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Every Business or Solopreneur needs a portfolio and what better way than to have one online. With new wordpress themes coming out everyday this is even simpler than you might imagine. Using a portfolio wordpress themes is a great way to show off your work, skills, and client testimonials all in one awesome place.
Now lets cover the basics real quick. When talking bout a portfolio online one typical relates that with a pinterest style website. You know a grid layout with different images representing everything from client testimonials to previous projects you or your business has worked on. The cool thing about wordpress portfolio websites is that it gives your prospective clients and easy way to navigate through your past projects and also shows off your creative side at the same time.
In this post I have compiled over 45 premium portfolio wordpress themes to help you get started on your journey for finding the right theme. One thing to keep in mind, responsive themes are really hot right now! What does responsive mean?? Quite simply the theme will adapt the screen size to fit the device you are viewing the website on. For example your site will automatically adapt to iphones, ipads, and other smart devices using a meida querie. Pretty neat!!
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are my affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you buy from one of these links (at no extra cost to you)
Dagda – Premium WordPress Theme MORE INFO / DEMO
Dagda is a clean business/portfolio theme for all of those who want something awesome in both usability, functionality and beauty. It's packed with some awesome features such as events manager, font manager, sidebar manager, slider manager and much much more. Check the full feature list for this.
Imbalance 2 turns you WordPress-based website to an attractive blog, portfolio or even online magazine. This free template designed in strict modern style with a minimalistic touch. Imbalance 2 can easily fresh up your web-magazine or blog. Due to modern flexible features and layout Imbalance 2 fits to almost any project and your visitors won't remain indifferent.
Cubrik Responsive WordPress Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Cubrik is a multi-purpose responsive WordPress Template. Features include: portfolio gallery, light box gallery; full screen portfolio slider; unique product customization order wizard with PayPal ecommerce integration; HTML 5 audio and video integration; Ajax enabled blog; shortcodes for contact form, Google map, email subscription form and twitter feed; and extra HTML code for your customization needs such as accordion, tabbing, pricing tables, buttons and more.
HalfCreative – One Page Portfolio WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
WowWay – Interactive & Responsive Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
WowWay is a quite unique and highly interactive WordPress theme for setting up a creative online portfolio. Based on a responsive grid, packed up with lots of cool features and built on a powerful admin panel, this responsive portfolio theme can be your top choice!
DK For Photography Creative Portfolio – MORE INFO / DEMO
DK is the Premium Photography, Portfolio, Personal website Template built with latest WordPress features. Custom Post Type, Unlimited Colors and Image Uploader etc.
RockWell – Portfolio & Blog WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
RockWell is a easy to use yet powerful theme with unique features. It is easy to customize and allows you to unleash your creativity. Fun, loud and versatile = that's RockWell. Doesn't matter if you are a photographer, business, blogger or a designer – this theme will suit all types.
Skylab Portfolio / Photography WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Skylab is a Premium Portfolio / Photography WordPress Theme with an innovative, touch navigation super smooth hardware accelerated slider designed for photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, art and creative directors, movie directors, architects, luxury businesses or bloggers. It's equally adept at showcasing design or photography projects.
Photolux – Photography Portfolio WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Lotus is a powerful and flexible WordPress portfolio theme that comes with very rich tools and options to make creating website as simple as possible. For example one of its tools is Smart Page Builder. In short, this is an awesome drag & drop page building tool. By this tool you can create any page (for example home page) layout with very rich collection of web elements in a minute without writing html or touching even one line of code. In other words, you can quickly design unlimited unique looking pages in simple drag & drop visually.
MY FOLIO – WP Portfolio Photography Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
My Folio offers a unique dark mansonry portfolio layout. The template includes a simple Drag and Drop page builder giving you the flexibility needed to set up a unique and good looking portfolio website
Fox – WordPress Retro Portfolio – MORE INFO / DEMO
The Fox WordPress Theme is a Retro style perfect for creatives looking to showcase their work. This theme focus on featuring the designers portfolio and connects to Dribbble to display your latest shots.
Responsy WP – Responsive Portfolio – MORE INFO / DEMO
Responsy is a responsive html5 wordpress theme suitable for personal portfolios or creative agencies. Responsy has been coded in HTML5 & CSS3 and jQuery. It has a solid flexible responsive layout that scales from 320px to 1170px. Responsy have a nice portfolio template a with responsive grid layout.
