Chris Wright was my first friend. We met on the playground at St. Timothy’s Preschool in 1988 and formed a bond that would last nearly four decades. I’m an only child – and to me, he was more like a brother in every way but blood. The night before he was killed, we shared a meal at Main Street Meats – swapping stories about the beautiful chaos of raising young families, our ambitious career pursuits, the wives that we adore, our parents, our kids, our dreams, our future golf trips. We toasted to his joy of finally becoming a ‘Girl Dad’ to Aprilia – born only a few weeks prior, as well as the antics of his young boys, Abbott and Declan. Chris was beaming with pride. We played ... (click for more)

One ongoing challenge in education is finding the most effective way to evaluate student performance, whether through traditional percentage and letter grades or emerging nontraditional methods. This challenge revolves around several critical factors, including how well these systems reflect actual learning, their susceptibility to grade inflation, and their implications for academic integrity. The traditional grading system, using percentages or letter grades from A to F, has been the standard for educational assessment for decades. Its clarity makes it easy to understand; for instance, a student scoring 85 percent receives a B, indicating their mastery of the subject. This simplicity ... (click for more)