text:
The Well Stocked Pantry Gift
Item: 190740
It's easy to stock a pantry with this gift!
Product Actions
Additional Information
Load those empty shelves with a variety of delicious products including our tasty Wild Maine Blueberry Jam (12.5 oz.), Blue Cheese Herb Mustard (8 oz.), Old Farmhouse Chutney (8.5 oz.), Garlic Teriyaki Sauce (11 oz.), Traditional Marinara Sauce (18.5 oz.), New England Corn Chowder (7 oz.), Horseradish Cream Sauce (8.2 oz.), Maine Sea Salt (6 oz.), Simple White Crackers and New England Clam Chowder (15 oz.) presented in a reusable industrial bin.
Made in USA


text: Not sure if this has been brought up but I aren't it on everythingapplepro.net when I was jailbreaking my ip4. Copied from everythingapplepro.net This tweak has been around for a while but it never worked on 4x until now. With many customizable settings its just very cool. To get it you need to open Cydia go to Manage, Source, Edit, Add and and this source: Cydia.heaveniphone.com . Then search for androidlock xt for 4x and install. Now go to settings, set up a new pattern, tweak the appearance and enjoy! Yes this does work for iPad also! The tweak itself is limited to 9 lines but can be changed to the folowing themes: AndroidLock HQ (for retina displays), Blades, Hauemgod, Pac Man, & Squares Screen shots

subset: commoncrawl


text:
OK, will we ever see a version of this draft that isn't pissing people off? I am beginning to doubt it…
The Free Software Foundation Inc. (FSF) is due to release the second draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3) Tuesday, according to sources close to the organization.
Created by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU free operating system project, the GPL is a popular license for free and open-source software (FOSS) including the Linux operating system, MySQL AB's database and the Samba file and print server project. Last fully revised in 1991, the GPL gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and redistribute software.
The FSF released the first draft of GPLv3 in January and two areas of the proposed license in relation to software patent licensing and digital rights management (DRM) generated plenty of debate…. Source: InfoWorld
[tags]gpl 3,second,controversial,foss[/tags]


text:
I'm over 55 and had signficant eye bags and loose upper skins on the eyelids...causing me to look tired. I wanted to look the way I feel - energetic and fun.
I had upper/lower eye surgery on tuesday - how long do I continue to ice the eyes. Also, do I remove the crusting along the stitch line or leave it alone?


text:
Enfield Town have moved out of the Ryman Premier relegation zone and George Borg believes the Towners' improved form has brought "life back into the club", writes Adam Newson.
Borg's men claimed a 3-0 win against Hampton & Richmond Borough on Saturday and that victory followed a 1-0 success at home to Harrow Borough last Tuesday.
Enfield have moved up to 20th the table prior to and drew 1-1 against Grays Athletic last night. The Towners now know that survival is now in their own hands.
"If we can continue to get points on the board then we will give ourselves a good chance at staying in this division," Borg said prior to yesterday's victory.
"It's not finished yet though. We have put a lot of work in to get to where we are and we will need to continue to do that until the end of the season. But it is back in our own hands which is important.
"I feel that we have brought life back into the club. The players are working extremely hard for our loyal supporters."
Enfield's form has dramatically improved since the start of 2014 and Borg's side are undefeated at home since the turn of the year.
The Towners boss credits the club's supporters for making the Queen Elizabeth II Stadium a difficult place to come for opposition sides.
"Our fans are by far the best in the division," he said. "I've been to many games in this league since I took charge and some of the grounds are very quiet.
"There is a buzz amongst our supporters and they've been like that since I arrived. They are now smiling as well after the good results and that will mean they are even louder.
"Enfield Town is a big football club and without the supporters we wouldn't be where we are. So we owe them a lot."
Enfield are on the road on Saturday as they travel to third-placed side Dulwich Hamlet. It will be a stern test for Borg's men who have only claimed one win on their travels this season.
However, the Towners boss said his players' increased confidence means they will be able to compete against any side.
He said: "We are trying to win every game now whether or not we are home or away. I think I am a tactical manager and we might play a little bit differently away from home, we might be a little bit more defensive in terms of the midfielders.
"But we will go to Dulwich confident and I am sure we will give them a good game. The way everyone is feeling at the moment means we can beat anyone in the league."


