A proposed paradigm for restructuring public schools has at least two essential components: (1) schools and school personnel must recognize the strengths that students bring to school and draw on these capacities to nurture achievement; and (2) schooling should be based on collaboration among its many constituencies, including school personnel, parents, students, citizens, and higher education faculty. Two federal government programs targeted to assist disadvantaged students in the 1960s, the National Teacher Corps and Trainers of Teacher Trainers (TTT) are cited. These projects utilized teacher preparation to reform education so that children not traditionally well served by public schools would succeed academically. The focus of the Teacher Corps was on providing an internship experience which would nurture the individual teacher's ability to prompt change within the public schools; TTT attempted to utilize schools of education to alter the relationships among teacher preparation's disparate constituencies. Analysis of the Teacher Corps and TTT allows for comparison of two different approaches to using teacher preparation to improve schooling, shows how government can institute projects which promote school reform, and demonstrates that lessons learned are applicable to teacher preparation and school reform in the l990s across the socioeconomic spectrum. (LL)