Word: districts
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...grade grubbers go the spoils. And the grade grubbers in this case are rabble-rousing parents in Virginia's Fairfax County. Residents of the high-powered Washington suburb have been battling the school district's tough grading practices; chief among their complaints is that a score of 93% gets recorded as a lowly B+. After forming an official protest group called Fairgrade last year and goading the school board into voting on whether to ease the standards, parents marshaled 10,000 signatures online and on Jan. 22 gathered nearly 500 supporters to help plead their case. After two hours...
...Fairfax was never considering anything that drastic, but in response to parents' complaints, the superintendent in April launched a study on how the district's grading system affects students. (Fairgrade, initially a co-sponsor of the study, jumped ship in December when its members disagreed with how the school board characterized the results.) Based on the findings released in early January - which showed that changing the scale would slightly boost GPAs but was inconclusive about whether it would help students get into better colleges - the school board on Jan. 22 agreed to start using a higher premium for tough courses...
...vote is good news for local business leaders who have joined the Fairgrade effort, warning that families worried about their kids getting into good colleges may move out of the county if the school district doesn't change its grading system. Talk of a possible exodus killing off businesses and destroying property values sounds a tad melodramatic, but given the tanking market and ongoing credit crunch, it's no wonder people are trying to do everything they can to shore up the local economy. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
...Opponents of Fairgrade counter that any move perceived as encouraging grade inflation could tarnish the school district's sterling reputation. Stuart Gibson, a Justice Department litigator serving his 14th year on the school board, voted for changing the grading system but will continue to oppose lowering the passing grade to 60. And he wants to maintain rigorous standards despite the three dozen e-mails he gets every day from Fairgrade supporters. He notes that in a neighboring district, 36% of students who graduated in June had a weighted GPA of 4.0 or higher. "I moved here from Minnesota...
...representative turnout will probably change the local balance of power, which could in turn affect the future negotiations over the status of these areas. That's why local Kurdish leaders are going to great lengths to get out the vote. A high-ranking Kurdish official in Diyala's Khanaqin district said thousands of voters would be bussed down from Suleymaniya province in Kurdistan to cast their votes in Khanaqin. "Their names are registered here. They just work in Suleymaniya," he said. It is unclear what mechanism would prevent those voters from voting again in Suleymaniya's election...