New Superintendent Should Listen to Students

What issues should be highlighted next year? How can the new superintendent incorporate student voices more effectively? What can the new superintendent learn from Starr? MCPS Superintendent Joshua Starr announced his resignation after having served three-and-a-half years. While Starr may have had his detractors, there is no doubt that he had to deal with a lot of issues. If the … Read More

Pizza Handouts for Poor

By Meagan Barrett ‘15 In Philadelphia, a former Wall Street worker has left his wealthy life behind to start a pizza restaurant called Rosa’s. Aside from having unusually low prices (1 slice is only 1 dollar), Rosa’s has become famous for feeding the homeless. Because the prices are so low, it’s an option for people to buy a second piece, … Read More

Field Trip Fuss

By Steven Witkin ‘16 It is the same routine every time. You get a field trip form and have to go around to every teacher to get their signature as some sort of approval. The official purpose of this seems to be so that the teachers know in advance when a student is out for a field trip, but many … Read More

An Emoji for Everyone

By Maya Koeppen ‘17 Over the years, everyone’s favorite personality emoticons have been criticized for being too limited in terms of choices. Apple offers a wide variety of Caucasian skin tone emojis, ranging from two girls dancing to a small family, but no other races. The only racial emojis include a dark skinned emoji with a supposedly religious headdress and … Read More

Put Tests in PARCC

By Stacey Wells ’15 As many individuals recognize, our country needs a major renovation of its educational system. Unfortunately, the higher powers seem to believe that more testing will solve everything. The federal government has been pushing for an increase in testing for years and it has finally begun in MCPS. The PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of College and Careers) … Read More

College Rankings Shouldn’t Be Only Factor

How influential should college rankings be? How should students use information from college ranking websites? Should the government create their own ranking system? In December of 2014, President Obama released information about the Department of Education’s plans to publish a new college ratings system by the fall of 2015 to help students compare the quality of different colleges. The plan … Read More

Ethnic Names Can Prove Challenging For Teachers

By Ankur Kayastha ‘15 Ethnic names are seen all over classrooms in the United States, so it may not come to be a surprise that there may be inherent bias when teachers tend to call on easier-sounding names like ‘David’ than, for example, my name, ‘Ankur’ (un-koor). Originating from western India, my name has proved difficult to pronounce for nearly … Read More

Marijuana Legalization Poses New Danger

By Christopher Sung ‘17 The 50 United States are often times called the “laboratories of democracy.” Although this expression was meant to highlight the innovative structure of American government, it also points out an important fact that not all political experiments work and that many fail quite destructively. In the case of failure, it is often times hoped that any such … Read More