Which would you choose: a modest salary and with modest regular pay raises and a guaranteed position as long as you weren't negligent at your job, or a higher salary and bigger raises in an environment where the people you supervised underwent high-stakes tests every year--and where you underwent annual evaluation (to determine whether you get a raise, retain your job, or are fired) based in part on their performance on the test?

Late last month I looked at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain's education plan and found it lacking. Now it's time to examine the education plan of his presumptive opponent, Democratic Senator Barack Obama. As always, I encourage you to read the plan yourself; you can see an outline of Obama's plan and download the full versions of his K-12 education and college affordability plans.

Have you seen presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's education plan? McCain presented his plan in a speech to the NAACP last week. What's most interesting to me about the plan is that it combines federal and very local oversight of schools--and in so doing presents a number of conundrums and possibilities.

Did you know: " • An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881 [Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)

Southern California teacher Karen Salazar has been let go from Jordan High School because she was "brainwashing" students with an Afrocentric curriculum. Salazar's mentor, a veteran teacher assigned to her, disagrees:

There's something about going to school that keeps my brain active. I don't know if it's the sustained reading, the intellectual discussions, the constantly changing subjects and challenges--or just the motivation I get from regular essay deadlines. But since finishing my schooling (yeah, right, as if I'll never go back), my brain has definitely slowed.

In many ways, I'm one of the lucky Ph.D.s: I may not have a tenure-track job or the status that comes with it, but I do work (mostly) 8 to 5, week after week. It's funny, because the reason I went back to school is because I couldn't stand 40-hour workweeks--too boring, too much thumb-twiddling in entry-level jobs. I longed for the flexible schedule that came with pursuing a life of the mind--even if that meant working more than 40 hours a week.

When I was in high school, I took seven or eight classes each year, and I was in a gifted and talented magnet program that sent students to the top colleges and universities in the U.S. In order to keep us competitive with high-achieving students across the country, our workload was in many ways accelerated--which meant for most of us hours and hours of homework every night. I fought endless battles with my parents over the many, many math problems I had to solve each night, the lab reports I had to write to prepare for college (where, BTW, I never had to write a lab report as extensive as those I wrote in high school), the essays in Spanish and French, and the extensive reading for all my humanities and social science courses. I grew depressed because of my workload, and my parents, schoolteachers themselves, instituted mental health days, where they occasionally would write me a note so I could stay home from school and just chill--and in a couple of cases use the day to catch up on all my homework.

When Denise asked me to write about "great women in education" in honor of Women's History Month, I agreed immediately, but my excitement about the topic was quickly eclipsed by a creeping dread: How the heck should I distill all the great women in education globally into a 500- to 1,000-word post?

The United States jails about 1 out of every 100 of its citizens -- more than 2 million people, according to a report released late last month by the Pew Center on the States. Not only that, but the rate of incarceration has increased in recent years, further straining state budgets that are already tight. And what are we getting for all of that money? According to Pew, not very much. Perhaps it's time to listen to activists who have been saying for years that there has to be a better way.

A little over ten years ago, my daughter was in the Head Start program. Back then, I had left an abusive marriage, and was a single mother. I went from living a comfortable middle class lifestyle, to living in poverty. But don't feel sorry for me. In many ways I was lucky, because if I had been in the exact same situation anytime in the last seven years, things would have been much worse for me and my children.

"Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth."--Helen Caldicott