WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson awarded eight scholarships last year to her grandsons and a top aide’s children – bringing to 23 the number of awards she handed out since 2005 in violation of Congressional Black Caucus Foundation eligibility rules.
They call it the Beltway Blinders—a common disease that hits when so-called insiders to Washington politics lose sight of the priorities, challenges, and fears that matter in “real” America. Those inside the Capital Beltway, the roughly 60-mile interstate loop around the city, are vulnerable to the highly contagious disease, losing perspective on what the rest of America is saying even as they pretend to represent it.
WORLD Magazine | Working-class blues | Edward Lee Pitts | Sep 11, 10.
That’s why it’s great that an organization like the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) has created an award to recognize the best teacher of the year. They have just announced that the inaugural National Teacher of the Year Award will go to Jeremiah Young, a science teacher from Beaufort High School in South Carolina. The award will be given this week in a ceremony in Washington D.C.
The high price of college textbooks is getting a lot of press. Legislators are considering bills to bring down costs, such as requiring professors to use the least expensive “educationally sound” option. As I have read articles about the burden of textbook costs, I have done some soul-searching about the cost of the books I choose for my students. I conclude that the textbooks I use are a good value compared to the alternatives.
Back to School, Back to the Books: The Value Behind Textbooks.
Labor’s campaign in California has been an ambitious mix of trying to persuade swing voters while at the same time trying to mobilize those Democrats who don’t often vote in nonpresidential elections.
California, labor and get out the vote for Democratic candidates - latimes.com.
As we slept, as it were, our federal minders awarded themselves impressive pay/benefits increases that average out to $123,000 per year, compared with $61,000 in the private sector.
Government Pay: Now For The Really Bad News - Forbes.com.
“ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march,” began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.
Education secretary urged his employees to attend Sharpton’s rally | Washington Examiner.
The suit against the Phoenix area Maricopa Community Colleges was filed less than two months after the Justice Department sued Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer (R) over the state’s new immigration law. It also comes as the department is investigating Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in Maricopa County, who is known for tough immigration enforcement.
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn.-A principal at Karns Elementary School is on shaky constitutional ground after telling a group of young students that they cannot bring their Bibles to school or study them during recess, according to a letter written to Knox County School District officials by an ADF-allied attorney.
In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama pointed to four areas of reform: Health care, energy, finance, and… education. As far as education goes, Obama has said that his goal is for 60% of Americans to hold a college degree by 2020. That’s very ambitious, considering the fact that right now the high school graduate rate is hovering around only 70%. Is it even possible to enroll enough students between 2010 and 2020 to reach a nationwide goal of a 60% college-educated citizenry?
JournoList founder Ezra Klein characterized the members of his listserv as merely “center to left of center.” While plenty of reports have highlighted what working journalists and others said on the listserv itself, further review of the reported membership suggests a farther-left ideology than Klein initially acknowledged.
One member boasts on his website of having been president of the socialist activist organization Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s.
Another called for a “climate Nuremberg” trial for global warming skeptics.
Others promoted the vulgar slang “teabaggers” as a label for Tea Party protesters, railing against “right-wing trolls” and “low-lifes” and comparing conservative leaders to racists and dictators.
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For far too long our colleges and universities have been allowed to ignore their chartered responsibilities to educate rather than indoctrinate. Instead of providing a forum for the free exchange of ideas, New York Times bestselling author David Horowitz argues that they intimidate students into ideological submission to leftist professors rather than pursuing meaningful research and that they proselytize for radical causes.
Over the past ten years, enrollment in PA public schools has declined, while spending and staff have grown by leaps and bounds. According to the Commonwealth Foundation, taxpayers now spend an outrageous $14,420 per pupil each year, while at the same time student performance has stagnated. Test scores have barely changed and PA continues to rank near the bottom of the nation in combined SAT scores.
According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan,
I hate to say this… I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster. It took hurricane Katrina to wake up the community and say we have to do better. The progress that they’ve made in four years is unbelievable.
Over the past five years, New Orleans has turned tragedy into triumph. It has quickly become the most market based school district in the country. The state of Louisiana took over most of the schools in the district and turned them into successful charter schools. As a result, 70 percent of students in New Orleans will be attending a charter school in the fall-the highest rate of any district in the nation. Additionally, the district now has an open choice policy that allows students to attend any public school regardless of their geographical location. In 2008, Louisiana enacted the School Scholarship for Educational Excellence Program that gives low-income students a tuition voucher to attend the school of their choice.
