welcome to the internets premier listing for all your educational needs. Containing over 15,000 links to some of the best educational resources on the Internet, The Library in the Sky guides teachers, students, parents,librarians, and members of the community on their journeys through cyberspace. The Library was visited over 900,000 times in 1999, and we anticipate well over 1 million visitors in 2000! THE MATTER OF setting standards for American education is certainly quite visible these days, but much of what we hear about it is not very enlightening. The talk is frequently filled with ideological heat rather than with critical light, and the tone of the discussion is more often nostalgic than realistic. In addition, scienceactivities the pitch in favor of standards is

against a colonial government scienceactivities that tried to impose modest taxes on it from afar. In education, this sentiment came to be expressed as a staunch defense of local control of our schools. During most of the 19th scienceactivities century, the local school was the primary unit of educational governance for most Americans. An individual community built a school, scienceactivities hired a teacher, raised money through local taxes and fees, and implemented education on its own terms. Outside help was neither offered nor welcomed. This was the ultimate in local control. Even in large cities, control of education tended to rest at the ward level. Consider some numbers that suggest the radical degree of decentralization that has long characterized American education. It was not until 1937 that we started recording information about the number of individual school systems in the country.

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