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We conclude our series with New Hampshire commissioners with Education Department chief Lyonel Tracy. We’ll talk with him about the struggle over federal standards, the dropout rate and what role he thinks his department should play in the state’s ongoing school funding debate.

New Hampshire's law requiring abortion practitioners to notify the parents of a teenager seeking an abortion 48 hours before it can be done was put into law in 2003 and has been in the court system ever since, under a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. With a Democratically-controlled legislature in New Hampshire now, opponents of the parental notification law are hoping that the time is right to have it repealed and have filed legislation to do so. We'll look at the parental notification Law, the arguments for and against it and what might happen with the repeal in the new session. Laura's guests are Republican State Representative Liz Hager of Concord, prime sponsor of the legislation to repeal the law and Phyllis Woods, former Republican State Representative from Dover and sponsor of the original parental notification legislation.

When President Bush delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he is expected to drop the traditional laundry list of programs and initiatives and instead focus on a few key areas where he and the Democratically-controlled Congress may agree. Among the topics to be discussed; healthcare, the environment, education and of course, the war in Iraq. We'll have post-speech analysis on what the President said and didn't say as well as how much the war in Iraq and the fight on terrorism colored the speech. Laura's guests are Dean Spiliotes, Director of Research for the Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College; Tom Rath, Republican Party National Committeeman for New Hampshire and longtime Republican analyst and consultant and Ricia McMahon, State Representative from Sutton and Newbury, former Democratic State Party Executive Director and State Director for Bill Clinton's 1992 New Hampshire general election campaign.

We play back for you the latest in our “Writers on a New England Stage” series, with Diamant on her new book “The Last Days of Dogtown”. It’s historical fiction set in post-colonial Massachussetts, an account of a real community that slowly died out. The show is an edited-for-broadcast version of last Thursday night's event at the Music Hall in Portsmouth.

The story of a severely mentally and physically disabled Seattle girl known only as Ashley has rippled through the public conscience in recent weeks. Ashley's parents had a group of procedures they call "The Ashley Treatment" performed on the child to stunt her growth and remove her breast tissue and uterus so that she could be at a small enough size to allow her to continue to be part of the family. They say it is for her good so that she can be loved and cuddled and cared for, but others say it is just a matter of convenience for the parents, who would have a hard time dealing with a larger disabled child. Either way, this particular case has raised the discussion on where the line is with genetic alteration, what is acceptable, what is not, when it is for convenience and when it is for the health of the child. Today on The Exchange, we discuss the many medical and ethical questions raised by this case and get your thoughts as well.

Laura's guests are Dr. Sam Casella, Section Chief for Pediatric Endocrinology at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School and Dr. Carl Cooley, Medical Director for Crotched Mountain, Developmental Pediatrician and Former Director of the Dartmouth Center for Genetics and Child Development.