Bill would consolidate childhood-aid program, By Jason Clayworth, March 9, 2010, Des Moines Register: “A 12-year-old state program to help children in low-income families get off to a healthy start and get ready for school has such scattered oversight that it could be prone to fraud, according to the state budget director. State officials confirm they lack data to know how many children have been helped since 1998 with the $336 million spent through the program, Iowa Community Empowerment. Part of the problem: The empowerment program encompasses more than three dozen programs scattered among four state departments, state officials say. Oversight is spread among a state board and 58 local boards…”
Day: March 11, 2010
National Academic Standards
Panel proposes single standard for all schools, By Sam Dillon, March 10, 2010, New York Times: “A panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents proposed a uniform set of academic standards on Wednesday, laying out their vision for what all the nation’s public school children should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation. The new proposals could transform American education, replacing the patchwork of standards ranging from mediocre to world-class that have been written by local educators in every state. Under the proposed standards for English, for example, fifth graders would be expected to explain the differences between drama and prose, and to identify elements of drama like characters, dialogue and stage directions. Seventh graders would study, among other math concepts, proportional relationships, operations with rational numbers and solutions for linear equations…”
Food Aid Distribution – Somalia
Somalia food aid bypasses needy, U.N. study says, By Jeffrey Gettleman and Neil MacFarquhar, March 9, 2010, New York Times: “As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff members, according to a new Security Council report. The report, which has not yet been made public but was shown to The New York Times by diplomats, outlines a host of problems so grave that it recommends that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open an independent investigation into the World Food Program’s Somalia operations. It suggests that the program rebuild the food distribution system – which serves at least 2.5 million people and whose aid was worth about $485 million in 2009 – from scratch to break what it describes as a corrupt cartel of Somali distributors…”