SECTIONS Editorials Letters From the Editor For the Record The Week Right Data Gekko Letter from Al help Books in Brief Trans-O-Gram On the Right Misanthrope's Corner In the era of role-models, Florence King pines for the Better Thans. COVER STORY America's Schools: Still Failing After All These Years Barbara Lerner grades American schools and finds little improvement. . . . Glynn Custred explains why good education is a matter of Civil Rights. . . . Susan Brady Konig enjoys Cultural Diversity Month . . . . Chester E. Finn Jr., Bruno V. Manno, Louann Bierlein, and Gregg Vanourek chart a new course for schools. . . . Richard Nadler abstains from sex education . . . . Arthur Hu argues that academic success is not a matter of dollars and cents . . . . Ronald L. Trowbridge says the price of vouchers is too high; Ramesh Ponnuru demurs . . . . Alan Reynolds finds loopholes in the education tax credits . . . . Jeffrey R. Giesea learns a lot about Stanford. ARTICLES On the Scene Matthew Scully takes a ride with the American Ambulance Chasers' brigade. . . . Andrew Stuttaford hunts the Loch Ness monster. Academic Questions Keith Windschuttle rescues Captain Cook from the clutches of Prof. Sahlins. . . . J. Philippe Rushton wonders where Steven Jay Gould dug up his facts. Burke, Ireland, and America Conor Cruise O'Brien interprets Edmund Burke's attitudes toward America and Ireland. Jeffrey Hart: A Teacher Celebrated A dozen former students honor Jeff Hart as a teacher and as a gentleman.

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS In Drawing Life, his sparkling memoir, David Gelernter sketches an America ruled by a new elite hostile to the country it has taken over. Scott McConnell regrets an American coup. . . . After reading John Lee Anderson's Che Guevara and Jorge Castaņeda's Compaņero, Anthony Daniels understands the Cult of Che only too well. . . . Conservatives can't decide whether to love or hate the Declaration of Independence. R. S. Hill receives some guidance from Pauline Maier's American Scripture. . . . Every Pole wants a dworek, and Radek Sikorski's got one. Ah, dworek, sweet dworek. . . . John Simon parts company with the admiring reviewers of Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men. . . . At two Canadian summer theater festivals, directors were set loose on Shaw, Shakespeare, et al. Linda Bridges reports on the damage -- and the delights.