Issues include teacher accountability as well as summer versus schoolyear experience.

Ms. Tyre remains mostly apolitical, stepping lightly around arguments over incendiary issues like teacher accountability and school reform.

"We had a Superintendent who was pushing for teacher empowerment and a union president behind teacher accountability," he said.

With Gore, you get much more money for education, teacher accountability, a preschool program and aid to go to college.

Kline has spoken in support of education reform designed to encourage parent involvement and teacher accountability.

Issues of teacher accountability, union power and community control were dramatically contested in the streets.

Mr. McGreevey says he is for teacher accountability, but he has been endorsed by the teachers union, which loathes the idea.

So, gradually and inexorably, the teacher autonomy of the 1960s has been replaced by teacher accountability.

Philadelphia is hardly alone in the quest for teacher accountability.

He wants to pay for training teachers (emphasizing phonics) and get states to demand tougher teacher accountability.