Large-scale curriculum and assessment reform is neither a local peculiarity, nor a product of national political partisanship. It is a phenomenon of international dimensions. Divided into three sections and nine chapters, this book seeks to explain and interpret the nature, impact, and interrelatedness of recent important and far-reaching reforms. Part 1 outlines the rhetoric of school-centered innovation, a case study of the practice of school-centered innovation, the national curriculum policy and the culture of teaching, and teaching quality and educational change. Part 2 covers the crisis of curriculum and assessment; the case of achievement in assessment, motivation, and selection; assessment and surveillance; and the test of socialism in reforming educational assessment. Part 3, the conclusion, discusses curriculum and assessment reform. This book recognizes that there are strong possibilities--and serious limitations--in both school-centered and centralized patterns of change. Further, sketched within the closing chapters are the beginnings of a reform model that might permit redefinition of the hegemonic academic curriculum as a basis for enhanced teacher development and improved educational opportunity for young people. (381 references) (KM)