G Frost's List: CQ annotated bibliography

• reduce such gases by 30 percent by 2020
• , Fayetteville budgeted $1.9 million for utility costs, but thanks to Coleman  ended up spending about $180,000 less than that
• these environmental specialists are helping city officials like Coody make good  on their promise to cut down on emissions that cause global warming
• Scientists say a buildup of six types of heat-trapping gases in the Earth's  atmosphere are beginning to cause potentially dramatic climate changes, such as  planetary warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and intensified droughts,  floods and hurricanes
• often referred to as "carbon" emissions because carbon dioxide (CO2) is the  most abundant greenhouse gas

  • I actually once read a scienific article that said SO2 not CO2 was the problem.
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• Cities are not only tightening their own energy belts but  increasingly issuing new rules, such as stricter building codes, to make sure  that residents and businesses cut back as well.
• "State regulators and state legislatures are putting a lot of pressure onto  utilities to invest in alternative energy like windmills that are very expensive  but are not viable power, by which I mean they're not available at times of peak  demand," Ebell says.

• "At that point, it was sort of an 'Aha' moment," he says. "Climate  change went from being an esoteric issue affecting someone else in the near  future to hitting us here, now."
• • Only a few states actually are viable to produce wind energy. However, those that do produce a lot of energy.
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• If climate change is already having real impacts — and will continue to do so,  even if efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions succeed — how should  governments begin to adapt to the resulting problems, such as flooding, coastal  erosion and species loss? Should they, for example, build higher seawalls to  offset rising sea levels
• California is an almost constant environmental battlefield. There was strong  pressure from environmental forces to move on the issue of greenhouse gases at  the start of this decade, with both the legislature and governor's mansion in  Democratic hands for the first time in two decades.

• Green building codes have drawn the most attention among local  governments seeking to cut back on carbon. Buildings account for 40 to 50  percent of a city's energy demands. They use a fourth of the drinking water and  produce 35 percent of the solid waste, mostly in the form of construction  materials. And buildings make up anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of municipal  carbon emissions, according to the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

• Even as the regional cap-and-trade systems get under way, more  than half the states are trying to cut down on coal as a share of their power  sources individually. Twenty-seven states now require utilities to rely on  renewable sources such as wind and solar to generate a significant share of  electricity — up to 25 percent in future years. That's nearly twice as many  states as had renewable portfolio standards in place just five years ago.

• "Economists and scientists . . . will tell you that coal is going  to be the primary factor that's going to power this nation and most of the world  for the next 30 to 50 years."

   

  According to the American Wind Energy Association, wind energy  capacity has been growing rapidly, with wind turbines installed in 2008 capable  of generating 7,500 megawatts of additional electricity. That's up from 5,249  megawatts installed in 2007. But 7,500 megawatts is still only enough  electricity to power about 2 million homes.

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• Tuition and fees at public colleges soared a record 14 percent this year,  continuing a quarter-century trend of higher-education prices rocketing faster  than inflation.
• Current Situation

  • This is kinda irrelevant because it is no longer the "current" situation.
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• The size of federal grants to students has not kept up with rising prices, and  state appropriations to colleges have not kept up with burgeoning enrollments

  • It is even worse now.
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• on many of the major issues accompanying the soaring price of  higher education, including the:

   
   
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    Plight of middle-income families;

     
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    Trend away from need-based financial aid and toward merit-based  aid;

     
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    Strains of combining work with study;

     
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    Burden of debt;

     
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    Difficulty in understanding the complexity of tuition pricing; and  the

     
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    Relatively low tuitions at public institutions — especially  community colleges
• soared by 14.1 percent from the last academic year to this year, according to  the College Board's annual report on higher-education prices, released Oct. 21.  That was the sharpest increase in at least three decades, and it followed a 10  percent hike last year — the steepest since 1981. Community colleges increased  tuition and fees by 13.8 percent, while costs at private four-year schools rose  6 percent.

  • This was 2003, what is it now?
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• “The states have been running away from higher education,”
• The confusion can lead lower-income families to give up on higher education,  even though grants and loans could make it affordable. At the same time, many  middle-income families feel overburdened because they don't qualify for  substantial grants.

  • I wish there was a way to balance so that everyone was able to get exactly what they need.
• Similarly, when the College Board's latest report on college prices noted the  relationship between declining state appropriations and rising tuition at public  schools
• But while professors may spend only 11 hours in the classroom, according to the  NCES survey, they work an additional 45.6 hours each week on research,  administration, advising students and other duties
• The inflation-adjusted price of attending college — tuition, fees and room and  board — rose between 32 and 39 percent over the last 10 years, with the smallest  percentage increase occurring at public four-year institutions and the highest  at public two-year schools. And while Pell Grant expenditures jumped 48 percent  during that decade, the number of grant recipients rose only 20 percent. As a  result, the average Pell Grant pays a smaller portion of the average student's  expenses than it did a decade ago.

