To the Point

Reforming America's High Schools

America's high schools have outlasted their usefulness, according to 13 governors from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to Louisiana and Texas. They've undertaken a coordinated plan to re-design grades 9 through 12. Bill Gates of Microsoft says he'll give $15 million to help inaugurate the growing movement to enforce tough standards so high school graduates can compete in the global economy. Are the high schools as bad as they're made out to be? Is "reform" really an effort by American business to control the educational system? Will an aging population support new investment in the public schools? We hear from educators, administrators, civic-business partnerships, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Making News: Supreme Court Hears Ten Commandments Case The US Supreme Court today heard arguments in two cases involving displays of the Ten Commandments on government property. Dahlia Lithwick, who writes "Supreme Court Dispatches" as Senior Editor at Slate, the online magazine, says today's case highlights the contrasts between two state cases from Texas and Kentucky. Reporter's Notebook: Rome to Return Axum Obelisk to Ethiopia Italy and Ethiopia have resolved a dispute that began when a massive, 1700 year-old carved pillar was shipped out of Africa and installed in Rome. Named after the town in northern Ethiopia, since 1937 the Axum Obelisk has been sitting in the Piazza di Porta Capena near the Coliseum. By the end of next month, it should be home again. Donald Levine, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, traces the obelisk's history.