Description: Within the past year, the federal government enacted three federal education programs: The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, The School-to-Work Opportunities Act, and The Elementary and Secondary Education: Improving America's Schools Act. These new acts reflect a new federal strategy for improving K-12 education, a strategy that is evident in four common themes contained in the acts. First, the new acts require states to set goals for what all students should learn. By creating statewide goals for all students, the federal acts seek to raise the standards for compensatory programs and reduce the fragmentation of services provided to students. Second, instead of a process-oriented oversight role, the acts seek to judge local programs by how well students are educated. This new approach to accountability provides more state and local flexibility over how to achieve improved outcomes. Third, a set of state improvement activities are defined that are common to each act. These activities revolve around technical assistance and staff development activities, plan approval and fund allocation, and setting specific performance standards. Finally, the acts encourage increased coordination among federal education programs. Coordination is designed to reduce fragmentation of federal programs at the state and local level.