Education

Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews was online Thursday, Dec. 15, at 1 p.m. ET to examine the area's top high schools and to answer any other education-related questions you may have had.

Full Coverage: 2005 Challenge Index

A transcript follows.

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Westminster, Md.: I recognize the struggle in using this test-taking data to identify metrics for administrators' goal-setting. But I worry about focusing too much on those who get a grade of 3 or more. I hate to see these data encourage teachers to set obstacles for participating in these classes. I would hope that our teachers would be willing to accept any college-bound student and provide the college-level experience with the high school safety net. It's asking a lot from the teachers to take a diverse group of students through a rigorous curriculum, but that is what seems most important. How has that concern influenced your data analysis?

Jay Mathews: I share your concern. For those who don't catch the reference here, this year on the new Challenge Index I introduced the College Board's new equity and excellence statistic, which is the percentage of all students in a school's senior class that had at least a 3 on at least one AP test sometime in high school. Unlike the challenge index, which just counts the number of tests taken, the E and E rating does measure how well kids do on the test.

I did not use E and E to rank schools, and will not for the foreseeable future because (1) the college board is still working in getting data for all schools, (2) the ranks seem to come put pretty much the same either way, and (3) measuring passing rates chills the efforts by good teachers in inner city schools to get AP or IB started. They need to get everyone used to the fact that they are having these courses and tests, and get the teachers in the lower grades to buy into the concept, before they can get their passing rates up. The challenge index rewards them for just getting kids to take the tests, which is a necessary start, and even taking the test and flunking it can have some benefits for some kids, teachers and kids tell me.

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washingtonpost.com: New Challenge Index: How to Score (Post, Dec. 13)

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Albany, N.Y.: I was surprised--and delighted--to find that Wilson, my old high school, was ranked 25th in spite of having 43 percent of its students eligible for subsidies, a far higher rate than higher ranked schools. I also note that the general trend is that the smaller the percentage of students eligible for subsidies, the better the school. This makes some sense as subsidies indicate poor households, and poor households don't have the means, or lesser means, of providing such things as computers for children.

However, there are a few schools for which this is not the case. This indicates that these schools are doing something different, that they should be studied, and that any problems due to being in an environment less conducive to learning can be remedied at least somewhat. This is encouraging.

Jay Mathews: Thanks. You have put your finger on one of the things the list does that I am most proud of---shows schools that are much better than their demographics would suggest they are. If you ranked the top 100 schools in the country by SAT scores, I wager there would be absolutely no schools on that list with free and reduced lunch percentages over 40 percent. But on the challenge index, and near the top of this DC area challenge index, there are.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: Do you ever see what percent passed (3,4,5) The AP. In schools with significant amount of free and reduced lunch, does the school pay the cost of the exam for anyone in the lunch program? Finally, do the high AP percentage schools have an organized outreach program encouraging students to try AP who may not have thought of it on their own?

Jay Mathews: I do record the passing rates, and the E and E rating I referred to above, which are on the new list today, also give you a rough idea of which school has the most kids passing the tests. Many good AP schools, particularly in low income areas, have just the kind of outreach you suggest. The college board charges low income students half the usual testing fee, and there is federal and state money paying the rest of the fee for many of those kids. But in nearly all of Northern Virginia, and a few districts in Md., the district pays the fees for ALL students, and requires them to take the test if they are in an AP class. I think that is a great idea, because the test is an integral part of the college experience that they need.

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Vienna, Va.: If you don't include Thomas Jefferson in the list because its students aren't "average," why include HB Woodlawn in Arlington, which clearly isn't an average school? What about Montgomery Blair in Maryland? I would agree it doesn't make sense that Jefferson be compared to other public schools, but I think most people would be surprised at all its similarities to Fairfax County's other high schools. If you wanted to, you could basically take the exact same curriculum as other Fairfax County high school students.

Jay Mathews: An excellent question, which I have struggled with. Until this year I had a complicated system of excluding schools if they were too selective, based on their selection systems. But that would have meant Banneker in DC, which selects kids by grades and scores, really ought not to be on the list, even though its average SAT score is about 1076, far below many of the regular enrollment schools on the list, and WAY below TJ's 1468. So I decided to use that SAT average as my break point, and put any school on the list, magnet or otherwise, that had an average SAT or ACT score below that of the highest SAT or ACT score for any regular enrollment school in the country. The highest regular school SAT I have found so far is 1280 at Saratoga High in Calif. If you know of a higher one, let me know. I decided based on that that 1300 would be the break point---I guess I will have to change that to 1950 for the new test.

