For the first time, a small portable device that lets researchers study DNA in the weightless environment of space will be employed in a student-designed experiment aboard the orbiting International Space Station.
The initial experiments were designed by a 16-year-old Bedford, New York, high-school student, Anna-Sophia Boguraev. The lab device was carried aboard the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship that reached the station last weekend.
In a lead article "Common Core ballot fight may head to court" by Statehouse reporter Christian M. Wade, the chief litigant against the ballot question, Linda Noonan, is quoted as saying that "Massachusetts deserves to have the best educational standards. We don't need Common Core-light." Her pro-CC group is seeking a stay of the ballot question on the grounds it is "vaguely worded and conflicts with the state constitution." The backdrop is that on Sept. 2, 2015, Attorney General Maura Healey and Secretary of State Bill Galvin approved the constitutionality of the ballot question proposing to stop the state from using the Common Core education standards. Subsequent to the AG's approval, hundreds of parents, grandparents and educators gathered the required number of confirmed signatures (more than 64,750) to give the initiative a chance to be on the November 2016 ballot.
Although Noonan asserts that the Bay State deserves the best educational standards, she doesn't explain why she supports Common Core. We know that the adoption of Common Core's standards led to a loss of content-rich literary materials by up to 50 percent in English (replaced by something called "informational texts"). Students end up unable to understand America's civic culture and to participate in it.
