Court rules Michigan has no responsibility to provide quality public education
DETROIT — In a blow to schoolchildren statewide, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 7 the State of Michigan has no legal obligation to provide a quality public education to students in the struggling Highland Park School District.
Highland Park parent Michelle Johnson, a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit against the state of Michigan, says students deserve a fair education. ZENOBIA JEFFRIES PHOTO
Highland Park parent Michelle Johnson, a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit against the state of Michigan, says students deserve a fair education. ZENOBIA JEFFRIES PHOTO
A 2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a “broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a public education system, regardless of quality. Waving off decades of historic judicial impact on educational reform, the majority opinion also contends that “judges are not equipped to decide educational policy.”
Highland Park parent Michelle Johnson, a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit against the state of Michigan, says students deserve a fair education. ZENOBIA JEFFRIES PHOTO
A 2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a “broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a public education system, regardless of quality. Waving off decades of historic judicial impact on educational reform, the majority opinion also contends that “judges are not equipped to decide educational policy.”
“This ruling should outrage anyone who cares about our public education system,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Michigan. “The court washes its hands and absolves the state of any responsibility in a district that has failed and continues to fail its children.”
The decision dismisses an unprecedented “right-to-read” lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Michigan in July 2012 on behalf of eight students of nearly 1,000 children attending K-12 public schools in Highland Park, Mich. The suit, which named as defendants the State of Michigan, its agencies charged with overseeing public education and the Highland Park School District, maintained that the state failed to take effective steps to ensure that students are reading at grade level...
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Egotism, Greed, and Pride: How they are killing our society slowly
It
is said in the Bible: “Pride cometh before a fall.” If that is true then our
modern day society is on the verge of taking a very profound fall from grace.
It seems that nowadays every time I turn on the television I hear stories about
how people kill people for selfish reasons, and to make matters worse our
society has begun to consider these occurrences the new norm for living in a
globalized world.
Relisha
Rudd, Monday Easter shooting at the national zoo, and the South Korean ferry
boat accident all are stories that serves as examples of how our society has
become overwhelmed by egotism, greed, and pride to the point of many senseless,
untimely deaths. It is these three elements that ravish the core of our Christian
moral beliefs that we hold as scared in this country. Long gone are the moral
value and codes of: “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you,” or “if
you have a coat and you see your brother in need give him one of your coats”.
No, these and many other moral codes have been replaced by new codes: the laws
of self-preservation, take what you want, do what you want and get rich or die
trying are all things that are not only destroying the most sacred of
relationships but it also forming in its wake a heartless, evil, and
unrepentant nation in its path.
“Mother
is the name of God on the lips of children everywhere,” said Brandon Lee in The Crow. To me and many other people
around the world this is more than just a famous one liner said by a deceased
actor in a cult classic film; it is the basis of how scared motherhood really
is to not just God but to people in general. However, now more than ever
mothers are abusing their relationship with their children for their own
personal gain. Such is the case with
Shamika Young. Shamika Young is a young mother with four children, who became
infamous nationwide by breaking the scared bonds of motherhood.
Her mother on the
other hand has used her daughter’s disappearance to get her fifteen minutes of
fame. She has been giving interviews commenting on friend’s photos on Facebook
and talking about living her life. It got so out of control that final the
blame was being put on the family where it belongs. The current Mayor Vincent
Gray said that this came about because of what the family did in selling that
child and not telling the cops the whole truth. In response to this the
grandmother said that it is not true and she is hurt that people think that way
about her family. Make no mistake: only the soulless and heartless can throw
their child under the bus in order to make a profit off of it, which is a clear
example of egotism, greed, pride and just plain evil. Only a coward would run
from a situation instead of sticking it out and turning it into a success
story.
There
is a code of the sea that a captain goes down with his ship. There have been
many famous captains who have followed this code like Captain Edward Smith
captain of the Titanic, who went down with his ship this captain after deployed
all the life boats he had to deploy. He
made the ultimate sacrifice, which was his life, in order to save as many lives
as he could. Yes, he truly lived by the code that captains go down with their
ship. However, what would happen if a captain did not live according to this
code. That is the heartbreaking lesson that 476 families learned the hard way
when two weeks ago Captain Lee
Joon-seok of the ferry ship abandoned his entire
crew and passengers to die on a ship that was sinking into the ocean.
One
truly has to be evil and egotistical to lie to people’s face and tell them that
they will be fine as long as they stay in their cabins. All the while knowing
that the ship is sinking and if they don’t get to a life boat they will die, instead
of warning his crew and passengers and loading them onto the lifeboats. He took
upon himself to save himself by getting into the lifeboat and rowing away as
the ship started to sink beneath the ocean. To make matter
worse he is so prideful to think that just by saying sorry it could right the
tremendous wrong he did to both his crew and passengers that his sorry could
give the families tranquility. These people died because he could not own up to
his responsibilities as captain and it needlessly cost these people their
lives.
