June 20th, 2011
by Marie
This year ten schools from across the Commonwealth have been rated a spot in Newsweek’s top 500 best high schools: Boston Latin (63), Hopkinton (95); Belmont (110); Mystic Valley Regional Charter, Malden (116); Westwood (134); Manchester/Essex Regional (138); Longmeadow (241); Sturgis Charter, Hyannis (301); Tahanto Regional, Boylston (449); Sandwich (484) and University Park Campus, Worcester (495).
There are a number of lists of top high schools and many ways to arrive at these rankings. Newsweek has been ranking high schools as “best” for many years now but this year the magazine has employed a different approach.
NEWSWEEK, which has been ranking the top public high schools in America for more than a decade, revamped its methodology this year in hopes of highlighting solutions. We enlisted a panel of experts—Wendy Kopp of Teach For America, Tom Vander Ark of Open Education Solutions (formerly executive director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), and Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford professor of education and founder of the School Redesign Network—to develop a yardstick that fully reflects a school’s success turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students. To this end, each school’s score is comprised of six components: graduation rate (25%), college matriculation rate (25%), AP tests taken per graduate (25%), average SAT/ACT scores (10%), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10%), and AP courses offered (5%).
Read the full article and list here at newsweek.com.
Education | 
3 Comments »
June 20th, 2011
by Marie
In his most recent column for the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne posits that the wide-spread state laws ostensibly enacted to combat voter fraud are really an attack on the right to vote. Claiming that study after study found no major voter fraud problems, Dionne sees that : “Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.”
His advice to deal with the impact of these laws: “The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.” To get more on Dionne’s take on these new election laws, read his column here at PostOpinions.
Education, History, Politics | 10 Comments »
June 20th, 2011
by DickH
The Acre in the foreground. Smokestacks and the Eliot Church steeple in the background. —by Tony Sampas
Lowell | No Comments »
June 20th, 2011
by DickH
In advance of the upcoming release of “The Fighter” on DVD in the United Kingdom, two English tabloids sent reporters to Lowell about a month ago to write about the city that was central to the film’s story and production. Deb Belanger of the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitor’s Bureau organized and led the trip, and she invited me to join them for a portion of it to provide any Lowell-history background info that might be needed. We made stops at Cupples Square, the Smith Street “crack house”, the Tsongas Center, Top Donut, the Superior Court, the West End Gym and a number of other spots where scenes of the movie had been filmed.
Yesterday’s edition of The News of the World carried a story about “The Fighter” and the reporter’s experience sparring at Arthur Ramalho’s West End Gym. The city of Lowell comes across pretty well as does Boston, which is where the reporter stayed. Here’s the full story.
Current Events, Lowell | No Comments »
June 20th, 2011
by PaulM
Poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder returned to his alma mater Reed College for the school’s centennial. He was profiled recently by Jeff Baker of The Oregonian newspaper for oregonlive.com. Snyder was one of my poet-heroes when I started out on the writing trail. He’s 81 years old and still traveling and talking about writing, living in balance with the Earth, and much more. Snyder is the life-model for the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel “The Dharma Bums,” which popularized the study of Zen Buddhism and a back-to-the-land mindset that flowered in the 1960s.
He’s someone we should try to host in Lowell while he is still accepting invitations to travel. I think he would appreciate the sustainable city ethic taking hold in Lowell and which is exemplified on a macro scale by the 40-year process of recycling the city as a whole through preservation of buildings, adaptive reuse of structures, restoration of environmental health to the rivers, improvement of green spaces and tree stock, and our multi-faceted cultural revival.
Culture, Education, History, Lowell, Poetry | No Comments »
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