Graduation exams raise special-needs concerns
Washington Times
State schools superintendent calls critics' fears overblown
HARWOOD, Md. | Maryland will this year become the 24th state to require an exit exam for graduation. As the state has slowly phased in its tests, known as the High School Assessments, the national debate continues about them in part because the federal No Child Left Behind law punishes schools that fail to raise test scores.
How NCLB Ignored the Elephant in America's Classroom -- POVERTY
by Jim Trelease
As politician after politician and CEO after CEO have pontificated for 20 years about what is wrong in American schools, all the while offering simple-minded solutions (higher expectations girded by more high-stakes testing), nearly all have ignored the great elephant in the classroom: poverty. Their behavior said, "If we pretend it isn't there, either it will go away or cease to exist." The inherent suggestion in NCLB is that all of that will go away if we just expect more of our teachers and students. That is an insult to both of them and it diminishes the enormity of the problem while doing nothing to solve it.
Under 'No Child' Law, Even Solid Schools Falter
New York Times
By SAM DILLON
Fawzia Keval, the principal of Prairie Elementary in Sacramento, which had not missed a testing target since the No Child Left Behind law took effect. "I'm spending sleepless nights," she said. Required to make a gigantic leap in improving students' test scores, many previously successful schools in California have been sinking.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
From today's Phila. Inquirer. As I was reading it, I couldn't help but think about the parallels in Morrisville.
Chris Satullo: A civics lesson from the Phils
By Chris Satullo
Inquirer Columnist
The Phillies (bless them, their children and their children's children) have done their part to lift The Curse.
Now, it's up to the rest of us to do the harder part.
The Curse has never just been about dropped passes, missed free throws, strikeouts with a man on third, or pucks through the five hole.
Those 25 years without a parade - which ended so gloriously, raucously and sunnily yesterday - hurt so much because they were an emblem of deeper woes.
In a place like, say, Seattle, the teams haven't won anything for a long time either, but folks there don't treat it as a bleeding civic wound.
Here, it hurt so much because, deep down, we feared we really were a city of losers.
Well, guess what? We're not. We never were. What the Phils have done, praise the Lord, is to rip the scales off our eyes. Our world champion baseball team is far from the only thing in this town that is world-class.
Maybe the Fightin's can teach us all how to expect, recognize and cheer success as ardently as we have feared and booed defeat.
For too long, we've been a city, a region, that no longer grasped the the storied wisdom of Tug McGraw: Ya gotta believe. Our response: Yeah, right. Who you kiddin'?
Just like a losing team that never advances the runner or turns the double play, we've been stuck in bad habits of nursing grievance, stifling hope and expecting trouble.
Particularly for lifelong residents, this stems from too many years of being buffeted by global winds, from too many betrayals by those elected to serve, from having to fight so desperately just to keep their block decent and their children safe.
Somewhere, for so many, all that congealed into a sour, cynical negativity. Sometimes, listening to us grouse, we sound like the Can't-Do Capital of the Universe.
I'm not a native. I've been here only 19 years - a total newbie. But here's the thing: Like thousands of others who've moved here and fallen in love, I get exasperated with our Loserville habits.
I've had plenty of chances to leave Philly. I never have, don't expect I ever will. There's no city on planet Earth where I'd rather live, no place that can match its savory mixture of beauty and grit, soul and scruff, history and histrionics.
And let me tell you: When the city is splashed in sun and wears a grin, the way it did yesterday, there's nothing like Philadelphia.
We have plenty of civic winners among us, extraordinary people who dream and do, then do some more. But we have this way of making them pedal uphill, against the drag of our nay-saying. We load them down with a weight of quarrels and quibbles; if they get too much momentum, we poke a stick in their spokes.
Tell you what. Let's not do that anymore. Let's cheer on and support our civic heroes - the Mary Scullions, Jane Goldens, Lily Yehs, Jeremy Nowaks and Lorene Carys - the same way we do Chase and Ryan and Jimmy.
