The No Child Left Behind law is supposed to address "the soft bigotry of low expectations," by holding schools and teachers accountable for teaching all children, regardless of their race, home language, learning style, gender, economic status, etc.

As a parent, I will be breathing a big sigh of relief in a couple of weeks when my older son leaves middle school behind. And the parents of his classmates tell me they will be doing the same. I'm almost expecting that the entire neighborhood will feel the breeze emanating from the middle school auditorium next Wednesday when the whole ordeal finally ends for the lucky 8th graders and their parents.

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)