Teacher apologizing to student in pledge flap
ACLU says Montgomery County middle schooler was humiliated.
High school students recite the Pledge of Allegiance last year. (TWP)
Should 9th graders take AP?
[This is my column for the Local Living section of Feb. 25, 2010.]
My wife and I sometimes got emotionally involved with high school issues when our children attended. High school counts. Parents can get upset. So I paid close attention when two Arlington County mothers contacted me, separately, about a flap over Advanced Placement World History in ninth grade.
“Two Arlington high schools are offering AP World History to freshmen, and one [Yorktown] is refusing to do so, saying freshmen shouldn’t take AP,” one said. The other said, “I’ve gotten mixed responses from teachers, counselors and other parents. Some feel it’s unnecessary pressure at too early an age.” They asked that I not use their names because one works in intelligence and the other is a PTA officer who wants to remain neutral in public.
Being sophisticated Arlingtonians, they understand the puzzling socioeconomic subtext. Yorktown (15 percent of students are low-income) is the high school for the affluent northern part of the county. Washington-Lee (34 percent low-income students) in the middle and Wakefield (48 percent low-income students) in the south have more economically diverse enrollments. You would expect Yorktown to be the most in love with starting college-level AP courses early because of its many families obsessed with getting their children into the likes of Dartmouth, Vanderbilt or U-Va., but no.
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College application videos: Good or bad idea?
Underscoring the fine line between art and reality, the movie “Legally Blonde” seems to have foretold the newest innovation in college admissions: YouTube videos.
In the movie, the rich sorority girl Elle played by Reese Witherspoon submits a video, supposedly directed by Francis Ford Coppola, to Harvard Law School and winds up being accepted.
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DCPS lining up support for Council hearing
School officials are working to make sure they have plenty of friendly voices at the D.C. Council's annual performance oversight hearing on March 15. Testimony at these events tends to become an open-ended infomercial for those unhappy with Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. So Peggy O'Brien, Rhee's family and public engagement chief, is reaching out to those who have had kind words for DCPS and have asked what they can do to help.
"The District of Columbia deserves a more complete picture of the school reform efforts underway," O'Brien writes.
She's even provided talking points: "Test scores and graduation rates are up, facilities have been modernized, our teachers are more qualified, more effective, and better supported, access to technology is system wide, early education is expanding and improving, and programs to address reading and learning problems are proliferating."
And for those who don't have eight or nine hours to spare waiting for a shot at the mike, O'Brien says DCPS will be happy to call with a heads up about an hour in advance of when their turn is likely to come up.
Here's the e-mail in its entirety:
Continue reading this post »Here's the e-mail in its entirety:
