Teaching and learning. Juli Wright’s first year of teaching first grade at Gladstone Elementary on the near west side was overwhelming, according to Elizabeth Duffrin, writing in Catalyst (September). “There were two big surprises. One was that so many children came to school without knowing letters, colors, numbers or even which end of a book to open. The other was the student mobility at Gladstone. ‘If you lost one, within the next couple of days you would always get one more and sometimes two. Of my original roster of 30, I probably kept 15 by the end of the year. It was crazy.’” Wright has since taken a job selling school date books and planners, which “allows her to work with educators, but with two big advantages–more freedom and pay based on productivity. ‘It’s not like teaching, [where] if I worked hard, I got paid the same as the person who was doing a horrible job.’”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
At 92 percent ready, Illinois state government is 22nd among states in its degree of Y2K preparedness, according to a September 15 report by the stateline.org news service. Alleged to be 100 percent prepared are North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Least ready for the new millennium is Alabama, which reported just 42 percent of its “mission-critical” computers to be compliant.
“Decreases in a state’s welfare benefit levels are associated with large increases in child neglect, and with small decreases in physical abuse,” write economists Christina Paxson and Jane Waldfogel in a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper released in September, “Work, Welfare, and Child Maltreatment.” “Holding income fixed, the children of women who work are at greater risk of maltreatment than those who do not,” which implies that “moving women off welfare rolls into jobs that do not pay more than welfare could harm children”–except the ones who aren’t being beaten.
