Education Reform: It's Just What Other Schools Need

MANY Americans continue to view education reform as something most needed in other people's schools, according to a new survey.

Sixty-three percent of those polled said schools in the United States need ``major reform,'' but only 33 percent said their local schools needed ``major changes.''

``We definitely have a correlation between how people feel about their schools and the proximity and size of the schools they know best,'' says Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, which commissioned the survey.

Respondents said the best performance measure was the percentage of students graduating, followed by the percentage of graduates who go on to college and performance on national tests. The poll of 1,000 registered voters also asked what factors ``make education worse.'' Responses include: lack of discipline and values (22 percent), lack of parental involvement (18 percent), drugs and violence (16 percent), lack of money (14 percent), and overcrowded classrooms (8 percent).