In one of last week's most surprising election upsets, California's flamboyant, fundamentalist educator Max Rafferty was denied a third term as state superintendent of public instruction. The winner is Rafferty's polar opposite: Wilson Riles, 53, a tall (6 ft. 4 in.), soft-spoken authority on teaching poor children, who talked sense about teacher training and preschool education (TIME, Nov. 2). Riles became the first black ever elected to statewide office in California.
Early in the campaign, Rafferty topped the polls and entranced his admirers by blasting unruly students, the decline of "moral" instruction and busing for school desegregation. Yet Rafferty had fallen out...
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