"Make the curriculum more relevant. Shrink schools and classes. Create specialized charter schools; make every classroom a diverse, intimate learning community," say the unrepentant '60s idealists, the tenderhearted school reformers.

"Hold teachers and schools accountable," demand Republicans from President Bush on down. "Test early and often. Use vouchers to save good kids from bad schools."

And what should we do when our teenagers drop out, act out, cry out? "Shrinks! Prozac! Ritalin!" advise the bleeding hearts. "Lock 'em up!" demand the right-wingers.

Smack-dab in the middle of the country, and smack-dab in the middle of this raging national debate, on a picture-perfect campus 35 miles west of Chicago, one public high school is employing many of these methods at once, with results that are stunningly successful by some measures, controversial -- scary, even -- by others. It is an institution that appears to answer the question, "If money were no object, could our schools be saved?"

At the Illinois Math and Science Academy, the curriculum is challenging and engaging. The student population and the classes are small, gender-balanced and ethnically diverse. The teachers are handpicked, well-paid and methodically evaluated; testing is frequent and rigorous. State funding subsidies and grants serve like vouchers, providing each IMSA student with a private-school-quality public education at a cost to parents ranging from zero to $940 a year. These teenagers are indeed locked up: Aside from periodic weekend furloughs, IMSA students never leave the campus.

And one more thing: The complex, competitive IMSA admissions process eliminates two-thirds of applicants -- all but the state's highest-achieving teens.

"The vision of the Illinois Math and Science Academy," says the school's mission statement, "is to create a learning enterprise that liberates the genius and goodness of all children and invites and inspires the power and creativity of the human spirit for the world."

It is a heady goal in an era when most public high schools dare aspire no higher than to graduate the majority of their students, and teachers are hard pressed to notice, let alone liberate, genius or goodness in the 150 to 200 students they face in their classrooms each day. It doesn't take an IMSA brainiac to deconstruct the disparity: Most American public high schools spend $6,000 to $10,000 per year to educate each student. IMSA spends $20,000.

Normally, K-12 schools are funded by their states' boards of education. But when IMSA was established by the Illinois General Assembly in 1985 to "assure technological skills for the work force, and assist in the preparation of professionals to serve the interests of Illinois in such fields as engineering, research, teaching and computer technology," it was also decreed that IMSA would be endowed by state-appropriated general funds, which now make up 85 percent of its budget. Most of the rest of IMSA's $14.3 million in operating expenses comes from private and government grants and contracts.

This rich bounty is offered in exchange for fulfillment of the school's two-pronged legislative charge: "to serve the people of Illinois as a preparatory institution, and the school system of the State as a catalyst and laboratory for the advancement of learning." In addition to producing the techno-geniuses who, it is hoped, might help keep Illinois and America competitive in the global marketplace, IMSA also consults with state education policymakers and provides model programs and training for Illinois teachers.

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