The American public school system has long been under scrutiny and in crisis. However, there is growing sentiment that large scale reform could be possible. In anticipation of the 2008 election, I have been conducting a series of interviews on education, sponsored by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Most recently I spoke to four of our nation’s best teachers, all of them recent winners of the National Teacher of the Year award. Here is some of what Michael Geisen, Jason Kamras, Kimberly Oliver, and Kathy Mellor had to say about standardized testing, merit pay, and other features of the current educational climate: