3/30/09

The article I have chosen is related to my local community in the area I was raised. It discusses the budget cuts for education that are expected to take place in Orange County, Florida, and the actions that are being taken to ensure education does not suffer. Basically, the article blames the Governor of Florida for not doing enough to ensure education has an adequate budget. Growing up in Florida, I was lucky enough to go to schools that were ranked nationally as great schools, but I know that most schools in Florida are struggling to pass students.

Since the recent Governor was elected, education budgets have been cut dramatically. One instance in particular I remember education budgets being cut is when the 1st Amendment was passed in Florida, with the govoners backing evident on billboards throughout the state. The ammendment boasted cutting property taxes, while decreasing the public school system's budget. In my oppinion, education should be the top priority. Where education is lacking, poverty, crime, drug use, and increased number of unwanted births seem to occur. In a state known for its poor education and test scores, the Governer should be doing everything possible to ensure that education does not suffer as a result of the recession.

3/25/09

The topic I am exploring is related to the decrease in education budgets in the Orlando area and the impacts it may have on the schools. If maximum budgets are taken, Orange county, the largest Orlando county, would have to close about 6 schools. This would mean moving students around and coming up with ways to get bus systems and physical buildings to support an increase number of students. In my opinion, education should be one of the last things cut from budgets since there are many implications that things such as poverty, and a low health status increase with the decrease in education (or maybe more accurately, as education is more successful, poverty and health get better). Closing 6 schools would greatly impact the Orlando area, and would pose many problems for the community, especially in the future. This is the county's way of trying to keep the per student budget the same while cutting back on the gross budget. More thought needs to be put in in order to come up with the best solutions to making Orlando schools better amongst budget cuts.

3/23/09 - Author's note, Draft 2

This draft is still not what I would consider a finalized draft. I expanded a bit from my first draft on one of the resources being anaylyzed but didn't do much expanding on the other resources. Also, I still need to finalize my works cited page. There are two types of citing throughout the paper (sec and par) because one of the resources was broken up into sections and not paragraphs (so this is correct).

I would like the peer revising to provide me with ways I can make the paper a little more clear and give me examples of points that could be expanded on.

3/09/09

This is a first draft for 3/9/09. I will attempt to add to and finalize a new draft within the next week.

I think the peice needs a bit more assessment of authors' stylistic elements and overall analysis of the arguments made. Also, I feel the paper is a bit jumpy and could use better organization.

Please let me know if there is any advise that could be useful to help me better organize the paper and argument analysis.

3/4/09

The authors of each of my sources seem to have a passion for impacting the current issues related to childhood obesity and use this passion in their first hand accounts dealing with the subject in order to promote a positive change to the issue. The authors often use statistics throughout their rhetoric to emphasize the point trying to be made, and develop ethos by presenting themselves as knowledgeable people with first hand experience dealing with researching the subject.

The authors also use strong words to describe the [so called] epidemic of childhood obesity in the US and the prevalence of potential complications. Each of them touch on the concern for furture problems, such as 1/3 of the generation living a shorter, less healthy, and more disease ridden life than previous generations.