Castleton Library

 What's happening @ the library

• Weekly Story Hours 
• LEGO CLUB! 
• Weight Loss Group 
• The Friends of the CPL present: Mother's Day Teddy Bear Tea Fundraiser

For Immediate Release

DEC UNVEILS NEW COMMUNITY AIR SCREEN PROGRAM TO EXPLORE LOCAL AIR QUALITY ISSUES

Enables Community Groups to Collect Air Samples

Congratulations Alec Hicks

Alec Hicks Selected for Capital District Youth Chorale

MHHS junior Alec Hicks was selected for the Capital District Youth Chorale this year after auditioning. Alec is an active member of the music department, participating in Band, Jazz Band, Chorus and Swing Choir. As a member of the Chorale, Alec performed on April 21 at the Palace Theatre in Albany, on May 1 at the Massry Center Auditorium in Albany, and on May 20 at Union College Memorial Chapel in Schenectady. Congratulations!  

Posted 4/09/12.

Alumni Webpage

Schodack Alumni

“Last year, we talked about looking at alternative ways of providing opportunities for students. We can’t keep doing things the same way,” said Superintendent Robert Horan.

Ex-BP engineer arrested in Gulf oil spill case

Posted: Apr 24, 2012 1:15 PM EDT Updated: Apr 24, 2012 6:15 PM EDT

By CAIN BURDEAU and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
Associated Press
 

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Federal prosecutors brought the first criminal charges Tuesday in the Gulf oil spill, accusing a former BP engineer of deleting more than 300 text messages that indicated the blown-out well was spewing far more crude than the company was telling the public at the time.

Standardized Testing....Pineapples don't have sleeves

When Pineapple Races Hare, Students Lose, Critics of Standardized Tests Say

A reading passage included this week in one of New York’s standardized English tests has become the talk of the eighth grade, with students walking around saying, “Pineapples don’t have sleeves,” as if it were the code for admission to a secret society.

The passage is a parody of the tortoise and the hare story, the Aesop’s fable that almost every child learns in elementary school. Only instead of a tortoise, the hare races a talking pineapple, and the moral of the story — more on that later — is the part about the sleeves.

In the world of testing, she said, it does not really matter whether an answer is right or wrong; the “right” answer is the one that field testing has shown to be the consensus answer of the “smart” kids. “It’s a psychometric concept,” she said. 

In the original version a rabbit races an eggplant, and children speculated Friday that the eggplant had been changed to a pineapple because some kids might not know what an eggplant was. Why the rabbit was changed to a hare was harder to explain. There is no mention of sleeves.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

A story by the children’s book author Daniel Pinkwater, above, was adapted for an English test in a way that baffled students 

and caused officials to say that the questions wouldn’t be counted.

Read more...