Word: nation
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Apartheid's legacy has been an aggressive racial division that segregates ethnicities into plush suburbs and ghettos. The manner in which South Africa defended Semenya only underlines how obsessed with difference the country remains. When Semenya returned from Berlin, she was met by the leader of the ruling African National Congress Youth League, Julius Malema, who proclaimed the issue was not gender but race: Semenya was a victim of white officials, white media and unpatriotic white South Africans. And yet one miracle of Semenya's story is that in a nation of little tolerance and where apartheid crushed self-respect...
...some weekends, when the rest of Washington is on the back nine or a racquetball court, Arne Duncan (whose first name is pronounced Are-knee) can be found playing in three-on-three street-ball tournaments across the nation. On a muggy, overcast Saturday in late July, while 50 Cent's "I Get Money" blares from a set of speakers, the former head of the Chicago Public Schools pounds the blacktop, alternating between playing intensely and walking off to take calls on his BlackBerry. Almost none of the other ballers know who the white dude with the salt-and-pepper...
...powerful teachers' unions, however, the idea that their jobs could hinge on a set of standardized-test results is anathema, in part because many teachers believe the tests are unreliable indicators of student performance. "Our disappointment is clear," says Kay Brilliant, director of education policy and practice for the National Educators Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. "If it's going to be more of the same, more NCLB [No Child Left Behind], more testing and minimal support, then we're not interested." Duncan admits he is tackling the Everest of entrenched interests with this particular reform...
...School, a rigorous K-12 program that led him to Harvard. There he graduated magna cum laude while maintaining his obsession with basketball, co-captaining the team his senior year. After college and a failed tryout with the Boston Celtics, Duncan flew to Australia to play in that nation's professional basketball league. He stayed for four years, playing ball, working with foster kids and eventually meeting his wife Karen...
...good grades, experimenting with teacher merit pay and shutting down failing schools and reopening them with new staffs. He's still keen on such controversial turnaround strategies. In late August, he announced another competitive grant program that uses $3.5 billion in nondiscretionary funding in an effort to fix the nation's worst schools...