employment has exploded -- the public school workforce has grown 11 times faster than student enrollment over the last 40 years." Furthermore, on a per pupil basis, the inflation-adjusted average cost of a K-12 education has gone from about $55,000 to about $150,000." The USA has many political parties - however, most people (including myself) see democracy as divided along French lines, left and right and anything in between just gets ignored, likewise anything too far out on the left or the right is also ignored. What most people want in a democracy is 'steady as you go' - not a rush to reform that which already works, nor indeed what some call 'progressive' politics. Here in UK the majority of the people are 'conservative' with a small 'c' - this means we do not like revolutionary ideas or talk of rapid change or an such and thus are happy to vote for the 'right' or the 'left' knowing that both are neither extreme or unBritish. Probably one of the most interesting democracies is that of Israel - they never seem to be able to form a government of one party and instead nearly always have some sort of coalition form of government, made up of two or even three parties. Like it or not, it makes for very interesting democracy. But it would just drive me nuts. It's bad enough that we have a coalition government here in UK which no one seems to know how we got or