According to the Longman Grammar (Biber et al.,1999), it is dificult to identify the intended time reference for the past perfect, because the reference depends on the context. In “All of them were loved, but most had missed many of the experiences we expect children to have in their first five years." (l.12), the time reference for the past perfect verb phrase is:

Lexical choices vary according to the different types of language: written or spoken. An example of a word in the text that is typical of American conversational English is:

In the sentence “It would be nice if teachers who work in the most challenging schools could be paid more." (l.43), the personal pronoun 'it' functions as an:

This editorial is a critical response to the article “Poor schools, rookie teachers” (l.3). The critique is built against the logical relation established between the two noun phrases of this title. This logical relation is one of:

According to the text, the only reason that fails to justify teachers leaving the toughest schools is that they: