You can live in the Northern Middle USA, and have the options of good public schools, good Catholic schools, good Christian schools, and in some places good Lutheran schools. All for a low cost.

This hip L.A. take on the education options is too hip. If it's that expensive, and that bad, just move, for the sake of your kids.

Try Grand Haven, Michigan public schools, for example. Check out their Science Olympiad record, and their record of graduates to elite universities. You can live on the water there for peanuts compared with California. Just cool your snottiness. You and your kids all will be much better off.

You need actually to be hip and smart, and cool it with your "hip and smart" posing.

I live in Nashville, a city with a rich, disturbing history of private schools (many of which sprung up during the civil rights era and it's no secret why). I also taught in public schools for five years.

I think both sides of the debate would benefit from talking to the other side. In Nashville, where you send your kids becomes a political point, on line with wearing a pro-choice or pro-life button and then asking those who disagree to please not mention it in polite company. Many offer a "not in my backyard" approach. As in, "I support the public schools, but I'll be sending my children to the magnet/private school." My choice to send my own children (who have yet to exist, so take that as you will) to public school was met with gasps and accusations of "child sacrifice." Nevermind that these same people know I work in the school system.

My decision to be a public school teacher has been met with everything from shock to derision to applause. I deserve none of those. The nadir came from a visit to the emergency room at midnight, when the nurse, shocked when I told her the name of the school I taught at, asked me, "How do you do it?" while serving a room full of gunshot victims and virus carriers. Well, I suppose I do it the same way you do it; the same way anyone does it. If you have the heart for service, you do it. Some say it's a "calling," and it is, somewhat. But we all choose where to spend our capital of time. Do we trade it in for money or fancy things?

One comment, so far (I assume there will be more), referred to the lack of intelligence of graduates of education colleges. She/he insinuates that private schools are better because they can higher teachers with advance degrees. But since the "smart" people go into the lucrative careers, doesn't this mean that smarter teachers take the higher paying positions? Those are almost always with public schools. In my area, public schools pay an average of 15% more.

What also gets lost in the debate over education, particulary when it comes to test scores and graduation rates, is that we're talking about people. Children. And it doesn't really matter how knowledgable you are on a subject, to be able to teach you have to be able to love. All children, no matter what. That goes for volunteers, as well. And parents. That's a tall order for most people, and part of why so many leave the teaching profession.

I was educated in public schools.

I attended an Ivy school, with a student body of mostly private school grads. They all seemed smarter than me for the first few weeks and they worked hard at seeming so. Then I realized that they couldn't creatively compete. I think of private schools as swaddling and I think people become creative when they aren't blanketed. So, I attribute my creativiy, in part, to those hallways with ugly lighting.

As regards Loh's Costco comparison, she's right. There are public school teachers who are breathtaking. I know. I taught beside some. Perhaps similar such teachers exist in private schools, but public school teachers are privy to secrets. They also aren't swaddled. Many feed their students. Clothe them. Buy their scarves and tie those scarves so that those children can play at recess. Such things tender compassion and comprehension. Sure, private school teachers can learn these lessons, but theirs is a program for slow learners.

The little tykes, still, one would think, have to go off to college. And not everyone gets into that accelerated MFA program at Bennington, do they? In fact, a BS or BA is roughly equivalent to a HS diploma of years ago. So there's a graduate program in the wings for a great many of these precious precocious few. $25k a year for secondary education is a wonderful thing. 2.2kids = $50K/year for say, 12 years or $600K before college. Makes that Bowdoin project look affordable, doesn't it? Well at $80K/year x 6 figure for those two tykes. Total comes in at a bit under 1.1 million dollars. And since they'll emerge, around age 26 or so with little in the way of those dirty plebeian employable skills, I would think that taking that million bucks and buying them a profitable business would be at least as sane an approach as any other. Then they would be free to pursue their creative side or rehabilitate whales or whatnot.

These must be fairly rich people that Sandra Tsing Loh has been hanging out with. By no means was I raised poor but I can't possibly imagine how my parents would have been able to afford today's $14K prices - even in 1980's dollars.

Also, I sincerely doubt the value of private schools. I've seen the results in my own generation (I'm 30); it's burn-out and malaise for many and it's an ill developed sense of how the world works for all. Why would you raise your kids in this kind of comfort and privilege when you know what twits these people usually turn out to be?

I can't stand her segments on NPR, her work is always too self indulgent and straining to be clever (plus listening to her read her scripts while "playing with the language" like a bad college theatre actress is always an exerscize in teeth-gritted endurance for me). This book showcases all of Loh's worst traits, the self agrandizment, the self indulgence, the labored "cleverness", I'm just glad I didn't listen to the audio book.