text:
Charter Schools:
This file is also available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format
IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY, many different education reforms compete for the attention of political leaders, policy makers, parents, and school officials. Charter schools constitute one of the most widespread and important of these. Since Minnesota passed the first charter-school law in 1991, forty-two states, including the District of Columbia, have passed similar legislation, and thirty-seven of these have operating charter schools (WestEd 2003, 1). As of April 2006, there were over 3,500 charter schools serving over 1 million students nationwide (Center for Education Reform 2006),1 up from only 100 schools in 1995 (Research Policy Practice International 2001).
There are many excellent explorations of the history and the politics of the charter-school "movement," and there is no need for us to repeat that information in detail here.2 But there is a series of fundamental questions and definitions that we need to address before moving on to the core of our analysis. First, there is the question of exactly what a charter school is. One interesting characteristic of most extant definitions is that, while they identify the core characteristics of charter schools, they almost always include language about not only what charter schools are but also glowing language about what they will do—that is, they often portray the hope of charter schools, while adding a bit of hype. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement:
The promise charter schools hold for public school innovation and reform lies in an unprecedented combination of freedom and accountability. Underwritten with public funds but run independently, charter schools are free from a range of state laws and district policies stipulating what and how they teach, where they can spend their money, and who they can hire and fire. In return, they are held strictly accountable for their academic and financial performance. (U. S. Department of Education 2004, 1)
Putting aside the value-laden aspects of this description, this excerpt helps to identify the key structural characteristics of charter schools. Broadly defined, charter schools are publicly funded schools that are granted significant autonomy in curriculum and governance in return for greater accountability. In addition, the charter establishing a school is, ideally, a performance contract that details the school's mission, its program and goals, the population served, and ways to assess success (or failure). Charters are granted for fixed lengths of time (usually three to five years), at which time the body that authorized the charter reviews the performance of the school and decides whether or not to renew it.3 We should note that almost every aspect of the legislation governing charter schools—such as the length of charters, who can apply for charters, and the like—can and does vary widely from state to state, so there are exceptions to almost every general statement describing charter schools (Kucsova and Buckley 2004).
While there are many perspectives on charter schools and while specific practices may vary widely across the nation, it is important to note that there is general agreement about what charter schools are supposed to do. The theoretical or intellectual basis for these expectations stems from the pro-market orientation that has helped to shape education policy reform in the United States for the last fifteen or so years. From this perspective, charter schools are expected to generate competition among schools, a competition in which poorly performing schools disappear and good ones prosper. Moreover, by reducing the level of bureaucratic regulation and control, charter schools should be free to innovate and create more effective and efficient programs that serve their clientele better. According to the U.S. Charter Schools web site,4 charter schools are designed to:
Or, once again according to the Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement, charter schools are free to:
lengthen the school day, mix grades, require dress codes, put teachers on their school boards, double up instruction in core subject areas like math or reading, make parents genuine partners in family-style school cultures, adopt any instructional practice that will help achieve their missions—free, in short, to do whatever it takes to build the skills, knowledge, and character traits their students need to succeed in today's world.
Note that in this vision, the charter schools themselves are not only better schools, they also "stimulate improvement of the existing public education system." To the extent that these processes—innovation, competition, leverage, accountability—work, charter schools help create a "market" for schools that produces better schools and increases "productive efficiency."5
The theory behind charter schools holds another promise: charter schools should also increase "consumer" satisfaction. By being more responsive to the needs of parents, students, and the community at large, and by allowing parents and students to choose schools that deliver the type of education that they feel best meets their needs, charter schools can improve the match between what schools offer and what "parent/ consumers" prefer. We can think of this tighter match as improving "allocative efficiency" (see Schneider, Teske, and Marschall 2000).
While charter schools have found fertile ground in the market approach to policy reform, support for charter schools as a form of school choice has also grown for political reasons. In the competition between vouchers and charter schools, two contending ideas that use choice as a means to reform schools, state legislators have usually chosen to adopt charter schools. As Henig et al. (2002) explain, "[F]rustrated with the poor performance of public schools, but unable to advance more radical notions of privatization, such as vouchers, advocates saw charter schools as the most effective means of building market incentives." (Also see Mintrom 1997. For more on the difference between charter schools and voucher schools see Hassel 1999.)
Despite the strong forces propelling them forward and a historically high growth rate, charter schools appear to be moving from the growth spurt of adolescence to a more sedate adulthood. Nationwide, there are signs that, while the number of charter schools is still growing, this expansion is now occurring at a decreasing rate. This may show that charter schools are reaching the normal maturation point of the typical sigmoid curve describing the diffusion of many innovations (Porter 1980; Schneider, Teske, and Mintrom 1995, chap. 4). For charter schools, this pattern may be driven by a variety of factors, such as the depletion of the population of reformers with the skills and energy needed to pioneer charter schools (Wells 2002, 1–2). It may also be driven by a particular temporal sequence: charter schools in some states have now been operating for five or more years, and there is growing pressure for a critical assessment of their academic and financial performance, perhaps slowing down their continued expansion. For example, in Massachusetts, where charter schools have existed since 1995, the state legislature in 2004 threatened a moratorium on further charter expansion, reversing itself only after reducing state funding for the schools (Greenberger 2004a, 2004b). In Washington, D.C., the Board of Education, one of the two chartering authorities in the city, has been approving less than 20 percent of applications before it in the last few years, while in the early years of the city's charter-school experience it approved all applications (see chapter 2).
Despite this slowdown in the rate of expansion, charter schools are clearly a popular policy. But are they a good one?
Charles Lindblom once wrote that the test of a good policy is that diverse actors can agree on it even if they cannot agree on why (Lindblom 1959). By this criterion, charter schools seem to be good policy; indeed, there sometimes seems to be as many arguments in favor of charter schools as there are schools themselves. Amy Stuart Wells (2002) argues that this collection of rationales can be boiled down into three main categories: standards-based or systemic reform, local autonomy, and neoliberal market-based reform.
Systemic Reform
Central to the appeal of charter schools for the proponents of systemic reform is the promise of increased accountability (Miron and Nelson 2000). In theory, charter schools, in exchange for the ability to operate relatively unencumbered by the policies of the local school district, are held accountable for improving the academic performance of their students. Thus charter schools can be seen as part of the broader trend in the last decade to reconstruct educational policy centered on measures of academic outcomes (Elmore, Abelmann, and Fuhrman 1996, 65–98)—a trend that is perhaps best exemplified by the provisions of the national No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which has affected educational practices throughout the United States.
In reality, however, this autonomy-for-accountability trade-off can be problematic, as administrators find themselves in the ambiguous position of holding schools accountable while not directly supervising them (Wells et al. 2002, 29–53). In addition, charter schools have clear incentives to seek a continuing stay of evaluation or to obfuscate evidence of poor performance (Henig 1994, 234). Moreover, state rules and regulations governing the release of school performance data are often lax, and this has allowed charter schools (and, to be sure, other schools of choice) far too much latitude regarding the disclosure of the information parents and students need to make choices and policy makers need to evaluate the schools. In a recent report on charter schools in Ohio, for example, the Legislative Office on Educational Oversight found that many charter schools "are not reporting data that allow them to be compared to their contracts" (Legislative Office Of Education Oversight 2003, 26). Consider, too, Van Dunk and Dickman's analysis of schools of choice in Milwaukee:
There is no question that there are good private voucher schools here, just as there are good public schools. Unfortunately, however, no accountability data exist to prove this, much less to prove that these schools' high performance was spurred by competition. . . . We have found that, overall, parental knowledge of specific schools tends to be low, and that parents face considerable barriers in their efforts to obtain information about schools. Thus parents are unable, by themselves, to hold schools fully accountable. (2004, 52)6
While Van Dunk and Dickman were specifically referring to voucher schools, there is no question that the same problems exist in connection with charter schools and other forms of school choice (see chapter 6; also see Schneider, Teske, and Marschall 2000).
Local Autonomy
The ability of charter schools to provide a space for locally autonomous, community-centered education is another reason charter schools enjoy broad support from diverse constituencies. Charter schools can provide a means for parents and students who perceive themselves as marginalized or disenfranchised to seek shelter from an indifferent or even hostile public school system. Groups as diverse as right-wing Christians in California (Huerta 2000, 177–202) to Afrocentrists in Michigan (Yancey 2000, 66– 97) have taken advantage of charter-school laws to create schools catering to their particular interests. Charter-school operators and their founding parent communities frequently use a broad set of strategies, including selective recruitment and explicit parent contracts, to create and maintain their distinctive identity (Lopez, Wells, and Holme 2002, 129–58). Insofar as they are successful, charter schools of this type may nurture and protect their constituent community, but some worry that by so doing they can exacerbate racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural segregation and inequalities (Fuller 2000a).
While many critics of choice fear the fragmentation of education and extol the virtues of the "common school,"7 others argue that homogeneity within schools coupled with a diversity across schools increases the opportunity for parents to become involved in their schools and learn more directly about the benefits (and costs) of participation in the provision of public goods and services. Moreover, many researchers have argued that parental involvement in schools is essential for improving academic performance and that the more supportive homogeneous environment of charter schools coupled with their commitment to parental involvement increases the chances for academic success. This argument is intimately tied into the idea of building what have been called "effective schools" (Coleman and Hoffer 1987; Henderson 1987; Bryk and Schneider 2002) and also to the idea of "coproduction" of public goods and services (Levine 1984; Marschall 2004)—points we explore in depth in chapter 11.
The Market for Schools
The third rationale for charter schools and school choice more broadly, and the framework in which both the most compelling and the most contentious arguments for and against such reforms are now framed, is found in the neoliberal theories of the market.8
The closing decades of the twentieth century saw a profound transformation in American public policy—the privatization of services once thought to be the exclusive province of the state. In the area of education, this was not a new idea: Milton Friedman (1955) proposed educational vouchers in the 1950s, and the intellectual history of the idea can be traced back to the political philosophies of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine (Walberg and Bast 2003), but the changing intellectual climate among policy makers and analysts moved such plans to the forefront in the 1990s.
While the idea of vouchers had been around for decades, instrumental in bringing the idea of educational privatization to a broader audience was John Chubb and Terry Moe's Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, a book that provoked fierce debate by proposing that government-run schools were destined to fail because of the very mechanisms of American democracy itself. According to Chubb and Moe, "the specific kinds of democratic institutions by which American public education has been governed for the last half century appear to be incompatible with effective schooling" (1990, 2). More specifically, the authors believe that in the American education system, where interest groups have easy and continual entry into the policy-making process, many entrenched organizations, particularly teacher unions, exercise too much control over decisions—and they skew decisions in favor of their own needs rather than the needs of students. Making the point even more explicit, they argue that poor academic performance is "one of the prices Americans pay for choosing to exercise direct democratic control over their schools" (2). Their solution was a market for education in which parents would be free to choose their child's school and where choice "is a self-contained reform with its own rationale and justification." For Chubb and Moe, choice "has the capacity all by itself to bring about the kind of transformation that, for years, reformers have been seeking to engineer in myriad other ways" (217).
Critics of school privatization were quick to point out that a system of school vouchers (or "scholarships" in the language of Chubb and Moe) was theoretically quite a distance away from the ideal market of neoclassical economics, and that transactions in such a "quasi market" were rife with unintended and possibly pernicious consequences, such as increased stratification across socioeconomic groups or further weakening of already struggling public schools. Henig (1994) suggests that the "market" in this case is better understood as a metaphor than as social reality, and a misleading metaphor at that (also see Fiske and Ladd 2000; Smith and Meier 1995; cf. Walberg and Bast 2003, 210–21).9 But despite these criticisms, Chubb and Moe succeeded in redefining vouchers from a conservative, esoteric microeconomic theory into a broad-based practical approach to fixing the ills of urban education that became an integral (if contested) item on many agendas for educational reform.
The central idea of a market (metaphorical or otherwise) for education is that once the government's monopoly on public schooling is broken and parents and students become "consumers," a host of new suppliers of education will enter the market and compete with existing schools and among themselves to provide educational programs that better meet the demands of parents and students than does the current monopoly provision of education. One key underlying assumption is that parents and students know what they want—and what they want is academically strong schools. Another key assumption is that schools (or some other organization) will provide information about their programs and quality and that parents will be able to find this information and use it to make choices and to hold schools accountable (Schneider, Teske, and Marschall 2000). In this idealized system of choice, programs and curricula will align with consumer preferences, and efficiency and academic outcomes will improve. Schools that do not improve or do not meet parental and student needs will lose students and be forced to reform or close.
Note that, according to proponents, not all these outcomes need be present for a market-based reform to be viewed as a success. For example, even if academic achievement (in today's environment, almost always defined by standardized test scores) remains constant, but costs go down, this higher productivity would still be a victory for market-based policy (Hoxby 2003, 287–341). Similarly, an improvement in consumer satisfaction or the utility of parents, even without gains in achievement or productivity, would still represent a net gain in social welfare.
Different systems of school choice approach the ideal of this neoliberal model in various degrees. Clearly voucher programs are most closely tied to the precepts of the model—and given recent court decisions, the expansion of voucher programs to include parochial schools will increase the number and range of providers dramatically. However, even school voucher programs still fall short of the ideal market, and charter schools are arguably even further from this ideal. At best, according to education economist Henry Levin, charter schools "simulate some of the dynamics of a market by increasing the supply of alternatives to parents and by competing with existing public schools" (Levin and Belfield 2003, 10). Nevertheless, according to Levin, "as long as there is some choice and competition it is believed that outcomes will be better than when there are no choices at all" (15).
Or will they? Although proponents of privatization and other market-based reforms do not often acknowledge it, a theoretical result in welfare economics, the "general theory of second best" (Lipsey and Lancaster 1956, 11–32), holds that "if any aspects of the free-market ideal are fundamentally unattainable (as is of course the case), then incremental movement toward that ideal is not necessarily a welfare improvement" (Ackerman 2004, 2–7). In a complex system like education, partial or even full privatization may turn out to increase costs and reduce benefits (Sclar 2000).
To ensure a net increase in social welfare in the real world of imperfect markets, the task of the policy maker is to meet all the sufficient conditions for such an increase, not merely a few necessary ones piecemeal. Unfortunately, identifying the sufficient conditions for a successful market for education is still an elusive goal. And, without the identification (and satisfaction) of such conditions, the "magic of the market" may, like many magic tricks, go up in smoke, leaving the evaluation of charter schools (and schools of choice more generally) much more difficult.
What Limits the Market for Education?
Economists and public policy analysts frequently evaluate policy options with reference to the Pareto criterion (named for Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, 1848–1923). This standard holds that a policy choice is preferred if it makes at least one person better off and no one worse off. The attraction of the market as a mechanism for the allocation of goods and services is that, under ideal conditions, through voluntary transactions the market will yield a Pareto optimum, a point at which no one can be made better off without making another worse off.10
What the theory of second best simply points out is that, under less than perfect market conditions, a Pareto optimum is no longer guaranteed—and getting closer to the ideal market in some dimension does not, a priori, predict an overall increase in social welfare. To return to the context at hand, two important questions should be posed: How might the implementation of a charter-school reform differ in the "real world" from implementing charter schools in an ideal one? And, after we take into account these differences, have we met enough of the sufficient conditions to increase social welfare?
Another critical issue in the evaluation of the "market" for education is the extent to which education generates externalities—social costs or benefits to a market transaction that are not properly accounted for by the price mechanism. The presence of externalities can lead to the wrong level of a good or service being produced, and the existence of externalities is one of the prime justifications for the public provision of public education. The example most often presented of externalities in education highlights the difference between the individual and the collective (societal) benefits of education. Put simply, when an individual invests in her own education, many of the benefits of that education accrue directly to her in terms of a better career and higher wages. But her community and the nation as a whole get an added benefit from having a more highly educated workforce—there is a positive externality to education that spills over from the individual to society.
Left strictly to individuals to decide, the level of education in a society will not reflect this "added" payoff, and all the societal benefits of education will not be reaped. The traditional economic solution calls for the public provision of education to reduce its cost to the individual consumer.11 In turn, this lower cost will make people willing to "buy" more education, and the public subsidy helps society reach the optimum level of education for the community and the nation.
According to Levin and Belfield, "[p]robably the greatest challenge to the view of market efficiency in education is created by the presence of externalities" (2003, 16). But, and this is crucial, the externalities Levin and Belfield have in mind are broader than the standard case of externalities presented above. Specifically, they link the provision of education to the very functioning of democratic society: "It has long been held that one of the central purposes of schools is to improve the cohesion and stability of society through the provision of a common experience that prepares the young for adult roles and responsibilities. Schools are expected not only to educate students as individuals, but also to contribute to the overall effectiveness of society through creating competent adult citizens. . . . The larger question is how to reconcile the private choices of families with the public requirements of education for democratic knowledge and values" (16).
Political theorist Amy Gutmann uses a similar argument based on the presence of externalities to build a case against elite private schools. She argues that while parents are choosing to spend their own money to boost their child's chances at lifetime success, there is a social cost in that the public schools will be rendered less capable of fulfilling their purpose of perpetuating democracy through the loss of socioeconomically elite students and politically powerful parents. This cost is a negative externality flowing from individual choices and transactions in the market for private education (1987, 115–18).12
Not all externalities are bad, however. As we discuss in chapter 12, parents may choose a charter school in order to improve their child's chances of academic success, but this individually motivated choice may help create a stronger, school-centered community. Or, returning again to theories of democratic education, parents enrolling their children in Catholic schools may find that they emerge better trained for the duties of citizenship (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore 1982), helping to improve their communities and society as whole. In short, some school-generated externalities can have important positive effects on civil society—but to achieve them may require action by government that transcends strictly market-based rationales.
Closely related to the idea of externalities is the fact that some, perhaps a large, part of education can be considered a public good. Once again using the case of democratic education, if there is little obvious return to individual students from civic education and engagement, and since such areas of a curriculum have both a real cost (the cost of teacher time, for example) and an opportunity cost (that is, a cost in terms of lost opportunity to cover other subjects or activities), in a competitive market we should expect democratic education to be driven out of the curriculum by lack of demand. If, however, society as a whole desires the production of good citizens through democratic education, then either traditional, government-run public schools subsidizing the provision of democratic education or else some regulation or limit on the market will be required.
The Flow of Information
Markets also fail to function optimally if participants make transactions under conditions of information asymmetry. As the term suggests, this sort of market failure occurs when one party in a transaction knows more about the quality of goods or services than the other.
There are at least two types of asymmetries that we need to consider. First, in the public policy and economics literature, there is the traditional difference in the quantity or quality of information between buyers and sellers—here between parents and students, the consumers who are "shopping" for schools, and the schools themselves, which almost certainly have more information about the true quality and nature of educational service provided. Levin and Belfield note, "[T]here has been considerable debate over whether school quality can be easily codified and quantified (or even manipulated), leading to the possibility that parents will be making choices based on false information" (2003, 15). Schneider and various coauthors have shown that many parents know very little about the range of schooling available to them (Schneider et al. 1997; Schneider et al. 1998). This asymmetry may be exacerbated by false advertising (Lubienski 2003; also see Kane and Staiger, 2002) or through the spread of bad information through low quality social networks (Schneider et al. 1999). The current drive to release test-score data may do nothing to solve this problem. Ladd argues that measures of average levels of performance provide misleading information to parents about how much the school is likely to add to student learning. Instead, average test scores provide information about the socioeconomic status of the average student at the school. Ladd notes: "While that information is not irrelevant to parents (and could be very important to some), it differs from information about the contribution of the school to student learning" (2001, 391).
