Policy Recommendation Essay Example for Free

Policy Recommendation Essay The difficulty with any definition of poverty involves the meaning of minimum needs and the amount of money required to satisfy these needs. (Ansel M. Sharp, 2010) Those in poverty sometimes face an additional obstacle to earning an adequate income. Discrimination as we use it means that equals are treated unequally or that the ‘unequal’s are treated equally. Discrimination exists in the labor market when people with equal productivity are paid different wages or people with differences in productivity are paid equal wages. Discrimination can also exist in the product market when consumers pay different prices for the same product. (Ansel M. Sharp, Evidence of Discrimination in Our Economy, 2010) Discuss the major impact to society of the problem. In 2001, some six-point-eight million families, or nine-point-two percent of all families, lived in poverty. This translates into more than thirty-two-point-nine million individuals, a staggering number to many Americans who have never been personally touched by poverty. Indeed, some have characterized those who live in poverty as the hidden poor. Studies have shown that there is a significant turnover in the poverty population: Families and single individuals move into and out of poverty several times throughout the years in response to significant life events. Although no reliable estimate exists for the number of hardcore poverty cases, the incidence of poverty can be easily seen to vary dramatically across a number of demographic characteristics. (Ansel M. Sharp, What is Poverty? , 2010) Just imagine searching through heaping piles of refuse at landfills, looking for anything that could seem partly edible, to satisfy an unending hunger. Many people around the world face this situation every day of their lives. What could have caused a situation like this to occur? The education and skill level, health or handicap status, and discrimination play a vital role in poverty. A major factor determining whether someone will end up living in poverty, education or skill level can make or break an income. Education plays a vital role in acquiring jobs, learning new skills, and bringing home necessities and comforts of life. A person who doesn’t receive an education has a very small chance of making much money and acquiring skills that would bring home a desirable income. Many who do not have an education bring their family into a cycle of poverty, where their posterity doesn’t necessarily have the income to go to college or even don’t have a desire to acquire a high school diploma. Poverty rates are higher among families with only one parent or head of household present. Poverty is also related to age, those very young and those very old have higher rates of poverty than those in their prime and middle-age years. The economic cause of poverty is family incomes depend on the quantities of resources that families can place in employment and the prices received for those resources. To understand poverty, then, it is important to understand what determines the prices paid for human and capital resources and what determines the quantities that can be employed. Under competitive market conditions, the basic principle of wage rate determination is that units of any kind of labor tend to be paid a price equal to any one worker’s contribution to an employer’s total receipts. In other words, workers are paid about what they are worth to employers. What a worker is worth to an employer is referred to by economists as the marginal revenue product of labor. (Ansel M. Sharp, The Economic Causes of Poverty, 2010) Market discrimination may be traced to two primary sources. These are the power to discriminate in the market and the desire to discriminate. In our complex market economy, the wages of workers vary widely. Even workers hired by the same employer to perform similar jobs are often paid different wage rates. The meaning of wage discrimination is clear enough: unequal pay for equal contributions. But proving discrimination depends on being able to distinguish among individuals on the basis of individual efforts and productivity. Generally, humans are paid pproximately what they are worth in a competitive economy. (Ansel M. Sharp, Evidence of Discrimination in Our Economy, 2010) Employment discrimination means that some people are not hired because of non-economic characteristics such as race or gender. Two individuals with the same training, education, and experience apply for a job, however one is black and one is white. If both do not have the same chance of getting the job, discrimination has entered into the decision-making process. There is a growing belief that discriminatory differences in pay, especially gender differences in pay, occur largely because of occupational segregation. In general, men work in occupations that employ very few women, and women work in occupations that employ very few men. The economic results of occupational segregation for women are low wages. Women are often relegated to occupations where productivity and experience have little to do with their status and where opportunities for overtime and premium pay are limited. Price discrimination occurs when people of different races or genders are forced to pay different prices for the same good or service, provided the differences are not due to differences in cost of serving the consumer. (Ansel M.

The No Child Left Behind Act: Impact on the Assessment of Special Educa

The No Child Left Behind Act: Impact on the Assessment of Special Education Students Three years after the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) moved into our schools there is a great deal of controversy that questions whether the act implemented by President George W. Bush is helping or hurting an already suffering school system. There are many dimensions of the NCLB act that have been questioned over the past three years; the fair assessment of students with disabilities is one of them. As the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (NCFOT) reported, the public relations aspect of this act is strong. However, all other areas of the new law are falling short of meeting their goals. In an annual report card developed by the NCFOT in 2005 accountability was rated with a ?D? and high-quality assessments with an ?F?. They further explain that Bush?s act encourages the use of commercial testing where they should be using classroom based assessments. Also, the accountability is somewhat misleading and can cause schools that are moving forward to turn into test-prep schools (NCFOT, 2005). While this report card focuses on how the NCLB act affects all subgroups in education, it is important to look at one group in particular; the special education students. President Bush?s NCLB act is forcing special education students to perform on statewide assessments that are above their intelligence level and are often requiring them to pass the assessments in order to receive a high school diploma. This often causes teachers, such as Lindley Corcoran, a special education teacher at Sheppard Pratt private school for students with severe disabilities, to teach to the test rather than teach practical functional skills which she believes will be ... ...ting Office. Fair Test. (2005). The National Center for Fair & Open Testing. Retrieved from http://www.fairtest.org Goldhaber, D. (2002). What might go wrong with the accountability measures of the ?No Child Left Behind Act The Urban Institute. Improving accountability for limited English proficient and special education students under the No Child Left Behind Act. (2003). Washington Area School Study Council. No educator left behind: Testing special education students. (2003). Retrieved March 18, 2005, from http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/NELB/NELB025.shtml Olson, L. (2004). Data show schools making progress on federal goals. Education Week, 24, 24-28. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org Tomes, H. Ph.D. (2004). In public interest: Are we really leaving no child behind? American Psychologist, 35, 31-35. Retrieved from www.apa.org

