Does anyone else remember learning "Basic" in grade school? I can't recall any details about it, except that x equalled just about everything, but what I do remember is that it was a powerful lesson in the extreme literal-mindedness of the computer "brain." Even the tiniest typo could result in a complete breakdown of the poor machine, a mini-version of that great scene in the Hepburn-Tracy comedy "Desk Set" when the fact-checking computer starts spewing cards and smoke.

There used to be an aging wooden sign outside my kids' elementary school. It identified the school as an "Early Primary School, Pre-K through Grade 3". Since the school actually goes through Grade 5, and had done so for years before my eldest enrolled, I saw the sign as one of the more benign examples of a school district not quite up to its task. Since then, the sign has rotted away and been removed.

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.

Okay, I admit it -- I really love this time of year. There's something about the sounds of a leather ball bouncing on a hardwood floor and that sweet swish when a shot kisses the net that makes me lose focus on just about everything but basketball. It's March Madness -- when college basketball takes center stage.

Right after World War II Congress created the National School Lunch Program as a “measure of national security.” It was a direct response to the fact that many of the young men responding to the World War II draft were rejected due to conditions arising from serious nutritional deficiencies.

Facing politically painful budget choices, House conservatives and Senate moderates are heading in different directions.

Determined to cut spending at all costs, House conservatives are demanding offsets for new hurricane recovery spending for the Gulf that is included in a $91.1 billion supplemental spending bill headed for the House floor Wednesday. They'll put Gulf recovery funds on the table for offsets but refuse to require tax expenditures to meet the same offset requirements.

Every school day, all around the country, nearly 8 million students are watching Channel One's daily public affairs program, a 12-minute mix of news, features and advertisements.

Did I say watching? It might be more accurate to say, "existing in the same general vicinity as," or "dimly aware of." It turns out many of these students are paying even less attention to Channel One than they are to their parents' suggestions about what to wear to the next mixer.

In a paper provocatively titled "Does Television Rot Your Brain?", two University of Chicago economists present what they call "strong evidence against the prevailing wisdom that childhood television viewing causes harm to cognitive or educational development."

Trickle-down theorists argue that cutting taxes for the rich will make everyone else richer. If it were true, the pace of tax cuts since 2001 should have made us all millionaires!

Trickle-downers also argue that holding the line on taxes will make America's economy more competitive and stronger. But here too the theory doesn't meet the real world test. More tax cuts will burden our economy with more debt. Despite spending cuts in vital social services in the budget they just approved, Congress is still going to have to raise the official debt limit, again, to $9 trillion by mid-March.

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.