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
Cartoon By Emma Hierholzer ’15
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
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
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
By Julia Gajewski-Nemes ‘15 When most parents have their first child, they feel the need to prove that they can be good at parenting and want to raise the perfect child in order to reflect those parenting abilities. They have the time to read up on the best parenting methods, research which stroller is the safest and buy the best … Read More
By Jack Armstrong ’15 Investing is now fun. That’s because it now requires little effort and doesn’t look anything like traditional investing. And it’s all thanks to a new app called Acorns that automatically monitors linked accounts, rounding up purchases, and investing the change into securely managed Exchange-Traded Funds. In addition to apps like Acorns, once you turn 18 you … Read More
By Morgan Hill ’16 The Maryland State Department of Education requires all students who attend a public high school to earn a technology credit in order to graduate. MCPS offers four classes that satisfy the technology credit requirement: Introduction to Engineering Design, Designing Technology Solutions, Foundations of Technology and Principles of Engineering. Due to the limited number of classes that … Read More
By Madison Dymond ‘16 When it comes to foreign language classes, most students are lazy. They have no real desire or motivation to speak anything other than English, and these classes are treated merely as obligations. Many students study a language for six years and are unable to hold a conversation in that language. They rarely take these classes seriously, … Read More
By Stacey Wells ’15 Americans often strongly voice their opinions about controversial issues, but it would be more beneficial if they would stop overreacting to every little thing. During the NFL Playoffs, McDonalds aired a commercial that depicted different towns and their local McDonald’s signs. The signs contained messages, such as ‘We Remember 9-11,’ ‘Boston Strong’ and even personal messages … Read More