The second asymmetry stems from differences among parents themselves. To ask a question familiar in the school-choice literature: "Who chooses and who loses?" While it may be possible in a given market for education that a small number of well-informed or "marginal" consumers increase social welfare for all through their shopping behavior and the response of providers (Schneider, Teske, and Marschall 2000), it is also possible that this information differential may exacerbate existing socioeconomic inequalities (Henig 1996).
To add an additional layer of complexity to the problem of information, schooling is an "experience good," the quality of which can not necessarily be evaluated until the student has been enrolled for some period (or perhaps even a "postexperience good" that cannot be evaluated until many years after consumption).13 Thus parents may be more satisfied in the short run with a charter school's focus on athletics, but ultimately regret the decision when their child gets his first paycheck.
Entry Barriers
Yet another way in which a market for education could fail is through imperfect competition. For example, there may be high entry barriers limiting the number of providers who step forward to create new schools. Finn, Manno, and Vanourek (2001) identify a host of such barriers, including political opposition from state or local boards of education; school district resistance or excessive regulations; state education department resistance; union or bargaining unit collective bargaining agreements; and trouble with federal regulations (also see Research Policy Practice International 2001, 44). Finn et al. (1997) also cite financial difficulties, including lack of capital financing, especially for facilities;14 little or no start-up money; inadequate per-pupil operating funds; and uneven cash flow. And finally, they highlight what they call "policy problems" embedded in "weak" charter laws (see also Kucsova and Buckley 2004).
Among the provisions of weak laws that can inhibit the creation of new charter schools are the following:
There can be other "supply side" problems in the market as well. For example, small providers who run a single charter school may be unable to compete with larger "educational maintenance organizations" (EMOs) due to economies of scale or the ability of large educational conglomerates to expend substantial amounts in political lobbying at the local, state, and federal levels. This could lead to the creation of an oligopoly in which the education market is made up of only a handful of large providers, possibly restricting consumer choice or charging high per-pupil fees from the district, state, or even parents, even if they are not producing higher achievement scores or increasing parental satisfaction.15
Additionally, one of the prime justifications for charter schools is their role as "laboratories of reform," that are free from the bureaucratic restrictions placed on traditional public schools by teacher unions and administrators (Nathan 1996; Kolderie 1990). However, empirical research has found little evidence of this (Rofes 1998; Teske et al. 2001) and the structure of real charter-school markets may actually act to inhibit programmatic competition (Lubienski 2003). Ironically, it may be that parents are risk-averse when it comes to their children's education—they may choose schools that emphasize traditional values and educational approaches rather than "buy" innovative programs with a high degree of risk. This is quite reasonable from a parent perspective, but may create systemic problems in a system of schools that is designed both to innovate and to respond to parental preferences.
Obviously, the study of charter schools is complicated. Although a strong neoliberal, pro-market theoretical foundation propels much of the discussion in the literature, there are many signs that mapping the logic of the market onto the real world of charter schools is less than perfect. Even assuming that we want more consumer choice and more competition among suppliers, we have no strong guidance as to whether these alone are sufficient conditions to create markets for schools that actually improve overall social welfare. We also know that since schools have a strong public good dimension and they generate many externalities, their nonmarket dimensions are as important as their more narrowly defined efficiency.
As if explicating these "big ideas" is not enough of a task, there is yet another challenge. As empirical social scientists, we must find a way to translate these ideas into questions that are tractable for analysis. To lay out a way of doing this, in the next section we rearrange these issues concerning the market for schools into five dimensions around which we structure the analysis we present in this book.
Five Dimensions for Evaluating Charter Schools
We argue that the ongoing debate over charter schools can be thought of as encompassing five dimensions, which we use to organize our study. These include "three C's:"
and "two A's":
Several of these dimensions map onto those identified by Levin (2002; Levin and Belfield 2003, 19–20) and Gill and his colleagues (Gill et al. 2001), but, we believe, our specification is more tractable for empirical analysis. In the next few pages, we begin to explore each of these criteria. We then describe the structure of the book and identify how these themes are to be discussed in the chapters that follow.
Competition clearly lies at the very heart of any market approach to educational reform. The idea here is quite simple and pertains to the "supply side" of education. In the traditional system of school assignment, a system in which students are assigned to a school based on where they live, schools are monopoly providers. Given this monopoly status, schools have no reason to compete with one another, and they have no incentives to create new programs or to improve their efficiency. The underlying argument is right out of Econ 101—without the salutary force of competition, monopolists charge too much, they produce inferior products, or they do both.
Milton Friedman's classic argument in favor of vouchers placed the reform of the supply side to increase pressure on monopoly education providers in a central role. Friedman's key argument is that competition will improve the price/performance ratio of inputs to outputs (productive efficiency). Friedman did not argue that competition would automatically lead to higher performance per se—rather, he argued that we could achieve the same level of outcomes at lower unit cost.16 One interesting outcome of this intellectual history is that voucher programs tend to set the dollar figure attached to vouchers below the cost of public education—embodying the belief that competition can produce more for less. However, perhaps because charter schools are not as closely tied intellectually to Friedman's argument for vouchers, the per-student payment in charter schools is usually higher than in voucher programs—even in the same city. For example, in Washington, D.C., per-student payments for students in charter schools total around $10,000, but in the recently approved federally supported program, vouchers are set at only $7,500.
The second dimension, choice, is also central to our study, for two reasons. First, as noted above, choice by itself should improve the match between what parents and students want and what they get from their schools. This in turn should improve parent and student satisfaction with their schools. Second, choice is intimately linked to competition. It is the diverse preferences and the ability of consumers to choose among a range of products that provides the foundation for competition. However, there is a "flip side" to this dimension: equity is a primary concern of most stakeholders in American education policy (see, e.g., Levin 1991).
In any market, there is always what Okun (1975) called the "big trade-off" between efficiency and equity. This trade-off may be particularly important in evaluating school reform since education plays a central role in reducing socioeconomic disparities and providing equality of opportunity in American myth and social reality (Hochschild and Scovronick 2003). In turn, successful charter school reform must not exacerbate inequalities through the "cream skimming" of students of higher socioeconomic status—even if this might improve productive efficiency or increase parental or student satisfaction. Thus, there are questions about who chooses and who loses in a system of expanded choice—and these questions are central to our analysis.
Community is not part and parcel of the market approach. However, the importance of community emerges from the distinctive nature of schooling. A system of charter-school choice should not jeopardize the social and political foundation of our communities and nation. As Levin and Belfield (2003, 20) write, "a market system that bases its appeal on differentiation and choice must adopt a mechanism to ensure common experiences across schools to prepare students for their civic rights and responsibilities." In turn, the public good or positive externality aspects of education must be considered as an important part of the final evaluation of a charter reform.
In addition, education is not a simple service. Rather, it is a production process that requires the continued input of a range of actors—that is, education is "co-produced" by students, parents, teachers, school staff, and administrators. There is clear evidence demonstrating the importance of the ties among these stakeholders in producing a high-quality education. Also, as alluded to above, schools provide a venue for citizenship or democratic education, and such education may be more effective in a well-functioning school community.
The first "A" is accountability, which should increase in systems of choice. In marketlike approaches to education reform, the first line of accountability lies in consumer choice. If parents and students are not happy with the school they chose, they can exit.
Since schools of choice are directly dependent on the revenues brought in by each student, if enough students exit the school, the school either improves or disappears. Paul Hill, in one of the most comprehensive studies of charter schools to date, argues that charter schools, freed from many of the bureaucratic rules and regulations governing traditional public schools, have created new "accountability" relationships with the teachers, on whose performance the schools depend, and with families, whom the schools must attract and satisfy (Hill et al. 2001, 6). These relationships, according to Hill et al., transform the way in which teachers, administrators, parents and students deal with each other, creating strong, cooperative, working relationships leading to strong school communities and higher levels of academic success.
Second, and more specific to charter schools, is the fact that charters are granted for fixed periods of time and are subject to periodic and strict review at which time they can be revoked. Consider the following example. In January 2004, the State University of New York Board of Trustees, which has authority to charter schools, acted on the renewal of the first three charter schools established in the state. Two schools were approved without problem. However, the decision on the John A. Reisenbach Charter School in Harlem's District 5 was more difficult.
New York's Charter Schools Institute, created to administer the state's charter-school law, had recommended that the Reisenbach School be closed at the end of the school year, due to poor academic performance, governance problems, and other concerns. However, the choice was not easy. On the one hand, District 5 was one of the lowest-performing in the city, and parents in that district were desperate for better schools. On the other hand, Reisenbach's poor performance after five years and the demands of accountability argued for closing the school. As this debate unfolded, an op-ed piece by Peter Murphy, which appeared in the January 31, 2004 edition of the New York Post, summarized the issues at hand concisely:
Charters differ from traditional public schools because they are held accountable for academic results. Failure has real consequences (rather than rewards of more money). This accountability system is made clear to charter-school operators up front and they commit to abide by it.
On February 24, 2004, the State University Board of Trustees voted not to renew the charter and the Reisenbach School joined the list of charter schools held accountable for failure. But how widespread are cases such as these?
While data calculating actual closure rates are hard to find, Hassel and Batdorff (2004) studied decisions to renew school charters, looking at all 506 nationwide renewal cases through 2001, and then focusing on fifty randomly selected cases. They found that 16 percent of charter schools up for renewal were terminated (conversely, 84 percent of the charter schools were renewed). The Center for Education Reform reports that 429 charter schools have closed from the inception of charter schools through 2003.17 If we set the number of remaining charter schools in the nation at around three thousand, we can estimate a closure rate of approximately 13 percent, not much different than the Hassel and Batdorff finding of 16 percent (also see Teske, Schneider, and Cassese 2005, who look at the politics involved in authorizing and renewing charter schools).
There are two problems with these existing data (besides the fact that they are, at best, approximations). First, it is close to impossible to state precisely the reasons for nonrenewal—there is no central repository for information about these actions, and news accounts are unreliable. While Hassel and Batdorff (2003) suggest that many authorizers have been willing to close underperforming schools, many nonrenewals make the news because of financial improprieties or other newsworthy acts of malfeasance. For example, in 2004, the Washington, D.C. school board closed the Village Learning Center Public Charter School after a city audit found that the school spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on leased space it did not occupy, credit card charges for apparel and gifts, and loan repayments that lacked documentation. Similarly, in September 2004, just as the school year began, ten thousand students in the California Charter Academy's four schools (spread over sixty campuses) faced serious disruption as the state closed the schools as a result of financial audits. Whether the high incidence of media reporting on charter school closings due to financial impropriety is just another example of the media's love of scandals is an open question; we still lack convincing evidence on the extent to which authorizers are really holding charter schools accountable for low academic performance.
Second, we have no standard by which to judge whether or not this (approximate) 15 percent closure rate is high or low (public schools are rarely closed and no data on private school closings are kept as far as we can tell). Critics often argue that charter-school closures are a sign of failure in the charter movement—that the charter "movement" is creating a legion of poor schools that are failing to educate the children placed in their care (and absconding with scarce public-education money, to boot). In contrast, proponents argue that while these closures are undoubtedly a sign of failure in individual schools, they are a sign of success for the movement as a whole as bad schools are weeded out and good ones survive. For them, closures are clearly proof that accountability is taken seriously.
While many advocates of choice argue that competition, choice, community, and accountability are goals in themselves, others argue that they really serve as intermediate steps to the ultimate goal of higher school performance. Lubienski makes this point clear:
[T]hemes such as "innovation," "choice," "competition," and "diversity," although they all have some value in and of themselves, often serve as intermediate goals that structure opportunities for institutions to increase achievement. Even as intermediate goals, however, choice, competition, and innovation are cast as the necessary vehicles for advancing academic outcomes. Therefore, the extent to which school choice reforms succeed in securing these ideals indicates the likelihood of reaching the primary objective in this logic model. (2003, 397)
Thus, these structural reforms should lead the final dimension that we argue should be used to study schools: achievement.
Higher academic achievement is now the mantra of educational reform and the call for better test scores is heard throughout the nation. According to Amrein and Berliner (2002):
In recent decades, test scores have come to dominate the discourse about schools and their accomplishments. Families now make important decisions, such as where to live, based on the scores from these tests. This occurs because real estate agents use school test scores to rate neighborhood quality and this affects property values. Test scores have been shown to affect housing prices, resulting in a difference of about $9,000 between homes in grade "A" or grade "B" neighborhoods. At the national and state levels, test scores are now commonly used to evaluate programs and allocate educational resources. Millions of dollars now hinge on the tested performance of students in educational and social programs.18
Indeed, there are many ways in which charter schools should be able to take advantage of their autonomy while responding to the pressures of choice, competition, and community to achieve higher academic outcomes (Chubb and Moe 1990; Hoxby 1997; Hill, Pierce, and Guthrie 1997; and Brandl 1998). Wohlstetter and Griffin make this explicit. For them, choice, autonomy, and competition make schools more flexible and innovative "with the perceived assumption that such innovations will produce identifiable improvements in student achievement" (1998, 3).19
As the descriptions of the criteria suggest, it is likely that there will be tensions among the various measures in almost any real choice program— improving productive efficiency through a choice mechanism may compromise equity; increasing social cohesion through regulations requiring democratic education may reduce freedom to choose.20 Moreover, it is difficult to measure the size of the trade-off across the different criteria, as they clearly have different metrics. We try to elucidate some of these trade-offs while assessing the success or failure of the charter schools we study in the chapters that follow.
The book is organized in four clusters, and we examine competition, choice, community, accountability, and achievement throughout, although with different emphases in each cluster and in each chapter.
In the first cluster, beginning with this chapter, we describe the theoretical issues that inform our work. In the present chapter, we have identified the five broad dimensions that structure our approach to studying school choice and placed these dimensions in the larger debate over school choice and charter schools. In the next chapter, we move from general themes that underlie every school-choice plan to an exploration of the venue in which we develop and test specific hypotheses that are derived from applying the ideas we explored in this chapter to the city in which we have been studying the evolution of charter schools—Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., has one of the strongest charter laws in the country and has one of the largest concentrations of students attending charter schools in the nation.21 At the time of this writing (April 2006), there are fifty-one organizations running sixty-three charter-school campuses, enrolling about 17,500 students. This represents almost a quarter of the total number of public-school students in the city and almost one-third of the schools. At least six new charter schools are scheduled to open in the school year beginning in September 2006. In chapter 2, we describe the development of the charter-school sector in D.C., touching specifically on how competition and choice have evolved since the city adopted its strong charter-school legislation in 1996.
With the themes and venue laid out, we then introduce the two research projects from which the data we use in this book are drawn. In chapter 3, we introduce the four-wave panel survey that we use to assess how parents shop for schools, how they feel about their schools, and how they participate in their school community.
A multiple-wave panel study is one of the most valuable, but least frequently created, social-science research tools. In the field of political science, studies that attempt to model the dynamics of political phenomena using such data are rare and in the sphere of charter schools—to the best of our best knowledge—are currently nonexistent.22 However, in chapter 3 we will also introduce some of the problems that plagued us as we tried to keep the panel "alive" in an inner city where there is high mobility and where people "disappear" from the sample for many reasons.
We follow that chapter with an examination of the students in charter schools and the traditional D.C. public schools and briefly touch on the issue of student achievement. A major theme in this section is the extent to which charter-school students are any different than students in the DCPS. One argument in the often-contentious evaluation of how well charter schools perform is that the students in them are different and "harder to educate." We explore this issue in chapter 4.
In chapter 5, we introduce our second major research tool. In 1999, we created a web site called DCSchoolSearch.com. As described in that chapter, we collected a large amount of data about each and every school in Washington, D.C. and made it available on a user-friendly web site. As visitors navigated through the information presented on DCSchoolSearch.com, we tracked their movements to see what information they were accessing and in what order. In addition, we surveyed parents who gave us their e-mail addresses to obtain more information about their search procedures.
With the sources of our data established, in chapters 6–8, we use data from both the survey and from DCSchoolSearch.com to study fundamental issues pertaining to choice. One of the main issues concerning choice has to do with what parents want from their schools, with perhaps the most important consideration being the relative weight that different parents put on academic achievement versus factors such as proximity, the racial and economic background of other students, and other, perhaps more idiosyncratic preferences. We compare the findings from our telephone survey with the search patterns parents used while "visiting" schools using DCSchoolSearch.com to present some rather different conclusions about parental preferences over school attributes.
In the two chapters that follow the introduction of our data sources, we combine theories of information search drawn from behavioral decision theory with traditional concerns of political science and theories of consumer behavior to explore how different types of parents search for information. We have two major research themes in that exploration: first, given the generally low levels of information that have been well documented, can we expect that parents will choose the right school for their child? Besides this question at the individual level, we are also concerned with a systemic one: if parents as a population of consumers have low levels of information, can the school system overall feel any competitive pressure to improve? Here we look more closely at the search patterns of the "marginal consumer" of education to see whether in the face of low information the school system may still be pressured to improve.
In chapters 9–12 of the book, we look at the consequences of choice and charters. Here we address the fundamental "so what?" question— does all the time, energy, effort, and money spent on creating these alternative charter schools matter? In chapter 9, we explore parents' satisfaction with their child's school. As noted earlier, given choice, parents should be choosing schools that do more of what they want done in education. Therefore, satisfaction should be higher among choosers—if not, this is a pretty strong indication of a failing system of choice. In this chapter, we also begin to deal with some fundamental methodological issues to which all studies of school choice must pay heed. Of greatest concern is the problem of self-selection—parents who have chosen to enroll their children in charter schools may be systematically different than parents whose children remain in traditional public schools. This self-selection into the "treatment" (i.e., charter schools) can lead to biased estimates of its effects.
We explore several statistical approaches to control for self-selection to see how robust the effects of charter schools are. We also explore the possibility that parents who choose have a psychological stake in saying that what they chose is good (often called the "rose-colored glasses" effect). To "telegraph" one of our most interesting results, we find that rather than viewing schools through rose-colored glasses, charter school parents may in fact be wearing "grey-colored" ones: they may constitute a group of parents that are particularly hard to please.
In chapter 10, we take full advantage of our panel data to explore parental satisfaction over time. We look at changes from the beginning of the school year to the end of the year and we look at how well schools did over time, comparing the 2001/2 patterns with 2003/4 ones. We also cope with some fairly difficult problems caused by attrition.
In chapter 11, we look at the extent to which charter schools and traditional public schools differ in the strength of community and the creation of social capital. Using methods established in our previous chapters, we examine the survey data for evidence of any charter-school effect on attitudes thought to be the foundation of parental civic engagement, both at the school level and in a broader context.
In chapter 12, we turn our focus from parents to students. We examine key indicators of student civic education and participation in search of empirical evidence for the contention that charter schools, like other schools of choice, build better citizens.
Finally, we conclude with an attempt to pull together the disparate empirical findings of the earlier chapters and view them through the lens of our organizing framework. We return to our central question: are charter schools, on the whole, a beneficial policy reform, or are the hope and the hype unjustified by the facts?
File created: 8/7/2007
Questions and comments to: email@example.com
|New Book E-mails
|New In Print
|PUP Blog
|Princeton APPS
|Sample Chapters
|Princeton Legacy Library
|Exam/Desk Copy
|Recent Awards
|Princeton Shorts
|Freshman Reading
|PUP Europe
|About Us
|Contact Us
|PUP Home


