Drop Tuition, not bombs
(Source: desmonsters)
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![The notion of “Wheels for the Mind” rolls back in with the New Year. It seems like “grandson of HyperCard”
Apple is scheduled to host an education-related event on January 19 – shrouded with a veil of mystery, as always. A new report from Ars Technica says the company is about to unveil a set of tools to create interactive e-books.
Previous rumors said that Apple will show no new devices, and that the event will center around Apple’s new partnerships with textbook publishers.
If this new report is true, the event might turn out to be much more significant. Ars Technica’s sources say Apple’s about to present new authoring tools described as “GarageBand for e-books,” making it easy for everyone to create interactive digital books. The company also plans to expand its platform to distribute these e-books to iPhone and iPad users.
Apple, who currently supports the ePub 2 e-book standard (with some additions) is also expected to announce support for the ePub 3 standard for iBooks.
(via Apple to Introduce “GarageBand for E-Books” [RUMOR])](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxy0xhrcgm1qaoramo1_400.jpg)
The notion of “Wheels for the Mind” rolls back in with the New Year. It seems like “grandson of HyperCard”
Apple is scheduled to host an education-related event on January 19 – shrouded with a veil of mystery, as always. A new report from Ars Technica says the company is about to unveil a set of tools to create interactive e-books.
Previous rumors said that Apple will show no new devices, and that the event will center around Apple’s new partnerships with textbook publishers.
If this new report is true, the event might turn out to be much more significant. Ars Technica’s sources say Apple’s about to present new authoring tools described as “GarageBand for e-books,” making it easy for everyone to create interactive digital books. The company also plans to expand its platform to distribute these e-books to iPhone and iPad users.
Apple, who currently supports the ePub 2 e-book standard (with some additions) is also expected to announce support for the ePub 3 standard for iBooks.
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A new report from the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center argues that Ed Reform falls short of its goals in adequately funding education and remedying inequality in state education spending. (Includes an interactive tool to see how your district is doing.)
Sunday, November 27, 2011EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Education Reform Act of 1993 dramatically overhauled the formula for providing state education aid to the Commonwealth’s K-12 school districts, in large part by creating the state’s foundation budget, a calculation of adequate baseline spending amounts for every district individually. The foundation budget has been in place for almost two decades now, and it has not yet been comprehensively reexamined. This paper contributes to the growing statewide conversation about the foundation budget’s present adequacy by identifying major gaps between what the foundation budget says districts need for certain cost categories in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 and what districts are actually spending. We gather this data for each of the state’s 328 operating districts, allowing us to analyze trends for different types of districts, especially for districts of varying wealth. Key findings of this paper include:
- Foundation understates core SPED costs by about $1.0 billion
[…]- Foundation understates health insurance costs by $1.1 billion
[…]- Districts have not implemented the low-income student program envisioned in the original foundation budget
[…]- Most districts hire fewer regular education teachers than the foundation budget sets as an adequate baseline
[…]- Inflation adjustments have not been fully implemented, causing foundation to lag behind true cost growth…
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1,097: Average number of hours U.S. teachers spend per year on instruction.
Students across the U.S. are enjoying or getting ready for summer vacation, but teachers may be looking forward to the break even more. American teachers are the most productive among major developed countries, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data from 2008 — the most recent available.
Among 27 member nations tracked by the OECD, U.S. primary-school educators spent 1,097 hours a year teaching despite only spending 36 weeks a year in the classroom — among the lowest among the countries tracked. That was more than 100 hours more than New Zealand, in second place at 985 hours, despite students in that country going to school for 39 weeks. The OECD average is 786 hours.
(Source: azspot)
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Most Americans, regardless of political party, don’t understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don’t get. How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries? How can we slash funding for education and clean energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don’t need and didn’t ask for?
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| — | President Obama on the debt-limit compromise (via athivee) |
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[W]hy remove the clothing allowance from kids in foster care and welfare? Why cut jobs for the cognitively impaired and the blind? NO this should NOT mean tax cuts, but rather restoration of basic services to folks like dentures for those on masshealth.
Tell me, what cuts would YOU like to see reversed? I, for one, would like to see more money funneled into public higher education as the surest route to jobs, keeping young people in Massachusetts, and the economy humming along – and the cost of community college education reduced especially for former foster children, students who received special education but can thrive and succeed in training for the jobs that require community college associate degrees and certificates, and anyone who met the right need based criteria. There is no better bang for the taxpayer buck. And, yes, at least $40 million for the judicial branch.
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| — | amberpaw, “BREAKING NEWS tax receipts two billion dollars above estimated revenue” Blue Mass Group | Reality-based commentary on politics and policy in Massachusetts and around the nation Tue, Jul 19, 2011 9:36 PM EST |
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The economic crisis deepens educational inequality.
Please welcome guest blogger R. Tyson Smith, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rutgers University Institute for Health. Starting this July he will be an American Council of Learned Societies New…
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Please join me in observing Self-Injury Awareness Day (March 1) by wearing an orange ribbon, or at least taking some time to learn about this behavior. Someone you know may be affected. Knowledge is better than ignorance.
Self-Injury Awareness Day 2011
Each year, the 1st of March is designated as SIAD around the world. It’s a time when we can all come together to help raise awareness about self-injury and self-harm. SIAD has been running for many years, and has become more and more popular in the UK over the last few years, and FirstSigns (previously LifeSIGNS) is proud to lead the UK in self-injury awareness by providing support, information, fact sheets and posters for everyone to use.
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Self-injury is a coping mechanism. An individual harms their physical self to deal with emotional pain, or to break feelings of numbness by arousing sensation.
Self-harm includes many harmful behaviours such as self-injury, but includes such diverse matters as eating disorders, risk taking behaviour, drug and alcohol misuse.
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Let’s also remember, that after parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom. In South America, teachers are known as ‘Nation Builders’. Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect.
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President Obama, State of the Union, 2011 (HUGE Standing Ovation) Need I say how I feel about that? (Source: leftish) |
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