Vertue – Clean And Minimal AJAX Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Vertue: a nice and simple, clean and minimal WordPress theme ideal for anyone looking to showcase their awesome work in an awesome way. And on top of that it's rocking a pretty mean blog too!
Bigbang – Responsive WordPress Template – MORE INFO / DEMO
Bigbang is a feature-rich portfolio template with a fully table less design. It's 100% responsive adapting to whatever device you can throw at it and it's aesthetically and simple design is very unique showing that a minimalistic design can be powerful. It features several page templates including 2 different layout templates, 6 portfolio post formats, single page portfolio, 6 blog page and 6 single page layouts. Add to that a jQuery flexslider, socialize icons widget, photo-stream widget supporting the most popular social media pages.
Status – Parallax and modular Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Status is new parallax WordPress theme with modular and fully responsive layout. Theme is suited for business or portfolio websites. Theme includes lots of advanced features and functions and is based on solid backend framework.
Yin & Yang – MORE INFO / DEMO
Yin & Yang is a light, minimalistic, simple to use portfolio theme. Quick to setup and easy to customize, thanks to the powerful admin panel, and the detailed documentation, Yin & Yang is the perfect theme for showcasing your most important work directly in front of your potential clients. Yin & Yang has got you covered on all fronts, so if you ever get stuck on anything, rest assured that you're going to get the help of a professional, if and when you need it, because Yin & Yang comes with excellent customer support.
AREA53 – A Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
AREA53 is a Responsive (full) HTML5 with a cool responsive slider. It's full featured with the Content Composer to create professional pages in minutes, filterable portfolio and much more.
Angular – Responsive Portfolio – MORE INFO / DEMO
Angular is a responsive WordPress Theme (try resizing your browser), suited for users who want to showcase their work on a neat portfolio site. The Theme is built on top of the fabulous Avia Framework and comes with support for the bbPress Forum plugin, just in case you need it!
ShowyCase – Portfolio / Photography WP Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
ShowyCase is a professional, super flexible and customizable portfolio / design agency / photography theme for WordPress. With 2 starter color skin colors, unlimited background image / colors, unlimited secondary color, 4 home templates and 4 portfolio templates all wrapped in modern clean design, Full multiple portfolios support with filtering ability, you almost have all what you need to build your perfect portfolio website.
Board – WordPress Portfolio – MORE INFO / DEMO
Board is a clean, suave theme designed to give your users the best experience while browsing your portfolio & blog.
Artiste: Professional Portfolio Website Template – MORE INFO / DEMO
Artiste is an "all-about-the-work" WordPress portfolio theme for the professional creative. It's clean yet functional, and concentrates on showcasing your work to potential clients and employers with little distraction. Go get hired more.
Expression Photography Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Expression is a cool responsive WordPress photo theme, best suited for photographers and creatives who use portfolios to effectively present their work. Expression theme is powered by the advanced Pexeto Panel, which provides tons of options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme. With all the styling options provided you can easily customize the appearance of the theme and build you own custom skin.
Punch – Responsive Portfolio WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Punch is a premium responsive WordPress theme that uses slick shape overlays and cool animations – perfect for any creative or digital agency. With powerful meta options and features, Punch is ready to help you show off your work the way you want to with stunning precision.
Locus One Page – WordPress Portfolio Template – MORE INFO / DEMO
This is as the name indicates an one page theme and it really stands out visually.
Gridlocked Minimalistic WordPress Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Gridlocked is a grid-based, post-format supporting, layout-shuffling, minimalistic theme for creatives. It is both a classic portfolio for showcasing your work and a modern tumblr-style blogging system. A truly versatile theme, Gridlocked can be configured to focus on your work, your blogging, or both. Support for post formats means you can jazz up your blog with your own self-hosted video, audio, images, galleries, asides, links, quotes and of course good old standard posts.
Classica: Minimalistic WordPress Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Classica is a beautifully minimalistic portfolio theme, free from gimmick and trend, making your talent the focal point of your portfolio – the way it should be. Present your work in a professional manor with a timeless design.
Square: Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Square is a clean, minimal yet powerful WordPress theme. Square has a compatible layout with mobile devices. We have tested it in iPhone, iPad and many other mobile devices. It contains two homepage types one for portfolio, and another for business purposes.
VideoPlus – MORE INFO / DEMO
Cool new video portfolio theme from Theme Junkie with a clean and modern look and feel.
