Wichita Falls ISD board reviews academic progress reports from four schools
Superintendent Dr. Donny Lee said the overall theme the board heard was 'making small incremental improvements.'
United Supermarkets donates to help Texomans in need
Principals from Hirschi, Southern Hills, Fain, and Booker T. Washington brought their reports to board members, showing how students have progressed since taking an assessment at the beginning of the year.
The reports give board members a projection of where students will be when they take the STAAR test.
'We try to educate the whole child and try to really ensure that all of our kids are growing. Every year we focus on growth. What does that mean? That means if they were reading on the third-grade level last year, we want to read on a fourth-grade level this year. Same with math. So we want constant improvement,' Lee said.
STAAR testing begins April 8 for districts across the state.
Lee knows educators are entering crunch time, so he will provide the support they need before testing.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Americans may aspire to single-family homes, but in South Korea, apartments are king
SEOUL — For many Americans, the apartment where 29-year-old IT specialist Lee Chang-hee lives might be the stuff of nightmares. Located just outside the capital of Seoul, the building isn't very tall — just 16 stories — by South Korean standards, but the complex consists of 36 separate structures, which are nearly identical except for the building number displayed on their sides. The 2,000-plus units come in the same standardized dimensions found everywhere in the country (Lee lives in a '84C,' which has 84 square meters, or about 900 square feet, of floor space) and offer, in some ways, a ready-made life. The amenities scattered throughout the campus include a rock garden with a fake waterfall, a playground, a gym, an administration office, a senior center and a 'moms cafe.' But this, for the most part, is South Korea's middle-class dream of home ownership — its version of a house with the white picket fence. 'The bigger the apartment complex, the better the surrounding infrastructure, like public transportation, schools, hospitals, grocery stories, parks and so on,' Lee said. 'I like how easy it is to communicate with the neighbors in the complex because there's a well-run online community.' Most in the country would agree: Today, 64% of South Korean households live in such multifamily housing, the majority of them in apartments with five or more stories. Such a reality seems unimaginable in cities like Los Angeles, which has limited or prohibited the construction of dense housing in single-family zones. 'Los Angeles is often seen as an endless tableau of individual houses, each with their own yard and garden,' Max Podemski, an L.A.-based urban planner, wrote in The Times last year. 'Apartment buildings are anathema to the city's ethos.' In recent years, the price of that ethos has become increasingly apparent in the form of a severe housing shortage. In the city of Los Angeles, where nearly 75% of all residential land is zoned for stand-alone single-family homes, rents have been in a seemingly endless ascent, contributing to one of the worst homelessness crises in the country. As a remedy, the state of California has ordered the construction of more than 450,000 new housing units by 2029. The plan will almost certainly require the building of some form of apartment-style housing, but construction has lagged amid fierce resistance. Sixty years ago, South Korea stood at a similar crossroads. But the series of urban housing policies it implemented led to the primacy of the apartment, and in doing so, transformed South Korean notions of housing over the course of a single generation. The results of that program have been mixed. But in one important respect, at least, it has been successful: Seoul, which is half the size of the city of L.A., is home to a population of 9.6 million — compared with the estimated 3.3 million people who live here. For Lee, the trade-off is a worthwhile one. In an ideal world, she would have a garage for the sort of garage sales she's admired in American movies. 'But South Korea is a small country,' she said. 'It is necessary to use space as efficiently as possible.' Apartments, in her view, have spared her from the miseries of suburban housing. Restaurants and stores are close by. Easy access to public transportation means she doesn't need a car to get everywhere. 'Maybe it's because of my Korean need to have everything done quickly, but I think it'd be uncomfortable to live somewhere that doesn't have these things within reach at all times,' she said. 