This is a competent, standard article based on the occasion of a survey and augmented with a few expert interviews. As journalism goes, it is journeyman. The Christian Science Monitor can do better, assessing not only that school districts are bracing for belt-tightening but reporting what, precisely, those superintendents are doing about it rather than cutting across the board. One of the chief issues in secondary education as well as higher education is the tremendous cost and upkeep/upgrade for technology, most of which has not been assessed for learning outcomes, from student response systems to virtual worlds. Not that this is the issue in Georgia, a state like Mississippi typically targeted by reporters to show how bad the national picture is, when Georgia is not representative. A better approach would have been to isolate top and bottom districts of states like Vermont or Iowa that typically invest in education. Had the reporter done that, she would have found the same issues plaguing Georgia are ones here in Iowa whose foundation, allegedly, is education (as found in our state quarter).