1. "When we heard that this was Bob‘s last show, we said we had to get out here," said Ryan Gagney, 2', of Oakland, Maine.

2. The math scores have generally been on a steady upward trajectory since the early 1''0s, well before the No Child Left Behind law was enacted. In many cases, the cumulative gain has been extraordinary,‘‘ said Kathi King, a math teacher in Oakland, Maine who serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests. It‘s pretty clear that we must be doing something right.‘‘ Jim Rubillo, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, says math teachers are getting more on–the–job training than they used to. Teachers know more about mathematics,‘‘ he said. They know more about how students learn mathematics.‘‘ There also is a widespread belief that it‘s easier for teachers to affect math scores than reading scores, because math is almost entirely a school–based subject while children get varying degrees of exposure to reading at home.