10 Sep, 2010
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Congress may not be making adequately yearly progress towards the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but that doesn’t mean it’s not on the minds of lawmakers who are locked in tight races for re-election.
Case in point? Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who has long been a critic of the current version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. He introduced a whopping three ESEA-related bills over a two-day period. Feingold is fending off a tough re-election challenge from three GOP opponents, including plastics manufacturer Ron Johnson. (This poll has Feingold just 1 point ahead of Johnson.) So he may see this as a good time to remind people of his independence on ideas like education.
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9 Sep, 2010
College College Students
College football was on the minds of many today, but September 11th memorial services were held in remembrance of lives lost in the terrorist attacks nine years ago—friends and family members of 9/11 victims gathered at the World Trade Center site in New York City, and President Barack Obama attended a service in Washington, D.C. Additionally, various 9/11 events were held at colleges and universities across the United States.
Most Americans refer to the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks as “Nine Eleven” or simply “September 11th” but President George W. Bush signed a law designating the date to be known as Patriot Day on December 18, 2001. The American flag is to be flown at half-staff at individual homes, the White House, and on all U.S. governmen
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8 Sep, 2010
Business Google Tools
Do you love Google Tools as much as we do? Google has a talent for coming up with features that often cater to the needs of Virtual Assistants and Online Business owners and can even help brick and mortar businesses take more of their activities online. For example, the blog post “Free Google Tools Changing the Way I Do Business” talks about the way Google’s suite of tools can streamline people’s work in the Real Estate business, providing quick access to email and documents.
If one of your goals for the last part of 2010 is to maximize your business productivity so you can hit the ground running in 2011, Google Tools can help you do that.
So without further ado, here’s a list of the ones we’d highly recommend:
1. Gmail
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7 Sep, 2010
Band Toys Toys
Seven-year-old Michael Bunnell has a big stash of Silly Bandz, the rubber-band like toys. Like any discriminating collector, he has special ones that he liked to show off at school.
“Dinosaurs are my favorites. But we can’t take them to school anymore.”
Alas, it’s true. The second grader attends Bear Creek Elementary School in Monument, where most teachers have banned the wrist toys from classrooms.
“I’’ll have to start paying more attention. I didn’t notice if Michael was taking them to school. I didn’t pat him down,” said his mother Janna Bunnell.
Administrators say kids play with them, chew on them, trade them, shoot them into the air, and they’ve become a distraction.
This can have negative impact on learning, says Principal Peggy Parsley. During a meeting earlie
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6 Sep, 2010
Employee Employee Satisfaction
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The U.S. Department of Education still ranks near the bottom of the list of big federal agencies when it comes to employee job satisfaction, at least according to a survey released last week by the non-profit Partnership for Public Service.
But it seems that the department’s employees are a tiny bit happier than they were on the same survey last year.
Out of 32 large federal agencies surveyed about issues such as leadership effectiveness, work/life balance, and pay, the Education Department came in 30th. Last year, on the same survey, the department ranked 27th out of 30.
Still, the department’s overall score improved a little, going up 1.6 points, for a total score of 57.3 The absolute happiest place in the government, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had a score of 81.8 on the same survey.
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6 Sep, 2010
Lobbying
For-profit colleges and universities have gone into lobbying overdrive in the past few weeks to stop the U.S. Department of Education from enacting a rule that would threaten their chief source of profit — federal financial aid dollars.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, for-profits “increased spending by nearly a quarter, to $1.4 million, from the first to the second quarters of 2010 alone. Some of the largest increases came from companies that could suffer the most under the rule, including the Career Education Corp., Corinthian Colleges, Education Management Corp. and Kaplan Inc.”
The new rule, referred to as “gainful employment,” aims to make sure students are not borrowing too much money to train for low-paying jobs that won’t allow them to pay down the loans.
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