Six ways to save out schools: it's time to set a national goal-oriented education agenda to improve students' performance, create incentives for good teaching, re-evaluate the curriculum, and develop new technology to spur learning.

• Author: Akande, Benjamin

THE LAST TWO decades of U.S. education policy can be likened to a rocking chair. Although it moves and swings, it does so only on one spot. The education system has become outdated and overmatched, unable to meet the needs of today's society and tomorrow's challenges. Like a rocking chair, it has remained in one spot for too long.

The U.S. employs a "try this, try that" approach with no coherent national policy. Ten years after the landmark report, "A Nation at Risk," which warned America of the problems facing its schools, the nation has yet to reach a consensus on the direction of education reform in the 1990s and beyond.

There have been many local and state reform movements aimed at re-inventing American schools from top to bottom. The Edison Project, the goal of which is to educate kids from birth to 18 years of age, and the Outward Bound plan that calls for a curriculum built on a series of student expeditions should be applauded for their innovativeness. They represent local attempts at solving what amounts to a national dilemma. What is needed is a national education strategy that would be adopted by all the 84,500 public schools in the U.S.

The U.S. education system has remained stagnant in a world where change is the order of the day. At one time, it was the model for the world. Today, all that is left are remnants of a system that clearly has relented on its efforts and become complacent. The education system has become a bureaucratic haven with lost priorities. In the public schools, some janitors wield much more power and make double the salaries of teachers. For many teachers in the public schools, teaching offers something they can not buy--poverty. Red tape and bureaucratic bottlenecks clog up the education system, and the end result is a lack of emphasis in those areas that matter and a complete loss of priority.

Texas is one of the notorious national leaders in public school mismanagement. A report by that state's auditor's office identified 640,000,000 worth of unnecessary expenditures and inefficiencies. There was a case of one county that had 12 school systems with 12 school boards and 12 superintendents while enrolling just 5,000 students. In addition to cited examples of duplication of staff, the audit showed that more than 75 of the state's largest public school systems have no internal auditors on their payroll. There is no mechanism in place to review spending and check inefficiency and corruption.

A study by...