This
brings us to our final example of how these elements affect our society and
that is the recent shooting at the national zoo on Easter Monday. This recent
shooting marks the third time in two years that the Easter Monday events at the
national zoo in D.C. have closed with a violent event following them. The
police do not know what they motives are for this recent shooting, but the fact
that people were injured over what may be a gang-related issue shows how greed,
egotism and pride are running our country. Gone are the days when justice,
peace, honest, and love run the country; they have been replaced with egotism,
greed,and pride. This is not just a national problem, but a worldwide problem. If we don’t fix this problem our children will be left to the mercy of the backstabbers, murderers, and heartless people who do anything to make a profit for themselves, and that, my friends, is no way to live.
Reported by Nadia Johnson
April 24, 2014
W.O.W Radio Blogger
Achieving my weight loss goal
Ever since I started
college and packed on the freshmen 15 pounds, I have been trying to lose
weight. It has been a war with some battles, I have won. I lost over 30 -40 pounds. But, when I sustained
a lower back injured, I gained all of it back, plus some. This time is going to
be different. I know many of us say that and every time, we try to lose weight
we tend to fail. But this time, it will be different, because I will be writing
a blog about it. That’s right, for the first time in my weight lost journey, I
am not only chronicling it but I also, sharing it. And hopefully, we can draw
strength and hope from each other and achieve our weight lost goals. So, here
we go one, two, and three: here comes the new me.
The first step in my weight lost plan was to find a work
out plan that I would stick too. I started with walking my neighborhood track
and for five to eight miles. After I finished each mile, I would jump rope a
100 times and do arm curls with the hand weights. This was all well and good,
in fact, just doing this alone without any change in my diet, I lost about
eight pounds. I started searching for new ways to lose more weight. So I
decided to join the local YMCA. I joined but found that because of my mother’s
birthday and winter holidays that I gained back, about five -six lbs. Then by
the end of January, I lost six pounds, just to put it back on again because I
fell for the diet pills hype that promise me, I would lose 20 pounds in two weeks.
So after I stop taking the diet pills, I got the common
cold that turned into one of the nastiest version of the flu bug, I had an
epiphany. I realized that I had already known how to lose weight. My only problem was consistence. So instead
of taking short cuts, I decided to do Nutrisystem diet system. It has worked
for me, in the past and I figure it could work for me again. I plan to buy it from QVC store because it is
cheaper. On QVC the 28 day program cost $176.0 a month, compared to the $238.
from Nutrisystem website. I also went back to the gym, on at least 2-4 times a
week and started swimming again.
I have decided in order to keep my sanity about losing
weight that I was not going to be a “scale hog”. This means I am not going to
weigh myself every day to see if I lost a pound or not. This time around it is
going to be different, for this time, I am losing weight for me and only me. I
am not losing weight to get or kept a man, to meet my mother’s standards on how
I should look, or to even feel better about myself. I am losing the weight for
me and I am doing this with the goal in mind, that the extra weight does not
make me nothing but unhealthy. I have to
stop comparing myself to famous celebrities and weight loss champions, who get
paid to lose a huge amount of weight in a small amount of time. I think that,
women put too much significance on our weight and not enough on who we are as
individual which I think is a real shame, for we don’t realize that we are
teaching unhealthy body images to young girls.
Not every women is cut out to be a size zero or two and that it is okay
to be a size six or twelve, as long as you are healthy. This is what we need to
drive home to anyone consistent man, women or child, what weight loss is truly
about practicing a healthy diet and active lifestyle.
What is my exercise and diet routine? Well the answer is
drinking Nutrisystem protein shakes for the next 28 days and following a strict
exercise schedule, which includes rocking climbing, swimming, kick boxing and
body pump classes. I have also decided
to take a fat burning pill called NV diet pills. I know what you are thinking
that I fell for it again, but these pills have helped me lose about 15 pounds
in the past so I think that is worth a try. On top of this I have decided to
exercise at home before I go tot the gym with my Walk five Miles workout DVD.
Even though my diet success story has just start or
restarted depending on the angle you are looking at it is my hope that by the
end of March, I would have lost some weight although, if you want to know how
much weight I have lost, then tune in, for my second of my weight loss story,
at the end of March. Until then, I wish all who are taking the weight lost
journey with me the best of luck. I will update you on my weight loss story at
the end of March “Go Weight Lost Gladiators”!
Reported by
Nadia Johnson
Blogger/Reporter
March 21, 2014
Why No One Showed up for the Endometriosis March: Why it’s a problem?
Most women can
remember when they were little girls and their mother’s told them about when
they would get their monthly visitors.
We member are mother’s telling us that: “ Known my dear when you get
your monthly visitor that it may hurt some but not much and it will only last
for a couple of weeks.” But what if this was not the case for you. What if your monthly cycle was plagued by
unbearable pain that it left you unable to move, speak, or even landed you in
the emergency room. What if this very rare disease has been affecting millions
of women for years, but little is known about and worst yet little is being
done to bring awareness about it.
