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SCHOOLS | Sen. Hill, students celebrate American Education Week [6] CRIME ALERT | Redmond Police Blotter [5]
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2013
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SPORTS | Bear Creek girls and boys soccer teams qualify for 1B/2B state semifinals [12]
A more consistent education with Common Core New standards provide more rigor and evens the playing field for students nationwide
SAMANTHA PAK spak@redmond-reporter.com
When a student moves from one school to another, one of the biggest adjustments he or she must make — aside from meeting and making new friends — is academically. Their new school may be covering a topic the student has already learned or they may not be ready for as the topic may be more advanced than what they have learned up to that point. This issue is magnified when a student moves states. “How much would he or she have to make up or how much is he or she ahead?” asked Nathan Olson, communication manager for Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). So, in an effort to provide students throughout the country with a more consistent education, 45 states
— including Washington — have adopted a Common Core of standards for English/language arts and math.
AN EVEN, DEEPER, PLAYING FIELD
Olson said in addition to providing a more consistent education for students nationwide, one of the goals of the Common Core — which applies to grades K-12 — is to help students be college and career ready after high school. “The learning is a lot more rigorous,” said Shannon Leonard, who teaches second grade at Horace Mann Elementary School in Redmond. She said with the new standards, students need to think more deeply about what they are reading and pull evidence from the text to show how they arrived at their answers. Leonard, who has been teaching for 15 years, admits that this
Jem Thrasher, an eighth-grader at Stella Schola Middle School in Redmond, lights a small piece of paper on fire to see how it burns as part of a science lesson Tuesday morning. SAMANTHA PAK, Redmond Reporter was a “big shift” for her as she has younger students. However, she has seen her students improving on
this skill and realizing the benefits of re-reading text for different purposes. “I think this is going
to lead to future success,” Leonard said. Brigitte Tennis, founder and headmistress of Stella
Schola Middle School — a Lake Washington School District (LWSD) choice [ more CORE page 7 ]
Microsoft Cybercrime Center helps fight online crimes worldwide spak@redmond-reporter.com
Members of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit work in the forensics lab in the company’s new Cybercrime Center in Redmond. Courtesy of Microsoft
In an effort to help advance the global fight against cybercrime, Microsoft Corp. has created the Microsoft Cybercrime Center. The center opened last week and is located on the tech company’s Redmond campus.
Within the center is a Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), which is made up of an international team that works with industry partners to help create a safe digital world. “The team applies legal and technical expertise to keep the Internet safer for everyone by addressing malicious software crimes, IP crimes or technology-fa-
cilitated child exploitation,” said Bonnie MacNaughton, assistant general counsel for the DCU. “The center’s tools and technologies will enable DCU to more effectively work with partners to fight cybercrime.” MacNaughton, who has worked on piracy-related issues at Microsoft for 12 years, said the Cybercrime Center brings together
people with different expertise from different industries — ranging from engineers to investigators to lawyers — and equips them with “the best tools and technology available.” She added that having experts in various areas under one umbrella makes it easier for them to work together to eliminate cyberthreats [ more CYBERCRIME page 7 ]
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SAMANTHA PAK