Normal Park Zoning Debate Continues

November 24th, 2011

A discussion about whether to expand the Normal Park school zone again turned into much more at Thursday night’s Hamilton County school board meeting.It brought up old issues from the Hill City debate and new ones since the board decided to let that area attend Normal Park Museum Magnet School. It ended with an emotional presentation from the school’s principal and board member Rhonda Thurman walking out during the meeting.A mother-to-be asked the Hamilton County school board to include 1 Northshore into the Normal Park school zone after Chip Baker proposed it. Baker says it’s only fair because the board agreed to let Hill City students into the magnet school zone at the November 3 meeting. Other board members wanted more information, but Rhonda Thurman wanted to forget the topic altogether.”I am ready to move on,” Thurman told the board. “There are other kids just as important as the ones at Normal Park and the surrounding areas.”But the issue isn’t over. To illustrate the point that the school will soon become overcrowded, Normal Park Principal Jill Levine showed the board real estate listings in Hill City.

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Tags: Debate, Normal Park

Trips Through Phoenix, Paris and Reality

November 23rd, 2011

After months—years, even—of anticipation, graduation has come and gone. The four days of ceremonies, receptions and endless photo sessions with family members have ended, and I am now an alumnus of Georgetown University. The comfort of college life is over and has been replaced by nostalgia and guarded optimism.

Within hours of my graduation, I was already transitioning into an unknown life of fluidity and homelessness. My on-campus housing ended two weeks before I could move in to my summer sublease. This was problematic. Conveniently, I had two trips planned that would provide some semblance of a home. I still had logistical hurdles to overcome, however. I packed up my belongings into several boxes and distributed them among friends who kindly agreed to hold on to them while I traveled.

My first trip was a quick 36-hour visit to Phoenix for my sister’s high school graduation. I arrived late on a Monday night and left Wednesday morning. I would have liked to see my own high school friends, but the timing was simply not amenable to such arrangements. (I wa

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Why We Overeat — An Excerpt from “Neurogastronomy”

November 22nd, 2011

Why do we stuff ourselves at Thanksgiving? The following is an excerpt from Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters, by Gordon Shepherd. In the excerpt Shepherd begins by looking at fast food and then looks at some of the neurological reasons for why we overeat at Thanksgiving and other times of the year.

[F]ast food contains a variety of food types and flavors. This is called the supermarket, smorgasbord, or buffet effect. This idea actually originated with a blind French scientist named Jacque Le Magnen in Paris, who became a legend in research on feeding. In the 1950s he began detailed studies of laboratory rats fed different kinds of diets. He found that on daily lab chow they showed little weight gain, but if he offered them chow with different flavors they quickly began to gain weight. This effect was rediscovered in 1981 by Barbara Rolls and her colleagues at Oxford, who called it sensory-specific satiety, meaning that with one flavor the animal quickly becomes full and bored with eating more, whereas a new flavor stimulates renewed eating.

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Tags: Excerpt, Excerpt “neurogastronomy”

Two Higher Education Companies to Merge

November 18th, 2011

In an announcement last week, two of the leading companies making student management software, SunGard and Datatel, plan to merge their assets. According to an article in The Chronicle for Higher Education, this merger between SunGard and Datatel has the potential to create better management systems for their respective higher education clients. This merger has many in various colleges and universities concerned since both companies offer student record management technologies.

According to the article, these higher education officials do have some reason to be cautious about this upcoming merger. While companies merge frequently, many university officials fear that this merger may not be in the best interest of the universities.  After Blackboard bought out several of its competition, the products and services those companies offered were phased out several years after the merger. Both companies have assured these school officials that no product line or service will be eliminated. Th

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Tags: Merge

Owen Glenn: Forget the sound-bite circuses

November 16th, 2011

One of New Zealand’s most critical elections is just over a week away. How you vote will make a world of difference to this country’s future and fortunes.

Forget the rhetoric, the sound-bite circuses and the outlandish claims masquerading as policy. Focus on the real state of this nation and the unique set of problems that must be carefully managed.

As New Zealanders we may need to put aside historical reasons for voting and give the best available team the mandate to get a complex job done. Who you don’t vote for becomes incredibly important.

According to recent polls 3.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent of voters (margin of error aside) think a vote for Winston Peters would benefit New Zealand. If this truly is the case rather than a polling blip I implore these people to think again.

His credibility is bankrupt and he doesn’t rate the empowerment that voting for him would allow. How can we trust someone who also continues to want to rewrite history solely for his own gain?

So who is equipped to lead the country?

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Tags: Forget, Forget Soundbite

Colleges Need To Give High Schools Feedback On College Readiness

November 12th, 2011

Anne Hyslop :Education Sector

Today, there is a growing agreement that students should leave high school college- and career-ready. But what does that mean? And how can high schools tell if they are meeting the goal? Data That Matters: Giving High Schools Useful Feedback on Grads Outcomes offers new research on states efforts to use career and college outcomes data.

 

First, the paper makes an important distinction between indicators of college readiness and actual evidence of readiness. High school data should include both. Indicators of college readiness are things that are measured while students are in high school, such as ACT or SAT scores, completion of AP or International Baccalaureate programs, completion of dual enrollment courses, graduation rates, and the like. These indicators are the ones most often reported as measures of college readiness because they are generally controlled by high schools and don’t require linking to postsecondary data. Ev

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Tags: College, High Schools