PURITY – Minimalistic WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Purity is a Clean and Minimal New WordPress Theme with a 'BOLD' feel that can be easily used as a personal portfolio or a business website. With an extensive documentation and a demo content you won't have any problems setting your page up.
Aware – Responsive Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Aware is an interactive, responsive portfolio theme perfect for freelancers, web designers, photographers and videographers alike. Its user interactive interface delightfully enhances your most loved portfolio pieces. Now, you can take your portfolio with you, in your pocket.
Daisho – Flexible WordPress Portfolio Template – MORE INFO / DEMO
Daisho is a portfolio solution for creative professionals and companies looking for a minimal and professional look. Flexible and responsive presentation, smooth navigational flow and clutter-free approach. Put your works in focus.
Roya – Responsive AJAX Portfolio Website Template – MORE INFO / DEMO
Roya is a Beautiful Responsive Portfolio Theme for WordPess. It uses AJAX for loading new contents, It's designed to be super fast and give the user a seamless experience.
Folioway – Premium Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Folioway is a perfect pixel WordPress theme, not only its clean and elegant, it also comes with tons of features like amazing slider, unlimited colors, etc. It's incredibly powerful and flexible and easy to use! It is just the best WordPress theme for your or your company's work presentation! This is simple and clean and for sure one of my WordPress Portfolio Themes favorites.
Workspace – MORE INFO / DEMO
Workspace is a feature-rich business / portfolio theme that perfect for the creative agency, freelancer or general business.
Volumes: Responsive Portfolio Theme For WordPress – MORE INFO / DEMO
Bold, beautiful, full of character and fully responsive – Volumes is a great asset to any creative freelancer or agency. An attractive showcase for you work packed full of features, a filterable portfolio, custom widgets, custom page templates and more.
Nemesis Clean Design For Creative Designer – MORE INFO / DEMO
Nemesis is the Responsive WordPress theme built for creative freelance designer website. It comes with many cool features ex. Skin manager, Flexible portfolio contents (including stylish AJAX portfolio), customizable elements's color, font and background image and patterns. There are also 100+ advanced shortcodes with Shortcode Generator support. You can also use 300+ custom fonts from Google Web Fonts.
Prospector Responsive theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Prospector is a fully featured Responsive theme. It's perfect for portfolio websites. Excellent Sortable Portfolio displays all your portfolio items directly on the homepage. Each portfolio item has it's own page with more details. It's a fully loaded portfolio theme with tons of nice stuff you'll love using. Precise and user friendly admin panel allows you to do a lot of customizations without knowing any HTML or CSS . Colors, images, fonts, widgets, sliders, portfolios, galleries,… everything can be customized and configured via admin panel.
CStar Design WordPress Theme – MORE INFO | DEMO
A user interface management system with lots of features, including flexibility, speed. It has never been such an easy task to publish your website with your preferred colors. With it's incredible skin editor, you will get your website exactly like the way you want. You have full freedom. You can edit all elements and backgrounds in the website. You can change the whole mood and concept of the website with 6 different background editor. You can either make it a serious company website, or change it to a fun and joyful website. Having a website for Restaurant, Furniture Shop, Rent a Car, Electronics, Hosting Company, Flowers Shop, Sports, Hospitals and for more sector, just depends on your imagination. You are one step away from your dream website.
Collection – MORE INFO / DEMO
Collection is an eye-catching portfolio / showcase / gallery theme that built with of a lot of amazing features such as custom post types, post formats, etc
MediaBook – Multimedia WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Cool and a bit different portfolio WordPress theme with accordion style photo gallery.
Pipes, A Super-duper Customizable WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
eList is a versatile clean and simple Directory WordPress Theme. Using eList, you can create an online directory of any type, and allow your visitors to submit new listings from the front end. The theme also comes with eCommerce integration, allowing you to charge your visitors for new or featured listings.
Good Space – Responsive Minimal WP Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Good Space Good Space is a WordPress theme especially for creative agency. It's very clean, minimal with modern design. This theme is also has a responsive ability. Moreover, it comes with tons of features. Including our page items that can be managed very easily via our awesome tool, 'Page Builder'. Admin panel in this theme is a real feature rich. You can also create unlimited sidebar, choosing over 450 fonts or if you want to use your own, we provide a cufon uploader. You can also translate each elements to your language via this admin panel.
