Today in Things That Don't Suck
Last Call Cleveland will be at Sketchfest Friday and Saturday at 9pm.
Hope You're Having A Good Boxing Day
But if you're not, maybe these tasty tidbits will help:
Gettin' Schooled
Chicagoist is kind of a nerd, so the underlying theme for this story saddens us a little, but at least the news is encouraging. Chicago Public Schools reported that its one-year dropout rate fell to 10.2% in the 2004-5 school year, down from 11.9% the year before. This comes on the heels of more good school news from last week, that 92% of schoolchildren showed up on the first day of classes. CPS CEO Arne Duncan was heartened, but said, "There is no such thing as an acceptable dropout rate." No high school diploma these days spells social and economic doom, he says, unlike 30 or 40 years ago when dropouts could still get a job chipping slag out of a 200-degree blast furnace at the steel mills or conking livestock on the head with a sledgehammer at the stockyards (oh, for the days when that was considered a good job).

