Bounced Emails

The United States spent an average of $8,701 per pupil to educate its children in 2005, the Census Bureau said Thursday, with some states paying more than twice as much per student as others.

New York was the biggest spender on education, at $14,119 per student, with New Jersey second at $13,800 and Washington, D.C., third at $12,979, the Census Bureau said. Seven of the top 10 education spenders were Northeastern states.

The states with the lowest spending were Utah, at $5,257 per pupil, Arizona $6,261, Idaho $6,283, Mississippi $6,575 and Oklahoma $6,613. The 10 states with the lowest education spending were in the West or South.

Overall the United States spent an average of $8,701 per student on elementary and secondary education in 2005, up 5 percent from $8,287 the previous year, the bureau said.

Funding is largely a state and local responsibility under the U.S. system, with 47 percent coming from state governments, 43.9 percent from local sources and only 9.1 percent from the federal government.

Students in northeastern and northern states tend to perform better on standardized tests than students in southern and southwestern states. But experts say the correlation between spending and testing performance is not strong.

The No Child Left Behind education reforms passed during President Bush’s first term have placed increased emphasis on performance on national standardized tests. Schools can be penalized if they repeatedly fail to meet targets for improving student scores.

"It’s not necessarily so that states with higher spending have higher test scores," said Tom Loveless, an education policy expert at the Brookings Institution think tank.

He said Washington, D.C., has among the highest spending in the country but its students have among the lowest scores on standardized tests, while some states like Montana with relatively low spending have fairly high performance on tests.

Loveless said two areas where education spending might make a difference were in teacher salaries and small class sizes for first graders. But overall, the relationship between spending on education and test performance was not strong, he said.

Ingredients

Pickled onions
1 cup red-wine vinegar
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
1 small red onion, halved and very thinly sliced

Burgers
1 pound 93%-lean ground turkey
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon canola oil
4 whole-wheat buns, split
8 teaspoons reduced-fat mayonnaise, divided

Instructions

1. To prepare pickled onions: Whisk vinegar, brown sugar, salt and allspice in a medium glass bowl. Microwave on High until the mixture boils, 2 to 3 minutes. (Alternatively, bring the mixture to a boil in a small saucepan on the stove.) Add onions and toss to coat.

2. To prepare burgers: Preheat grill to high. Place turkey in a medium bowl and gently mix in cilantro, cumin, ground chipotle, salt and allspice until distributed throughout the meat. Form the mixture into 4 patties. Brush with oil.

3. Grill the burgers until cooked through and no longer pink in the center, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Meanwhile, toast buns on the grill, if desired.

4. Drain the onions, discarding the marinade. Spread 2 teaspoons mayonnaise on each bun; top with a burger and pickled onions.

Nutrition Information

Per serving: 309 calories; 12 g fat (3 g sat, 1 g mono); 65 mg cholesterol; 27 g carbohydrate; 26 g protein; 4 g fiber; 738 mg sodium; 149 mg potassium.

Nutrition bonus: Selenium (30% daily value), Iron (20% dv).

Exchanges: 2 starch, 3 lean meat; 2 Carbohydrate Servings.

Makes 4 servings.

askew • \uh-SKYOO\ • adjective

: out of line : awry

Example Sentence:
Jeff didn’t realize that the bookshelf he had hung on the wall was slightly askew until he placed a pen on it and it rolled off the edge.

Did you know?
It’s believed that "askew" was formed simply by attaching the prefix "a-" — meaning, among other things, "in (such) a state or condition" — to "skew." The word "skew," which derives via Middle English from Anglo-French "eschiver," meaning "to escape or avoid," can be a verb, adjective, or noun. But at the time of the first appearance of "askew" in English, in the middle of the 16th century, "skew" had only been established as a verb meaning "to take an oblique course or direction." At least one etymologist has suggested that "askew" might have been influenced by an Old Norse phrase, and that the same phrase might have also given us "askance." In the past, "askew" was used synonymously with "askance," as in, "She looked at me askew after my ill-timed joke."

Of the roughly 6,800 known languages and dialects spoken in the 191 countries of the world, only 2,261 have writing systems (the others are only spoken) and about 300 of these have online dictionaries. You can search for them on Google and wade through 50 million mostly irrelevant returns or quickly peruse the cream of the crop here at alphaDictionary.

http://www.alphadictionary.com/langdir.html

On this day:

• Earthquake Devastates Port Royal, Jamaica (1692)
  In the 17th century, Port Royal was a popular place for pirates to bring and spend their treasure, earning it a reputation for gaudy displays of wealth and loose morals. On June 7, 1692, a devastating earthquake hit the city, causing two-thirds of it to sink into the Caribbean Sea. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed between 1,000 and 3,000 people—over half the city’s population.