Race to the Top

Race to the top is a 4.35 billion dollar United Sates Department of Education program to help create reforms in schools K through 12 in the United States. This program was announced by President Barack Obama and the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009. To get the money from this grant you would have to meet certain criteria like how successful your state was at giving kids their education, how good the teachers are in the schools, and doing all the things the government wants you to do. The effects of race to the top are that out of the fifty states forty eight of them adopted common standards for K through 12. Also, there was 350 million federal grant money that went to funding the making of having tests that met the common standards all the states adopted. There was a timetable that was created for race to the top that was separated into two phases. If a state wanted to participate they had to have their entry in on January 19, 2010. Forty states made the deadline. Then if you applied you had to see if you made the cut, so the government announced "winners" on March 4, 2010. Then in phase two the same thing happened just at different time increments. If you were a state that "won" there were different amounts of money you could have been awarded. In phase one the lower range was from twenty to 75 million dollars and the higher range was from 350 to 700 million dollars. Some critics of the race to the top program say that there is too much government interference in education and they say that there is no proof that it will work and that attempts in the past have not been successful. I think that it will be a good thing because we have already seen the benefits of it in our school. Some examples would be getting the smart boards or the class set of ipod touches.





Sources:
http://www.youtube.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_top
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=580&q=race+to+the+top&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=race+to

Terrorist Bombs Moscow

Today, January 24, 2011, in Moscow, Russia, there was a suicide bombing that killed at least 35 people and wounded 180 people. This bombing was at Moscow's busiest airport Domodedovo. This bombing turned the airport into a smoky, blood splattered hall of dismembered bodies, scared survivors, and abandoned suitcases. There has been no one blamed for the bombing but Russia suspects that it was the Islamic militants in the southern part of Russia, Chechnya. They think that it was the Islamic because in March 2010 they bombed Moscow's subway system that caused forty deaths. After the attack the president Dmitry Medvedev immediately declared it a terrorist attack and tightened the security on Moscow's other two commercial airports and Moscow's other key facilities. This is the air port's second time being involved in a terrorist attack because in 2004 two female suicide bombers got through the lax security there, got two tickets illegally, and boarded a plane. Once they were on the plane they and were in the air, they blew it up killing 90 people. For the people that were injured in the bombing, Vladimir Putin ordered the health minister to send her deputies to the hospitals to make sure they wounded were getting the care they needed. Back here in the United States, Barack Obama called the catastrophe an "outrageous act of terrorism" and assured Dmitry Medvedev that he has the United States full support. Also, British Prime Minister David Cameron gave Russia his full support. I think that Russia feels the same way we did when we had 9/11 and I feel for them. If this were to happen in the United States I really don't know what our government would do. Would we declare war? Look past it? Or would we do the same Russia did? I hope that this never happens to us and that our security at the airports is on the top of its game.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/terror-suspected-in-deadly-moscow-bombing-23951084
This is a link to see the news of the bombing.

This is the bombing the two women did.


 This is the bombing from today.

Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUfv3D14ZcE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuzNoYa4jQY