Boxed – Responsive Full Background Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Boxed is an elegant responsive portfolio/photo WordPress theme that was created so you can show off your work beautifully on the web. The theme has a unique left-sided navigation while keeping the site centered in the browser, an optional (you can have a normal static image instead) full-screen background image slider which can be set to show different images on the homepage, portfolio pages, blog pages, regular pages and even on a per post/page basis and overall a very clean and modern design that looks great no matter your browser size.
Duotive Three – Complete WordPress theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
This is the ultimate portfolio theme with a very easy and powerful administration tool.
Footage – A Photo & Video Production Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
With Footage as your website your viewer will never get bored and leave. This theme is a unique way to display your photography and supports all types of photo orientation so your photos will not get cutoff. If you are a photo/videographer and need a fresh new look for your website then this is the theme for you. And best of all Footage is AJAX enabled so your users will only have to reload when posting a comment.
Spark Portfolio WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Spark is an amazing portfolio WordPress theme. Simple to use, it's designed to display any kind of content and it's perfect for every business. The theme is built on a solid framework and it's HTML5 and CSS3 based.
New Horizon – Blog & Portfolio WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
New Horizon – is perfect for design/fashion orientated blogs or for creative people who's tired of regular thumbnails grids layouts.
Refined WP – Portfolio / Business WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Refined WP is a WordPress 3.2+ Ready Premium WordPress Theme specifically designed for corporate / business websites, portfolios, designer or agency websites etc. With a clean minimal design and numerous portfolio layout options it offers a lot of ways to display your portfolio / services and enables you to send a clear message.
Airlock: Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Airlock is the project made for creative designers and interactive agencies. Simplicity, flexibility and attention to detail is the main asset of the design.
Dandelion – Powerful Elegant WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Dandelion is a Powerful Premium WordPress Portfolio Theme. This theme provides all the main functionality you will need to present your products, work and yourself in an elegant and professional style. The Dandelion theme is highly flexible, so changing the color scheme is super simple and for the most parts you won't need an image editor. The theme is best suited for any business, portfolio, photography and personal sites. This theme allows you to build your own custom skin just by selecting your favorite colors from the admin panel with a color picker. Additionally, there are 32 custom patterns that you can choose between for the body.
Duotive 2WO – All in One WordPress Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Very flexible theme with many different color schemes and unique features. Different but still a top WordPress Portfolio Themes pick!
Origin WordPress Theme – MORE INFO / DEMO
Origin is a stunning grid-based theme that tells a story through imagery. The theme creates a truly engaging experience by saturating the screen with your beautiful photos. The theme is also responsive, meaning it will look and work great on mobile devices as well. If you are an artist looking to showcase your latest work, or if you are a blogger looking to give your visitors a fun new way to browse your latest posts, then Origin is great choice for you!
Heat Premium Portfolio For WordPress – MORE INFO / DEMO
Heat is a Premium Portfolio WordPress Theme with a very unique layout especially suited for photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, art and creative directors, architects, luxury businesses or bloggers. It's equally adept at showcasing design or photography projects. Its page templates accommodates multiple galleries, each with as many images as you want.


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Today around noon, U.S president George W. Bush addressed over the phone the crowd gathered in front of Capitol Hill for the annual March for Life, giving them his support and emphasizing the work done under his presidency to favor a culture of life.
Calling from Manhattan, Kansas. He thanked the participants for their "devotion to such a noble cause."
He reminded them of his commitment to the value of human "the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence apply to everyone, not just to those considered healthy or wanted or convenient. These principles call us to defend the sick and the dying, persons with disabilities and birth defects, all who are weak and vulnerable, especially unborn children. (Applause.)
President Bush also underlined the progress made under his presidency to restrict the practice of abortion, among which to ban the use of taxpayer money on programs that promote abortion overseas, the ban on partial-birth abortion.
"We're vigorously promoting parental notification laws, adoption, teen abstinence, crisis pregnancy programs, and the vital work of our faith-based groups. We're sending a clear message to any woman facing a crisis pregnancy: We love you, we love your child, and we're here to help you."
"We also must respect human life and dignity when advancing medical science, and we're making progress here, as well," referring to the bill supporting ethical treatment and research using stem cells from umbilical cord blood.
"By changing laws we can change our culture."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wibsey ward councillors have allocated ward budget funding of more than £5,000 towards upgrading the Scout headquarters on Netherlands Avenue.
