Use remainder of summer break prudently
As of today, Spokane kids have 47 summer vacation days left. Here are some suggestions for using that time wisely:
Learn: To parallel park, play cribbage, do a cannonball.
Ride: A bike, a bus.
Read: The comics.
Write: Letters to relatives, poetry, in a journal.
Sleep: In the backyard.
Adopt: An older neighbor.
Grow: Pumpkins.
Don’t think about: The first Tuesday in September.
Shades of brown
An Education Week analysis of high-school graduation rates in every congressional district shows no distinction between Eastern Washington and North Idaho.
The trade magazine map showed Washington’s 5th Congressional District shaded tan, meaning the graduation rate in the state’s 12 easternmost counties averages somewhere between 66 percent and 78 percent. Most other Washington congressional districts also were shaded tan.
The exceptions are the 3rd (southwestern Washington), 6th (Olympic Peninsula) and 9th (Tacoma area), all of which were shaded green, meaning 56 to 65 percent of residents graduate from high school – the lowest in the Northwest.
Idaho’s 1st congressional district (which includes the Panhandle) also is tan on the map, while the state’s only other district is shaded chocolate brown, indicating higher graduation rates. That means the trade journal determined that people in Boise and eastern Idaho are more likely to graduate high school than those from any other congressional district in Idaho or Washington.
Montana is one of eight mostly-rural states that are shown entirely in chocolate brown.
The best-rated congressional districts are a darker brown that you won’t see on the map anywhere west of Iowa or south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Acronym of the week
Question: Which of the following is the correct definition of SAT?
A. Scholastic Assessment Test
B. Scholastic Achievement Test
C. Scholastic Aptitude Test.
The correct answer is no longer any of the above, although each is listed on the state’s online list of education acronyms.
The test that has become a rite of passage for generations of would-be college students was called the Scholastic Aptitude test when first offered in 1926.
Sources vary on whether either of those other names was ever officially used. But over the years, it became known simply as the SAT, a trademark that’s registered with the nonprofit College Board.
In 2005, the College Board changed the official name to SAT Reasoning Test. (Which is redundant, given that the “T” already stood for “test.”)
There also are SAT Subject Tests, which measure students’ knowledge in specific subject areas and are taken by far fewer people.
Number of the Week
49 – percent of college freshmen in 2005 who had earned straight-A’s in high school, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares to 20 percent back in 1970.
Another big change: Seventy-nine percent of those 1970 freshmen listed “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” as an important personal objective.
By 2005, three-quarters of college freshmen said their primary objective was “being very well-off financially.”