Pencils Down


Is there anything worse than spending your entire Saturday taking a test that allegedly is going to determine your entire academic future (no pressure...)? How about being one of 5,000 students nationally whose SAT scores were marked incorrectly this school year? Yeah. That sucks.

Two students in Minnesota received their SAT scores in December and immediately knew something was up. According to the New York Times, the teenagers protested their results and demanded their tests be rescored by hand. Sure enough, the scores had been graded incorrectly the first time around. The board then began a scramble to see if other students' scores had been mishandled. The short answer? Uh, yeah.

In March, The College Board announced to a stunned public that about 4,500 students received SAT scores lower than what they earned when scanners missed some lightly-filled ovals. According to the New York Times, the biggest discrepancy found was a whopping 450 point-differential. That's enough to change scholarship eligibility and, at some schools, enough to mean the difference between rejection and acceptance.

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[Originally published via ELLEgirl.com, "In the News" segment]

Kids in the Hall

Here's a scary fact: about 10 percent of American teenagers drop out of high school, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And while teachers, government officials, and parents are busy sorting out what drives them to leave, one organization thinks the problem might be as simple as a change of scenery. How do you make students want to stay in school? In a word: decorate.

Publicolor, a non-profit organization devoted to both improving the dropout rate and creating an energized young work force, provides tools and training to inner city students, allowing kids to visually transform their beige and monochrome schools into a place they actually like to come.

"When we started painting the school, everything fell into place. Everybody was, like, actually happy," says Dios Belti, a 16-year old from Manhattan who describes her school as "drab" and "boring" pre-makeover.

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[Originally published at ellegirl.com, "In the News" segment]

Body Exhibit Draws Crowds and Criticism

Writer Janna Winter, Photography Nicole Caldwell
Columbia News Service
Mar. 29, 2006
[From AZCentral.com]
Photo caption: Dr. Todd Olson, chair of the Anatomical Committee of the Associated Medical Schools of New York, stands with a cadaver under a sheet at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y.

NEW YORK -- Reflexology students Siobhan Bedell and Sandy Kovan walked through the black-walled gallery stopping in front of a body lying in repose, deboned like a fish.

They made their way through the exhibits, past a fetus hanging from a sliced-open belly, following the crowd to another dimly lighted room of nameless cadavers. And they pondered the idea of donating their bodies to such a show when they die.

"I wouldn't do it on the spot," Kovan said. "I mean, who are these people?"

Bedell and Kovan were at "BODIES...The Exhibit," at the South Street Seaport in New York City, one of at least five competing exhibits touring the country that display cadavers in various states of disassembly. The first one, launched in July 2004, was Gunther von Hagens' Body World in Los Angeles. The South Street Seaport show, which opened in November, has drawn crowds of the curious. But it's also raising concerns among medical education experts who fear these museum exhibits are flouting antiquated or lax laws regarding the possession and transportation of human cadavers.

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The Evening's Mood

The time here is like an old lady on the ground. I work on a test about the legal system and swallow big gulps of music through these little speakers on my computer.

I read about the dance of the seven veils in "Skinny Legs and All" while sitting in a bubble bath at Hampshire College. That section, about the dance, reveals the secrets and meanings of life and I remember thinking "Eureka!" as I read it, like the mathemetician who discovered water displacement. So how come I can't remember the meaning now, when I would so very much like to know?

"I don't want you to be sad," she said, then: "You look amazing tonite."
(I couldn't say anything, so I said "It wasn't supposed to be like this," which I guess I don't even believe.)

I dream of fireflies hovering over a frozen pond, waiting.

Ledes

A compilation of some of my best ledes in news and features stories:

Nicole Caldwell/Ledes

Parachuter Tom Slinkard fell thousands of feet dozens of times without incident. Yesterday, however, The Southwest Parachute Association’s president tripped and broke his ankle on the back steps of his home in Rivertown while carrying trash outside.

A 31-year-old truck driver was killed today when an Amtrak passenger train struck his tractor-trailer at an unguarded railroad crossing in Moorpark, police said.

One-quarter of breast cancer patients who applied for insurance coverage during experimental treatments involving high-dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants were denied due to an “arbitrary and capricious” approval process, a study in today’s New England Journal of Medicine found.

After working at his newsstand for 12 years, Rosario Marvello said he could only stand by and watch yesterday as sanitation workers swooped down on the corner of Albany and Massachusetts and abruptly dismantled his newsstand in silence.

A 16-year-old was shot yesterday in the halls of Eastern District High School when two other students attempted to steal his gold necklace, police said.

Marc Balgavy stood at the microphone in the back room of Freddy’s on Dean Street. “Amy: Hi, it’s me again,” he read from a letter he wrote to his neighbor ages ago but never sent. A few people let out sympathetic chuckles. “You are the greatest person I have ever met,” Balgavy continued. His chipmunk cheeks turned red under his dark brown beard. “I know I’m not a great guy… I’m different than those around me. I don’t have a good sense of humor.” The chuckles turned to cheers and applause. Then, the kicker. “Most of the time I can be found making super heroes and villains,” Balgavy read. “I just love making superhero costumes.” The crowd went wild. “Cringe Night,” held at Freddy’s Bar & Backroom in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, had begun.

Temperatures dropped overnight. Rain boots and sweatshirts and jeans covered goosebumped skin. The sky offered a violet backdrop to the October storm. Raindrops hitting pavement sounded like plastic beads dropping on a wood floor. Six inches of rain had fallen in 48 hours. It would be eight days of downpours before the sun came out again. Roads were closed. Rivers overflowed. It was perfect ghost-hunting weather.