Trends in Elementary and Secondary Education - Why So Much Homework?, Should We Lengthen The School Year?, Paths To Work: Vocational Education

For decades parents and educators have sought ways to reverse a perceived decline in the quality of America's public schools and to boost the academic achievement of American schoolchildren. The education reform movement gained momentum with the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, a book that called American schools so mediocre that the economic future of the country was in danger. A more recent wake-up call was the 1996 release of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which showed American schoolchildren lagging behind most of the world in math and science achievement.

Numerous remedies have been prescribed to fix our schools. Among the most popular current remedies are the assignment of more homework and the lengthening of the school year. The first two panels present an overview of the amount of time spent by American schoolchildren on homework and attending school. The homework data show that popular perceptions are sometimes at odds with what's actually happening. We'll see that the heaviest burden of homework seems to fall on the youngest shoulders. We'll also see how American students compare to students around the world in terms of time spent on homework and in school.

Thomas Jefferson saw public education as a way "to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom." There was a time when Americans believed that the job of schools was to teach students how to think. Today it is generally accepted that the primary purpose of public schools is to prepare students academically for the workplace so that the economy is productive and competitive throughout the world.

Increasingly, the opinions of business leaders are being considered when school reform is discussed. Businesses complain that public-school graduates enter the work world with little understanding of business skills. Colleges say that many entering students have insufficient reading, writing, and math skills to do college-level work.

In the panels that follow, we will see what programs are in place for college-and non-college-bound high school students to prepare them for the world beyond high school. We'll also take a look at wired schools and see how government and business are behind the rush to connect America's classrooms to the Internet.