The idea is, the index is designed to show which schools do the best job challenging average students, and a school with an average SAT score that would get you into Harvard clearly has no average students.

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Jay Mathews: Oh, and to answer that last good question a little more fully, Woodlawn kids are selected by lottery, not grades or test scores, and their average SAT is about 1250, last time I checked.

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College Park, Md.: English Professor, Terrapin-style here:

Jay, Can you do a follow up on this challenge of the Challenge Index:

Look at all schools with say, 50 percent Free-reduced lunch numbers, and examine those that move up or "show better" in your Index.

My favorite dark horse is Northwestern in Prince George's With 53 percent free/reduces lunch showing at 0.725.

By the way, your Free/reduced figure on Flowers, in Mitchellville is wrong and should be corrected.

Thanks again, for this important work.

Jay Mathews: I have had trouble getting up to date free and reduced lunch data for some schools, so thanks for the correction. What do you have for Flowers? I think that is the figure the school system gave me last month.

I like yr idea very much, and should take a closer look at Northwestern.

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Annapolis, Md.: A fairly recent high school grad myself, I can't help but feel like this method for choosing the best high schools is missing something. Are tests, and the numbers of people taking them, really the best way to measure a school's success? I remember there being a huge push before my senior year, when the school begged students to take AP classes, although they had previously chosen not to. As a student, this left the definite impression that the school doesn't care about us, or even rally how we do on the tests. Is there a better way to make this list?

Jay Mathews: I am open to any and all suggestions. So far this is the best numerical measure of high schools I have yet to see, and I always ask people to tell me a better one. All the others seem to measure just parent income, and nothing else. This measure is VERY narrow, and fails to tell you very much, but what it does tell you is important.

And I like the fact yr school tried to persuade you to take the tests. As I said, they are an integral part of the college experience, and it is very hard to motivate as many students as a good teacher would like unless taking the test is a given.

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Jakarta, Indonesia: What is a good balance in educating the young, relative to the past, present and alternative futures?

Thank you for your fine work with The Post. As an American living overseas, I depend on The Post to keep me in tune with America.

Jay Mathews: Wow. This requires a philosophical thought far beyond my competence. I think you want your child to have good character first of all---be kind, thoughtful, and willing to admit mistakes. Second, you want a child who appreciates, maybe even loves, the power of reading, and who has tackled difficult math, foreign languages, history and science, and does something athletic that gets the heart started. Then they have to decide what to do next.

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Arlington, Va.: How often do you reevaluate the criteria of the Challenge Index? What motivates you to rethink the criteria?

Jay Mathews: I reevaluate every time I get a smart email from readers, such as the ones I am reading here today. Right now, my thoughts are on how to incorporate the E and E rating, without robbing the index of its strongest point---it aims a light at schools from a new direction, and shows some with good reputations are not so good, and vice versa.

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THHSST: What is the equity and excellence rating for TJ?

Jay Mathews: That's easy. 100 percent. I should have put that in the list. thanks for reminding me.

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Fairfax, Va: I was wondering how you determined the number of graduating seniors at each high school. In your Tuesday column you indicated that there were 462 graduating seniors at Annandale High, but enrollment statistics on the FCPS Web site show 504 seniors at Annandale in June 2005. Just curious about where the discrepancy comes from.

washingtonpost.com: New Challenge Index: How to Score (Post, Dec. 13)

Jay Mathews: I have done this long enough now that most of the school districts kindly gather that data for me. So some central office statistician collects those numbers, based on my narrow definition of graduating senior. I only count kids who graduate in June, and not the ones who have to take a summer course and don't graduate until August. The Newsweek list, dealing with a wider range of schools that aren't so familiar with what we are doing, still gets its graduates number from each individual school in most cases.

And to anticipate your next question, yes, I know that a school could make itself look good by reporting a lower number of grads than they actually had, but I have yet to have a school do that, and I think if they did, someone would eventually tell me about it. School people are VERY honest, in my experience.

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Burke, Va.: Do you also track the ratings for private schools? I am particularly interested in how three schools in Northern Virginia -- Bishop Ireton, Bishop O'Connell and Paul VI -- stand in relation to the local public schools. Thank you.

