Word: public-schools
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Alan Ayckbourn's book builds, with deft comic logic, from a tangle of mistaken identities to the climactic remark, "There's a cat-burgling pig in my bedroom!" Lloyd Webber's tunes are inventive and sweetly chipper. The effect is of two precocious lads putting on a genial public-school charade. By Jeeves may not be lighter than air, but it's surely lighter than Guerre...
...Constitution protects their right to express that view, of course. But in decisions dating back at least 30 years, courts have ruled that the separation of church and state forbids religious groups to make the Bible part of the public-school curriculum. That hasn't stopped folks from trying. Rather than teach Genesis in the classroom, however, they now try to discredit evolution by teaching seemingly scientific but subtly Bible-based alternatives...
Sometimes the results are invigorating. Frustrated by poorly run public schools, activist parents are changing the face of American education with reforms from school vouchers to charter schools and the private management of public schools. ``I've seen schools that have been totally transformed,'' said Diana Nelson, a mother of two, during a convention earlier this month of parents serving on local public-school councils in Chicago. One by one, parents stood up and explained their concerns, some near tears. During a training session called Speak Up!, participants broke into small groups to practice testifying before state legislators...
Some critics go so far as to say that charter schools will actually hurt public-school systems by drawing away talent and money; they benefit the few at the expense of the many. "If state mandates are really such an impediment to the 1.6 million public-school students in Michigan, then why not remove them for all of us?" asks M.E.A. president Julius Maddox. Such concerns temper the general enthusiasm for charter schools expressed by U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, who as a Democrat is closely attentive to the union view: "We don't want to take our attention...
Some critics of the movement argue that parents may have too much freedom under current laws. Only 10 states require parents to have a high school diploma or General Equivalency Diploma to be able to teach. "It's a giant step backward," argues Thomas Shannon, executive director of the National School Boards Association, which represents more than 15,000 public-school boards across the country. "People tend to think, as one old basketball coach said, that everybody can boil water and coach basketball, and they kind of feel the same way about teaching. They just don't know what they...