It is probably no coincidence that Charlottesville High School’s Freshman Academy got more love from administrators after the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001. Arguably the most influential—and maligned—federal education act since the 1964 Civil Rights Act pushed public school integration, NCLB uses test scores to measure “school accountability” and sets annual […]
This year’s graduating class of 261 had 451 students in ninth grade—which means the dropout rate should be huge, right? Try 3 percent. That’s the official number for the Charlottesville City Schools division from 2005-06, a number derived by the number of students who drop out in a year divided by the total number of […]
art With Charlottesville turning its collective eye to photography via the Festival of the Photograph, the UVA Art Museum devotes a small space to a related exhibition that gives just a taste of four Virginia camera artists. This is a disparate quartet of heavyweights: fine artists and top-notch journalists including Sally Mann, Sam Abell, Emmet […]
comics You can always count on zombies for a good time. Those irascible brain-munchers have been pop-culture staples since at least Colonial times, trading on race/class fears to give the upper crust a little something to fret about at night. Zombies have been best used in film, from George Romero’s Living Dead movies to the […]
stage One measure of a dramatic production is its success in bringing out qualities not apparent to a reader. On seeing director Francine Smith’s Old Times, I realized I had overlooked much of the play’s humor amid the ominous stares, pregnant silences and coded commonplaces that were expected features of Harold Pinter’s 1971 script. Such […]
Two parents who were convicted of providing alcohol to minors, and who tried to take their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, will be forced to serve a 27-month sentence.
Police now have three people in custody who, they suspect, fired bullets into a crowd of youths on Prospect Avenue on March 2, seriously injuring a 16-year-old Charlottesville High School student. One suspect is in custody at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail. Another is still in New York City, where he was picked up by […]
A cart full of about 20 laptop computers, meant as teaching tools for city elementary kids, was stolen, along with two desktop computers, on June 7, Charlottesville police say. The computers, many of them new, white Apple MacBooks, are worth about $25,000 total. Sometime after 6pm last Thursday, police suspect, one or more robbers broke […]
Shoppers’ World has been bought by the owners of Barracks Road Shopping Center, Federal Realty Investment Trust.
Maple Hill Farm, an organic farm near Scottsville where Dave Matthews’ Best of What’s Around operation is based, plans to house seasonal interns on its facility to learn the farming trade. According to farm manager Matthew Holt, this move comes in the midst of a growing trend among organic farms to take on willing interns […]