Jay Mathews: I have added a few private schools to the bottom of the list in the past. I ran out of space this year, but I will do it again next year. Most private schools wont give me their data. They say their essential wonderfulness cannot be defined by one number. But some will, and their index ratings are as varied as the public school ratings are. The ones at the top are pretty interesting, like St. Anselm's Abbey in Northeast DC whose Challenge index rating was somewhere around 7.000 this year, and like TJ its E and E rating was 100 percent.

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Annapolis, Md.: Hi again! I think part of the problem was the fact that at least some of us students felt that we only mattered to the school as potential test takers, not as students. I'm not sure how much taking the AP tests helped prepare me for college, because I'm going to a very untraditional college where there are no tests. But I know that myself, and most of the people in my AP classes, only took AP classes for the additional weight. Maybe this doesn't apply to this chat, but I feel that pushing students to take AP classes adds additional stress without much benefit (for many colleges, "passing" the AP test does not result in an actual credit). While taking tests is an integral part in most colleges, I wonder how the AP tests are really different from the tests we would regularly take in high school, and in what other ways we could prepare students for college.

Jay Mathews: Tell me more. My email address is mathewsj@washpost.com. I have visited a lot of high schools, and studied the test policies of many more, and there are VERY few that have exams like AP or IB---three to five hours long, with most of the questions free response. Even more important is the fact that yr school has no control over the writing or grading of those exams, so they cannot be dumbed down without the teacher or principal getting caught (as long as all students are required to take them.)

Keep in mind that about 80 percent of American high school students, most of whom are going to college, never take a single AP or IB test. I think that is one reason why half of the college goers drop out of college.

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Alexandria, Va.: You've been writing recently about comparisons of school districts as a whole. Have you done this using your Challenge Index? Do you feel doing this for a district as a whole would be a valid measure? I'd think there would be some stark differences revealed, especially where one or two schools in a district have high Challenge Index scores, but the rest of that district's schools continue the illogical practice of barring AP/IB to non-Honors students.

Jay Mathews: i have been doing it in the Post for several year. Look at today's extra section in the Post (except for DC, which will run these lists and story on Dec. 29). See the little box with all the districts ranked? i think that list does just what you say, showing how surprisingly well Clarke County is doing in the middle of farmland, and showing how relatively disappointing is the index for affluent Howard county, although they are now getting much better than they were.

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Arlington, Va.: This may be drifting too far afield but..

What are your thoughts on magnet schools like TJ? Do they ultimately help or hurt the overall academic environment in a community? As a graduate of TJ, I wrestle constantly with whether having a public school like that is really a good idea? i.e., is it in the Public Interest?

Jay Mathews: A great question, about which I have not made up my mind. I think having a choice of something like TJ is fine, but the district would have to be careful to make sure that kids who chose not to go to TJ, or could not get in, got just as challenging an experience in their regular schools. Nobody does a better job in its regular schools than Fairfax County, so it can continue to have TJ, in my mind, and not feel guilty about it

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Virginia: I took an IB class at the American International School of Vienna in 1984/1985. It was the toughest test ever.

Jay Mathews: I took one at George Mason High in Falls Church in 1998, at age 53, and it almost killed me.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Two questions:

1. Why are you so focused on public schools, to the exclusion of private schools? The way I see it, the only difference in private school students overall is that they & their parents are willing to consider that option & spend money on education.

2. I'm with the recent high school grad who asked about all this emphasis on tests and scores. It's fine for some students (I took 3 AP exams myself a VERY long time ago, achieving scores of 3, 4 & 5), and this was in NY, where we also had to contend with the Regents exam. In retrospect, I don't see why teens need to be stressed to the max about these tests -- and especially if they are interested in careers that are not academically oriented. If my child is going to be a dancer, homemaker, or journalist, why should she have to take physics at all, much less the AP variety???

Jay Mathews: As you saw above, i would love to do more with private schools but they wont give me their data, most of them.

As for yr question two, that kind of stress may be a problem in the five percent of schools that give a lot of AP tests, and have kids worrying about getting into selection colleges. But the vast majority of high schools are not like that. Their students spend no more than an hour a day on homework, and spend 3 or 4 hours watching TV or playing video games. I know some of those games can be stressful, but i don't think that is the kind of stress we want to worry about.

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Washington, D.C.: Is DC and Prince George's schools ranked so low because they're heavily blacks?