Costing a total of £16,000, work is well under way on the scheme, which includes replacing the flat roof with a pitched one as well as soffits, fascia boards, guttering, down pipes, roof insulation and a roof extension over the planned new disabled entrance.
When completed the building will be used by the community during the day, with youth service and Scouts sessions during the evening.


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by Joni Astrup
Associate editor
A program designed to help area families who are financially unable to provide Christmas gifts for their children kicks off this week.
Gifts Anonymous barrels will be put out at area businesses beginning Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 19 and 20. People may drop off new, unwrapped, children's gifts in the barrels through Friday, Dec. 14.
New this year is an opportunity to buy Visa gift cards for older children. Michelle Eder, one of the Gifts Anonymous coordinators, said the cards are available at Klein Bank in Otsego or at The Bank of Elk River's downtown Elk River location. The banks will waive the fees normally associated with Visa gift cards and will make sure the cards are delivered to Gifts Anonymous.
Cash donations are also welcome and may be mailed to CAER Gifts Anonymous, 19279 Watson St., Elk River, Minn. 55330 or deposited in the CAER Gifts Anonymous account at The Bank of Elk River.
Last year Gifts Anonymous provided gifts to 723 children from 274 families.
Here are this year's gift drop-off sites:
Elk River
•American Legion, 525 Railroad Dr.
•Anytime Fitness, 18130 Zane St.
•Bank of Elk River, all locations
•Bela Salon, 19320 Highway 169
•Boys and Girls Club, 905 6th St.
•Brock White, 12785 Elk Lake Rd.
•Central Bank, 17267 Yale St.
•Coborn's, 19425 Evans St.
•Cub, 19216 Freeport Ave.
•Curves, 13469 Business Center Dr.
•Family Speech and Therapy, 19021 Freeport St.
•First National Bank of Elk River, downtown and Elk Park Center
•Kemper Drug, 323 Jackson Ave.
•Menards, 19521 Evans St.
•Olde Main Eatery, 313 Jackson Ave.
•Purpose Driven Restoration, 325 Main St.
•River of Life Church, 21695 Elk Lake Rd.
•St. Andrew's Church, 566 4th St.
•Star News, 506 Freeport Ave.
•Union Church, 1118 4th St.
•Walgreens, 18267 Carson Ct.
•Zylstra Harley Davidson, 19600 Evans St.
•Bank of Elk River, 15800 88th St.
•Denny's, 9020 Quaday Ave.
•Klein Bank, 15751 87th St.


text: On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 01:10:09 +0200, Richard Lyons wrote: > I assume from the popularity of mutt here that it must be good. Over > time, I have received the impression from various discussions here that > it is possible to filter incoming mail to different folders and then > read it with mutt. I have restructured the folders in kmail so that > they can be seen from mutt and have been experimenting reading them > from mutt. I am now getting doubts about the convenience of using > mutt. > Of course, if Kmail does everything you want in a way, that's satisfying you, you have no reason to use mutt. But with Mutt you can do almost everything you want. And if no other MUA satisfies your needs, you have a good reason to read some documentation an create your own MUA - based on Mutt. > THis is what I do with kmail. The incoming mail picked up from the pop3 > server is filtered to topic or client folders and the presence of > unread mail is visible from bold face titles. It is then easy to read > the unread mail, in the order of priority I feel appropriate, and > ignoring folders with no new mail. This still works even after > eliminating nested folders (which are invisible in mutt whether mbox or > maildir). My Mutt's inbox and outbox are identically, and incoming and outgoing mail is sorted in threads. All incoming and outgoing mail remains there, until I have "closed the case". Then it is deleted or saved in one big mailbox. If I have to search an archived mail, I use the limit option (fine thing - filtering the mail to be viewed with regex). Mail from mailing lists and spam is recognized by procmail and automatically sorted into the appropriate boxes, where I have a look from time to time. > To compare with mutt, I have simply opened the ~/Mail directory in which > the folders are, and tried to read new mail. Unread mail is not > identified by default, so I went through a handful of the 70-odd > folders and marked some recent mail as unread. Then I tried to find it > again. The read next unread instruction in mutt appears to only > operate inside a folder. The folders containing unread mail are not > flagged in any way. I can only find the 'unread' mail by opening every > folder (c then ? then scroll to the next folder and press enter -- not > very simple) and looking for entries marked N. Finding new mails is very easy: Just change to the mailbox and type TAB. Mutt is jumping to the next unread mail then. It's true, that you don't see immediately, in which of your mailboxes you have new mail. But all important new mail should be sorted to my inbox in my opinion. And with mutt you can save it in the right archive mailbox by just typing two keys (!). Just read about save-hooks. And if I wanted procmail to sort new mail in different mailboxes I would easily find a way to see instantly, which boxes do have new mail and to open them simultaneously. Mutt offers you the maximum convenience - after a quite unconvenient and difficult configuration. S. -- Sven Mayerhofer N 53 35 E 07 54


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"You think that your personality is going to go over, but it doesn't," laments singer-songwriter Nellie McKay. "I thought I had a talent for alienating people, but I have no idea what it is that doesn't go over."
