“Just as Chicago provided school choice to students at only a portion of the eligible schools last fall, CPS [Chicago Public Schools] now proposes to provide parental-choice tutoring this year to children at only 13 of the 25 eligible schools, leaving 12 high schools out of the loop,” writes Alexander Russo in Catalyst Chicago (March). “However, federal officials have signaled that CPS may not get away with that. ‘Nobody has been given any special dispensation to serve fewer schools this year,’ says Melinda Malico of the U.S. Department of Education. ‘They have to provide the option for supplemental services to any low-income student in a school that is in the second year of school improvement.’”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Four out of five U.S. hogs are raised in CAFOs,” that is, “concentrated animal feeding operations,” which are much larger than conventional hog farms, reports Brian DeVore in Sierra (March/April). “But change is in the air.” Well, maybe not. His best example is Iowa, where just 4 percent of the state’s hogs are raised in more humane and less polluting “hoop houses.” He also claims hopefully that “more and more shoppers are willing to pay a premium for sustainably farmed pork–about $2 more per pound than the mass-produced variety, higher still for organic.”
It’s safer to turn your back on your partner than it was ten years ago. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, “Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001” (February), the number of rapes, sexual assaults, robberies, and assaults in this country committed by one intimate partner on the other in 1993 was 1.26 million. In 2001it was 691,000.
