Part of a conference on education in the South, this session on educational policy issues of the 1980's includes 18 papers divided among five panels. In the first panel, four papers forecast the next decade's critical educational problems and policy issues, including demographic and social shifts, changes in educational governance and finance, the federal role in education, public aid to private education, and educational access and quality. The second panel focuses on the role of the private business sector in improving education; its four speakers discuss the National Association for Industry-Education Cooperation, unemployment, business involvement in education, and private schooling provided by the data processing industry. The third panel's five papers ponder the governance of public education, considering federal, state, court, and teacher roles, and noting the necessary complexity of the country's educational decision-making structure. Vocational education, Comprehensive Employment and Training Act programs, and the school-to-work connection are examined in the fourth panel's two papers. Finally, the three speakers in the last panel look at the need to improve the quality of public school teaching--particularly because of technological change--through both preservice and inservice teacher training. (RW)