American education faces two long-term, formidable imperatives. The first is to invest a population with the skills to compete in a global economy and to apply these skills to solve the many and multiplying problems confronting the nation and the peoples of the globe. We expect our schools to furnish these skills and understanding of the world. So far reports on this front have been disappointing. Successive national surveys reveal that K-12 students lack the basics of history, geography, economics, mathematics and science. They are falling behind their peers in other countries around the globe.