text:
SALINAS >> Green party gubernatorial candidate Luis J. Rodriguez was in Salinas on Friday for the last leg of his campaign and to decry recent police shootings.
Rodriguez, a longtime activist, poet and author of a best-selling memoir of his youth in East Los Angeles, said, "Before declaring myself as a candidate, I was here in Salinas working toward peace among gang members. At the same time, that's why I'm here again in Salinas. Because these police killings are an issue of peace, respect and dignity Right now the community here is suffering."
The problems in Salinas' Alisal district "didn't just happen overnight," he said. "It's something that's been brewing for decades."
Local resident Demetrio Pruneda said services were held Friday morning for Carlos Mejia, 44, who was shot and killed by police on May 20 while waving a pair of large hedge trimmers.
Pruneda, who is a Hartnell College trustee but was speaking only as a "concerned resident," said that when one brother cries, "that pain is felt in our community."
Salinas City Councilman Jose Casta?eda said he, Rodriguez and others were scheduled to meet Friday with Marquez Equilibria, a mediator with the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division.
Several groups and individuals, from Casta?eda to Assemblyman Luis Alejo to Salinas police Chief Kelly McMillin, have said they called in the Justice Department's renowned reconciliation service to help ease tensions and come up with concrete steps for moving forward.
Civil rights attorney Anthony Prince was also in town with the Rodriguez entourage.
He said he was troubled that the officers who earlier this month shot farmworker Osman Hernandez are back on duty even though officials say the investigation has not been concluded.
"I'm troubled that (McMillin) exonerated them almost immediately," Prince said.
Meanwhile, an attorney representing Hernandez' family in a wrongful death civil claim sent a letter Friday to city attorney Chris Callahan asking for the names and badge numbers of the officers who shot Hernandez.
Attorney Christopher Dolan said the request was made in the wake of a California Supreme Court decision Thursday ordering police agencies to make public the names of officers involved in most shootings.
Salinas police and city officials said they are reviewing the ruling but as of Friday had not released officers' name in the three fatal police shootings this year.
Dolan also said he was disappointed his public records request for information on Hernandez' death was largely denied.
"This family has the right to know why, and how, their beloved son was gunned down like an animal in the street," Dolan wrote. "It is unfortunate that the people have to use the courts to police the police."
Julia Reynolds can be reached at 648-1187.


