High School Diploma

It was the question Toshea Greene had been dreading, but one she knew eventually had to come. Sitting in her supervisor's office after almost a year on the job, a decision she made 27 years ago had returned to dismantle everything. Greene, 42, a divorced mother of two, left school after ninth grade. During a routine audit last year of personnel files at the Center City nonprofit where she did community outreach, her secret was discovered. It would cost her the job, which required a high-school diploma.

When you've been away from school for 67 years, your geometry gets a little rusty. Martha Gerhart's son had to explain isosceles triangles to her on a kitchen blackboard. But when the 81-year-old Gerhart dons a cap and gown Tuesday evening to receive an honorary diploma with the Hatboro-Horsham High School graduating class, it will be a tribute to her own determination in earning a high-school equivalency diploma this year. "You can learn a lot of things if you have the will," said Gerhart, a slim and energetic woman who spends hours quilting for friends and organizations.

IN AN AGE of increasing fragmentation, I look for areas of common sense that can rally citizens to improve our schools and better educate our kids. I think every parent and taxpayer in Pennsylvania would say that students who graduate from high school should be proficient enough in reading, writing and math to enter the world of work or attend college. The high-school diploma is supposed to be the credential indicating you have those proficiencies. But I know I speak for many when I say the diploma is a compromised document.

Ryan Snell, 18, racked up almost enough college credits for two associate's degrees before earning his high school diploma. Homeschooled by his parents, the Moorestown teen simultaneously took 30-some classes at Burlington County College for more than 100 credits. He has applied to Wharton and a handful of other prestigious schools. While his accomplishments are impressive, they are not unusual in the Snell family. Both of Ryan's older brothers, Jake and Tom, took dozens of classes at the county college while being homeschooled.

Bernard Cooper grew up listening to the click of shears, the slap-slap of a straight razor being smoothed on a strop. As the son of a barber, he naturally learned the trade, putting himself through graduate school cutting hair. And in 1971, when the Las Vegas coroner called Cooper to break the news that his father had died of a massive heart attack while attending a convention, the doctor of psychology suddenly found himself running a barber college on the side. "I could've just dropped the whole thing because I was busy with my psychology life," said Cooper of Warrington.

Claiming that students who take GED exams do not cover all the material now required to earn a high school diploma in New Jersey, the state Department of Education has proposed discontinuing state-endorsed high school diplomas for people who take the GED test. Under proposed regulations presented at last week's state Board of Education meeting, New Jerseyans taking the nationally administered General Education Development (GED) test would earn a certificate saying they had passed the GED course, but they would no longer earn a full-fledged diploma.

Sixteen-year-old Cheri Lynn Holker of Ridley Township was driving to a McDonald's with two friends on the night of Dec. 26 - it was one day before she was to leave for a vacation overseas - when a drunken driver's vehicle plowed into her car, killing her and injuring two of her friends. Yesterday, in an emotionally charged Delaware County courtroom, the driver, John J. Carney of Chester, a 34-year-old accountant, was sentenced to 38 months to 14 years in state prison for the DUI-related vehicular homicide and two counts of simple assault.

There are more than 38,000 adults over the age of 25 in Gloucester County who do not have high school diplomas, said John Karaska, quoting from 1980 federal census statistics. Karaska, evening school principal at Gloucester County Vocational-Technical School, hopes to make a dent in that statistic. The vocational school is about to become the first facility in Gloucester County to offer adult high school classes, leading to a diploma, on the premises. Currently, Karaska said, any adult in the county wishing a high school diploma must apply to Glassboro High School, which will enroll the student in its adult program.

Philadelphia's celebration of International Literacy Day, hosted by the Mayor's Commission on Literacy, revealed a program sure to bring promise and hope to thousands of Philadelphia residents. With the installation of the Philadelphia Adult Diploma Program, the collaborative effort of the Center for Literacy, District 1199C and the School District of Philadelphia, adults lacking a high school diploma will no longer need to search for ways to obtain its equivalent. Currently in place to remedy the need for high school diplomas is the General Equivalency Degree.