In the last few days, I've heard so many say that when Brad Lidge's knees hit the turf at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday night, as Ryan Howard raced toward him like a joyous locomotive, they couldn't quite believe it. They didn't know how to behave.
They'd been so busy waiting for the deluge, bracing for the pain, expecting that one broken-bat single off Lidge in the ninth to lead, in some brutal, fated way, to another broken heart.
But, today, our hearts are full, not shattered. It feels outstanding, but a bit weird. For so long, we've located our pride in how much pain we can handle, how much disappointment we can shoulder.
That's something Philadelphians should never lose, their glorious stubbornness, their willingness to show up and work hard no matter the odds. The difference now, maybe, is that we can start believing that all our hanging in, our refusal to quit, will be rewarded by something grand - not just by a new load of pain that we're perversely proud to bear.
We've been stubborn to endure. Now, let's work on being stubborn to excel.
This championship isn't once and done. It's time for a civic winning streak.
Also from today's Phila. Inquirer. Sounds like Morrisville has some faded infrastructure like this, as witnessed by the collapsed storm drain they're a-diggin' for down by the most chunky, plasticky, metallic former leaf dump I've ever seen. I've heard of rubber trees, but who knew there were concrete trees, brick trees, plastic garbage bag trees, rolled-up old carpet trees, car grill trees, rusted twisted metal trees, etc.? All deposited there before there were any substantial regulations over that sort of activity.
When the Boro's done doin' what it's doin', does its environmental obligation end at just pushin' this junk back into the whole, tampin' it down, and walkin' away? Say it ain't so! That's essentially parkland, innit? Children and the elderly alike play there, or is that only evoked to stop development projects there?
Beneath the surface, sewer systems fading fast
By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer
Deep under the streets of Abington, terra-cotta pipes more than a half-century old carry the sewage.
Most of the time.
When it rains, water pours in through cracks, threatening to swamp the system.
In Falls Township, Bucks County, officials figure that the two-decades-old water meters are limping along, reading low. The cost to replace them: $2.5 million.
As for trouble spots in Delaware County, Joe Salvucci, executive director of the Regional Water Quality Control Authority (Delcora), deadpans, "Where would you like me to start?"
Throughout the region and the nation, the water and sewer infrastructure is aging. The question is how to fund repairs and upgrades to meet new, stringent standards.
On Tuesday, Pennsylvanians will vote in a referendum on $400 million in grants and loans.
The price tag statewide has been estimated at $36.5 billion over the next 20 years, according to a state report released yesterday. With operation, maintenance and debt service added, the cost balloons to $113.6 billion.
"This is about making sure our streams and rivers are not polluted with raw sewage, about making sure the tap water we rely on is safe," said John Hanger, acting secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
"Unfortunately, right now we have too much raw sewage going into rivers," he said. "In some cases, and I'm only slightly exaggerating, the pipes leak more water than they carry."
Hanger said the $400 million would also provide 12,000 construction, engineering and other jobs.
DEP officials were reluctant to single out any of Southeastern Pennsylvania's 127 community sewage treatment facilities and 208 community drinking water systems.
"It's not one or two systems; it's across the board," said Jenifer Fields, water program director at the DEP southeastern office. "We're at this point where so much is failing."
Consider a pipe Salvucci refers to as the "Chester force main," an aged 42-inch line just under three miles long.
Replacing it would cost $30 million. If they don't hit rock.
The cost of such projects long was borne by the federal government. But now it is more the states' responsibility.
In New Jersey - where officials say $21 billion is needed for waste- and drinking-water upgrades - the state Environmental Infrastructure Trust on Thursday announced the sale of $128 million in bonds to help finance 67 projects worth more than $300 million.
In Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, smaller boroughs may be hit hardest, said Edward Troxell, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs.
Many have some of the oldest infrastructure, compounded by limited funds due to a declining tax base.
On top of that, many water plants must deal with new contaminants, such as trace amounts of pharmaceuticals.
