Students, parents sing same tune

Hey, kids. You know that song you’ve been singing the past few days, “School’s out for summer”?

Well, your parents used to sing the same song every June (your teachers probably still do). It was recorded by a guy who called himself Alice Cooper and wore mascara (your grandparents didn’t approve). He still performs, though he’s nearly as ancient as Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger.

So, parents and kids together: “Out for summer/Out till fall/We might not go back at all/School’s out forever/School’s out for summer/School’s out with fever/School’s out completely.”

Lost from the crowd

Washington state’s class of ‘08 lost 156 students every day during high school.

There were 89,781 Washington kids who started their freshman year together, and 61,178 are graduating this year, according to numbers from the research arm for the nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes the trade journal Education Week.

Those aren’t numbers you’ll likely see from the state (though figures aren’t yet available for the class of ‘08).

Ed Week contends that 49 of the 50 states underestimate their drop-out rates – by 10 percent in Washington and as much as 30 percent in New Mexico. Alaska was the lone exception.

Talking about you- know-what

As the Valley Voice reported last week, Central Valley School District must rethink the way it teaches s-e-x. A change in state law says that districts like CV that have been teaching an abstinence-only curriculum must add lessons about “safe sex,” like the use of condoms.

For those who were wondering what that portends for Eastern Washington’s biggest school district, the answer is, very little.

Spokane Public Schools already teaches comprehensive sex ed under its “human growth and development” curriculum, said district spokeswoman Kristy Mylroie. So, while officials are checking to make sure it meets the letter of the new law, “there won’t be any huge changes.”

Acronym of the week

This week’s acronym, selected from a list compiled by the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, is ERIC.

We at the Voice immediately thought of rocker Eric Clapton.

But then we did some research and found that ERIC stands for the Education Resources Information Center, operated by the U.S. Department of Education. The center, found at www.eric.ed.gov, bills itself as “the world’s largest digital library of education literature,” with 1.2 million bibliographic records.

For instance, type in the word “chalk,” and you’ll get a list of 172 scholarly papers with “chalk” as one of its keywords. You can look at an abstract for each, and ERIC tells you how to get the full report.