The James Logan Courier

By Rick La Plante
New Haven Schools Director of Parent & Community Relations

The Board of Education on Tuesday night received a report showing District-wide improvement in reading as well as progress in ongoing efforts to close the achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing student sub-groups. The information was part of a report from the Division of Teaching & Learning on progress made toward the outcomes identified in the District’s Strategic Plan, based on New Haven’s Seven Essentials for Growth and Improvement.

District-wide, a higher percentage of students already have met or are predicted to meet their growth targets in reading this year than by the end of last year, Chief Academic Officer Wendy Gudalewicz told the Board. And compared to District students as a whole, a higher percentage of African-American students have met or are predicted to meet reading growth targets this year in fourth, fifth, eighth and ninth grades, while a higher percentage of Latino students have met or are predicted to meet reading growth targets in second and eighth grades.

By Shari Roan
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

The musical instruments kids play in school bands and orchestras are traveling denizens of bacteria and fungi, say the authors of a new study. Music education is great for kids, they note, but please, please wash the instruments!

Researchers at Oklahoma State University bravely examined 13 instruments that belonged to a high school band. Six of the instruments had been played the previous week and seven hadn't been played in a month. Swabs were taken of 117 different sites on the instruments, including the mouthpieces, internal chambers and even the carrying cases.

From wikipedia:
Tsutomu Yamaguchi (March 16, 1916 – January 4, 2010), was a Japanese national who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 160 people are known to have been affected by both bombings, he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.

A resident of Nagasaki, Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was bombed at 8:15am on August 6, 1945. The following day he returned to Nagasaki and, despite his wounds, returned to work on August 9, the day of the second atomic bombing. In 1957 he was recognized as a hibakusha (explosion-affected person) of the Nagasaki bombing, but it was not until March 24, 2009 that the government of Japan officially recognised his presence in Hiroshima three days earlier. He died of stomach cancer on January 4, 2010.

Read more about Tsutomu Yamaguchi, free from The Economist.