From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

Some journalists seem fated to write about certain subjects. Sam Allis, who reported on this week's cover, comes from a family with five generations of distinguished careers in the field of education. They range from founder of Haverford College to dean at Harvard to alumni official at Amherst College. Sam's father is a former chairman of the history department at Phillips Academy, which Sam attended before going to Harvard.

Fortunately, Sam brings much more to the table than lineage. He monitors the education of his daughter, Molly, 8, who attends a public school in Brookline, Mass. "If there is one thing I have learned in this beat, it is that parental involvement is the single biggest factor between success and failure for a school," he explains. "One, often two bleary-eyed parents of virtually every child in Molly's class show up at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast to hear and see what their children and teachers are doing. Any school that can command that kind of loyalty is doing something right."

Bleary-eyed loyalty is nothing new to Allis, though. Colleagues know Sam best for his engaging wit and his tendency to immerse himself in a good story. While on the presidential campaign trail with Walter Mondale in 1984, Allis grew a beard, overate on the campaign plane and "became somewhat Orson Wellesian," recalls a comrade. In other phases, he's been lean and mean. "Sam is indefatigable, and his enthusiasms are boundless," observes George Russell, who edited this week's cover package. "He throws himself at things. That's one of the reasons he's so good at what he does."

Allis wrote for the Wall Street Journal before coming to TIME in 1981. After stints in Houston, Washington and Rome, he joined the Boston bureau in 1988 and began writing about education. Allis is a firm believer in public schools and is adamant that their problems won't be solved purely by the marketplace mentality toward education that is now in vogue. "Children are not widgets, and the less successful cannot be discarded like failed businesses," he says, not without a trace of anger. "On the other hand, the educational establishment in this country needs to be sandblasted out of its torpor." Sam has never had a high tolerance for torpor, and we like that.