Word: leveler
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reforms also included a plan to introduce merit pay in up to 150 school districts. Merit pay incentivizes good teaching and has great potential to improve underperforming schools. In many professions, a higher level of performance is rewarded with a higher level of pay, and teaching should be no exception. New York City’s Chancellor of Schools, Joel I. Klein, has already instituted a modified version of merit pay: The district gave $14.2 million in bonuses to schools that improved their performance in the 2007-2008 school year. A more effective system would be a hybrid model...
...facto organic, because small farmers there cannot afford to purchase any nitrogen fertilizer. Fertilizer use per hectare in Africa is only 1/10 as high as in Europe or North America, causing crop yields per hectare to be only 1/5 as high as their Northern counterparts. Total production level has been declining on a per capita basis for the past three decades...
...while regional primacy can be healthy for a Great Power, it unfortunately gives heady policymakers visions of grandeur. In limited, specific instances, projecting power on a global level is feasible as well as desirable. Dominating the international system is not. America learned this the hard way in the Middle East. Worldwide hegemony is not only incredibly expensive, it breeds resentment among states and or non state actors; as a result, balancing blocs arise to repel would-be-empires. China’s decades-old border disputes with Russia and its newfound awareness of energy politics in the Persian Gulf mean...
...appointees had their nominations stalled due to tax problems, and how so many elected officials believed they were exempt from the law. Just like regular citizens, politicians should be required to obey tax codes. Moreover, the timing of many of the scandals was truly unfortunate. There should be higher levels of scrutiny in place and more tax records demanded from high level public officials to identify corruption earlier than in confirmation hearings.One politician who was truly unfaithful to his electorate was former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich’s decision to sell then-Senator Obama’s seat...
...some ways, a product of both belief sets. The continued realization of the eerily applicable clichés also comes with a sense of regret—that, on some level, the resources not consulted, friendships not made, and places not seen have been an institutional failure, one that could have been avoided had I been better advised to spend time with different people or do different things...