PALO ALTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL 50 EMBARCADERO RD. PALO ALTO, CA 94301 NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
PAI D PALO ALTO PERMIT #44
The Campanile
Vol. XCVI, No. 3
Palo Alto High School • 50 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94301 • www.palycampanile.org
Friday, November 8, 2013
Seniors take victory, sophomores second in Spirit Week
Jensen Hsiao/ The campanile
Students from all grades come together during the first-ever brunch rally to win points for their respective classes on Oct. 23. The seniors clinched the win at the end of the week, See SPIRIT WEEK, A3 with sophomores in second.
ACT to pilot digital assessment in 2015 By Angela Stern Senior Staff Writer
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tarting in the spring of 2015, students can trade in their pencils for keyboards on ACT testing days. The nonprofit organization recently announced that it will pilot a digital version of the test at select high schools in 2015 and plan to make the new format available to all test takers shortly after. The ACT exam is a “curriculum and standards-based educational and career planning tool that assesses students’ academic readiness for college,” according to the organization’s website. The test is taken by nearly 1.7 million high school students every year. Jon Erickson, president of the ACT’s education division, said that the new format will resemble the current test, but allow for more rapid score returns and reflect the increasing presence of computers and technology in students’ lives. “This has been in the planning for a long time,” Erickson said in an interview with Deseret News. “But,
we’re not doing it for the technology. It’s really a vehicle around the need to address immediacy of results, new ways to measure skill performance and informing and improving instruction.”
Results can be returned to the student much quicker, if not almost immediately. Jon Erickson
President of ACT Education
Faster delivery of results was one of the foremost reasons for creating a digital version of the test, as the new format will hopefully be able to score the tests in anywhere from seconds to minutes following completion. The organization has yet to release specifics on how the new results will be delivered, since the optional writing component must still be hand-scored and will thus take extra time. “Most of us want to have our re-
See ACT, A3
New Common App malfunctions By Jeffrey Ho Staff Writer
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he Common Application, an online program utilized by schools nationwide for college admissions, has recently encountered numerous technical difficulties, hindering the college admissions process for many seniors applying to universities this year. Over this past month, complications with the Common App system have delayed submissions of college applications for the nationwide high school class of 2014. Such complications on the website have caused frustration throughout the nation.
When the website is busiest, many students reported complaints regarding failure to log into an existing account, trouble importing transcripts and letters of recommendation onto the site, jumbled document conversion formatting and glitches in the payment systems. In addition, due to the increasing number of colleges utilizing the Common App for college admissions, its server has been in high demand for students, resulting in periodic crashes that affects the users. According to Scott Anderson, the Common Application’s Director
See COMMON APP, A3
JEnsen Hsiao/the campanile
Students have been encountering issues while using the Common Application website when submitting applications to colleges.
Environmental Club revamps recycling effort to minimize impact By Heather Strathearn Senior Staff Writer
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he Paly Environmental Club (PEC) has decided to turn the current ineffectual system of separating waste into compost, recycling and trash at Paly into one that is functional in correctly separating waste to benefit the earth. Disregard for the proper usage of the green compost or blue recycling bins is prevalent; along with a few compostable or recyclable items, trash is common throughout. This misplacement of items also occurs in the trash bin, which often contains items that could be recycled or composted. This compost and recycling movement has infiltrated many other Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) schools, but has failed to take hold at Paly. A few years ago, the Green Team, a former Paly club focused on bringing awareness to environmental issues, attempted to initiate this movement through labeling the compost, recycling and trash bins and creating laminated “Got Green?” posters that displayed information as to which color represents which means of waste disposal. However, these efforts by the Green Team “didn’t change the climate of
the school,” according to Assistant Principal Jerry Berkson. Despite the Green Team having disbanded and never succeeding in creating an effective system to promote composting and recycling at Paly, this year, PEC has assumed plans to revamp prior efforts. PEC plans to kick off its efforts to increase awareness around the school of the importance and environmentally positive effects of compost and recycling during Paly’s annual Turkey Trot on Nov. 22. Along with the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) handing out Thanksgiving feasts for a cash or canned food donation, PEC will be stationed on the quad to advise students in their trash disposal.
Added guidance supplied by the club is aimed to help students and clear up any confusion on which items belong in which bin. PEC realizes that sorting composting, recycling and trash is not always simple, and even the most environmentally conscious people struggle in deciding where each item belongs. “I was a part of the Green Team, and I still walk up to [recycling and compost bins] and take five seconds to really think about what goes where,” Berkson said. With club officers manning every recycling and compost bin on the Quad during Turkey Trot, PEC is hoping to leave students with no
See RECYCLING, A3
Coby Parker/the campanile
PEC is hoping to correct the current disposal of student waste.
WASC accreditation review ongoing By Arjun Parikh
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Senior Staff Writer
alo Alto High School has been working closely with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) since the 2008-2009 school year in an attempt to improve the school in all areas. WASC is one of six regional associations that accredits schools. Schools across the United States must first be accredited before they are eligible to take part in federal and state financial aid programs. According to WASC’s website, a school is accredited once WASC finds evidence that the school “possesses the resources… to achieve its educational goals.” Schools must also “provide evidence of the quality of its educational programs.” Peer evaluation and institutional self-review are required for initial accreditation. A WASC report on a particular school has two major sections. “One [report] is called the selfstudy, which is reporting everything Paly is doing — if we could take a snapshot of the entire school right
now, what does our school look like?” Paly WASC coordinator Emily Garrison said. “And the second set is the action plan, which is, ‘How do we get better?’”
WASC is dedicated to helping Paly create a brighter, more sustainable future. Accreditation is reaffirmed every six years to ensure that schools stay on track and are meeting goals. An institutional self-study, an external review and a site visit are required during each reaccreditation period. In addition to granting eligibility for financial aid programs, accreditation allows college credit to transfer between accredited schools. Accreditation is also vital for graduate programs. “So then what happens is that WASC sends a visiting committee and they spend about four days with us in the late winter or early spring,” Garrison said. “They read this report, they talk to everyone, they come to classrooms, all to validate our report
and then to give us feedback about our action plan.” Although the amount of work going into to WASC escalates at the beginning and end of each six-year cycle, there is always a WASC-related task going on behind the scenes. “What’s really interesting about WASC is that it’s a six-year cycle that is being worked on all the time,” Garrison said. At Paly, the most recent WASC cycle took place during the 20082009 school year. “Primarily, teachers are the main driving force behind WASC,” Garrison said. WASC is dedicated to helping Paly create a brighter, more sustainable future, and its findings have helped bring about major change — WASC is responsible for the implementation of the later start time (8:15 a.m.) and the block schedule that came into effect three years ago. Most students feel the block schedule has had a positive impact at Paly. “Even though I questioned it at
See WASC, A3
INSIDE N e w s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A 1- A 5 Opinion...............................A6-A8 Lifestyle . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B1, B6, B8 E d u c at i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B 2 F a c u l t y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B 3 Spotlight...............................B4-B5 StudentLife....................................B7 S p o r t s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C 1- C 8
SPOTLiGHT Common Core
A preview of the new federal standards and how they affect classes. B4-B5
LiFesTYLe Women Empowerment
Students in Palo Alto take initiative to encourage women empowerment. B6
sPORTs Single Sex Sports?
Should all sports be co-ed or offer teams for both sexes? C4-C5
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