'I like to go out at night; I think it would be boring to have all the lights go off at 9 p.m.' *** Apartments first began appearing in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a government response to a housing crisis in the nation's capital — a byproduct of the era's rapid industrialization and subsequent urban population boom. In the 1960s, single-family detached dwellings made up around 95% of homes in the country. But over the following decade, as rural migrants flooded Seoul in search of factory work, doubling the population from 2.4 to 5.5 million, many in this new urban working class found themselves without homes. As a result, many of them settled in shantytowns on the city's outskirts, living in makeshift sheet-metal homes. The authoritarian government at the time, led by a former army general named Park Chung-hee, declared apartments to be the solution and embarked on a building spree that would continue under subsequent administrations. Eased height restrictions and incentives for construction companies helped add between 20,000 to 100,000 new apartment units every year. They were pushed by political leaders in South Korea as a high-tech modernist paradise, soon making them the most desirable form of housing for the middle and upper classes. Known as apateu, which specifically refers to a high-rise apartment building built as part of a larger complex — as distinct from lower stand-alone buildings — they symbolized Western cachet and upward social mobility. 'Around the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every big-name celebrity at the time appeared in apartment commercials,' recalled Jung Heon-mok, an anthropologist at the Academy of Korean Studies who has studied the history of South Korean apartments. 'But the biggest reason that apartments proliferated as they did was because they were done at scale, in complexes of five buildings or more.' Essential to the modern apateu are the amenities — such as on-site kindergartens or convenience stores — that allow them to function like miniature towns. This has also turned them into branded commodities and class signifiers, built by construction conglomerates like Samsung, and taking on names like 'castle' or 'palace.' (One of the first such branded apartment complexes was Trump Tower, a luxury development built in Seoul in the late 1990s by a construction firm that licensed the name of Donald Trump.) All of this has made the detached single-family home, for the most part, obsolete. In Seoul, such homes now make up just 10% of the housing stock. Among many younger South Koreans like Lee, they are associated with retirement in the countryside, or, as she puts it: for 'grilling in the garden for your grandkids.' *** This model has not been without problems. There are the usual issues that come with dense housing. In buildings with poor soundproofing, 'inter-floor noise' between units is such a universal scourge that the government runs a noise-related dispute resolution center while discouraging people from angrily confronting their neighbors, a situation that occasionally escalates into headline-making violence. Some apartment buildings have proved to be too much even for a country accustomed to unsentimentally efficient forms of housing. One 19-story, 4,635-unit complex built by a big-name apartment brand in one of the wealthiest areas of Seoul looks so oppressive that it has become a curiosity, mocked by some as a prison or chicken coop. The sheer number of apartments has prompted criticism of Seoul's skyline as sterile and ugly. South Koreans have described its uniform, rectangular columns as 'matchboxes.' And despite the aspirations attached to them, there is also a wariness about a culture where homes are built in such disposable, assembly line-like fashion. Many people here are increasingly questioning how this form of housing, with its nearly identical layouts, has shaped the disposition of contemporary South Korean society, often criticized by its own members as overly homogenized and lockstep. 'I'm concerned that apartments have made South Koreans' lifestyles too similar,' said Maing Pil-soo, an architect and urban planning professor at Seoul National University. 'And with similar lifestyles, you end up with a similar way of thinking. Much like the cityscape itself, everything becomes flattened and uniform.' Jung, the anthropologist, believes South Korea's apartment complexes, with their promise of an atomized, frictionless life, have eroded the more expansive social bonds that defined traditional society — like those that extended across entire villages — making its inhabitants more individualistic and insular. 'At the end of the day, apartments here are undoubtedly extremely convenient — that's why they became so popular,' he said. 'But part of that convenience is because they insulate you from the concerns of the wider world. Once you're inside your complex and in your home, you don't have to pay attention to your neighbors or their issues.' Still, Jung says this uniformity isn't all bad. It is what made them such easily scalable solutions to the housing crisis of decades past. It is also, in some ways, an equalizing force. 'I think apartments are partly why certain types of social inequalities you see in the U.S. are comparatively less severe in South Korea,' he said. Though many branded apartment complexes now resemble gated communities with exclusionary homeowner associations, Jung points out that on the whole, the dominance of multifamily housing has inadvertently encouraged more social mixing between classes, a physical closeness that creates the sense that everyone is inhabiting the same broader space. Even Seoul's wealthiest neighborhoods feel, to an extent that is hard to see in many American cities, porous and accessible. Wealthier often means having a nicer apartment, but an apartment all the same, existing in the same environs as those in a different price range. 