text:
3209 W Shorewood Dr
Mercer Island, Washington, 98040
Commute to Downtown Mercer Island
Almost all errands require a car.
About your score
3209 W Shorewood Dr has a Walk Score of 12 out of 100. This location is a Car-Dependent neighborhood so almost all errands require a car.
This location is in Mercer Island. Nearby parks include Clise Park, Homestead Field and Fruitland Landing.
Explore how far you can travel by car, bus, bike and foot from 3209 W Shorewood Dr.
Bus lines:
0.3 mi
0.4 mi
0.4 mi
0.4 mi
0.4 mi
0.6 mi
View all Mercer Island apartments on a map.
Search for homes in Mercer Island or find a Mercer Island real estate agent who knows walkable neighborhoods. Links will open on our partner site Redfin.com.
This location is in the city of Mercer Island, WA. Mercer Island has an average Walk Score of 31 and has 22,699 residents.


text:
Edyta Krawczyk
Rated 4.4 of 5
Holidays in Cuba
Hi Vanessa,
Just wanted to write you a quick note to say that we had an amazing holiday in Cuba and we were really pleased with a great help and support from Yarlene, the holiday place representative. She was available every day in the hotel and was the most helpful and hospitable.
Also, the whole trip was organised in such a great way and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
Many thanks,
Cuba Holidays Browse all
- Featured
- Popular
- Best Value From£619
Bask in sunshine and move to the salsa beat on an exotic holiday to Cuba
Escape to Cuba's sunkissed sands for an amazing price!
- The Location on one of Varadero's best virgin beaches
- Virgin Atlantic Sale, huge reductions sale ends 18th Oct
- Enjoy varied entertainment, including water sports, beach volleyball, tennis, evening performances and more
- The all-inclusive plan features 1 buffet restaurant, 2 A la carte, 3 snack bars and 3 bars
Stay at a Havana hotel brimming with history & one of the newest beachfront resorts in Varadero
Relish the timeless charms of Cuba from the comfort of Cuba's most cutting edge hotels
- Stay at two of Cuba's most cutting edge hotels, bursting with modern comforts
- Relish an all-inclusive beach retreat, boasting an overabundance of facilities
- Explore Havana's charismatic, timeless and bustling streets
Enjoy the beautiful views of the Cuban coast from Melia Marina Varadero hotel
Enjoy the exciting nightlife the Melia Marina Varadero Hotel has to offer, whilst relaxing during the day in the beautiful accommodation
- Virgin Atlantic Sale, huge reductions sale ends 18th Oct
- Melia Marina Varadero Hotel is ideally located 300m from the beach in an ecological reserve with a dolphinarium and caves to explore
- Incredible all-inclusive benefits with dining at 9 restaurants at Melia Marina Varadero Hotel
- Excellent watersports facilities including yachting, fishing and diving
Enjoy a luxurious Cuban holiday combining Vibrant Havana and Relaxing Varadero
Fall in love with Havana and its captivating heritage before being dazzled by the pristine shores of Varadero
- You will be staying in luxurious hotels in both Havana and Varadero that combine perfectly and offer the best of both worlds whether you are looking to adventure or relax
- Experience the best of the world famous Varadero Beach where white sand is lapped by clear water when staying at Melia Varadero
- Enjoy a Welcome cocktail and a bottle of cava on arrival in Havana and Varadero
Treat yourself to a luxury Cuban getaway, with stunning beaches and amazing vistas
Expect Luxury, comfort and relaxation!
- Relish fantastic eating and drinking options 24 hours a day
- Enjoy spa treatments, water and land sports and more for a fun-filled break
- Virgin Atlantic Sale, huge reductions sale ends 18th Oct
- Enjoy complimentary perks, including a bottle of sparkling wine, a romantic dinner for two, plus a 30 min massage per couple.
Explore Cuba's cultural hub plus an all-inclusive stay next to a white-sandy beach
Ideal for trendy couples - stay at a chic and sleek hotel in the heart of vibrant Havana and then Stay next to Cuba's famous Varadero beach
- Virgin Atlantic Sale, huge reductions sale ends 18th Oct
- Exclusive Couples offer - Welcome Cocktail, 1 hour free Wifi Access in Havana plus a bottle of wine on arrival, 30-minute massage and a Romantic Dinner in Varadero
- Be swept away by the amazing views of Havana from Capri's rooftop pool
- Blau Vardero offers something for everyone with as little or as much as you want to do on offer including a spa
Terral Hotel + Blau Varadero
Get the best of Havana and Varadero with this fabulous combination of city and beach in two of Cuba's finest hotels, the...
Nh Capri Hotel + Iberostar Bella Vista
One of Havana's most historically popular mafia-run hotels of the 50s, the Capri is a legendary property with over...
Nh Capri Hotel + Blau Varadero
Combine exploring the old dimes of Havana with a refreshing beach retreat in Vardero on an unforgettable twin centre...
Iberostar Parque Central + Iberostar Varadero
If you want to really feel Cuba's beating heart and pulsating rhythms, this is one of the best for an unforgettable...
Melia Habana Hotel + Melia Varadero Hotel
Start your holiday at The Melia Habana Hotel, located in the heart of the elegant Miramar district, overlooking the sea....
Iberostar Parque Central + Royalton Hicacos
Discover the cultural and historical treasures of Havana as you're treated to 5-star service at the Iberostar Parque...
Best Value
Villa Romero
Villa Romero is beautiful in its design, and its comfortable rooms are pleasantly decorated to a high standard, offering...
Kohly Hotel
Explore the historic and cultural wonders of Cuba's spellbinding capital as you unwind over an eight-day getaway. Havana...
Casa Colonial Juanita + Dos Mares Hotel
Are you searching for an adventurous holiday filled with culture, authenticity and charm? Then why not enjoy a twin...
Park View
Explore the beautiful and interesting sites of Cuba's capital during an 8-day stay in the centric Park View Hotel....
Chateau Miramar
Seize this opportunity to explore Cuba's mystical and ancient capital from top to bottom, savouring its enduring...
Dos Mares Hotel
Beyond its sober elegance of Mudejar roots and the presence of round arches and red clay tile roof, it is known for its...
Talk to a specialist
Call 020 7644 1755 to speak with our award-winning travel consultants.
Opening hours 09:00 - 20:00 GMT


