Grades

The Interboro school board has adopted a district homework policy setting suggested amounts of work for students at every grade level. The intent of the policy is to emphasize that the board believes homework reinforces lessons taught in the classroom, said school board member Susan Jacobs. School board President John Costello said that while it was not mandatory that teachers follow the homework policy to the letter, he hoped they would follow the spirit of the new rule. "I'm sure most of the teachers will basically follow this policy while still being able to have academic freedom," Costello said.

LIFE DOESN'T depend on the grades a student receives, yet students and their parents spend a lot of time worrying and talking about grades. Grades are significant in determining what academic program will be appropriate and are used to check progress in meeting academic goals. Receiving good grades is important, but learning based upon individual capacities is more important. It could answer the questions: Should I study more? Do I need to concentrate more in school? Am I in the right program?

It's impossible to think about school without thinking about grades. But school officials in Philadelphia and other big cities are doing just that - questioning whether grades, particularly failing grades, help or hurt kids. Kids who don't do well, who fail classes or get left behind, are most likely to drop out of school, educators say. "There's hardly a kid who's been helped by an F," says Sam Husk, a national expert on urban education. "When you give them an F, you label failure right across their chest, and they don't forget it. Ever.

You have seen our grades, now tell us yours. Visit our website at www.philly.com/DomoReportCard . Results will appear in tomorrow's Daily News.

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy has received $5 million from Urban Outfitters founder and chief executive officer Dick Hayne to help launch a Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. He is board chairman of the private school. The center will enable students to complement their traditional academic core courses with seminars in areas that include engineering and robotics, new media, public speaking, ethics, statistics, and international partnerships. Students also will have opportunities to learn from top entrepreneurs, including Hayne.

The Freire Charter School in Center City has received a $298,600 federal grant to help the charter high school add a middle-school program. Freire officials said they planned to use the money from the U.S. Department of Education's Public Charter School Program to help buy a building for the planned expansion. The school has been told it can expect to receive an additional $450,200 in federal funds over the next two years as the charter grows from 500 high school students to 1,000 students in fifth through 12th grades.

Temple Owls guard Brian Polk won't be playing tomorrow, when the Owls open their basketball season against Rutgers. "He will not be in uniform," Owls coach John Chaney said yesterday. Chaney had announced last month that Polk would be sitting out the first semester because of a violation of team rules that included dropping a class without telling his coach. Earlier this week, Chaney said he was considering allowing Polk to play, pending a meeting with Polk's academic advisers.

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy has received an anonymous $500,000 gift to support the private school's new engineering and robotics department. The gift will establish the Gizmo Fund, which will provide money for equipment and technology used by engineering and robotics students, the school announced Friday. The department grew out of a small after-school robotics program that began nine years ago. Springside, a former girls' school, and the adjacent Chestnut Hill Academy, a former boys' school, merged in July to create Springside Chestnut Hill Academy.

Teacher Gail Roman passed out batteries, wire and tiny lightbulbs. Then she wrote "CIRCUIT" in big letters on the chalkboard. "Does the beginning of this word remind you of anything?" she asked. "Circuit City!" some children shouted. Not quite the answer Roman was looking for, but the youngsters were already too busy assembling their science experiments to notice. Their goal was to transfer the energy from the batteries to make the lightbulbs shine. The task was part of a five-day summer camp, for children age 7 to 12, at Penn State's Abington campus.

A California man was arrested after authorities in South Jersey seized a shipment of high-grade marijuana with an estimated street value of $1 million. Fifteen boxes of pot, weighing a total of about 250 pounds, were in a cargo container sent from California to a Delran public storage facility last week, and Thomas Arnold, 55, of Santa Barbara, was arrested last Wednesday, the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office and Delran Police announced Tuesday. Arnold, accused of arranging the shipment, was sent to Burlington County Jail on charges of drug possession and possession with intent to distribute.