"It's like keeping an old car running," said John Brosious, deputy director of the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association. "You're replacing so many pieces and parts, and all of a sudden you need a catalytic converter."
Often the problem isn't so much that water leaks out of the system but that it seeps in.
With every significant rainfall, water pours into pipes through cracks and seams.
Delcora officials know how much water its customers buy. And it's only 40 percent of the flow coming into the treatment plants.
In most suburban communities, stormwater systems are separate. But in Philadelphia, where some pipes date back 120 years, the system handles both sewage and stormwater.
Sewers have backed up into basements, leaving a slick of raw sewage and toilet paper.
In downpours, pipes fill quickly, and water may gush from 180 overflow points into the Schuylkill and Delaware River.
Other cities are spending billions to build tunnels and tanks to hold stormwater until it can be treated.
But here, it would take something the size of Citizens Bank Park, said Howard Neukrug, director of the city Water Department's office of watersheds. So officials plan to incorporate green technologies, such as porous pavement and rain gardens.
"In the end, it's still going to cost a lot of money," he said. "Billions of dollars."
What opposition there is to the ballot question is not about the need, but the funding.
In July, the legislature passed an $800 million infrastructure measure, to be paid with gaming revenues.
The state couldn't get more, said Sen. John C. Rafferty Jr. (R., Montgomery). So Tuesday's question adds $400 million.
But Matthew Brouillette, of the conservative nonprofit Commonwealth Foundation, said it was merely a way to get around the state's debt cap:
"To put it in layman's terms, they have come close to maxing out their credit-card limit, and they have put this on a different credit card."
Others, while supporting the ballot question, have concerns that it could foster sprawl if money is used to expand sewer lines to undeveloped areas.
"We'll be watching to make sure that doesn't happen," said Bob Wendelgass of the nonprofit Clean Water Action.
One of the region's poster streams could well be the Wissahickon Creek. Its headwaters are in the parking lot of Montgomery Mall, and water quality goes downhill from there.
Five aging sewage-treatment plants drain into it. During dry summer months, officials estimate that the stream flow, which eventually swirls by a Philadelphia drinking water intake, is 95 percent treated effluent.
Although there are exceptions - two years ago, a hard rain and power outage at the Ambler plant sent 55,000 gallons of raw sewage into the creek - the plants operate in compliance with their permits, Wendelgass said.
"The problem is the collective discharge has caused the stream to be degraded," he said.
He said meeting new standards would be "painful."
Abington, for instance, is already spending $11 million - paid for with a 15-year bond - for an upgrade to a plant built in 1947.
Ambler Mayor Mary Aversa said that with new regulations, the borough could have to replace its entire facility at a cost of $60 million, under the worst-case scenario.
For the last five years, Ambler has spent upward of $200,000 a year for the most urgent repairs to piping that serves about 6,000 customers. "That's just the tip of it," Aversa said.
As for the water system, new development may force Ambler to build larger mains to avoid a scenario like the Aug. 13 apartment building fire in Conshohocken.
When water pressure in hydrants dropped, firefighters had to draw water from the Schuylkill.
"The more we put off these upgrades, the more expensive it's going to become," said Patty Elkis of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
Tires. Tires. How could I forget tires? I saw several of them in the former leaf dump debris pile/pit too.
My guess is that because it appears to be on Bridge Commission property, the Boro has neither jurisdiction nor leverage to get it cleaned-up or stabilized. And it will stay that way for a long, long time.
I would surmise that the Bridge Commission is pretty cheesed off at the Boro over the Gateway Project fiasco, and would think twice, thrice, and many more times before even thinking about making a development deal with Morrisville.
Too bad, because a project like Gateway not only could have brought an attractive tax ratable to town, but perhaps also could have been used to leverage the developer to clean-up or stabilize the obviously dumped-on land.
So, good luck, find that storm drain, throw that junk back in the hole, stomp it down, and walk away.
Post a Comment