Schoolhouse Rock: FIXING THE EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Teaching Limits

For the debut week of this blog, I concentrated on teachers, in part because that's where much of the political debate seems to be focused right now. (Last night, John McCain told his fellow Republicans, a little menacingly, that he wanted to "help bad teachers find another line of work," to raucous cheers.)

But as Slate readers have commented in the Fray (here, for example) and in the email messages they've sent me, there are some issues that are difficult if not impossible for teachers to deal with alone. Funding inequities often shortchange the school districts where low-income students live, and after the last bell rings, those students often return to chaotic communities and troubled home lives, both of which make it harder to succeed in school.

That's the other big political debate in education right now - what can and should schools do differently in order to improve the lives of disadvantaged students - and that's what I'm hoping to get into next week. For now, thanks for reading, and to all the teachers, students and parents out there, congratulations on surviving the first week of school.