Jay Mathews: No, it is because they are run by administrators who have not yet decided to make this a priority. There are plenty of schools on the list with a minority of non-Hispanic white kids---Wakefield, Annandale, Stuart, Springbrook, Kennedy, Banneker, Wilson---that do very well on the index. I got started on this story in 1982 when i stumbled across an East LA school that was 95 percent low income Hispanic kids, and bursting with AP courses. And please notice on my ranked list of districts, both DC and PG are ahead of some places that are majority white.

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Annandale, Va.: So you truly believe that kids drop out of college because they don't take AP or IB???

Jay Mathews: I truly believe that kids drop out of college, and there is plenty of research to back that up, because they find they are unprepared for the academic demands of college. They haven't learned to budget their time. They haven't been asked to write long analytical papers before. They leap to the assumption that they are just not college material, and go do something else. This being the United States, many of them realize years later that their assessment of their academic skills was wrong, and they come back to college and do great. But wouldn't you like them to get that insight when they are still in high school? A well taught AP or IB course can do that. I have watched many of them in action, and it is something to see. Read my Escalante book if you want one of the best examples. Those courses can change lives.

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Alexandria, Va.: Why do you consider taking the test an integral part of the college experience? As far as I'm concerned, tests are not really an integral part of anything.

Jay Mathews: In a perfect world, they might not be, but American colleges are ruled by tests, big long scary final exams. You are welcome to choose a life that doesn't require college, but if college is your choice, it seems wise to me for your high school to spend some time and effort getting you ready for it.

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Annandale, Va.: Jay - In a chat you did maybe a year ago, you said that residents of Fairfax County ought to (I'm paraphrasing) kiss the ground they're living on because the school system is so good, whether measured nationally or compared to other metro Washington schools. Is that still a valid appraisal? What about elementary and middle schools as barometers of performance?

Jay Mathews: I have yet to find another school district that, compared on several points, such as challenge, teacher quality, attention paid to low-income students, does any better. And very few come close. Montgomery and Fairfax are in my mind nearly equally good on all counts, although i would prefer Montgomery required all AP students to take AP tests. If you find one of that size that is better than Fairfax, let me know.

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Virginia: Do you ever factor in building maintenance quality and similar factors into your list? For example, if a school is known to be of very poor building quality, but has good test scores, would you consider the poor building (and therefore not-so-great learning environment)?

Jay Mathews: When I wrote my book Class Struggle, I was amazed at the poor quality of the buildings that housed some of our best schools, even in affluent neighborhoods. Building quality seems to me to have little to do with academic quality, altho a building in really terrible condition, like some in DC, does send a depressing message to students---you don't count.

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Virginia: How about a ranking of local elementary schools? I think that's where kids get on the academic path to success or failure.

Jay Mathews: We don't give any test, other than the federal NEAP test, to elementary school students across the country, and NAEP is just a sampling. You would need some universal yardstick, and i know of none.

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Cleveland, Ohio: Just a quick point: my understanding is you don't "flunk" AP exams as you indicated in your first post -- you're just given a "no recommendation" with respect to whether you should receive credit for that material where you enroll in college.

Jay Mathews: True, but I think flunk is a useful term to use for general readers, rather than the bureaucratese that the College Board likes. If you get less than a 3, you are unlikely to get credit from any college. That is close enough to flunk for me.

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Fairfax, Va.: Ok, so it may be the best numerical way to measure schools, but really -- how can a numerical assessment give you any idea about the quality of teaching? It's just like the US News' rankings of colleges. The most competitive colleges get to the top of the ranking, and continue to remain there, while other "lesser" schools, with innovative teaching, exciting curriculum, etc. do not get noticed. As a former student of one of the "top" schools, I can attest to the fact that these assessments mean nothing if they do not account for the actual quality of teaching.

Jay Mathews: Ah, but they do. What schools high on the list, even low-income schools like Wakefield in Arlington, do that gets them on the list includes many parts of good teaching--identifying kids who have not been challenged as much as they are capable, giving then extra class time, not letting them slip between the cracks, imparting a team spirit in preparing for the exam, varying teaching methods to see what works. And notice that the US News list top schools are all well endowed, big name places. Many of the schools high on the challenge index are anything but, and it is great teaching that has elevated them above their peers.

