R: One School Fits All

This week we will seek to explore the role of the government in education and discuss where our priorities ought to lie in order to sort through the countless solutions offered by politicians and think tanks. Should the government require schools to meet national academic standards, or should communities be allowed to incorporate virtues into the curriculum? Was Bush's No Child Left Behind program a failure, and if so, what makes Obama's Race to the Top initiative any more promising? Some have said that these approaches to education reform are too conservative, and a more radical change is needed. Perhaps vouchers or charter schools are the answer, or even doing away with high schools as we know them.