for harm averted. But to be fair, it's more than that. In addition to preventing even more severe cuts to education, the administration has helped millions of college students by keeping interest payments for loans down and tripling the number of people who can participate in AmeriCorps service programs.

I am very concerned by the privatization tendency in all areas of life, and my colleagues at the International Education meeting in Brussels were worrying along the same lines. With austerity driving ever-increasing chasms between the rich and everyone else, I don't see what will stop it.

Pedro Noguera, Deborah Meier, David Whitman, Luis Moll, Barbados, Sapphire Rhodes

It echoed what I was hearing over there: the way the "austerity movement" has crippled education, above all in the so-called "developing" nations. Not to mention crippling, literally, the health and welfare of the world's children.

I find it ironic and hypocritical that the opponents of charter schools don't voice much objection to the loss of affluent children to private schools.