Common Core and The Importance of Developing Critical Thinking Skills

With so much debate and disagreement and ideology involved in the formation of the elementary school curriculum, it is becoming more and more important for children to have access to support in developing effective reading and vocabulary skills from as early as possible, as a greater grasp on the direct meanings of words fosters a more practical, common sense reasoning ability when faced with more abstract concepts and values, and results in a more self-reliant learner who is able to excel within the school curriculum, yet retain their own critical...

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How will Society as a Whole Benefit from Universal Preschool?

Patty Murray, other lawmakers want to offer universal preschool http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022245351_universalprekxml.html Do we need universal preschool, not just in Washington State but in every state? YES! Why you ask? The following article on the Huffington Post by Mark Shriver provides some compelling facts to back up the move for universal early education for low and medium income families in Washington. America Can't Afford...

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Banned TED Talk from Seattle native Nick Hanauer on the Truth about Job Creation

Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g Via Business Insider: "As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs. The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer...

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What Can Parents Do To Prevent "Summer Slide" Learning Loss?

The new school year is approaching - is your child prepared? Many parents are not aware that through the "Summer Slide" phenomenon, children are entering the new school year unprepared, to the degree that teachers are spending up to 6 weeks re-teaching material from the previous year. It's Known as the Summer Slide: Parents and Students Seek Ways to Stay Academically Engaged Over Vacation http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/7/prweb10967255.htm This...

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SeaTac's $15 / Hour Minimum Wage Initiative: A Multidimensional Issue

SeaTac's minimum-wage initiative is causing quite a stir in the area. The initiative proposes to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, from the current state minimum of $9.50 per hour. This would make SeaTac have a minimum wage that is extremely higher than surrounding areas. There is a lot of criticism toward this initiative. There’s concern that raising the minimum wage in SeaTac is going to make it unappealing to businesses and investors,...

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Orca Whales Off Bainbridge after Liberty Bay Visit

Summer Orca outing near Bainbridge. Sighted earlier feeding in Liberty Bay in Poulsbo. ...

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Unemployment Up in Kitsap County - A Local Problem or is it Systemic?

Is Unemployment A Local Problem or is it Systemic? Often there's a tendency to view unemployment as a local issue, meaning that we never really take a step back, to look at the entirety of the system and consider it's functioning as a whole. We look at individual areas and make comparisons between them as to who has made more jobs, who's doing better, who's doing worse. Yet never really seeing the big picture, of how it's all interconnected. Within...

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