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This is not my fight. I have no high-school kids and I don't even live on Marco any longer. However, I can testify to the value to a high-school education of quality with teachers who care for their students rather than their own interests. I can also testify to the value (or lack thereof) of a large school that emphasizes diversity. I went to a private high school that emphasized quality education rather than diversity. There were a total of about 400 students, all male, in the entire school (hardly an example of diversity) ... about 100 in my graduating class. Some of you may have heard of the Science Talent Search (God help us, PBS features it each year!) which sought to reward the 40 students in the nation thought to be the most promising future scientists. Then it was supported by Westinghouse; now it is the Intel STS. Thanks to one teacher in this class of 100, we placed 3 semi-finalists and 2 finalists ... 5% of those in the nation! I was one of those finalists thanks to the dedication of 1 man: the Reverend Mister Walter J. C. Grant, S.J.. We called him "Waldo." He was the inspiration of my life ... a man who taught us the areas of science in which we would be tested but had not been included in our standard curriculum. One of the STS finalists in our year (Roald Hoffman) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, joining the other 6 STS finalists who have won the Nobel in one area of science or another. Another was blown up by anti-Vietnam-War crazies in his University laboratory in the mid-West. This is what one person, in one school, striving for exceptionalism can do. Think on it!

Ed Foster
Formar Marco Resident