Topics range from history to current issues, from leading figures and movements to legislation and Supreme Court cases, from administration to adolescence. About 50 new articles deal with distance learning and other emerging trends. Approximately 500 articles have been updated. Some statistics were revised (although the number of California State University campuses was not updated). Library has some very current information, while Children's literature is severely out of date.

Entries range in length from a couple of sentences to several pages. Length does not necessarily correlate with current importance; for instance, Missionary education movements is longer than Minority education, and Military education is longer than Migrant education. The humanities are covered more extensively than the sciences. Individual colleges and historical aspects of education outweigh research and reform (e.g., there is no index listing for statistics, and ethnography is missing entirely). Literacies are under-represented; computer literacy is included but media, visual, and information literacies are excluded. There is no mention of young adult literature, which continues to be a controversial and important topic. Except for those appended to new entries, lists of references contain few current titles.

Several appendixes follow the entries: a sketchy chronology of significant educational benchmarks (none for the 1980s), a list of significant U. S. Supreme Court decisions in education, a list of education majors and degrees, and a topical bibliography of generally older resources.

Despite some gaps this set covers much ground and is useful for many libraries, but should not be considered the definitive source or the only purchase in this area. Given the limited amount of updating, libraries may choose not to replace the previous edition.