MightyWriters

Michelle Obama

President Obama’s edits on speechwriter Jon Favreau’s draft of a health care speech.

“A photo like this is thrilling, gratifying and also terribly frightening to anyone who delivers his or her own writing to an editor. (Or a group of editors.) I wonder how this picture makes other people feel. I see it and feel a swelling of pride—not in the president so much as in the hard work that goes into good writing.” —Hank Stuever, Washington Post

Tonsil, via Romenesko
The President’s revisions close-up

President Obama today proposed giving $900 million in federal grants to states and school districts that agree to turn around or close the 2,000 schools across the country that produce more than half of the nation’s dropouts.

To qualify for the School Turnaround Grants, the school districts would need to agree to a series of criteria, including: firing the principal and at least half the staff; reopening as a charter school; close the school all together and transfer students to better schools in the district.

The Caucus, NYT
Gen. Colin Powell, White House

“Nearly one in three of our children in this country is now overweight or obese.”

President Obama says there’s one sure thing parents can do to help their kids learn, regardless of financial means: Forbid them from watching television on school nights.

Of his own daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, Obama told Essence magazine: “The girls don’t watch TV during the week. Period.”

According to the President, the first thing they do after school is homework. If they haven’t finished by dinnertime, around 6:30pm, they pick up where they left off after the meal. And after that, they can read until they hit the sack. Malia’s bedtime is 9pm; Sasha’s lights go out a half hour earlier.

Rest of the story here.

President Obama will propose a major increase in funding for elementary and secondary education for the coming year in tonight’s State of the Union address, one of the few areas that would grow in an otherwise austere federal budget… Washington Post

“We’re going to raise the bar for all our students
and take bigger steps toward closing the
achievement gap that denies so many students,
especially blacks and Latinos, a fair shot at
their dreams.”
—President Obama, speaking yesterday of his plan to amp up his “Race to the Top” program

“Though the president reads aloud with his children in the evenings—he and Sasha are finishing ‘Life of Pi’— parenting in the White House is more complicated. Because the first couple cannot move freely about, their relatives take Malia and Sasha to the bookstore, on a walk through Chinatown, to the multiplex to see ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.’ Last spring, according to Sher, well-meaning White House residence staff members tried to give the girls cellphones, so their parents could always reach them; the first lady stepped in to refuse.”

—excerpt from the New York Times Magazine, Sun., Nov. 1

Photo (top): Damon Winter/The New York Times