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Herndon, Va.: Jay, Have you ever written about the scandal that is the PG County school system? Once again this year, they look just as poor in the Challenge Index as the DC schools, which is pretty shocking considering that many of the PG County high schools, relatively speaking, are not poverty stricken. For example, we have Largo (20% free/reduced), Gwynn Park (12%), and Friendly (18%) ranked 166, 159 and 155, respectively. In contrast, we have Woodlawn (15%), Richard Montgomery (12%), Clarke County (14%), Yorktown (16%), and Washington-Lee (32%), all ranked in the top 8. What gives? This has some particular resonance with me because in the main, I am a product of PG County schools. I attended them from Grades 4-10, and a couple of good friends (who graduated from Friendly) and I all live within 10 minutes of each other now in Fairfax's Langley school district. Needless to say, we've all made that choice in significant part because PG is not even close to being an option anymore schoolwise. Any thoughts?

Jay Mathews: You make an excellent point. I think the PG schools could do much better if they resolved to set high standards and stick to them, as schools elsewhere with similar demographics do. But that takes strong leadership, and they have had great trouble developing such leaders. If you have the solution to getting great school leaders, let me know. It is still a mystery to me how you do that.

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Virginia: With all the news on black-white achievement, how can a school be top if there are too much focus for minorities kids whom parents are not involved in PTA/PTO?

Jay Mathews: I hope you will send that question to mathewsj@washpost.com. I don't quite understand it. If you are saying that a school cant do well on this list unless it has lots of involved parents, you are wrong. Garfield High's parents in East LA were not involved at all, but a few great teachers pulled that school up, and THEN the parents got involved, seeing that it was a school worth getting involved with.

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Alexandria, Va.: Do you think that the early separation of the "gifted" kids and the "regular" kids has caused the problems of lack of interest in taking advanced classes in high school? I don't think that marking kids in the third grade is a very accurate assessment of their intellect. What happens is that only the marked kids take advanced classes, with the ones in third grade taking regular classes ... all because of one test in third grade. Though there are discrepancies in the processing power of kids... they certainly aren't pronounced enough to divide kids at such an early age.

Jay Mathews: Could be. Telling kids in 3rd grade that they just aren't gifted student material can have an impact, but in this country that message is sent to lots of kids even in districts that don't have formal gifted programs. The point is to maintain high expectations for all kids. Some will disappoint you, but you have to give everyone the fullest possible support.

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Arlington, Va.: Why bother with "top high schools?" They just prepare students well for top colleges - which, as Jay Mathews (BA Harvard) has established, don't matter. Not that you or your children would go to Mason - you just want to push everyone else there.

Jay Mathews: I would love to have my kids have gone to Mason, or any of the schools on the top of today's list. But I lost the family vote, 2-1, and my last kid went to Sidwell, which does not treat AP as well as many of the public schools I mentioned here. And if you have read me, you know I think that the "top school" notion, at least when it comes to colleges, is nonsense. There are at least 300 colleges as good as Harvard, and my bosses at the Post mostly went to big state schools.

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Washington, D.C.: Jay, how do I compare the ability of private schools in the area to challenge students compared with public schools? I am having a difficult time comparing public versus private to determine whether certain private schools, including parochial schools, will offer a better education that a local public school.

Jay Mathews: I think you can ask an individual school to tell you, for your private information, promising not to pass it on to me, how many AP or IB tests they gave last may, and how many senior graduated in June. Then do the math, and see how that school compares to the public schools you are looking at. Many of the public schools in this area, a very rare place in American education, are better in my view than the best private schools we have here.

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Fairfax, Va.: I disagree that AP and IB courses prepare students for college. I took AP and IB courses in High School and was able to get credit for a year at UVA, but I was so burnt out by High School that I couldn't focus on college. I managed to graduate with a GPA under 2.7.

Jay Mathews: I am sorry to hear that. Do you think the problem was AP and IB, or something else? But all families have a choice, and if the AP or IB grind is too much, you can drop a course or two, whatever makes sense. The problem is the vast majority of schools that do not offer AP or IB, or dont let most of their students into those courses, so they have no choice at all.

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Alexandria, Va.: Will there be a list of private & Catholic schools at some point?

Jay Mathews: Not until the schools change their minds and remove their ban on sharing data with me.

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Annandale, Va.: We live on a street which divides two High School districts. Our side goes to Annandale and the other side goes to Woodson. Several neighbors have mentioned that they are planning to move into the Woodson area. Are they really gaining anything by switching high schools within the same school system?

