Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

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We have with us today, Jay Matthews. He is one of the most prominent education journalists in the

country and has been actually for a few decades now. I won't say too much about his biography.

He may do a little of that in our discussion.

He had an article in Education Next,

recently entitled What I Learned in 23 years,

Ranking America's Most Challenging High Schools.

And that is our topic today.

Welcome, Jay.

Hi, Mark. Thank you.

All right.

Well, first, we have the Challenge Index rankings.

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