Washington Post staff writer Michael Dobbs, on the frenzy of competition among colleges for top minority students with high SATs: "According to the College Board, 1,877 African-American students nationwide scored higher than 1300 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT last year, compared with nearly 150,000 students overall who achieved that score."
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Al From, head of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council: "Let's get a message and redefine our party in a way that people will want to vote for us, and then our candidate will probably do fine. A candidate who eliminates the 'culture gap,' eliminates the 'security gap,' is willing to compete all over this country, and has an effective agenda for reform will do fine - no matter where he or she is from."
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Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain: "Hope has triumphed, and with it the confidence of the American people in the values and principles on which our shared civilization on both sides of the Atlantic is based. George Bush decided to respond to totalitarian terrorist attacks with a return to basic principles. He could have chosen appeasement. He could have opted for mere rhetoric. He decided not to do so. He decided to oppose brutality with steadfast conviction. Now a wide majority of his people has backed this policy. It has confirmed that there is hope in our way of life, a form of hope that derives its strength from its essential convictions, a hope that is manifested in the desire to defend freedom above all else."
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Edward Prescott, co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics: "Americans aged 15-64, on a per-person basis, work 50 percent more than the French. Comparisons between Americans and Germans or Italians are similar. What's going on here? . . . Marginal tax rates explain virtually all of this difference. . . . Analysis of historical data in the U.S. and Europe indicates that, given similar incentives, people make similar choices about labor and leisure. Free European workers from their tax bondage and you will see an increase in gross domestic product (oh, and you might see a pretty significant increase in gross national happiness, too). The same holds true for Americans."
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Lucy McCormick Calkins, termed by some the nation's Moses of reading and writing education, responding to the question of whether there are differences between what boys and girls read: "We know boys often choose to read nonfiction and girls choose to read fiction, and schools don't support enough nonfiction reading. If that's going to be your sons' entrance ramp into reading, give it to them. . . . There is a widespread recognition that girls grow up loving to read more than boys. It is exacerbated by teachers, who are mostly women. The women are choosing the books the children read. That tends to be realistic fiction, (with which) libraries are filled. . . . Parents need to read to boys. They go out and play sports with boys but don't read to them. They need to read in front of their boys, and to their boys. And they've got to find books boys love."