For months, third-grade teacher Hillary Linardopoulos has been on a mission to get Jimmy Rollins to visit her class at Julia deBurgos School in Kensington. She waged a creative, exhaustive Twitter campaign to get the star shortstop into her classroom. Linardopoulos (@MrsL132) is a major Phils fan and had already used her powers of persuasion to get Mayor Nutter to visit her class. But Rollins is a busy guy, and he was a tough sell. Linardopoulos started wooing him Aug. 22. For months, she offered chocolate chip cookies, showed him pictures her students drew, told him what a visit would mean: "Señor JRoll you'd provide the kids w/the experience of a lifetime!

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy has received $5 million from Urban Outfitters founder and chief executive officer Dick Hayne to help launch a Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. He is board chairman of the private school. The center will enable students to complement their traditional academic core courses with seminars in areas that include engineering and robotics, new media, public speaking, ethics, statistics, and international partnerships. Students also will have opportunities to learn from top entrepreneurs, including Hayne.

WHAT DO the liberal-leaning Los Angeles Times and conservative-leaning New York Post have in common when it comes to kids, teachers and schools? Both have pushed for, and then published, the rankings of teachers in the public schools in their cities based on "value-added" rankings of teachers through standardized-test scores. I think we should do exactly the same thing with the Philadelphia public schools. We evaluate a student's progress in school through grades and test results.

PORT ORCHARD, WASH. - Crying and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, a frightened 9-year-old boy accused of accidentally shooting a classmate sat before a juvenile-court judge yesterday as his father gently rubbed his back. Bail was set at $50,000 during the preliminary hearing, and ultimately the court will determine whether the third-grader will face criminal charges as an 8-year-old girl remains critically wounded. "I just want everyone to know that my kid made a mistake.

Almost a year after the Camden City School District gave itself highly favorable scores in a performance evaluation, the state Department of Education has come back with its own review, and the scores aren't pretty. In the latest Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC) performance review, the district received failing grades in four of the five categories - instruction and program (7 percent); operations (47 percent); personnel (9 percent); and governance (33 percent). It received 79 percent in fiscal management, which acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf said was mostly because the district was checked daily by a state-appointed fiscal monitor.

RALEIGH, N.C. - When the final horn sounded on the Capitals and Kings last night in Los Angeles, it officially marked the end of the first half of play in the NHL's arduous, 1,230-game season. With that, it's time to break out the red Sharpie and pass out grades to the Flyers at the midterm, putting them into perspective with our Nov. 21 report card: OFFENSE Through the first 40 games, the Flyers rank second in goals per game (3.43) and third in total goals (137)

By Rob Gleason   Pennsylvanians elected Gov. Corbett to make the tough, necessary decisions to get us out of the mess left behind by years of higher taxes, out-of-control spending, and fiscal disarray. As we enter into year two, it's clear that the governor has kept his promises in year one and has produced a series of big wins for Pennsylvania's working families and taxpayers. In spite of the fact that the governor inherited a $4 billion budget gap, he passed a historic budget that didn't raise taxes by a single cent.

With a first-year record like Gov. Corbett's, it's a good thing he still has three more years to go. Or maybe not. Another three years could give Corbett time to make some progress, at least, toward pressing issues facing the state - like fixing roads and bridges, or making natural-gas drillers pay their fair share. There even may be time to do something about handgun violence that tragically ends hundreds of Pennsylvanians' lives annually (were the governor not such a gun-rights stalwart)

IF YOU weren't sure that the perception of Parx Racing has changed nationally, the American Graded Stakes Committee proved it yesterday. After a 2-day meeting in Lexington, Ky., it awarded the Cotillion Stakes Grade I status for 2012. It is the track's first Grade I stakes, one of only 112 around the country and just 10 for 3-year-old fillies. The committee awarded new Grade III status to four stakes. Three of them - the Smarty Jones, Greenwood Cup and Doc Penny - will be run at Parx.