Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 3 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
English
Also Strong
To the Editor:
Earlier this week, an English teacher at RCHS politely suggested to me that my article on Jim Clark, the Westinghouse finalist, in last week’s Rappahannock News had been unfair to RCHS’s English department.
The article said that Jim had felt his instruction at RCHS in writing, particularly grammar, had been weaker than his instruction in science and math.
I replied that I had simply reported Jim’s views, not necessarily my own. But she pointed out that, regardless, readers were left with an unfavorable impression of RCHS’s English instruction.
Prompted by this conversation, I decided to see whether the 14 RCHS students who scored above 1200 on their SATs in the last year displayed a large difference in their verbal and math abilities. If RCHS were weak in English, I figured it would show up as weak verbal scores in this group.
The result? The 14 students averaged 626 on the verbal part of the test, 652 on the math part.
In other words, it looks as if the English department is justified in feeling unfairly represented. On the average, RCHS’s high-scoring students are almost even in their verbal and math abilities.
BONNIE PRICE LOFTON
Laurel Mills
96.1%