'And even though we occasionally use disparaging terms like 'chicken coop' to describe them, once you actually step inside one of those apartments, they don't feel like that at all,' Jung said. 'They really are quite comfortable and nice.' *** None of this, however, has been able to stave off Seoul's own present-day housing affordability crisis. The capital has one of the most expensive apartment prices in the world on a price-per-square-meter basis, ranking fourth after Hong Kong, Zurich and Singapore, and ahead of major U.S. cities like New York or San Francisco, according to a report published last month by Deutsche Bank. One especially brutal stretch recently saw apartment prices in Seoul double in four years. Part of the reason for this is that apartments, with their standardized dimensions, have effectively become interchangeable financial commodities: An apartment in Seoul is seen as a much more surefire bet than any stock, leading to intense real estate investment and speculation that has driven up home prices. 'Buying an apartment here isn't just buying an apartment. The equivalent in the U.S. would be like buying an ideal single-family home with a garage in the U.S., except that it comes with a bunch of NVIDIA shares,' said Chae Sang-wook, an independent real estate analyst. 'In South Korea, people invest in apateu for capital gains, not cash flow from rent.' Some experts predict that, as the country enters another era of demographic upheaval, the dominance of apartments will someday be no more. If births continue to fall as dramatically as they have done in recent years, South Koreans may no longer need such dense housing. The ongoing rise of single-person households, too, may chip away at a form of housing built to hold four-person nuclear families. But Chae is skeptical that this will happen anytime soon. He points out that South Koreans don't even like to assemble their own furniture, let alone fix their own cars — all downstream effects of ubiquitous apartment living. 'For now, there is no alternative other than this,' he said. 'As a South Korean, you don't have the luxury of choosing.'
CBS News
15-07-2025
- CBS News
North Braddock residents want leaders to address borough's blighted properties
North Braddock prides itself on being the birthplace of steel. When the steel mill shut down, people moved out and took their money with them, but that's just the start of a growing problem. At 527 Hawkins Avenue in North Braddock, the safety concern can be seen easily. The entire side of the home is leaning over the road, and it's a safety issue; neighbors said it needs to be addressed. "They don't tear them down. They are just falling down," resident Harold Rutter said. He said the property used to be nice. "Somebody bought it and then sold it to somebody else, and it just fell apart," said Rutter. He doesn't know who owns this specific home now. When asked why he thinks owners have let the property deteriorate, Rutter pointed to the town's general decline. "Hey, nobody wants to live in this town, like I said," Rutter replied. It's a recurring story in the neighborhood where he's grown up. Along Hawkins Avenue, other homes sit abandoned, with broken glass or in disarray, with trash. "It's really frustrating to see all of this crap around here; this stuff is terrible. It used to be a nice, clean town a long time ago," Rutter said. This street is covered with an orange fence and cones when the side of the home eventually falls, and it's not slowing down traffic on a busy road with bus traffic. North Braddock Mayor Cletus Lee said he wants to see this home have an emergency demolition, even if there's no funding. "As not only being the mayor of North Braddock, but also being a demolition contractor, steps need to be taken in place immediately," Lee said. "The most important thing is public safety." The mayor said there's even an email chain with the North Braddock borough council about it. North Braddock Council President Lisa Franklin-Robinson said they've been working hard to fix the blight in North Braddock, and when the council republished a blight study, it found 1,040 blighted parcels. The leaning house on Hawkins Avenue, Franklin-Robinson said, has been on the list for demolition for at least a year. She said that after the storms and rain we've seen, that's made it lean even worse. Then, it got to the point that the council president said they closed half of the street on Monday. Franklin-Robinson said the council is taking steps to fix the issue in the borough. As a council, they've completed a financial health assessment with the help of Local Government Academy. In addition, they've established an open dialogue with every level of government, up to the federal level, and asked for funding. Franklin-Robinson said that last year, the county proposed appropriations through Summer Lee's office, her administration approved $1.2 million, but the Trump administration didn't release the funds. The money was meant for a workforce development program to help teach deconstruction and property demolition while remediating blight. Rutter said he'd like to see positive changes in North Braddock, starting with Hawkins Avenue. "I'd like to see these people tear these houses down and clean this town up a little bit."
