The Last Ephor

Forced to Pick a Major in High School . When I was in high school (just after the Earth cooled) Dwight Morrow was in the next town over. It's in a town that used to be very wealthy and largely white. Sometime around the late 60's to mid 70's integration efforts hit the tipping point and "white flight" began. Now the area is largely minorities with pockets of it's wealthy white residents hither and yon. Dwight Morrow itself looks like a private school. Beautiful campus and granite buildings with green lawns in between. It could pass for a small college. In my day (I sound like Abe Simpson), the school was rife with racial strife, violence, gangs, drugs and plummeting test scores. The year I graduated high school, the police were called to the school 26 times. One school dance ended with a student stabbed and a near riot. We played them in soccer and the games were so contentious the police would come to every game. It started my sophmore year when we...

I rarely cover local topics but this one piqued my interest. Christina to lay off 97 employees. Combine that with: Christina's Wise abused credit card use, auditor finds Well, Mr. Wise's abuse could have paid for two annual salaries. If I were The Decider here. Mr. Wise would have his wages garnished and any discretionary spending of his over $100 would require auditor approval. It's stories like this that lead me to believe that the staff layoffs wouldn't be necessary if the amount of waste, fraud and abuse were reduced. Certainly there are some staffers that may not be required but that's a careful line to walk. Here's the other problem and one which is personal for me. Those staffers who are experienced get first shot at any open jobs in the district. Sounds good, right? The problem is that a number of them are taking jobs at Delaware Autism Program. They have neither the ability or the desire to work with autistic kids. That is a very, very narrow s...

Charles Murray is a genius. (Genius here is defined as "he agrees with me so he must be really smart.") This is part II of III. Murray is the author of "The Bell Curve" which was roundly criticized as being racist when it came out. His work was subsequently confirmed by peer research. Murray notes that he hoped to spark a re-evaluation of intelligence and education and how the two are related. We've seen the progression of a procrustean system for students of all abilities. I doubt anyone thinks this is a good idea but nobody is willing to take the slings and arrows that accompany discriminating between student abilities. Imagine the uproar that would ensue if the principal told 20% of the students at A.I. DuPont that they would be directed to vocational education classes. He'd be out of a job faster than Christine O'Donnell at NARAL. I can't speak for Delaware schools (or even public schools in the last 15 years) but when I was in HS they we...