Jay Mathews: Nope. Read my online column this week on Annandale High. Here is the link

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Great Falls, Va.: My daughter attends a top rated high school (Langley) and she has mild learning disabilities. How would you suggest that I get the school and teachers to work with me to support her? Despite obtaining a "504" for her, I am frustrated by the non-responsiveness of the school faculty. Please advise. Thanks.

Jay Mathews: I am very surprised. That is a great school in a district that has a good reputation for helping learning disabled kids. I would put on my most patient face, resolve never to raise my voice, and proceed up the chain of command. If you are not getting satisfaction at one level, go up a level, and dont blame anyone, just say you think yr kid needs more help than she is getting. What can we do? (Using "we" is always a good idea. I do it at the Post when i am training to persuade my editors to do something.)

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Manassas, Va.: The list looks at how many people take AP/IB tests compared to how many graduate, but what about how many graduate compared to how many are actually in the senior class?

Jay Mathews: That is the dropout problem, also an interesting issue. In low income neighborhoods, the percentage of kids who graduate is smaller, and reflects problems that i think have little to do with what is going on in the school. But if you know of a school in such a neighborhood that has licked the dropout problem, let me know.

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Fairfax, Va.: Hi -- I'm the mother of a second-grader at FCPS and am confused, and frankly shocked, as to why Fairfax County is viewed as such a great school system.

We have been at Fairfax county for 2 1/2 years and have not been impressed.

For one, the phonics instruction (or lack thereof) is startling deficient. There have been millions of taxpayer dollars spent on research to evaluate the best way to teach children to read. Yet our elementary school seems entirely ignorant of this vast area of research and continues with the whole language approach to reading. I attended an excellent reading conference in Washington DC last summer where the latest in reading research was presented. I met hundreds of teachers who flew from all over the country to attend, yet did not see a single teacher or administrator from Fairfax county.

The teaching of math is equally disturbing. My daughter brings home nearly indecipherable word problems, yet still has difficulty with the basic arithmetic.

The science curriculum seems more focused on memorizing insignificant minutiae (eg., the anatomy of the cricket) than instilling creative, innovative thinking and instilling a passion to learn.

I could go on and on. The bottom line is that because of these fundamental failures in teaching basic, elementary concepts, I have found myself teaching my daughter myself out of absolute necessity.

In my opinion, the main reason that Fairfax county is ranked so highly is the fact that we have a disproportionate number of highly educated and highly involved parents. If one were to actually study the curriculum -- at least that offered at the elementary level -- there is very little quality instruction that merits the county's high ranking. Our kids are succeeding here despite the teaching, not because of it.

I would love to hear your comments.

Jay Mathews: I am aware of those problems. I am wagering you are one of the smart parents who have educated me on them. Sadly, all the other big school districts have similar problems. If you find me the big district nirvana for phonics and traditional math, i will write about it. I dont see it yet, except in pieces.

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Washington, D.C.: It seems that regardless of what we do, there is a straight line correlation between the relative wealth of a community and the scores of the schools that serve that community. This seems less a result of the efforts of the schools but of the homelife of the student. The kid from a stable two parent family will mostly do better than a equally "smart" kid in a less stable environment. So, what do we do?

Jay Mathews: That is exactly right, and what we do is have schools that with teachers and programs so good they can make up for the deficiencies at home. My favorite example, subject of my next book, the KIPP schools, inner city middle schools that work hard on creating an achievement oriented culture, and then give the students a challenge program. The KIPP school in southeast DC, all black kids, 85 percent low income, has the highest math scores in the city, and nearly the highest reading scores. And those graduates will go to college, enter the middle class, and the middle class will get bigger--that is how we have been solving this problem in American for a century.

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Arlington, Va.: Just a quick comment on the AP/IB issue here; being an ex-AP/IB student myself I do back up Mr. Mathews on this. If everyone in my college would have had that kind of exposure to school-then all would have graduated with me last may.

Jay Mathews: Bless you. And good luck with your future.

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Jay Mathews: Finally I have worn out my questioners. I would not have kept it up this long, but I am going on vacation tomorrow, to see my 88 year old mom, and let her wait on me hand and foot. So i figured i can expend a little extra energy today.

Thanks for the great questions, and remember if you see any errors on the Challenge Index, let me know. Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. And Beat The Cowboys. Please.

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