Even before Hurricane Katrina New Orleans Schools suffered from a lack of teachers, run down facilities and failure to meet state and national guidelines. Since the devastating storm those problems are compounded. As students and families trickle back into New Orleans Schools, those in leadership roles must provide all the necessities to educate the current 27,000 children, along with 100 more who are enrolled each week.
New Orleans Schools have a new leadership team in place to guide the way. Paul Pastorek was recently named Louisiana Schools Chief, and Paul Vallas will head the Recovery School District (RSD), which includes most schools previously run by the state board. Vallas, who has served as superintendent for both Philadelphia and Chicago Schools, appears very realistic about the troubles plaguing the New Orleans Schools. But he also claims that, “This will be the greatest experiment in choice, in charter, and in creating not only a school system, but also a system of schools.”
Vallas has said that the lack of usual limitations will create opportunities, but that the limited finances will remain challenging. New Orleans Schools currently have a mix of 58 public schools, charter schools and RSD schools open. 20 more New Orleans Schools are expected to open in fall of 2007. What will they look like?
Many hope that charter schools will continue to have a strong presence in the district. New Orleans Schools have 17 RSD authorized charter schools. There are also charter schools run under the local school board and 5 magnet schools. The world is watching to see how these choices are monitored and to determine their effectiveness. Many school reformers hail charters as the future of New Orleans Schools due to their combination of independence and accountability. Failing schools are simply closed.
Vallas and Pastorek recently attended an education summit hosted by the New Schools Venture Fund and the New Leaders for New Schools. The “two Pauls” outlined their plan for addressing issues like educator shortages and poor classroom space. Some of the proposals include initiating a “welcome school” to screen incoming children of New Orleans Schools for both academic and emotional needs. Post-Katrina teachers have seen a major increase in anxious and fearful children unable to concentrate on academic tasks.
The continued disruption and lack of routine in the lives of these children adds an emotional burden to the already understaffed and overburdened New Orleans Schools' teachers. This leads to the problem of attracting teachers to this devastated and struggling area. Vallas plans to draw on the student-teacher populations to help prepare for the need. New Orleans Schools will need to hire 800 more teachers for the '07-'08 school year.
New Leaders for New Schools, a principal training organization, has signed up to train 40 principals for New Orleans Schools by 2010. In spite of this outside help, the task is daunting and enormous. Vallas puts a positive spin on the challenge, “If we can create a dynamic school system here, that means it can be done any where, and there will no longer be any excuses for why it can't be done.”
Building A New School
Say, I'm making $5000 - no make that $15,276 a month from AdSense on my sites. And now I'm going to sell all my secrets on how to do that for $67 or $97 or whatever. For more resources go to www.thegoogleincome.com So what happened, did I get all bored with my filthy riches and decide to become a philanthropist and sell stuff that makes me 15K a month for a pittance? Or is it something else'Am I saying it's impossible? Certainly not. I know people who make that more.But a little reality. Those people don't have 5 or 6 or 50 sites. They have maybe 500 or 3000 or more. Few sites make 20 or more a day. Very few. Average income is probably less than a dollar a day. So with 500 sites at a dollar a day, you've got your 15K a month. Now the domain names cost you maybe $3500 to $4500. Then you need hosting and somehow you've got to build the sites and get traffic to them.
There are excellent tools but the ones that will let you do this kind of thing in a reasonably short time are also very (very) expensive. And you are continually dealing with sites that don't get indexed or get de-indexed or even get banned. Traffic today, gone tomorrow. Plus, if you're not real careful with those tools you may get an unpleasant letter from Google about a DMCA copyright infringement which could cost you your AdSense account. You can make money, you can build an empire. But it isn't easy or quick no matter what you hear. And it really isn't a business. It's not a long run proposition, it's not stable. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail - or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business.
You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 7 "secret" keys to AdSense.
1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over.
2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and URL. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe its part of the text. Wake up, OK?
3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad.
4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords.
5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot? You might hear that 1% or 1.5% click through rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages).
6. You have to track what you're doing and you have to test variations in ad layout, placement, color and related content to optimize your income. No one can tell you how to do it except the
traffic coming to your site. If you don't test and track, you're flying blind.
7. You need to keep building new sites. You are now a member of the AdSense Illuminati. Quite possibly you already knew all that. So why are you looking for something else? Really. This is all you need to start doing it.
Probably any course or book can help you if that's what it takes to get you moving and doing. Ultimately, no one can really show you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to learn the ropes and put in the time. Like everything in life - the greatest traffic generator, the ultimate course or the super MLM opportunity, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. You can also go to www.yourgoogleincome.com. There's no magic bullet, no ultimate secret to buy. There's no easy, painless, work free, certain road to riches (except, maybe, inheriting it and that can be very hard on the heirs).Whatever you do on the net, do it wide awake and with your brain actually functioning. The final un-numbered key is that a technique, a shortcut, and an idea that will make what you do easier, faster, or more profitable - one single tiny thing - is worth more than any book or course costs. One useable idea and you've gotten a great deal. If you learned something you didn't know or had forgotten, then its worth much more than you paid. There may not be any magic solution out there, but there are useful concepts, techniques and ideas. You just have to see them for what they are, and then get busy and really use them.
Both Patricia Hawke & Arvinder2025 are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Patricia Hawke has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education, Food And Drink and Education Toys. Patricia Hawke is a staff writer for Schools K-12, providing free, in-depth reports on all U.S. public and private K-12 schools. For more information please visit. Patricia Hawke's top article generates over 246000 views. to your Favourites.