In 2004, McKay released an attention-grabbing debut, "Get Away From Me," a double-disc set of Tin Pan Alley pop, jazz, disco and endearingly awkward attempts at rap beloved by critics and the few thousand people who heard it. She was 21 years old, and so uncool she was cool.


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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The U.S. Education Department granted Pennsylvania a partial waiver from the No Child Left Behind school evaluation law Tuesday, giving state officials the flexibility to develop alternatives they say will yield more meaningful assessments of schools and students.
Pennsylvania is the 41st state to receive a waiver, which eliminates the federal benchmark that relied largely on standardized tests to measure progress toward a national goal of all students reading and doing math at their actual grade level by 2014.
The Obama administration, in a tacit acknowledgement that the goal is unattainable, began offering the waivers last year to states that developed their own federally approved plans for measuring student and teacher performance.
The state Education Department said new, user-friendly "school performance profiles" will combine standardized test scores and attendance, graduation and promotion rates to gauge academic progress at each of the 3,200 school buildings in the state starting this fall.
Also, a new educator evaluation system will use student achievement among other criteria in assessing the performance of teachers starting this year and principals starting in 2014-15.
Schools with a high percentage of low-income students and low academic performance will be assigned special designations that qualify them for intervention and support services.
Gov. Tom Corbett hailed the waiver approval as "welcome news for students, parents, taxpayers, educators and public schools across the state."
"This waiver allows Pennsylvania to focus on improving schools by directing resources to areas that help students academically succeed," he said. "We now have a better way of guiding improvement efforts in schools by establishing ambitious, yet attainable, goals."
Wythe Keever, spokesman for the state's largest teacher union, said the waiver is "a step in the right direction," but that replacing the so-called AYP benchmark with multiple measures of student achievement won't solve the statewide need for more education funding,
"If you don't provide adequate resources for teachers and schools, it's like asking (teachers) to spin straw into gold," said Keever, of the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the waivers are required because Congress has not finished a rewrite of the 2002 law, which expired in 2007. Some of its goals proved too ambitious, including that all students be working at grade level by 2014.
How changes affect Pa.
Federal education officials granted Pennsylvania's request for a waiver Tuesday from the No Child Left Behind law. The commonwealth is the 41st state to get a waiver. Key points about the change:
o Districts no longer have to meet the benchmark called adequate yearly progress that was measured through student scores on standardized tests known as the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSAs.
o Instead, schools will be rated on the state's new school performance profile system, which officials said would be available online this fall.
o School profiles will be based on data including participation rates for the PSSAs and Keystone Exams, as well as graduation rates, attendance and closing the achievement gap.
o Schools with large percentages of low-income students, known as Title I schools, will receive labels of priority, focus or reward. Low-performing schools designated priority or focus will receive intervention and support; reward schools could be eligible for funding to help them replicate successful programs at lower-performing buildings.


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The 2013 BET Honors aren't set to air for nearly another month, but that doesn't mean you can't get a taste of what to expect from this year's event.
Honorees Halle Berry (in this stunning Monique Lhuillier creation), Chaka Khan, Lisa Leslie, Bishop T.D. Jakes and legendary music executive Clarence Avant took over Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for a night of inspiration, music and recognition.
Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu, Mint Condition and others hit the stage in celebration, while host Gabrielle Union kept the show alive and fresh.
The 2013 BET Honors will air Feb. 11.
Take a peek at the night's red carpet arrivals after the jump!
Photos courtesy of Getty Images


text:
Yokohama F.Marinos said Friday they have signed 2013 J.League Player of the Year Shunsuke Nakamura to a new one-year ¥130 million deal for the coming season.
