June 29, 2004

Left Back, Not Behind

The NYT reported on Sunday that 9,000 city students’ failure to pass new third-grade exit exams was followed by a massive parent volunteer effort aimed at raising student scores over the summer.

Digna Sanchez of Learning Leaders offered this quixotic nugget: “It’s the first time we’ve had a summer initiative of this kind,” Sanchez said, “Clearly, the end of so-called social promotion for third graders is a controversial issue.”

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Parents must be volunteering to express disapproval of the law, not to help children learn to read or anything.

Posted by Marie Gryphon at June 29, 2004 | Comments (1)

June 27, 2004

Acrimony Academy

Does it surprise anyone that this little dust-up occurred at the High School of Legal Studies? It’s good to see both teachers and students leading by example.

Come on, you know you love us. Litigators are so warm and fuzzy!

Posted by Marie Gryphon at June 27, 2004 | Comments (0)

June 25, 2004

Moore is Less

I was planning to comment on Christopher Hitchens’ enviably eloquent take-down of Fahrenheit 9/11 when Kyle beat me to it. Too few coherent essays are both stylistically over the top and substantively below the belt. Hitchens gets extra credit for using the word “lugubrious” in a sentence.

Posted by Marie Gryphon at June 25, 2004 | Comments (1)

June 24, 2004

Validation

"You would be a very good lawyer."

- fortune cookie at Tony Cheng's


Posted by Marie Gryphon at June 24, 2004 | Comments (2)