CUTTING "EASY" CLASSES COULD LEAD TO MORE DROPOUTS

Want to keep kids in school? Don't eliminate opportunities for them to feel successful. In tough economic times, cutting classes like home economics and industrial arts might appear to be an easy way to trim a school's budget. But in a letter to The Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Maine, retired school administrator Ronald Moody argues that such cuts could hurt the chances of some students to graduate. "One of life’s precious rules is: Everyone must have an experience at being successful at something to prevent dropping out of everything," Moody writes.