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Obama's proposal, which calls for increasing federal aid to schools by 16% in 2011, to $29 billion, would leave identifying and fixing chronically low-performing schools to officials on state and local levels and curtail federal intervention in most others. The plan would also swap out NCLB's sticks for carrots - a strategy that Duncan is already using in his $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative that encourages states to pass education reform so they can be eligible to compete for grant money. (Watch a video about reforming America's schools...
...union leaders - perhaps still reeling from Obama's recent support for the decision to fire 93 teachers at a struggling school in Central Falls, R.I. - skewered the new White House plan, charging that it shifted an unfair burden onto educators. "We were expecting to see a much broader effort to truly transform public education for kids," Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement. "Instead, we see too much top-down scapegoating of teachers and not enough collaboration." The plan puts "100% of the responsibility on teachers and gives them 0% authority," says Randi Weingarten...
Observers of all political stripes seem to agree that Obama's plan is ambitious but short on specifics. For starters, it's unclear how quickly states would be able to codify collective standards for college- and career-readiness - which would most likely require new exams and curricula - and already Alaska and Texas have signaled that they don't intend to cooperate in the effort. Education-reform experts have also expressed reservations ranging from the feasibility of the plan's college-and-career-ready timeline to its ability to motivate schools that fall in the middle of the pack in terms...
...cartels to a re-engineering of the judicial system in drug-beleaguered states like Chihuahua. That might go some way toward answering critics of the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral pact that is supposed to deliver more than $1.5 billion in U.S. antidrug aid to Mexico, a plan some see as too wedded to tired and often failed U.S. drug-war staples like Black Hawk helicopters instead of less corrupt and more professional Mexican police. As a result, says Vargas, "Juárez could be an example of how to reverse this situation in Mexico...
...even some Red Shirt supporters viewed the blood throwing plan as a desperate measure signaling the movement's goals had failed. "I'm loosing confidence,'' Lalida Phanyang, one Red Shirt supporter wrote on the group's Facebook wall. "It's a joke. This protest will turn into a humiliation,'' wrote Tawatchai Srihathai, another supporter. Red Shirt demonstrators have attempted to humiliate their political opponents in the past by throwing bottles and other objects at them, most notoriously bags of human feces. Two people were arrested in recent weeks for throwing bags of feces at Prime Minister Abhisit's home...