text:
The day paramedics rushed me to the emergency room at County-USC Medical Center after a bicycle accident, an army of wounded was already there. It was 1 o'clock on a Friday afternoon and 151 people were waiting to be seen by the 13 doctors.
That's a typical number of patients, Dr. Sean O. Henderson later told me. He's vice chair of the ER unit, which treats about 400 people a day. They wheeze, stagger and roll through the door with everything from earaches to bullet wounds, and those with relatively minor problems often wait into the next day before getting treated.
I had the privilege of going to the front of the line with "blunt head trauma," a concussion and amnesia, Henderson told me. "You kept asking, 'Where am I?' and 'What am I doing here?' "
L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has an answer for the first question. I was at ground zero, he said, in the nation's healthcare crisis.


text:
Stop & Shop to Raise Awareness for Child Hunger
By Grocery Headquarters Staff
As part of its ongoing mission to fight hunger in the local communities it serves, the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company is teaming up with multiple GRAMMY nominee Hunter Hayes and ConAgra for the "Hunter Hayes' 24 Hour Road Race to End Child Hunger," which kicks off on May 9 in Times Square. Hayes is raising awareness to help end child hunger while attempting to break the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS record for Most Concerts Played in multiple cities in 24 hours. "Stop & Shop is committed to being a better neighbor in our local communities, especially around hunger relief and child-related efforts," said Joe Kelley, president, Stop & Shop New England division. "No child should go hungry, but approximately 16 million children in the United States currently live in households without consistent access to adequate food." "As a food retailer, we continue to play an important role in the fight against hunger and regularly work hand in hand with our local food banks through donations and also associate volunteering," said Don Sussman, president, Stop & Shop New York Metro division. "In recent years, we have been able to expand on that commitment through the donation of high protein meat, the funding of mobile food pantries and a greater emphasis on ensuring kids most in need have access to healthy food." To alleviate child hunger by reaching more food insecure children with healthy meals, Stop & Shop and its parent company Ahold USA's Our Family Foundation, is in the second of a three year initiative to distribute $6 million in Fighting Child Hunger grants to 16 regional food banks throughout its market area. These grants target communities with significant need in order to provide millions of healthy meals to children through child care, after school, mobile pantries, and summer programs, as well as other innovative approaches. At Greater Boston Food Bank, they are utilizing their Stop & Shop Fighting Child Hunger grant to transition their BackPack program to school-based food pantries and expand mobile distributions. The grant also contributes to summer feeding programs that ensure kids receive meals during the summer when they cannot take advantage of the meals they receive during the school year. "We are tremendously grateful for this grant from Our Family Foundation and Stop & Shop/New England Division for the second year. One in nine residents of eastern Massachusetts is at risk of hunger, and as many as one in four are children. These families and children in our community will benefit from this grant immediately, as it will allow The Greater Boston Food Bank to distribute enough nutritious food for 900,000 meals at our direct distribution sites. Our Family Foundation's generosity is truly supporting GBFB's mission to end hunger here in eastern Massachusetts," said Catherine D'Amato, President and CEO, The Greater Boston Food Bank. With its Fighting Child Hunger grant, Connecticut Food Bank was able to start and support the GROW Up with Good Nutrition Initiative which includes a walk-in mobile food pantry truck with fresh produce and healthy groceries targeting low-income families with young children. The initiative was launched in fall 2013 when it began to make product deliveries to families participating in the Head Start program. In addition, during last year's government shutdown when these Head Start programs had to close their doors, leaving children without meals they would have otherwise received during daycare, the Connecticut Food Bank used the grant funds to provide emergency food distribution to 1,200 children enrolled at three closed Head Start locations. "By providing young families with fresh, nutritious foods, we are improving the nutrition content of each participating household's meals," said Nancy L. Carrington, Connecticut Food Bank President and CEO. "Through the generosity of Stop & Shop, we are able to expand the nutritional value of meals they prepare at home while educating the youngsters about good nutrition that will last a lifetime."


text:
Otto Leonard Pohl, a resident of Little Falls, formerly of the Pine River and the Pequot Lakes area, passed away peacefully, Sunday, July 22, 2012, at his home at Bridgeway Estates in Little Falls.
Otto was born June 15, 1914, in McHenry, N.D. to the late John W. and Anna (Boxegaard) Scott. His family moved to Minnesota where he grew up working on neighboring farms. Otto then found his lifetime passion working in the logging and mill industry. He worked as a machinist and sawyer all over Minnesota at various sawmills and camps in the sawmill industry for 80 years, from the Gunflint Trail to Willmar. He built his last sawmill in Outing, at the age of 83 years. Otto served in the United States Army in 1941. He then returned home and married his childhood sweetheart, Helen Krieger, on Oct. 8, 1944. The couple adopted one daughter, Rebecca. Otto's fun times were going fishing and going out to eat. He knew of every great restaurant for miles around. He was the family storyteller and history teacher, always having a story and sharing his many pictures of the past.
Otto is survived by his daughter, Rebecca (Joseph) Kestner of Swanville; grandchildren, Tina (Samuel) Yorek of Rice and Bonnie Shields of Swanville; and great-grandson, Evan; stepgrandchildren, Melissa Kestner, Patricia Shields, William Shields, Joey Fritz, Jenny Shields and Jerry Shields; stepgreat-grandchildren, Kiah, Kyra, Dakota, Shawna, Ashely, Cassandra, William, Jr., T.J., Gene, Barron, Nevin, Hunter, Ciarra, Chase and Beau; nine step great-great-grandchildren; special friends, Otto called his "sons" Morris Olson, Roger Langenbau, Gerald Paulson and Vernon Shields; and his companion dog, "Sammer."
Otto has joined his wife, Helen, who passed away in April of 1998.
In Otto's memory in lieu of flowers, his family requests you plant a Norway Pine Tree of your own.
Emblom-Brenny Funeral Home
Otto Leonard Pohl, 98
Otto Leonard Pohl, a resident of Little Falls, formerly of the Pine River and the Pequot Lakes area, passed away peacefully, Sunday, July 22, 2012, at his home at Bridgeway Estates in Little Falls.


