This book discusses the crusade for educational excellence since the early 1980s. It argues that the reform movement has failed to adequately address the extraordinary degree of alienation and apathy among secondary school students and teachers, and the schools' contribution to the problem, i.e., there exists a human element of the education crisis that the reformers have largely neglected. The book addresses these issues in three parts. Part 1 examines the evolution of the education reform movement including the people and the developments that shaped it. Part 2 presents a detailed examination of why the excellence movement is floundering. Part 3 examines the adverse consequences of the apathy and alienation that pervade so many of the nation's public secondary schools and offers an agenda for reform. Contains 78 references, chapter notes, and an index. (GLR)