The 35-year-old Nakamura, the first two-time winner and the oldest recipient of the J.League MVP award, played a pivotal role in helping Marinos win the Emperor's Cup and finish runners-up in the J.League.
The former Japan international was also named MVP in 2000 during his first spell with Marinos under Ossie Ardiles before moving abroad to ply his trade in Italy (Reggina), Scotland (Celtic) and Spain (Espanyol). He returned to Yokohama in 2010.
Nakamura played in all but one game last season for Marinos, who lost the championship by a single point to Sanfrecce Hiroshima on the final weekend.
He scored 10 of Yokohama's 49 goals, but was sidelined down the stretch with a gallbladder inflammation that forced him out of the Nov. 10 home game with Nagoya Grampus, which Marinos lost 2-1 — one of three defeats they suffered over the last four games of the campaign.


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Atlanta Hawks coach Larry Drew is not in Israel to hire Maccabi Tel Aviv coach David Blatt as his assistant, Blatt told R-Sport on Thursday.
Drew's pre-season visit to Tel Aviv prompted speculation he may be planning to bring Blatt onto his team. But Blatt, who doubles as Russia national team coach, said Drew's visit is simply about "sharing ideas."
"There's no connection whatsoever between him being here and any NBA possibility on my behalf. I don't know where that rumor started but it's very untrue," Blatt said.
"Coach Drew, in the interests of gaining knowledge and sharing ideas with a different place and different style, came to visit with us."
Drew's visit has proved fruitful, Blatt added.
"We're in constant discussions. He's with us, meeting us in the coaches' room every day, he's at the practices and we're out to dinner together and we're discussing a lot of things."
After leading Russia to bronze at London 2012, the first men's basketball medal in the country's history, Blatt said he was not sure whether he would remain with Russia, which he has led since 2006.
He has yet to decide on his future, he said Thursday.
"Nothing's changed," he said.
"The feelings are very good on both sides, but that's not concerning me staying or not, that's just our general feelings about each other."
Blatt will meet with federation officials to discuss the Olympic campaign in the "near future," he said, adding that no date has yet been set.


text:
Adventure returning home
Within only a matter of seconds after sending that text message requesting prayer, I noticed a car stopped about 100 meters up the road, and started walking toward it. Not every stopped car necessarily means the driver is offering me a ride, but after walking a bit closer, a man got out of the car and waved me to come! It was a father with his teenage son. They took me to the Aomori Chuo Interchange which is an entrance to the Tohoku Expressway. It was only 3 kilometers further up the road, but they saved me at least another 30 minutes walking.
I had originally intended to take Route 7 back home which is the same route that I came on, but it was already 9AM and I figured perhaps the Tohoku Expressway would be faster even though I may have longer waits. The wind was strong and I began to feel cold. It was good to be wearing a heavy winter coat and woolen hat this trip.
After about an hour a man stopped and offered me a ride to Omagari City in Akita Prefecture. I rejoiced because this would take me to the Shiwa service area past Morioka which is about 200 kilometers further or over 1/3 of the way back home!
After arriving in Shiwa, I remembered that I had quite a long wait there last year during a previous trip. But this time after only 10 minutes a couple with a young son offered me a ride. They were going all the way to Chiba which meant I could go with them as far as the Adatara Service area just before the junction of the Ban'etsu expressway! This is as good as it gets, for we arrived at Adatara at 3:30PM or two hours before sunset. I needed only one more good ride!
The driver was an engineer working with lasers and fiber optic cable production. I commented to him that such technology must be extremely complex, and yet it doesn't compare with the complexity of the human cell. He smiled when he realized the conversation was leading to creation by intelligent design.
The engineer was also interested in what I had to say about the fall of the American government in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson sold the American economy to a private investor corporation.
At Adatara after only a 15 minute wait, a young couple, Mr. and Mrs Ii from Toyama, took me the final 120 some kilometers back to Niigata. May God bless them greatly for their kindness! They had to get off the expressway to drop me off which meant it cost them another 1000 yen in toll to get back on.


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Coach Fran McCaffery wants to use more full court pressure. Added depth with allow him to do just that and Aaron White is certainly feeling comfortable at the front of that press. The sophomore forward talks about his role on the press, the added depth on this Iowa team, and much more.
White Quincy from HawkeyeReport on Vimeo.