An ugly showdown is looming. This week Israel's government began sending dismissal notices to 4,500 of the country's 110,000 schoolteachers. If it can reach a deal with unions by May 31st—the legal deadline for dismissing teachers before the next academic year-it will fire less than half as many. But for that the unions would have to accept reforms that they say would ruin the system. Most Israelis agree that their schools are in bad shape. Their complaints sound much like those anywhere: falling standards, growing indiscipline, violence and so on. Claims that Israel led the world in the 1960s and 1970s are exaggerated, says Or Kashti, the education correspondent of the daily Maariv: early comparisons were based on selective data. Nonetheless, Israel now does worse than the rich-country average (but better than its neighbours).
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