I would like to respond to a portion of Chad Mohammed’s Thursday column in which he said, “The merit-pay plan is flawed and simply will reward teachers for teaching in areas with students of higher socioeconomic status and punish those who teach students of lower socioeconomic standings.”
I would like to respond to Johnathan Lott's column regarding public schools. As a side note in his column Lott wrote, "I'm still not sure how spending over $100 billion in deficit money on education will be a short-term economic stimulus."
Sen. Jeremy Ring's proposal for the modification of Bright Futures falls far short of anything bright. A student majoring in biology with an SAT score barely above the national average and a mediocre GPA would be awarded more money than a philosophy major who scored a 1500 on the SATs and had straight A's. Not only is that absurd, but just imagine the implications of that sort of scholarship.
A great deal of Alligator articles and editorials recently have focused exclusively on Ron Paul, whereas there have been zero articles about any other candidates. An editorial Wednesday reported that 34 percent of Republican students on Facebook support Paul.
On Monday, the Gainesville City Commission voted to approve the location for a new homeless shelter that will be part of a joint effort to end homelessness between the city and Alachua County.
Recently, U.S. News and World Report ranked UF as the 17th best public university in the country. Last year, UF was ranked No. 13 by the report, and UF President Bernie Machen was spearheading an aggressive campaign to get UF into the Top 10. Machen's obsession with the rankings was almost nauseating. Now Machen says, "The reality is, our change in the academic rankings is insignificant."
Solutions by The State News
