tell if the experiments will prove successful. In the meantime a growing number of people agree that the country as a whole needs to define the goals and standards it wants for its schools. As Secretary of Education Richard Riley says:

If this country is to have a great future we're going to have to connect the generation ... now in the public schools to learning in a much more significant way. The first step is to define what...