National Education Goals Panel (NEGP)

One of the most important events in recent efforts to reform American schools was the historic meeting of President George Bush and the nation’s governors at the Charlottesville Education Summit from September 27 to 28, 1989. Based upon the deliberations there, six national education goals were developed. They were first announced by President Bush in his State of the Union speech on January 31, 1990; six months later, the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) was established to monitor progress towards the goals.1 The six nation- al education goals became one of the centerpieces of educational reform in the 1990s and were incorporated in the Goals 2000 legislation in 1994 (which also added two more goals).2 Given the importance of the Charlottesville Education Summit and the creation of the nation- al education goals, it is rather surprising that there have been almost no scholarly, in-depth investigations of their origins—especially within the historical context of the broader educa- tional reforms of the 1980s.3