Watched by an oversight board and chief operating officer more powerful than the mayor, hundreds of millions of state tax dollars stand to flow through Camden, New Jersey - a city so forlorn that the drug trade may be its single largest employer - as part of a massive recovery plan and a state supreme court decision equalizing public-school funding. Yet the COO - installed to oversee the recovery and crack down on corruption - has no authority over the city's dysfunctional school system and must depend on a patronage-loving school board to implement a school construction plan. For a sobering look at the messy details of urban school reform amidst civic degeneration, see "The Front Lines of School Reform: Sending Aid to a Corrupt Culture," by Brent Staples, The New York Times, November 3, 2002