The 5th Wave Review

They had one goal. To wipe out all humans and take over our planet. The first wave that came through was an EMP that fried any electronic equipment. All the planes flying in the air crashed, all the cars driving stopped. the whole world came to a standstill. This took out about half a million people. The second wave took out all the coastal cities and the people who live there when they dropped a huge slab of metal onto one of the largest faults on the planet, causing massive earthquakes and huge tsunamis. The third: an avian virus that wipes out 99 percent of the remaining population.The fourth: involving â€Å"Silencers,† humans who were implanted years ago with an â€Å"alien† gene while still in their mothers' wombs. These Silencers look and seem human, yet are actually programmed to kill any remaining humans. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey takes the first person perspective of Cassie, one of the last remaining humans on earth. As she resists the aliens who try in ever y way to kill her, she loses her entire family. Suddenly, she is shot by a Silencer and is trapped beneath a car, bleeding to death.Evan Walker, the Silencer who shot her then finds her, first trying to kill her, but then revealing himself to be one of the few aliens who originally voted to not use violence against the human inhabitants. He overcomes the alien’s consciousness and helps protect and heal her as she struggles to find her little brother, Sammy. Cassie has two goals: to stay alive, and to rescue Sammy, who has been sent to what is supposedly a refugee camp, but which actually is a paramilitary program where he will be taught to kill.The advice I would give the main character is to stay low, stay hidden, and take out the government one at a time. The oppressive government is the aliens who faked being military leaders and other positions in power in order to take power over the now nearly extinct Homo sapiens. The type of government depicted in the 5th Wave is simi lar to a dictatorship. The aliens killed anyone they didn’t like and anyone who tried to oppose or resist them. Humans were tricked into thinking they were at a refugee camp, but they had just actually became permanent citizens of the alien’s regime.To leave the camp is basically suicide, because as a â€Å"citizen†, you have to have a chip embedded under the skin in order for the aliens to track where you are at all times and to exterminate you is necessary. So, if you leave the camp, they will hunt you down and kill you. People live in terror because they know that they can be killed at any time. There are almost no supplies or resources left on Earth, which deprives any remaining human of essential supplies, food, weapons, and water. Another example is how the aliens kill anyone that they see that is not part of their little city.Anyone who realised what was going on and tried to rebel was also executed. (Pg. 130-131) The aliens are the new leaders of the ear th. Cassie is one of the main characters in the novel. She is not a member of the aliens’ society on Earth, so she is constantly being stalked and shot at while she scavenges around looking for essential supplies and her brother all while trying to stay hidden and alert. They try to kill her on sight, but she escapes every time. Another example at the end of the novel, Evan leaves her, Ben, and Sammy to sacrifice himself by blowing up the whole compound where the â€Å"refuge† was.She was insistent on him escaping with her and the group but finally gave in when he kept wanting to. (Pg. 443-444) Cassie’s actions impact this society very little in the beginning, but at the end, she helps destroys the whole alien compound on earth. Cassie's actions resulted in both positive and negative consequences. The warning given by the author is to not trust anybody. In the novel, Cassie emptied an entire clip into a soldier, killing him because she thought that he was holdin g a gun, but he was actually holding a crucifix.She didn’t trust him, but in the end, she didn’t regret her decision because she knew he was in a better place than the now alien-infested Earth. The difference between the Others and a human are impossible to tell, because they possess the human body and the mind. The citizens will eventually have to overpower and take over the government if they are to survive, as the aliens are wanting to rid Earth of all humans in order to take over. (Pg. 223) The advice I would give the protagonist is to help other people more and to not be as selfish.Another warning is to never travel by yourself, as bad thing may happen to you. The warnings apply to everyone. In conclusion, if aliens take over the world, don’t panic. They may be friendly. However, if they turn out to be evil, be like Cassie and rip out your M16 or a brick or whatever you have on them. In The 5th Wave, Cassie represents humanity’s resistance, one of th e last humans to survive on earth. Don’t trust anyone, as the author says. A lesson that is to be learned from this novel is to never underestimate someone who looks and acts of a person who is like you, they may have an upper advantage.

Media Representation Of Women s Sports - 1707 Words

When men engage in sports, it is seen and interpreted as an opportunity for them to exhibit dominance in the masculinity and as an expression of heterosexuality. When women have traditionally engaged in sports, it has caused commentators to question one’s heterosexuality, to question their femininity, and to almost ridicule the idea of women engaging in a traditionally male-dominated activity. This analysis focuses on media representations of men and women in sports, and the differences that exist in the way that these stories are covered. This exploration will feature Canadian-based media coverage as it pertains to women and men engaged in hockey. This analysis shows a changing in the guard of how women’s sports are being covered. The increasing feminism movement in sports with icons such as former MMA UFC fighter Ronda Rousey leading the way in combination with an increasing in feminine issues being covered by the media has meant a change in the way women’s sports are featured. Though gender still has a major influence over the coverage of women’s hockey and a traditional heteronormative gender role is communicated at several points of these pieces, the conversation has moved away from being an exposition on the strangeness of women’s engaging in a men’s sports to becoming a celebration of women in sports. What this encouragement does communicate however is the ability of these women to leave behind stereotypically heteronormative feminine traits and take on the masculineShow MoreRelatedAn Investigation Into the Media Representation of Gender in Sport1303 Words   |  6 PagesAn investigati on into the media representation of gender in sport. There have been many studies and investigations into the different types and intensity of the media coverage in sport involving both sexes. 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