text:
Phoenix LXXII: Send in the Clowns
View Single Post
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 3,582
vCash: 500
Originally Posted by
Because the NHL was a benefactor/enabler/co-conspirator of Beasley's improper conduct, could it be argued that they are partly responsible for the fallout that followed? I'm not familiar with the docs, but is there really something in there authorizing Beasley to do 'whatever it takes' (or anything remotely outlining $20 million+ in subsidies) to keep the team? The line about him not needing council approval is pretty damning, at least to me. That would signal to me, the casual observer, that this backdoor Reinsdorf deal wasn't exactly on the up and up.
I guess if you go back and really look at things, the NHL didn't stand to lose much by letting this go to BK court. It could be argued, given the order of events, that it was actually their intention to do so. Anything to void the AMULA, letting them setup a sweetheart deal (Reinsdorf) or just flat out profit in the end (TNSE/PKP) regardless of what transpired.
I'm not seeing the motivation for the league to find a legitimate local buyer. Not after the AMULA was voided. At that point, their corporate interest is to attain the most money possible for the asset. Or, at the very least, recoup every $ spent. I see no reason for the league to cave on purchase price, beyond middling concerns about optics. It could be argued that the drawn out and often times dramatic process has given them adequate cover to exit the market. Lobbing guys like Hulszier and GJ at the problem really had no downside. Cities move at a pace slow enough to serve the NHL's end goal.
Well the NHL had a big gamble in court, if they had lost the right to determine where their franchises are located. Everyone had their opinions but without precedent no one knew how it was going to go. The NHL would have rather the team sold back in 2009 and not had to deal with this as long as they did.
View Public Profile
aqib's albums
Find More Posts by aqib


text:
For the second year the Interlagos crowd will watch a home driver try to stop a British rival from winning the championship. Last year it was Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton – this time it's between Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button. Sebastian Vettel could also have a say, but his chances of stopping Button are … Continue reading How the titles can be won in Brazil
Day: October 13, 2009 articles archive
Two points in it with two to go: It's Ferrari vs McLaren… for third place
Posted on
It's the two titans of the sport: Ferrari and McLaren, who between them have won 374 Grands Prix and 24 constructors' championships. But not this year. The 2009 constructors' championship trophy is not destined for Maranello or Woking. The two teams are fighting as hard as ever – but this time it's for third place.


text:
You know that the world has reached some kind of "pork is awesome" point of overload when a restaurant opens in the West Village and the name of the place is simply "Swine." That's got to be an ominous indication that we're all going to die soon. That or we're just becoming a bunch of gluttonous assholes that will jump at any opportunity to eat pig parts and brag about it on Instagram. Only booty shots, kittens, and nail bling will earn likes on a photo faster than something tagged #bacon. The team who opened this restaurant seems to know that fact well.
Don't get me wrong, we here at The Infatuation are as guilty of propagating the pork frenzy as anyone. I think the first Perfect For category we ever created for a restaurant review was "Full On Pork Indulgence." And hell, we had this place at the very top of our Hit List before we finally made it in, even though @sweatshorts played footsie with a rodent during his dinner here a few months back (note: every restaurant in town has to deal with those furry little f*ckers, and we weren't about to let that stand in between us and a restaurant that by name alone was daring us to come get fatter.) But when you take into account that this spot opened in the same year as a place called Pork Slope, you have to worry a little bit about the future of humanity.
Regardless of what the name of this restaurant says about the world we currently live in, we have to say that most of the food at Swine is actually pretty damn good. We have happily gorged ourselves on the pig related offerings on this menu, and it's a cool neighborhood spot for a drink too. But we also have a hard time handing out accolades to a restaurant that makes a bunch of fatty/salty foods that taste great, but the second a vegetable comes into play, the rails come off. For instance, we love the bone marrow & brisket burger here, but no sh*t we do. It's bone marrow on a burger with gruyere cheese. And then the plate of blackened carrots with quinoa shows up on the table and it's terrible. I guess the moral of the story here is that Swine will give you exactly what you expect from a place that carries a name like that - salty, fatty food that pleases the palate and makes for a great photo or two. Expecting much more than that will probably lead to disappointment.
Food Rundown
Pickle Plate
There's something nice about a plate of pickles to chew on and cut the fat from the rest of the heavy things that are inevitably about to arrive at your table. We'd recommend an order if that sounds good to you too.
A foie gras and jelly sandwich. This is another perfect example of something that tastes really good, because of course it does. It's foie gras with jam on white bread. We liked this a lot, but it just kind of seems like a lay up.Pork Belly
You can't really come to a place like Swine and not order pork belly. This particular version of the stuff you now see everywhere was really, really good, thanks in no small part to its sweet chili glaze. Give it an order if you're down for some real fatty goodness.Bone Marrow & Brisket Burger
This is a great burger. One of the better burgers we've had all year actually. But it will also probably kill you slowly. Enjoy, but eat infrequently.Blackened Carrots & Quinoa
As we mentioned before, this was a disaster. I can't really figure out why or how either - the carrots were just sort of mushy, and the temperatures of the hot carrots and sort of cold quinoa seemed to be at odds with each other. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, it was unsettling and lacked any sort of flavor. I guess that vegan date you brought here is going home hungry.Condiments
Your server at Swine will most definitely upsell you on some condiments to go with your food. For instance, that bone marrow burger isn't even close to absurd enough without a side of bacon marmalade to go with it. There are a bunch of different sauces and fixin's available to pair with your food, each at $3 a pop. We didn't think any of them added much to our meal.


text:
Preparing and filing your federal income tax return for free has never been easier. Here are the options:
H&R Block Free Edition • This is for taxpayers with simple returns. For more information, go to HERE.
Preparing and filing your federal income tax return for free has never been easier. Here are the options:
H&R Block Free Edition • This is for taxpayers with simple returns. For more information, go to HERE.
Turbo Tax Free Edition • Tax-prep software company Intuit offers this option, also for fairly simple returns. Go to HERE for details.
In-store at Walmart • Select locations nationwide are offering free preparation of simple tax forms through a partnership with H&R Block and Jackson-Hewitt Tax Service, good only on 1040EZ forms. For more information, go to HERE.
The downside to these free private-sector programs is that they focus only on simple tax return preparation. If you have a more complicated return or itemize your deductions, you probably aren't going to qualify for the free help. Plus, the free options don't include state tax preparation.
But they do get a lot of people through the door. Companies often use free-filing programs as an opportunity to market other services, such as the state return preparation and filing, which cost money. Always compare prices among a handful of providers for the cost of all the services you'll need this season.
And don't forget that tax-preparation companies offer an array of fee-based services that aren't always a great idea. For example, you can elect to get a refund-anticipation loan at a high interest rate based on your anticipated refund. If you can wait a couple of weeks, you can get your money without giving anyone else part of it.
In addition to all the private-sector options, all Utah taxpayers can prepare and file their tax returns online directly with the Internal Revenue Service through its Free File program. The services provides electronic filing and in many cases free tax preparation, too.
Free File comes in two formats: Traditional Free File and Fillable Forms.
Traditional Free File guides users through the process of preparing and filing a return. The option is provided through a public-private partnership between the IRS and a consortium of nearly two dozen tax software providers who make versions of their free-file products available exclusively at HERE.
A taxpayer must meet certain criteria to use Traditional Free File, such as having an adjusted gross income of $57,000 or less.
Anyone can use Fillable Forms, because there is no income limitation. Unlike the Traditional Free File, though, taxpayers aren't guided through their returns by software. They must fill out the forms online.
One word of caution about Fillable Forms. Because you won't have a software program guiding you through the tax-preparation process, there's no guide to help you take advantage of important tax credits or deductions. One of those commonly missed deductions is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which can be worth hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to a low-income family.


