GIVEN the complexities of why Johnny sometimes can't read and why the school board sometimes can't raise enough revenue, covering education has always been a journalistic challenge. In recent years, the field has broadened still further because of the integration movement to include elements of law, politics and sociology. "All the comfortable assumptions have exploded," says Senior Editor John Elson, who directs our Education section. "The theories and rules are all up for reconsideration, making the beat livelier than ever."

Since the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation decision, events have zigzagged dramatically, requiring close coverage. Last year our cover on "Retreat from Integration" concentrated on the politics of busing. This week we report the latest installment of the story and evaluate the impact of busing on what happens in the classroom--and in the home.

"The Agony of Busing Moves North" was written by Associate Editor Christopher Cory, who seems to have spent the better part of his career preparing for the assignment. As a trainee correspondent nine years ago, Cory did his first story for TIME on summer students in Washington. He later covered desegregation in New York City and as Boston bureau chief between 1967 and 1969 frequently interviewed leading educators. As a writer, he worked in our Behavior and Law sections before concentrating on Education. For this week's story, he and Reporter-Researcher Nancy Jalet questioned teachers and administrators as well as authorities outside the school system.

While Cory finds these sources helpful, he also keeps up on the thinking of other scholars: Son David, 5, a Montessori school pupil, and Daughter Caroline, 7, who each morning gets a ride on the back of Daddy's bicycle to Manhattan's racially integrated Public School 9. "Their kid's-eye insight," says Cory, "can be as valuable as any expert's opinion."

In fact, when it comes to the highly volatile racial issue, children are much sought after, if not particularly outgoing, interview subjects. When Nancy Faber talked to several nine-and ten-year-olds in San Francisco, she found them "sensibly unexcited about discussing such delicate subjects as school integration and busing." From Pasadena to the slums of East Harlem, other correspondents reported on varying school conditions and community moods. In Boston, Philip Taubman discovered that "children aren't really interested in all the rhetoric. If they have to ride a bus, they just want to make sure that they can sit with their friends or where the bumps are best." Examining the strands of national policy in Washington, Jess Cook found no such mood of calm among the political elders, whose primary worry seems to be the votes of parents.

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