These numbers hardly constitute the success Chubb claims for the Philadelphia school district or its private management companies. The public schools in Philadelphia, as in just about every other big city, need more than just reformation - they need a revolution.

Across the country, major school reforms have failed to yield astounding results. The guarantees of greater accountability for student learning and for the improvement of sub-par public schools promised by the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind legislation have created what has proved to be an insurmountable challenge for federal and state governments, as well as for the educators charged with enforcing the NCLB policies.

Despite their best efforts, politicians, public schools, teachers, administrators and even private management companies are still continuing to fail urban students and their families.

As the pendulum of blame for this failure swings back and forth from lawmakers and administrators to teachers, from teachers to tests, and from claims of insufficient resources and funding to lack of parental involvement, the children in our urban schools continue to languish, slipping further and further behind, victims of an education system that has become not only broken but immobile.

For education to be successful, a massive transformation is essential. We can't afford to let our education system stagnate; our country and our children have too much at stake.

Education needs more than reform, more than changes in policies and testing, and more than NCLB to remobilize. Education in America needs a revolution, complete with new leaders, establishing new ideologies. Education is in desperate need of fresh ideas that are not only inspiring, innovative and creative, but intellectually stimulating and proven to be effective.

As an education student at a state university, I can tell you exactly where a revolution needs to begin: 150 students sitting in room listening to regurgitated textbook material and filling in little circles on electronically graded multiple-choice tests, at the cost of $632 a credit hour, does not constitute a higher education, it merely provides students with a five-figure receipt for one.

From the professors to pre-school teachers, it's essential for all educators to be passionately dedicated to teaching accurate, relevant knowledge and skills. It's not enough to simply relay information, students need to understand more than the "whats" and "whens" and "hows" - they need to understand the "who cares?" the "so whats?" and the "why the heck does this matter?" Teachers must find ways to convey this knowledge in creative, interesting and challenging ways.

EDUCATION is an engagement of students' minds, and mediocrity, at any level in - especially the highest levels - is simply unacceptable.

Our universities are providing future teachers with mediocre educations and training, the teachers, in turn, are then providing their students with mediocre learning experiences.

A top-to-bottom overhaul is what we need to fix our education problems, but a reconsideration of where the top begins and where the bottom ends also has to be made. For change to occur, the structure of our education system and the way we think about education must not only be examined, but challenged and ultimately transformed at every level.

A.M. Eastman, Millville, N.J.