For over ten years reformers have been attempting to revolutionize the way schools operate, including how students learn. There have been a number of changes in areas such as administration, curriculum and outreach, resulting in a number of reforms. But here is a question - is it working?

Looking back, educational reform appeared in the year 1983 when a report called "A Nation at Risk" was published. The report showed the poor state of affairs within the K-12 environment,highlighting low basic comprehension rates and even very high rates of dropouts. This is what made administrators and policy makers sit up and pay attention to the fact that educational reform was needed.

One the area where change was acknowledged was standardization of student testing. At that time, a number of states began to legislate merit pay programs for educators. Three years later, by 1986, there were 46 states that offered merit pay plans, an increase from 28 states in 1983. The teachers were evaluated on their educating ability and knowledge of their subjects to determine their raises as well as bonuses.

Research now suggests that the initial focus on standardization did very little to affect the student's learning and comprehension. These studies suggested that changes in administration or even professionalism did not indicate an effective education strategy implementation. Teaching guidelines were becoming less coherent and even more complex.

What was missing? It appears as if one of the core issues missing was the concept of the empowerment of teachers. And yes, today technology is playing a much bigger role in helping to empower both students and teachers.

This also brings up an interesting point. What motivates kids to learn from their teachers? During this reform movement, educators were thinking on a parallel, and interested in a number of new education theories that offered insights into the way students learn as well. One of the theories includes something called "constructivism," where students learn by doing rather than observing. The biggest complaint about the American education system has been its top-down approach with the states governing schools.

Today, schools and teachers are asserting more control over education management decisions. Non-profit charter schools and for-profit education management programs started offering students public school learning environments that break away from the traditional state run systems.

Many community non-profit programs have been wildly successful with after school and summer programs. By personally connecting with each child and youth in their environment, these programs foster strong relationships to teach, inform and counsel on various life issues and skills through programs where parents have seen dramatic increases in student's reading and math levels, healthy study habits, communications, and improved peer relationships.

Parents today now have more choices. They can actually choose to take their students out of poorly run schools and place them into parochial schools, for example, or as with an increasing number of families, parents and their offspring can get out of the classroom and do homeschooling instead.