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Peter Newman, THE TAX MAN, is having his annual “Personal Enrichment Series” seminar at the Polsky Theater, Carlsen Center, Johnson County Community College on September 1, 2010 (Wednesday evening) at 7 PM with Refreshments.
Peter Newman will cover a variety of very important financial issues including the FairTax. The other subjects include an unusual investment opportunity with High Rates (up to 24%) with low risk, referred to as “Tax Lien Certificates”.
This is another opportunity for FairTaxers to learn from the most knowledgeable tax authority in the country and the most articulate about our destructive Federal Income Tax system. Don’t miss this once a year opportunity. I will be there. EARL LONG
Additional information can be obtained by internet links to http://video.jccc.edu/polsky.htm
Peter Newman’s web site is http://taxmankc.com
His program will also be shown on CableTV channels in Johnson County
Sundays from 7 - 10 PM and Wed 8 - 11 PM
TimeWarner CableTV Ch 17
Comcast Ch22 in Johnson County
SureWest Ch 17
The FairTax is the most powerful political agenda of the century. The battle is on. Use the FairTax, the powerful weapon that it is.
You can donate on our web site at the Donate tab, http://www.fairtaxkc.org/donate.php. Recurring saves you the time to do this every month. Send checks to FairTaxKC, PO Box 11415, Shawnee Mission, KS 66207.
There is a long and proud history of this intellectual yeoman’s work on the right. When Milton Friedman introduced the idea of school vouchers, he was widely dismissed as a crank. Today, even core Democratic constituencies are seeing the wisdom of loosening government’s death grip on the education of American children. When Ronald Reagan began pursuing welfare reform as Governor of California in the early 1970s, it was widely dismissed as an extremist reaction to the Great Society. But within a few decades, a Democratic president was touting its federal implementation as one of the cornerstones of his legacy.
Nearly half, 47 percent, of illegal-immigrant households consist of parents with children. This proportion is more than double that of U.S.-born households, where just 21 percent are parents with children. Over the years, the number of children of illegal immigrants has increased significantly.
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I’m not usually the conspiratorial type, but watch Gov. Chris Christie explain how the Obama administration disqualified the state of New Jersey from hundreds of millions in education funds because some clerk in Trenton turned in the wrong excel spreadsheet:
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Cutting spending is never easy politically. In an election season like this one, being honest about spending is liable to get you labeled as an “extremist.” But it is time for someone to step up and show the courage to tell the American people that Santa Claus isn’t coming to town.
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Teach for America, based in New York, was founded in 1990 by a Princeton graduate who hoped to expose future leaders to the problems of education. It enlists college graduates from a variety of academic backgrounds and career interests, not just education majors.
The classroom size at Horizon Academy is nine students. KMBC’s Kelly Eckerman reported that there is a lot of one-on-one learning at the school because whether they have dyslexia or some other learning disability, children learn differently.
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KU senior finds balance between academics and football, but misses trip to China
http://www.news.ku.edu/2010/august/23/blackwell.shtml
LAWRENCE - Brian Blackwell decided he’d pass up a trip of a lifetime and opted instead for the sidelines the University of Kansas’ Memorial Stadium this fall.
Blackwell, a senior from Herington, is a safety on the KU football team. In four years in the program, he’s dutifully filled his role on the team but has never seen action during a game. (more…)
KU professor among Jefferson Science Fellows honored by State Department
http://www.news.ku.edu/2010/august/23/dobson.shtml
LAWRENCE - “Rewarding … exhilarating … sometimes exasperating.” That’s how University of Kansas geography professor Jerry Dobson describes his year in Washington, D.C. (more…)
KU touted for excellence by three national publications
http://www.news.ku.edu/2010/august/23/rankings.shtml
LAWRENCE - The University of Kansas is among nine public universities in the nation cited by U.S. News and World Report for having the top study abroad programs, which the publication said education experts agree on as a key ingredient to student success. (more…)
In all likelihood, the data will soon be so convincingly bad that we’ll again debate the need for an economic stimulus. Let’s hope that when that begins, all will finally concede that the ideas of John Maynard Keynes are as dead as the man himself, and that Keynesianism is the real voodoo economics.