Chicago Tribune
15-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Indian Prairie School District 204 to pilot weighted grading system this school year
Indian Prairie School District 204 is piloting a weighted grading system this year, with the goal of standardizing grading and promoting equity across the district, according to district administrators. The district will be testing out the new weighted grading practice at the middle and high school levels, according to a presentation to the school board on July 7 by Deputy Superintendent Louis Lee and Waubonsie Valley High School Assistant Principal Montrine Johnson. Under the recommended grading practice, student work is divided into two categories: formative and summative. Formative assessments, including things like quizzes and entrance and exit slips, would be weighted at 20% of a student's grade. Summative assessments — cumulative evaluations, such as unit tests, final exams, projects and essays — would be worth 80% of a student's grade. This recommendation came out of research done by a committee of educators and administrators, according to the presentation. The committee looked at grading-related topics like re-takes, zero's, formative and summative assessments, the role of homework and extra credit in grading and resources for students with 504 plans and Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, and multilingual students. Formative assessments are 'low-stakes,' Johnson said at the school board meeting on July 7, and show students 'exactly where they are, what their strengths are and the areas in which they need to grow.' Summative assessments, on the other hand, are meant to measure the knowledge and skills that a student has learned. The rationale for the weighted grading system includes a focus on more equitable grading, Johnson said, since the grading system looks at students' mastery of topics and skills and lets students know what they're aiming for and what their grade represents. It also standardizes grading practices, Lee told the board. The district currently has over 250 different gradebooks, he said, to track and measure grades. 'That many, just, different forms of how we're valuing work…is inconsistent, sends the wrong message to students,' Lee said. Both administrators acknowledged that criticism of this sort of grading practice exists. Lee noted that, for example, weighting can devalue formative assessments, and impact student motivation to do daily work. But the district's sub-committee looking at formative and summative assessments, for which Johnson was a co-facilitator, ultimately landed on recommending this 80% and 20% grading system. A couple middle schools already have similar weighted grading systems, the district administrators noted. The board responded with numerous questions about the proposed system — and some concerns. Board member Susan Demming, for example, asked about the specific percentages that were decided on. Johnson said these percentages were common in looking at neighboring schools, and said that the committee felt the percentage for summative assessments couldn't be more than 80%. Board vice president Supna Jain asked if the idea is for this grading system to be a guideline or a requirement. Lee said the long-term plan is for it to be a requirement, but that there would be flexibility as to, for example, how assignments are categorized and how they're designed. Board member Mark Rising expressed concern about the weighting of formative and summative assessments. 'We have very different learners across our district,' Rising said. 'And when we're setting an 80/20, formative-summative (system), we are automatically setting up kids for failure, in my opinion. There are kids that their homework, their extra credit sustains their grade. There are some kids that have test anxiety. I fear we are creating not a more equitable system, I fear we're creating a more inequitable system.' To the board's questions, Talley noted that this sort of grading already exists in the district, meaning it's not an entirely new system, but it isn't standardized across district schools and classrooms. He said he asked this work to be done over three to five years because 'of the questions that people are asking' and that this is the beginning of the process for the district. Lee, too, pointed to the timeline as board members shared their questions and concerns. 'We want to provide a long runway for this,' Lee said. Meanwhile, the sub-committees are continuing to work on grading and implementation, Lee said. Re-takes, for example, are one point of concern. Lee noted that re-takes are common in college, for standardized tests and post-graduate examinations, and said they are evaluating what role they should have in classes in the district going forward. The weighted grading pilot will be starting in the fall, according to the presentation, and is set to include both teachers already implementing a similar system and some that aren't, Lee said. The total number of classrooms and teachers participating in it will not be finalized until teachers return in August, Lee told The Beacon-News. From there, Lee said the plan is to present data from the pilot to the school board in the spring, train teachers starting in August 2026, and potentially implement the grading system as standard policy in August 2027.
