The data displayed in ranking tables imply that if only the leaders of a particular school would offer more AP classes, improve student-teacher ratios or raise test scores, then theirs could be among the “best” schools. This simplicity is appealing: It implies a clear silver bullet for school improvement. It also paints a picture of schooling that is divorced from reality.
Judith Meyer
Judith Meyer is executive editor of the Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal, the Morning Sentinel and the Western Maine weekly newspapers of the Sun Media Group. She serves as vice president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition and is a member of the Right to Know Advisory Committee to the Legislature. A journalist since 1990 and former editorial page editor for the Sun Journal, she was named Maine’s Journalist of the Year in 2003. She serves on the New England Newspaper & Press Association Board of Directors and was the 2018 recipient of the Judith Vance Weld Brown Spirit of Journalism Award by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. A fellow of the National Press Foundation and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, she attended George Washington University, lives in Auburn with her husband, Phil, and is an active member of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.
Posted inOp-Eds
Everywhere we go, we leave a trail of trash. Here’s what you can do to help.
Inspired by San José State University student Edgar McGregor’s work and his Twitter presence, people from all over the world have begun to pick up a bag or bucket in his honor.
advertisement
Posted inOpinion, Our View
A ‘No’ vote will bring cleaner air, revenue to Maine
The politics of this project must not override the positives, and the promises and concessions made by NECEC must not wither. Vote “No” and hold NECEC accountable for every word and deed.
Posted inNews, Oxford Hills
Paris Town Office closed after COVID-19 outbreak
PARIS — Town Manager Dawn Noyes said the Town Office closed Wednesday because several employees have COVID-19. The office will be cleaned and is expected to reopen Tuesday. An outbreak is defined as three or more people contracting the virus. Noyes said there are more than three people in the office who are sick.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Who deserves a religious exemption from vaccine mandates? It’s hard to say.
Complicating matters is that most faiths do not oppose vaccines. Pope Francis has called immunization against the coronavirus “a simple yet profound way to care for one another,” for example. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, objected to vaccines but said Christian Scientists should get them, where required. (A believer should “obey the law, and then appeal to the gospel to save him from bad physical results.”)
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Sending us to fight fires was abusive. We preferred it to staying in prison.
I appreciate the collective efforts and concern on behalf of incarcerated firefighters. But they fail to take into account the hundreds of thousands of people in jails and prisons across America in conditions so terrible as to make fire camps seem like country clubs. Places where people are forced to choose between working for nothing and losing their humanity.
Posted inNews, Oxford Hills
Two die last week from injuries suffered in Paris crash
Bryant Pond man, 32, dies in crash on Park Street, and Sumner man, 77, dies soon after at Norway hospital.
Posted inOp-Eds
Fall foliage flopping: How climate change is dulling and delaying your leaf peeping
Predictive maps based on historical and current weather data show peak season will occur in mid- to late October over much of the eastern U.S. this year, but climate change is expected to keep nudging these dates backward in the coming decades. Through the Second Century Stewardship Foundation, Stephanie Spera, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond, is analyzing fall foliage changes at Acadia National Park on Maine’s Mount Desert Island.
Posted inOp-Eds
America’s 50,000 monuments: More mermaids than congresswomen, more Confederates than abolitionists
Of the 50 historical figures most frequently honored with a monument, only three were women: Joan of Arc, Sacagawea and Harriet Tubman. Tubman, the only one of the three who would have called herself American, was born enslaved and was not considered a citizen until she was in her 40s.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
The climate crisis is spawning weird ideas to fix it. They might be all we have.
A team led by Jan Langbein, an animal psychologist at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany, has proposed training cows to use a toilet. In a recent study published in the journal Cell, 10 out of 16 calves were successfully trained to urinate in a “MooLoo,” a designated area of their pens.