The opening of the school year, once an occasion for standard feature stories in the press, has acquired a new and formidable significance as the busing issue continues to smolder. "It is a sad sign of the times that covering the opening of school is considered a dangerous breaking news story," says Sandra Burton, chief of TIME's Boston bureau. A veteran observer of desegregation cases in California and Massachusetts--including the violence in Boston last year--Burton spent much of the summer exploring the effect of integration on children's achievements and the likely impact of extending school desegregation beyond the boundaries of increasingly black cities into the largely white suburbs. But when school opened last week, says Burton, "I was forced to shift from pondering and interviewing to the more practical chore of ordering helmets for bureau staffers." Then Burton, Correspondent David Wood and bureau stringers spread out to cover the trouble spots as well as the schools where desegregation has proceeded calmly and successfully. TIME correspondents in Boston did not have to use the helmets, but Chicago Bureau Chief Benjamin Gate, Correspondent Richard Woodbury and Photographer James De Free all encountered overt hostility in Louisville: when a group of angry citizens recognized Woodbury as a reporter, they tried to run his car off a back road with their pickup truck; De Free was the target of a bottle-throwing demonstrator.

In New York, Associate Editor Frank Merrick wrote the cover story, which was researched by Marta Dorion. In a separate section of the cover story, Staff Writer Peter A. Janssen examined the aspects of the quality of education that are central elements in teachers' strikes in New York and other cities.

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