Word: school
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...these kids. Why so much? Because a mountain of research shows that ending social promotion doesn't work if it just means more Fs. Kids who are simply forced to repeat grades over and over usually don't improve academically and often drop out. Zacarias wanted more tutoring, summer school and intensive-learning classes. Unqualified students wouldn't rise to the next grade; nor would they be doomed to redo work they already failed...
...forward-looking plan that Zacarias, 70, didn't have the clout to enact. He wasn't popular enough--the school board recently bought out his contract after a bitter power struggle--but even fellow reformers think his plan was too much, too soon. Says board member David Tokofsky: "You've got the unions who want their say. And, of course, there's the facilities issue: Where do you send all these eighth-graders if you can't send them to high school?" The district now says it will stop advancing low-achieving students only in two grades (second and eighth...
Still, the war on social promotion could have one salutary consequence: if every school district takes L.A.'s approach, struggling students will get a lot more teaching help, not just a kick in the rear as they finish another unproductive school year...
...South Boston, as David Abaire, to "very regular blue-collar folk" (back then, Dad sold fruit from a truck; Mom worked on a circuit-board assembly line). After Sarah Lawrence College, where he met his wife, actress Chris Lindsay, he honed his craft at New York City's Juilliard School Playwright's Program. What if he scores in Hollywood? "The movie stuff will pay my rent," he says. "But if I want my words to remain as is, I'll stay in the theater...
...pets--the iguana, the hamster and Leo the snake--as well as the house itself with its vast deck, pool and hot tub off the master bedroom, as if to say that life has been good to him after all. The four kids have already been packed off to school. And now Cindy, in this Phoenix home where she grew up, is in charge. She's more commanding here than in Washington, where even after 19 years in the role of a politician's wife, she still seems tentative. She says all the right things about believing her husband would...