Congratulations to a veteran Columbus public servant, Evelyn Turner Pugh, this year’s recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Award.
This is the flaw in the lottery/HOPE scholarship formula that very few if any among us saw coming.
After a long and bruising series of budgetary, legal and public relations hits, Georgia is ready to hear any kind of good news it can get in public education.
Columbus Council has kicked the proverbial (beer?) can a little farther down the road and the people’s vote on it a few more months into the future.
The 25 citizen members of the Columbus Charter Review Commission have worked thoughtfully and well over the last year. Theirs is an important and sometimes thankless task. Its final adjournment provides an occasion for this board, and civic-minded citizens of this community, to offer at least a few words of appreciation.
As the prison escapees in “Raising Arizona” explained to their unwitting hosts, “We released ourselves on our own recognizance.”
How can we take a bite out of high school truancy, and maybe improve graduation rates in the process? Hit the hooky players where it hurts.
Jim Arnold’s “Letter to Washington” is somewhat disingenuous, and I recommend that Mr. Arnold and your readers take the time to read an excellent article, “The Failure of American Schools,” written by Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City’s school system, in the June issue of Atlantic Magazine.
Jimmy Carter, with his volunteer projects and international diplomatic work, is probably our highest-profile living former president. The highest profile among former first ladies is unquestionably that of the woman who now serves as U.S. secretary of state.
If your boss demands the truth from you, and later concludes you have distorted or withheld pertinent information, what are the odds you’ll keep your job?
As Georgians watch a nasty primary runoff, one wonders whether such a second round of elections is worth it. Wouldn’t it just be better to declare the one who gets the most votes in the first round the winner, and spare us the extended intra-party battle?
Educators understandably bristle at the term “failing schools.” But if there’s a more graphic indicator of utter and abject failure than administrative cheating on children’s test scores, we’re at a loss to think what it might be.
What is the task of a teacher? The teacher is given the tremendous responsibility of encouraging students to pursue academic excellence, to develop critical thinking, and to improve reasoning skills. The ultimate goal is for a student to be a self-governing, lifelong learner who, with his talents, skills and critical thinking, makes a positive contribution to his family, community and society.
The brief answers are an unqualified “yes” and a qualified “no.” I qualify the “no” for creationism because students’ curiosity should be answered, but not as part of the science curriculum. Creationism is a cultural issue, not a science.
My native state has a gift, unparalleled in either contemporary America or remembered history, for making a public and collective fool of itself in headlines, Web hits and comedians’ monologues.
You can be a tell-it-like-it-is newspaperman or you can live a fruitful life in a small town.
The late Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, a political leader of surpassing eloquence, once introduced John F. Kennedy, the man who defeated him for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, this way: "Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, 'Let us march'?"
Baseball's a great way to see the heartland of America. How else would a traveler learn the history of the Precious Moments Chapel, which artist Samuel Butcher built under divine inspiration in Carthage, Mo., a decade after finding a market for his greeting cards and figurines of impossibly cute tots with poolsized eyes?
With Congress' annual August recess looming, neither the Senate nor the House will be meeting President Barack Obama's deadline for votes on health-care reform before they leave town. And that's just as well.
The clock is ticking on President Obama's health care reform plan, and not necessarily in his favor. The political inertia in this session of Congress regarding any health care reform bill is evident and bipartisan.
