AT&T Scholarship Provides John Marshall Law School Elder Law Student With Paid Internship A semester-long internship at the Center for Disability and Elder Law sponsored by the legal department of AT&T gave third-year law student Rebecca Erde hands-on experience for her future profession.
Erde, who has a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin and an M.B.A. from DePaul University, left a 12-year career in advertising and marketing to pursue a law degree. She will receive a JD from The John Marshall Law School in January with a certificate in Elder Law.
“I’m hoping to assist the growing elderly and disabled population with critical financial and health care planning,” Erde said. As part of her internship, she received a $2,500 scholarship award from AT&T. At CDEL she has worked on the Senior Center Initiative program, drafted wills, interviewed disabled and elderly candidates to determine their legal needs, assisted people with filing petitions and court proceedings at the Pro Se Guardianship Help Desk at the Daley Center, and with her 7-11 license Erde is able to represent candidates with petitions for Guardianship.
Common Core added an important piece to the mounting evidence that curriculum continues to narrow at the expense of vital academic subjects with yesterday’s release of survey data from 1,001 third through 12th-grade teachers. Fully two-thirds of those surveyed agreed that extra attention to math and language arts is crowding out other subjects, with the sentiment particularly strong among elementary-school teachers. Of those who saw the curriculum narrowing, 93 percent pointed to state tests as the primary culprits.90 percent of teachers said that inclusion in state testing results in a subject being taken more seriously.
Focusing on math and reading at the expense of subjects like science and social studies requires serious scrutiny, and Common Core should be applauded for bringing more attention to the issue. Critics of test-based accountability will be quick to cite the survey as evidence of the deleterious effects of testing, but the numbers tell a more complicated story. 90 percent of teachers said that inclusion in state testing results in a subject being taken more seriously. O
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The books read by North Carolina schoolchildren have long been a source of contentious debate, on topics ranging from slavery to evolution.
A new exhibit at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looks at the role textbooks have played in state history since the early 1800s.
Items in the exhibit include Civil War-era textbooks published in Greensboro and Raleigh that defended slavery, and two textbooks banned in the 1920s for teaching the theory of evolution.
The co-chairman of the state Textbook Commission, Charles Gaffigan, says there are fewer controversies today, but he says North Carolina still has an important role in textbook adoption, since it’s one of the country’s largest buyers of school books.
The exhibit at the Wilson Library will run through Jan. 31.