Word: specialize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bush's more controversial plan involves "Title I," which sends $8 billion yearly to schools with poor kids. These grants can amount to $150,000 for a typical 500-child school; they've usually been used for teacher's aides or special remedial classes, without great results. Reformers in both parties say the idea of holding schools accountable for progress is overdue. The prospect of being penalized by having the federal money rerouted directly to parents "gets the attention of educators and the bureaucracy," says Ray Cortines, a Democrat and former schools chief in New York City and San Francisco...
What makes him a special piece of work, though, is that he openly boasts that he deliberately engineered the production of his two daughters to make the family rich. Giving new zest to the phrase refreshing candor, he told the Today show's Matt Lauer last Friday that the original idea for the manufacture of Venus and Serena came to him when he happened to see a woman win "$30 or $40 thousand" in a tennis tournament, "and she played four days!" Not Thomas Edison, not Alexander Graham Bell, not Bill Gates could have been more enthusiastically inspired...
...parents wanting their kids to be in the movie." But, he says, "the good news is it's not a star-driven film. It's the child's film, and the child is not going to command a $20 million fee. So the primary cost will be in the special effects. We want to make all of that as believable and fantastical as possible. Technology is now incredible...
...certain critics can't help poking fun at him. Why so serious? And considering the status of Purdy's heroes--from the great French essayist Montaigne to the brave Polish dissident Adam Michnik--the objects of his derision seem like straw men. Purdy singles out for special scorn management guru Tom Peters, who teaches disciples to think of themselves as commercial, brand-named products; the cyber- magazines Wired and Fast Company, which promote, in Purdy's view, greed and self-absorption; and Jerry Seinfeld, whom Purdy calls, in a tone once reserved for Satan and serial killers, "irony incarnate...
...Anne was obviously a special player and a big part of this team, and we of course are going to miss her," Wheaton said...