While this is the
sad story for millions of women who deal on a daily bases with the disease called endometriosis. Endometriosis is a disease that affects
women’s menstrual cycle. The major of women this disease affects are Caucasian
women who are either tall or thin women with a low BMI index. It is usually
diagnosed in women between the ages of 25 -35, but has been found in women as
young as eleven years old. The exact causes of this disease are unknown. Some
of the symptoms are the following: pelvic
pain, infertility, pain during intercourse, cramping during intercourse, pain
in bowl movements, urination, lower abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, low
back pain, chronic fatigue, irregular or heavy menstrual bleeding and blood in
urine.
So has a disease
that affects the fertility of women gone unnoticed by the mainstream media and
society for so long? The answer is simple there is just not enough interested
in it. The reason why I say this is because the recent Women’s March that
happened on March 13, 2014 that was supposed to bring awareness to this female
disease only had one thousand participators. This is a shock because the
expected participations were to be one million women. This speaks volume to me
because it means that even us women don’t see it as important of a cause like Breast
Cancer. The reason for this is because
Breast Cancer can be fatal and it deals with one of the main parts of a women’s
body that identify her as a women. Whereas, endometriosis just deals with the
menstrual cycle and a woman’s infertility, but it’s not fatal like breast
cancer.
If this is going to be the continued viewed of
this disease then it is going to be a very uphill battle to get it to be taking
seriously among not only women, their male counterparts, but also the medical
community as well. This means the lack of research on the disease, the lack of
testing for it in young adolescence girls and more importantly the development
of new treatments and medicine will go undiscovered to year’s maybe decades to
comes, which is unfortunate for the many women who suffer from it now. However,
this will prove to be a great lesson, which is if you don’t care about a cause
as important as this one then no one else will.
Reported by
Nadia Johnson
Blogger/Reporter
March 21, 2014
Remembering Camelot: The 50th Anniversary of a Dream cut short
When people look back to
a kingdom where grace, mystery, honor, change, beauty, and peace reigned, they
think of Camelot. Camelot was that mythical kingdom. It was run by King Arthur,
his knights of the round table, Merlin, and his Queen, Guinevere. Their kingdom was archetypical
of how a kingdom should not only be run, but also what it should stand for.
The Kennedy Administration only lasted 1,036
days, but it was in those 1,036 days that it became the Presidential
Administration that would not only define the 20th century, but also
cause Americans to change the way they viewed themselves. Just like the
original Camelot was ruled by a king, his queen, his knights, and cabinet so
was this one. The king was of course John F. Kennedy, his queen was Jackie
Kennedy, their knight; were his brothers: Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy and the
U.S. Congress.
However, Jack was not the only
one making changes to how the President of the United States was looked upon;
his wife Jackie was doing the same for the role of Frist Lady. It can be said
that Jackie Kennedy set the standard for what it was meant to be the First
Lady. Jackie Kennedy was one of our most
stylish, sexy, discrete, and chic First Lady of American we ever had in the 20th
century. She was fluent in three languages, which were French, Italian, and
Spanish. It was this combination with her natural beauty and glamour that made
her a rock star on both American and foreign soil.
November 22, 1963, would be one of those days that people would remember when they heard the news that Camelot had died! The day started out peaceful for the President and First Lady. The day was filled with laughter and being impress with the large crowd that come out to see them, in Texas during his reelection campaign the president decided to do away with the bullet proof bubble for the top of the limousine, in which, he and the first lady would be riding in. Along the way, he saw a sign held up by some children saying “Mr. President Please stop your car and shake our hands” and he did, just that.
Then at 12:30 p.m., shots were
fired at the presidential limousine. It was a total of three shots, that hit
the president and several that hit other members, in the limousine. When it was
all over, the President of the United States was dead!
December 9, 2013
W.O.W Radio
The Crumbling Ancient Texts That May Hold Life-Saving Cures
"Subjects in the collections, spanning the 13th through 17th century, include the Koran, Sufism, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, and more. Haidara stresses the need for climate-controlled safe-houses for the manuscripts, so that academics can begin to study the books to learn about African history. He thinks the books might also contain information about cures for maladies that persist today. “Every book has answers, and if you analyze them you can learn solutions,” he says. “Everything that exists now, existed before now.” One prime example of this constancy is a plague that has afflicted humans at least since ancient times and currently kills approximately 1.2 million people per year: malaria."
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Only 1 in 4 teens exercise enough!
New York Daily News: Only 1 in 4 teens exercise enough. http://google.com/producer/s/CBIwi8fg2Q4 
"I Love Me! Slumber Party" by Empower Parties
"I Love Me! Slumber Party" by Empower Parties
For girls 11-14! https://m.facebook.com/empowerpartiesDC
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