“Collecting Dead Relatives and Sometimes a Live Cousin” and “My Family Tree is Lost in Forest” are just some of catchy slogans found printed on shirts of genealogy enthusiasts. These avid researchers are looking to fill holes in their family trees. It’s work that most have been at for decades.

My wife and I wanted to get started finding our lost relatives, but we didn’t know where to begin. She had a binder full of information that one of her relatives had put together, but other than that, we were ones who were lost.

We started by going to Genealogy library at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library, but you can also do this online.

The No Child Left Behind Act tries to solve this problem. The federal government is pressuring public schools to set minimum standards that each student must pass before advancing to next grade.

However, in spite of these new laws, many states still have semi-automatic advancement based on student’s overall per-formance. Many schools consider a student’s "portfolio" of work, attendance record, or other mitigating factors. Based on these factors, school may advance students to next grade, even though they do poorly on their tests or read at a previous grade level.

For example, a dedicated California 7th-grade math teacher wrote to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, radio talk-show host, about this problem. She said that about 30 percent of her students did not do their daily homework assignments, but she could do nothing about this. That is because California Education code forbids teachers from "punishing" students for failing to do their homework.

She also said that students are "not retained" if they fail one class or fail all their classes. "Not retained" is a polite way of saying not left back.