Last year, I paid a visit to the SEED public charter school here in Washington, DC.

SEED is the only publicly-funded urban boarding school in the nation. It starts in grade X, is co-ed, and serves a very low-income, very academically needy bunch of about 320 kids in grades 7 through 12 -- virtually all of them minorities. Started by Eric Adler and Rajiv Vinnakota, the school boasts a lovely campus, two dormitories (one for boys, one for girls), a pleasant gymnasium and cafeteria, a spacious well-stocked library.

It's hard to say an intriguing piece of research is being ignored by the media when it generates a story in that paragon of the MSM, The New York Times. Still, I was surprised by what seemed to me to be a rather paltry number of news stories covering recent findings from a large-scale, government-funded, peer-reviewed study showing that public school students score as well or better than their peers in private, religious and charter schools in math.

How much does it cost to deliver a unit of education -- say, a semester of Algebra I -- through a computer? How does that compare to the cost of doing the same by means of a teacher in a classroom? Is it essentially the same product? And if it is cheaper to explain to teens how to solve for X using the tools the computer age has given us, who should realize the savings?

Here's a selection of recent headlines from around the country:
"Charter schools see boom in sign-ups" (Detroit News, Dec. 19)