Issuing the Challenge

Abstract

Throughout the past two decades we have been worrying about the challenges that American families face in preparing to learn, work and live high quality lives in a new society. The new society is more diverse, technological, faster paced and global. Our work has centered primarily upon educational performance and achievement. The nation has made extraordinary efforts over the past two decades to focus the spotlight on education as the principal vehicle to peace, prosperity and the preservation of power and culture. We now have national educational goals to guide usand assessments for measuring our progress along the way. These assessments provide the states and the nation as a whole with an educational barometer of the general citizenry. On the horizon are new national tests that purport to tell us as individuals how well we are achieving national standards, and even how well we fare in the international marketplace of knowledge and skill acquisition. When the national test is finalized and in place, each American family will have access to information about both the educational standards and tools to know how each one of us is measuring up.