text:
You Are Here: AHRQ Archive Home > National Healthcare Quality Report, 2003 > List of Acronyms
This information is for reference purposes only. It was current when produced and may now be outdated. Archive material is no longer maintained, and some links may not work. Persons with disabilities having difficulty accessing this information should contact us at: https://info.ahrq.gov. Let us know the nature of the problem, the Web address of what you want, and your contact information.
Please go to www.ahrq.gov for current information.
ACE — angiotensin converting enzyme
ADLs — activities of daily living
AHCPR — Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now AHRQ)
AHRQ — Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome
AMI — acute myocardial infarction
ART — antiretroviral therapy
ASPE — Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
BRFSS — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
CAHMI — Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative
CAHPS — Consumer Assessment of Health Plans
CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CDC TB — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Tuberculosis Surveillance System
CHF — congestive heart failure
CKD — chronic kidney disease
CMS — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
CPM — Clinical Performance Measures
CSFII — Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (1994-96 )
CSHCN — children with special health care needs
CVD — cardiovascular disease
DFC — Dialysis Facility Compare
DHHS — Department of Health and Human Services
DON — Diabetes Outreach Network
DQIP — Diabetes Quality Improvement Project
ESRD — end stage renal disease
FAP — Facility Admission Profile
FOBT — Fecal occult blood tests
GDP — national gross domestic product
GFR — glomerular filtration rate
HAART — highly active anti-retroviral therapy
HCFA — Heath Care Financing Administration (now CMS)
HCSUS — HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study
HCUP — Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project
HEDIS — Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set
HHAs — home health agencies
HIV — human immunodeficiency virus
HP2010 — Healthy People 2010
HSR&D — Health Services Research and Development Service
IADLs — instrumental activities of daily living
ICU — intensive care units
IMSystem — Indicator Measurement System
IOM — Institute of Medicine
IT — information technology
JCAHO — Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
K/DOQI — Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative
LHI — Leading Health Indicator
LTBI — latent tuberculosis infection
MDS — Minimum Data Set
MEPS — Medical Expenditure Panel Survey
MQMS — Medicare Quality Monitoring System
MTF — Monitoring the Future Study
NAEPP — National Asthma Education and Prevention Program
NAMCS — National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey
NHA — National Health Accounts
NCBD — National CAHPS Benchmarking Database
NCI — National Cancer Institute
NCQA — National Committee for Quality Assurance
NCVS — National Crime Victimization Survey
NDEP — National Diabetes Education Program
NETSS — National Electronic Telecommunications System for Surveillance
NHAMCS — National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey
NHANES — National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
NHDS — National Hospital Discharge Survey
NHHCS — National Home Health and Hospice Care Survey
NHIS — National Health Interview Survey
NHQR — National Healthcare Quality Report
NHSDA — National Household Survey on Drug Abuse
NIDDK — National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
NIS — National Immunization Survey
NKF — National Kidney Foundation
NNDSS — National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System
NNHS — National Nursing Home Survey
NNIS — National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance
NPLHD — National Profile of Local Health Departments
NQF — National Quality Forum
NSFG — National Survey of Family Growth
NTBSS — National TB Surveillance System
NVSS-I — National Vital Statistics System - Linked Birth and Infant Death Data
NVSS-M — National Vital Statistics System, Mortality
NVSS-N — National Vital Statistics System, Natality
NWHPS — National Worksite Health Promotion Survey
OASIS — Outcome and Assessment Information Set
OBQI — Outcome-Based Quality Improvement
OBRA — Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act
OECD — Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development Health Data File
OpDiv — Operating Division
PPS — prospective payment system
PSA — prostate specific antigen test
PSI — Patient Safety Indicator
PTCA — percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty
QIO — Quality Improvement Organization
SAMHSA — Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
SEER — Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program
SHPPS — School Health Policies and Programs Study
STATE — State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation System
STDSS — Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance System
TB — tuberculosis
TEP — technical expert panel
TRIP — Translating Research Into Practice
TST — tuberculin skin test
UNAIDS — United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
URR — urea reduction ratio
USC — usual source of care
USRDS — United States Renal Data System
UTI — urinary tract infection
VA — Department of Veterans Affairs
VAP — ventilator-associated pneumonia
Vital statistics — National Vital Statistics System
WHO — World Health Organization
YRBSS — Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
Proceed to Next Section
Return to Contents
The information on this page is archived and provided for reference purposes only.
AHRQ Home | Questions? | Contact AHRQ | Site Map | Accessibility | Privacy
Policy | Freedom of Information Act | Disclaimers | Plain Writing Act
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | The White House | USA.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 5600 Fishers Lane Rockville, MD 20857 Telephone: (301) 427-1364


text:
Paris man arrested in connection with death of his Jewish neighbor
Police arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with the death of his neighbor in what an anti-Semitism watchdog said may have racial overtones.
Police arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with the death of his neighbor in what an anti-Semitism watchdog said may have racial overtones.
Some French Jewish criminals are using aliyah to escape the law because Israel and France have no extradition treaty.
But anti-Muslim attacks tripled in volume, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. More ▸
The president is "cynically ignoring reality" by not naming the assailants as Islamist, says BNVCA founder and former police commissioner Sammy Ghozlan. More ▸
Ex-police commissioner Sammy Ghozlan cited anti-Semitic violence, uncertainty and his desire to be near his family for the aliyah. More ▸
The attack follows similar incidents at a kosher restaurant and a Jewish school. More ▸
Raphael Amar, 22, had followed a childhood friend to Syria to fight with the Sunni jihadist group and died last month. More ▸
French police are looking into reports that a gang of youths tasered a Jewish teenager in central Paris. More ▸
The arrest of a French veteran of the Syria war in connection with the Jewish museum shootings in Belgium has Jewish security professionals warning of a new danger. More ▸
A woman assaulted a Jewish mother and her baby in Paris while shouting anti-Semitic slurs. More ▸


text:
OTTAWA — The season just got a lot more difficult for the Ottawa Senators.
The Senators will be without star defenceman Erik Karlsson for the rest of the year. The Norris Trophy winner underwent surgery Thursday to repair his left Achilles tendon, which was cut by a skate blade during a game Wednesday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Senators general manager Bryan Murray said Thursday the surgery went well but 70% of Karlsson's tendon was cut. Recovery is expected to be at least three-to-four months, thus ending Karlsson's season.
"It was a clean cut and recovery is expected to be 100%," Murray said. "But it does mean his year finishes at this time."
Murray had the opportunity to speak to Karlsson, saying the player felt he "got directed and got cut with a skate that shouldn't be where it was."
Karlsson, 22, was injured while being checked by Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke. The Penguins player lifted his leg in what appeared to be an attempt to pin Karlsson against the boards but his skate blade struck the Senators' player right above his skate boot.
Karlsson immediately slumped to the ice and was in obvious pain as he attempted to get up. The NHL's Department of Player safety reviewed the incident and felt no supplementary discipline was required. Murray was very disappointed with that decision but said his biggest concern now is dealing with the loss of Karlsson to his hockey club.
"I'm outraged by the fact we lost Erik Karlsson," said Murray. "I'm disappointed for him, I'm disappointed for the players on our team and the coaching staff and the fans of the city.
"The league suggested it was a hockey play gone bad and I suggested that Matt Cooke has somewhat of a history and maybe that should be considered as well, but I don't believe that's the approach they took. They took it as the individual act."
Some NHL players do wear Kevlar socks for additional protection but Karlsson was not one of them. Marc Methot, Karlsson's defence partner, said the injury will make him try the socks.
"It's a tough call," he said. "Most of us have never even tried them on before.
"It certainly raises awareness now. I'm going to try them out."
Karlsson's injury couldn't have come at a worse time for the Senators (7-5), who've been decimated by injuries.
Ottawa is already forward without forward Jason Spezza (back surgery) and defenceman Jared Cowen (season-ending hip surgery). Peter Regin and Guillaume Latendresse are both sidelined with injuries but could be back early next week. The Senators also lost winger Milan Michalek, who twisted his knee during Wednesday night's warmup.
We don't replace Erik Karlsson. We don't have anybody in that category of player. We hope other people eat his minutes and defensively we just won't allow any goals
Murray was already working the phones looking for ways to strengthen his club prior to Karlsson's injury. He's doesn't anticipate opposing GMs will be any more charitable now that Ottawa is without its top defenceman.
Despite the sense of urgency, Murray doesn't want to give away any first-round draft picks or some of the organization's top prospects for a short-term fix.
Karlsson led the Senators in goals (six) and was second in points (10) through 14 games.
"We don't replace Erik Karlsson," said Murray. "We don't have anybody in that category of player.
"We hope other people eat his minutes and defensively we just won't allow any goals. I guess that's the only way you can do it. (Goalie) Craig Anderson has to be great and our defence has to be great and hopefully by committee find a way to score some goals."


text:
Top Searches: Jazzmaster, Les Paul, Rickenbacker, Gretsch, JHS
Books & Media
Volume J-Y features complete lyrics, chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams for 100 more Beatles hits, including: Lady Madonna - Let It Be - The Long and Winding Road - Love Me Do - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - Michelle - Money (That's What I Want) - Norwegian Wood - Nowhere Man - Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - Paperback Writer - Penny Lane - Revolution - Rocky Raccoon - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - She Loves You - Something - Strawberry Fields Forever - Taxman - Twist and Shout - We Can Work It Out - When I'm Sixty-Four - With a Little Help from My Friends - Yellow Submarine - Yesterday - You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - and more. 6_ x 9_ format.
Shop Brand: Hal Leonard
Shop All: Books & Media
Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a Chicago Music Exchange digital gift certificate, good for anything and everything...
Series: BookPublisher: Hal LeonardMedium: SoftcoverAuthor: Yasuhiko IwanadeFinally, the long-awaited English edition of this historic Japanese book is here! The Beauty of the 'Burst pays tribute to Gibson's magnificent Sunburst Les...
$25.00 $32.99
Wear Our Brand Try our American Apparel crewneck and you'll be feeling snug, comfy, and stylish.
The legendary Shure SM58® vocal microphone is designed for professional vocal use in live performance, sound reinforcement, and studio recording. Its tailored vocal response for sound is a world standard...
Subscribe to our email newsletter for all the latest gear news and updates.
© 2017 Chicago Music Exchange. All Rights Reserved. 3316 N. Lincoln Ave Chicago, IL 60657 (773) 525-7773.