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This chapter explores the impact of economic globalization on the country, the reduction of tax revenues, and a decline of our education system. The concept of globalization is explained and a concept is explored as how America can become more competitive with a superior public education system. I discuss prior options to improve public education No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and the 1957 Education Defense Act as ways to improve education for a more diverse society. I provide evidence that the 40 year effort of using an under funded NCLB Project produced less than the Education Defense Act of 1957 because it attracted more and better qualified individuals to the profession. Globalization forces governments to reduce taxes on industries to help retain them in their states or just held home companies remain competitive. Finally, quality education is viewed as not an option but a must if this country wishes to remain competitive in the global economy and retain political stability that may result from social unrest due to a lack of good employment and educational opportunities.

This chapter highlights why, with the current situation in a VUCA world, governments should consider to ‘leave alone’ the educational policy for the prosperity of special education. One possible way is that governments should let the ‘economic invisible hand’ take on the arrangement of inclusive education and proceed without interference to induce educational competition and the effectiveness of inclusive education.

During the NEA’s early years, the higher education community formed the core of the organization’s leadership, and higher education issues in turn represented a key area of NEA policymaking. The late 19th and early 20th century Association was fundamentally a professional group with a large teacher membership but little teacher representation in its leadership. In fact, it was only after the first 100 years of the NEA’s existence that the organization made an effective transition toward becoming a labor union, led by teachers and faculty members and focusing its primary energies on collective bargaining – first in the K-12 arena and soon after in higher education. Most recently, the NEA has sought to synthesize the two roles – that of professional association and union.

Gifted education suffers from the lack of a legal definition of giftedness and federal mandate for the provision of services in schools, and also from a lack of any federal funding to provide services. These lead to a situation characterized by extreme inconsistency in provision of educational services across locations, sometimes even within the same school district. We offer a historical perspective on these issues and a view of the current status of gifted education services, followed by discussion of relevant legal issues in this context.