Henderson County News
Duke Energy announced Wednesday that it had made more than $1 million worth of grants to improve natural areas in North Carolina and South Carolina, including a $100,000 donation to Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy to protect a creek in the Mills River watershed.
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Henderson County News
Chasing Rainbows: The Road to Oz opens with a brief glimpse of the end, which is a good thing. The road to Oz is mighty hard for Judy Garland and company. It’s good to know ahead of time that she makes it.
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Henderson County News
Things are rockin' in the new early signup period for local and state elections.
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Henderson County News
State Rep. Chris Whitmire is leaving his state House seat to take a civilian job related to his Air Force background.
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Henderson County News
Chuck Edwards, a Hendersonville business owner and past president of the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday filed for the state Senate seat incumbent Tom Apodaca plans to vacate at the end of his seventh term.
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Henderson County News
State Sen. Tom Apodaca, a political novice who rose over the past 14 years from back bench anonymity to become one of the most powerful legislators ever to serve from Hendersonville, announced on Monday that he is not running for re-election next year.
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Henderson County News
FLAT ROCK — The Singleton Centre has been bought by a commercial real estate broker who promises improved signage and more coordinated shopping events by the center’s tenants.
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Henderson County News
Q. I read where Henderson County students scored the 12th highest SAT scores in the state. Great, but there is a missing piece. How many took the test compared with all the other school systems?
This year 374 Henderson County high school students took the SAT, only 44 percent of eligible test-takers. In Buncombe County, 51 percent took the test, but in Polk County only 39 percent sat for it. Wake County (Raleigh) had one of the highest rates at 67 percent. The national average is 52 percent. Henderson County’s test-takers have dropped steadily in the past two years. Assistant School Superintendant Kathy Revis offered that the decline may have to do with the new state mandate that all high school juniors in North Carolina take the ACT — the new kid on the block. Born in 1959 doesn’t sound new, but the SAT was around back in 1901. The ACT and SAT are big competitors and in 2012 the ACT passed its rival. No wonder; the ACT landed sweet contracts with 18 states including North Carolina.A general difference in the tests is that the SAT is trickier, tougher in math and emphasizes verbal abilities and critical thinking. The ACT is more straightforward. It is curriculum-based, measuring what a student learned in class. Currently the SAT penalizes you for wrong answers but the ACT lets you guess your heart away counting only correct answers! Who doesn’t love that?The SAT is not your father’s aptitude test. In fact, they dropped “Aptitude” in the formal name and now call it College Board. Next year changes will kick in that will make it more like the ACT and the dreaded writing test on the SAT will now be optional. Students who want to augment their ACT scores can still take the SAT and a high score there might give them an edge over students who opted out.Either test is accepted by each of our state’s 18 public universities. Yet some 200 schools such as Wake Forest University don’t require either test. It seems that many have found that test scores are not a guarantee of student performance. The bonus? Not taking the SAT will save a student about $50 a pop.Want to play college sports? Freshmen, of course, have minimum eligibility standards, but Division I schools use a sliding scale whereby an applicant can offset low test scores with a high grade point average and vice-versa. Maybe if you play sports in high school and don’t study much, they’ll take you if you’re really, really smart. I’m not sure how that works if you play in the band.
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Henderson County News
St. Gerard House has launched a campaign to raise $935,000 to expand autism programs in a house it bought across the street from its Grotto School.
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