VIEWSnRestoring Family Autonomy in EducationnMark Twain once confided that he received publicnschooling as a child but never let it interfere with hisneducation. Millions today are not so fortunate; for theirneducation is being interfered with. The full extent of thenproblem came to light in 1983 in four major nationalnstudies. (The four reports were as follows: A Nation at Risk:nThe Imperative for Educational Reform, by the NationalnCommission on Excellence in Education; Action for Excellence:nA Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nation’snSchools, by the National Task Force on Education fornEconomic Growth of the Education Commission of thenStates; the New York-based Twendeth Century Fund’snstudy, chaired by Robert Wood, a former U.S. secretary ofnHousing and Urban Development; and a report directed bynTheodore R. Sizer, former Harvard University EducationnSchool dean and headmaster of Andover Academy.) Thenmost scathing condemnation was delivered by the NationalnCommission on Excellence in Education. Concluding thatnthe public schools were in a serious state of decline and werenEdwin G. West is a professor of economics at CarletonnUniversity in Ottawa, Canada.n16/CHRONICLESnby Edwin G. Westnnnindeed a threat to the nation’s social, political, and economicnwell-being, the commission revealed, among other things,nthat about 13 percent of all seventeen-year-olds and 40npercent of minority youth were functionally illiterate.nThe 1983 studies caused a flurry of activity within theneducational establishment, and several official promises ofnreform were promptly announced. Subsequently, however,nnot much has improved. In his 1988 Report to the Presidentnand the American People entitled “American Education:nMaking It Work,” Secretary of Education William Bennettnconcluded that “gains in student learning are slight and thenaverage level of student skill and knowledge remains unacceptablynlow.” In its 1985 report. The Condition ofnEducation, the National Center for Educational Statisticsn(NCES) also concedes that not much improvement hasnbeen made:nThe school systems throughout the nation face thenformidable challenges of improving students’nperformance and coping with the changing socialnand economic environment. Current studentnperformance may be insufficient to meet then