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Fri, 22 Aug 2008
One of the funny things about democracy, you never know what's going to take off. The Department of Education began encouraging schools to form "School Improvement Teams" (SITs) some years ago. I haven't managed to speak to anyone who knows exactly when and why they were invented, but the idea is to get parents, teachers, administrators and people from the community together to present reform ideas to principals and school committees. In practice, I gather that few of them have an independent existence and largely serve to ratify decisions made by others.
But look what happened. Four energetic members of the SIT at Exeter/West Greenwich High School have become quite concerned about the proposed graduation requirements, and have formed a statewide SIT coalition to air those concerns and communicate them to the Board of Regents more effectively. They've already had one meeting, attended by dozens of people from SITs from all over the state. They're having another on Tuesday August 26, from 5-7pm at the Exeter-West Greenwich High School, 930 Nooseneck Hill Road (Rt 3) in West Greenwich. If you're part of a SIT, you're invited. If you're not, you're invited, too, though maybe you should consider joining one.
13:55 - 22 Aug 2008 [/y8/cols] link
What does a high school diploma mean?
If, like me, you have a high school student in the house, you probably know about the new requirements for high school graduation. Adopted in 2003, the first class to satisfy them (mostly) has just graduated.
The requirements are interesting. There is a requirement for a certain amount of course work, and also a requirement for a "project" that involves a great deal of individualized attention and instruction. Students are expected to think of something good to do, to do it in some depth, and to report on it with a paper or presentation. At my daughter's school, she tells me that one boy, a drummer, composed a piece of music for nine xylophones and another converted an old car to use biodiesel. Others arranged internships with a variety of local businesses. The idea is to acquaint the students with pursuing something deeply, while also allowing them to follow their own interests.
But those aren't the only parts of our graduation requirements. Seniors are also required to have taken the NECAP tests, a standardized test administered in the fall of junior year. This is kind of a curious requirement, since the test was designed to be an assessment tool for an entire school, not an individual student.
The problem with the NECAP tests is a suspicion among people on the Board of Regents that lots of students don't take it seriously enough. So it was added to the new graduation requirements, though at a low enough level that flunking the test won't deny anyone a diploma by itself. It's an odd reason to add this as a graduation requirement, but it's an odd world, isn't it?
13:54 - 22 Aug 2008 [/y8/cols] link
For interested readers who want to know more about transit before government subsidies. That is, in the days before government transit subsidies, there were private transit subsidies.
A 1955 Time magazine article tells the story of what happened to the DC trolleys after the 1935 Public Utilities Holding Company act of Congress forced electric companies to divest themselves of the trolley lines they had operated as loss leaders. Essentially, investors bought the company in order to loot it of its cash holdings, not to run it at a profit, because it didn't make a profit.
A wikipedia article describes how the Pacific Electric Railway was always pretty much a loss leader for Henry Huntington's suburban real estate development interests.
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