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Reaching the Ideal

Special education has its problems, but they mainly follow from the failure of schools to comply fully with the law

Low Pay, Low Quality

For decades the nation has been able to school its children on the cheap by exploiting a trapped workforce of educated women. Those days are long gone.

Comparable Worth

Salary data fail to account for the shorter workday and work year in teaching. Once adjusted, teacher salaries look about right.

Fiscal Indiscipline

Why school districts can’t downsize

Mounting Debt

The long economic boom enabled school districts nationwide to fund expensive reforms and hefty pay raises. Now, however, they are finding it nearly impossible to cut costs and balance their budgets. What makes it so tough for districts to downsize?

Academic Freedom

The typical urban school district’s personnel and budgeting systems leave principals without much say in hiring teachers or allocating resources. The decentralization movement may just change that.

Who Should Lead?

Finding principals and superintendents who will transform America’s schools

Lifting the Barrier

Eliminating the state-mandated licensure of principles and superintendents is the first step in recruiting and training a generation of leaders capable of transforming America’s schools

Out with the Old

University-based school administration programs are incoherent, undercapitalized, and disconnected from the districts where graduates are most likely to seek employment. There is much to be learned from the way business and the military train their leaders

The Power to Perform

Attracting nontraditional leaders to education will require increasing their authority and compensation, conditioned on getting results

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