This paper contrasts two perspectives for evaluating educational programs: (1) a growth curve model of personal development in the sociocultural context; and (2) a narrowing staircase model of educational success. According to the first perspective, development occurs along personal, social, and cognitive dimensions, and arises from the individual's exploratory interaction with a context structured by enduring cultural resources that are organized in layers. The local school is one of many such resources encountered by the individual in his or her life-journey. As to the second perspective, within the orthodoxy of Institutionalized Public Basic Schooling (IPBS) in Zambia, development is conceived as a cumulative process of cognitive empowerment that is imparted through extractive alienation of the individual from the culture and community or origin. The paper maintains that education in Zambia will achieve its goals of personal and social improvement only if it conforms with the articulated quality criteria. Informal education in many parts of Africa includes legitimate participation in subsistence activities, narrative exposition of indigenous wisdom, and co-constructive play with peers. Each of these forms of practice, the paper notes, meet some of the quality educational criteria that are generally lacking from IPBS. The paper then describes two educational innovations in terms of their adequacy according the articulated criteria: (1) community-based, individual program plans for children with developmental disabilities; and (2) the use of growth-charts and child health monitoring to link basic science education with primary health care. (Contains 49 references.) (Author)