• Callan says that while he doesn't support McKeon's proposal, “It's  kind of hard to argue against it. [Funding] is the only leverage the federal  government has.”
• McKeon's idea of capping tuition could make colleges less accessible to the  needy because colleges provide aid for disadvantaged students from tuition  proceeds. “If you are going to be penalized for raising your tuition too much,”  she explains, “a good strategy would be to cut tuition and not spend money on  need-based aid.”
• To counter a “brain drain” of promising students leaving their home states for  college, several states created scholarship programs that weren't based on need.  Some were available to any high-school graduate who qualified for college.  Others were merit-based.

• Miller's bill would establish a pilot program of year-round Pell  Grants for students who want to complete their studies quicker, raise the  maximum Pell Grant from the current $4,050 to $11,600 by 2011 and raise the  maximum public-service loan forgiveness from $5,000 to $17,500.

   

  Kennedy would raise the maximum Pell Grant to $4,500 immediately  and make more students eligible. He would raise the maximum loan forgiveness to  $15,000 and
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    Froze and eliminated faculty positions;

     
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    Eliminated positions for administrators, professionals, support  staff and graduate assistants;

     
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    Closed the campus television station;

     
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    Reduced the number of classes;

     
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    Halted heating and cooling system upgrades;

     
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    Reduced travel; and

     
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    Restricted overtime.

  • What they have also done is instituted mandatory furloughs.
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• Advocates of so- called multiple intelligences - such as Robert Sternberg at  Yale University and Howard Gardner at Harvard - argue that traditional IQ tests  take account only of cognitive ability and ignore other kinds of intelligence,  such as creativity, task commitment and motivation
• basis of tests that measure creativity and motivation or on the basis of work or  performances by the student.
• Advocates of gifted and  talented education say  schools are failing in their responsibility to help their brightest pupils  achieve their full potential and are squandering a valuable national resource  needed to compete in a global economy
• I was bored to tears

  • Being bored is usually caused from having to relearn things already known. Or it that the teacher is going at a glacial pace and the student already gets it.
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• And they complain that gifted programs primarily benefit white and  middle-class students, with youngsters from minority groups or disadvantaged  backgrounds grossly underrepresented.

  • I don't diagree that that probably happens. But white students still deserve oppertunities too.
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• They don't like us because we're so much smarter,
• Whatever their number, gifted students are today not the country's highest  educational priority. Special classes or programs for them are the exception,  rather than the rule

• Funding for gifted programs is also meager. The federal  government spent just $5 million last year on the only educational program  targeted specifically at gifted and talented students - less than .02 percent  of the Department of Education's $31 billion budget. About two-thirds of the  states provide specific appropriations for gifted education, but the most recent report from state  directors for gifted and talented education  shows an average of only $17 million alloted to gifted education among the states providing figures.

  • I find this interesting because wouldn't you want to have a little, just a little more funding?
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• we also know that there are large numbers of gifted  kids who spend years in schools without learning anything

• Moreover, the advocates say, failing to help the brightest  students reach their full potential wastes a valuable resource and threatens the  nation's position in the global economy. “If our brightest are not competitive  with the brightest in other countries, there are implications for global  competition and for global cooperation as well,” says Sandra Berger, director of  the gifted education division at the Council for Exceptional  Children, which also lobbies on behalf of students with disabilities.
• Without advanced or enriched programs, they say, gifted  students will fall short of their potential or, worse, lose interest in school  altogether.
• Gifted education has always been a laboratory for general education,”  says Berger at the Council for Exceptional Children. “What gets developed in the  gifted-ed laboratory has often been used by general  ed as good education  methods.”

  • Gifted helps the regular class room too... interesting
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• Giftedness “doesn't happen in a vacuum,” Clark says. “You have genetics and the  environment working together in a nurturing way, and very few socioeconomically  deprived areas are nurturing in that way.”
• educators viewed highly gifted students as deviants whose exceptional  abilities were liabilities rather than assets. It was thought that giftedness as  a youngster would not last into adulthood: “Early ripe, early rot,” it was said.  Many educators also believed that gifted youngsters developed social and emotional  problems - the so-called “mad genius syndrome” - that continued into adulthood.
• Despite the progress, the report concluded that gifted education still suffered from inadequate funding, a  shortage of trained personnel and problems in identifying gifted  students.
• In these more flexible arrangements, students can supposedly be grouped into  more advanced classes in some subjects and less advanced classes in others.
• The result, she concluded, is that America's brightest youngsters are less  well-prepared than their counterparts in other countries.
• • This chart is interesting. 1,200 per Title I. 1,600 per Special Education. And 2.3 for gifted students.
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• “That funding is meant to serve the needs of all students, and that includes gifted  and talented students.”
• Advocates of so- called multiple intelligences - such as Robert Sternberg at  Yale University and Howard Gardner at Harvard - argue that traditional IQ tests  take account only of cognitive ability and ignore other kinds of intelligence,  such as creativity, task commitment and motivation
• basis of tests that measure creativity and motivation or on the basis of work or  performances by the student.
• But Hiatt says there are other reasons why minority or disadvantaged youngsters  are underrepresented. “Parents in low-income areas often don't ask the question,  'Is my kid advanced?' ” Hiatt explains. “We do get that question from  middle-class parents.” In addition, Hiatt notes that language-based testing  disadvantages students with limited proficiency in English - like many Hispanic  youngsters in Texas and elsewhere in the Southwest

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