Libraries For The National Education Goals

Focusing on the major educational initiatives of our times--the National Education Goals outlined and endorsed in 1990 by the nation's governors, and President Bush's America 2000 strategy--this report reviews and summarizes information about the role of libraries in many different educational efforts designed to meet the national goals. It is argued that libraries can and must play a pivotal role in meeting these goals, including efforts to prepare students to cope with learning in an information age (resource-based learning), and to provide a national electronic network for students, teachers, administrators, and community members (the National Education and Research Network). This work provides direct evidence of the relationship between existing and developing library programs and the national education initiatives, citing specific examples whenever possible or appropriate. A separate chapter is devoted to each of the six goals to be reached by the year 2000. Within each chapter, information is presented for each of three spheres of influence defined in "Education Counts: An Indicator System To Monitor the Nation's Educational Health" (U.S. Department of Education, 1991)--learning and schools, social context, and national values. Within each sphere of influence, examples of ways in which libraries can contribute to meeting the goal are presented together with research findings, comments, and highlights of programs already involved in the types of activities related to a particular example, and sources of the information given are cited. A 15-item selected bibliography of sources on which this work is based concludes the report. (BBM)

The Goals 2000: Educate America Act in 1994 contained five National Education Goals. Goal No 1 targets the year 2000 as the date by which children in America will start school ready to learn. This text discusses how all those who are involved with pre-schoolers can achieve such a target.

Each vol. a compilation of ERIC digests.