Experimental On-Camera Report Cards Make Grade

And now: the video report card.

In an effort to keep parents better-informed about the academic progress of their offspring, San Diego State journalism professor Don Sneed sent home videotapes assessing the work and work habits of each student in his fall class on critical and editorial writing.

Sneed decided that the regular report card carrying only a letter grade is too skimpy and only increases the alienation felt by tuition-paying parents. “In college there is no such thing as a teacher-parent conference,” he said.

Fifteen of 20 students in Sneed’s Journalism 425 class volunteered to be part of the video report card experiment. Their parents received an individually tailored tape of 25 to 30 minutes in which Sneed, seated in his back yard in El Cajon, offered a critique of their son’s or daughter’s performance.

Feedback from an accompanying questionnaire was upbeat: 100% of the mothers and 88% of the fathers liked the video idea. Among the dissenters was a father who upbraided Sneed for criticizing his daughter’s use of mathematics in a story she wrote about the county marshal’s budget.

“He said that one criticism negated everything good in the report card, and he told me his daughter got straight A’s in high school math,” Sneed said.

Sneed says he will use the video report cards again if the students are amenable, the class is small enough and his wife again agrees to do the camera work. Of course, if video report cards spread to the lower grades, certain behavioral patterns will be altered.

The classic excuse given by students for the disappearance of their report card before scrutiny by their parents--”The dog ate it”--might have to be updated. Stay tuned for: “I erased it, by mistake. Honest.”

Drawing the Line

In a dispute between management and a labor union, you might figure the business-oriented Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce would side with management.

As a matter of philosophy, that may be true, but when philosophy stands in the way of political access, look for philosophy to give way.

Case in point: the chamber booked the restaurant at the new Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento for a gala breakfast March 28 as part of an annual two-day lobbying trip. The breakfast is meant to give 30-plus chamber leaders a chance to meet informally with the county’s legislative delegation.

As soon as the invitations were mailed out, Assemblyman Peter Chacon notified the chamber that he, and possibly other Democratic legislators, would not attend because it would require crossing a picket line by members of the Restaurant and Hotel Workers Union Local 47.

The chamber last week sent amended invitations announcing that the breakfast has been shifted to the Capitol Restaurant, where the employees are already represented by Local 47.

High-Pressure Pitch

The folks who run the San Dieguito Water District are not happy with a Cardiff plumber who distributed 100-plus flyers warning homeowners that water pressure has increased ominously in recent years.

“This kind of pressure can cause considerable damage to your house,” say the flyers. “ . . .Think of the mess you may have to live in, while carpets and padding are removed and damage to furniture as well.”

Alarmed water customers have called both the city of Encinitas and the water district demanding an explanation. “Old people are afraid their pipes are about to burst,” said water district office manager Beth Stone.

Stone and other officials say pressure has not increased, and they offer what they say is a watertight explanation: Unlike districts that use pumps, the San Dieguito system is strictly gravity flow and, at last report, Newton’s law of motion and gravity ( F=ma , or Force equals mass times acceleration) is still in effect.

For doubters, the city is offering free pressure tests.

The issue has also been turned over to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. (The flyers offer to install a pressure regulator for $85.)