What you can see at the Hall of Fame: The shades Roy Orbison used to check out the next "Pretty Woman" The handwritten lyrics Jimi Hendrix penned for (and probably in a) "Purple Haze" The jacket John Lennon wore for "Sergeant Pepper" A high school diploma Buddy Holly probably chucked into his closet when he got big in music Grace Slick's dress from the original "Woodstock" (suspiciously without mudstains) George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" shoes The dress Tina Turner wore in the film "Tommy" Grandmaster Flash's Kangol cap (no, it's not red with lightning bolts)

Ryan Snell, 18, racked up almost enough college credits for two associate's degrees before earning his high school diploma. Homeschooled by his parents, the Moorestown teen simultaneously took 30-some classes at Burlington County College for more than 100 credits. He has applied to Wharton and a handful of other prestigious schools. While his accomplishments are impressive, they are not unusual in the Snell family. Both of Ryan's older brothers, Jake and Tom, took dozens of classes at the county college while being homeschooled.

The sentencing should have been routine: a guilty plea to witness intimidation, a probationary sentence agreed to by prosecution and defense. But Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner, citing his often-frustrating 14 years as a homicide judge, decided to make it a teachable moment. "I don't know if any of this will register, but you have to sit there until I'm done talking," Lerner, 71, told Toteyana Jones. "Today's victims' families are tomorrow's defendants' families, and one reason for this is the stupid, ignorant no-snitch culture," Lerner said Wednesday as Jones sat quietly with attorney Bruce Wolf.

The youngest member of Moorestown's board of education answers the door of his home in a blue pinstripe suit, white shirt, and tie. "Shall we talk in my office?" Brandon Pugh asks, and seats himself at a broad, glass-topped desk that looks like it belongs in the Oval Office. At age 19, so does he. "It was such a competitive election," Pugh says of his months-long campaign for the school board. But he and his supporters deposited literature at more than 6,000 homes, and when the ballots were counted last week, he had narrowly beaten three others.

The youngest member of Moorestown's board of education answers the door of his home in a blue pinstripe suit, white shirt, and tie. "Shall we talk in my office?" Brandon Pugh asks, and seats himself at a broad, glass-topped desk that looks like it belongs in the Oval Office. At age 19, so does he. "It was such a competitive election," Pugh says of his months-long campaign for the school board. But he and his supporters deposited literature at more than 6,000 homes, and when the ballots were counted last week, he had narrowly beaten three others.

Moments after griping with a neighbor about Camden's crime surge, Lawrence Taylor spots a woman in a bikini top and jeans shorts checking her makeup in the tinted window of a car parked across the street. Prostitutes "are just front and center now," says Taylor, 47, who lives in the Cooper Plaza neighborhood. It's the middle of the day, and a half-block away, hundreds of powerful New Jerseyans are celebrating the opening of Cooper Medical School of Rowan University - a beacon of hope, they say, in the impoverished city.

A proposal by Gov. Christie to do away with New Jersey's current graduation exam would raise the bar on student achievement and help ensure that a high school diploma from a school in the state is more than just a piece of a paper. Christie wants to replace the current comprehensive examination of everything a student has been taught in high school with end-of-course tests similar to a final exam, which is more practical. The changes were recommended by a task force that concluded the state's High School Proficiency Assessment, as well as an alternative test taken by students who fail the first option, is not properly aligned with New Jersey's curriculum standards.

The community college is being asked to save America. But like a small-town fire department straining to contain a big-city blaze, community colleges aren't equipped to handle the huge job thrust on them, many experts say. Many millennials - a diverse demographic of 18-to-34-year-olds who make up the largest share of community-college students in the Delaware Valley - are looking to the schools to give them a fighting chance in a brutal...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Maria Medina's life is littered with the destruction of diabetes. Her neighbor had a foot amputated because of the disease. Her mother went blind from it. Her sister died of it. Damage that pervasive is a common experience in the Mexican-American community, which has some of the highest rates in a surge of diabetes nationwide. The disease can provoke heart attacks, high blood pressure, kidney failure and blindness, and is the seventh-leading cause of death nationwide.

President Obama is right to put more pressure on colleges and universities as well as the states to make a college education more affordable. A nation that keeps telling its children they need more than a high school diploma to succeed in this increasingly high-tech world shouldn't make it so hard for them to pay for college. Obama wants to boost the Perkins federal loan program from $1 billion to $8 billion and change the formula for how the money is distributed. Colleges that fail to reduce costs will lose federal aid, an aggressive incentive for the schools to find practical ways to reduce the cost of an education.

As the Philadelphia School District's "guardian angel," Victoria Yancey has attended hundreds of funerals, held weeping mothers, and delivered personal tributes for students who died too young. This summer, as the cash-strapped district laid off thousands of workers, Yancey conducted "healing workshops" for the employees who were left - teaching people how to deal with survivor's guilt and the worry that the next pink slip would be theirs. With end-of-the-year layoffs looming, she had planned her next session for Tuesday.