Eighteen states and the District of Columbia advanced to the second round of a national competition for federal financing to support education reform.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were named as finalists on Tuesday in the second round of a national competition for $3.4 billion in federal financing to support an overhaul of education policies.

The much-anticipated decision by the federal Education Department eliminated almost half of the 35 states that entered the competition, called Race to the Top.

The finalists are Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/education/28education.html?ref=education

Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools

Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks.

Their support has surprised many in education circles, given states’ long tradition of insisting on retaining local control over curriculum. The quick adoption of common standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school is attributable in part to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September. 

for the rest of the article, click here 

 

Come on Arizona, lets get with the program dudes! It's race to the top, not a political partisan driven race to mediocrity. We have so much good raw material here, and if we really want a bright future for the state, it's going to be due to having a well educated, highly skilled young workforce. 

 

Dear Arizona Legislature and Honorable Governor, lets have a race to the top, instead of spending so much energy racing and chasing after ghosts and fictional enemies of the state.

jg

 

Brisco & Dixie Get Some Quality Time with Mommy!

Arizona regents panel rejects change to scholarships

Associated Press

An Arizona Board of Regents committee on Thursday rejected another proposal by the three state universities to change a popular college scholarship program for high achievers.
The AIMS scholarships pay tuition and fees at the state's three public universities for high school students who perform well on the standardized Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards test.
But the scholarships are costing too much and the universities want more discretion to funnel some of the money toward need-based scholarships. The award is a scholarship that equals the cost of tuition, renewable for up to four years.
An estimated 8,394 students received the AIMS scholarship in the 2009-10 school year, or about 8 percent of undergraduate students at Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/07/15/20100715aims-scholarship-regents-panel.html#ixzz0tp0DQguN

Don't worry, about a thing, cause every little thing, gonna be all right...

from CNN.com...


Is the world ready for good news?

"Someone has written, in presenting the conference, that good news is a species that is becoming extinct. If you look at any newspaper ... we are bombarded by bad news," he said as attendees chatted at a welcome party at Keble College on Monday. "But if you dig, if you look under the surface and search, you will find a lot of new technology, new science, new art, new ways of thinking, politically, socially, philosophically that may give you, when you string them all together, a more optimistic view of the future."

This article is about the third global TEDGlobal 2010, conference in Oxford., UK.

It includes everything from artists (like singer Annie Lennox) to tech guru's (like Steve jobs) to actual geniuses like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry.  How exciting! Oh, what wonderful times we live in!