Battle Creek Habitat for Humanity Works to Spruce Up Blighted Properties

Volunteers from River Walk Community Church in Battle Creek worked Saturday afternoon to give a more appealing look to a house at 657 Van Buren St., under a new effort to spruce up blighted properties in the city.

The initiative was launched last week by Battle Creek Area Habitat for Humanity, which is targeting abandoned houses to be boarded up, cleaned up and secured.


"There are over 600 abandoned houses in Battle Creek, many with broken windows and smashed doors," executive director Joe Konrad said in a new release. "They are accessible and they are dangerous."

 

www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120212/NEWS01/202120312/Habitat-Humanity-brighten-blighted-areas

Economic Class: The Great Divide in American Education

Economic class is increasingly becoming the great dividing line of American education.

The New York Times has published a roundup of recent research showing the growing academic achievement gap between rich and poor students. It prominently features a paper by Stanford sociologist Sean F. Reardon, which found that, since the 1960s, the difference in test scores between affluent and underprivileged students has grown 40%, and is now double gap between black and white students.

 www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/occupy-kindergarten-the-rich-poor-divide-starts-with-education/252914/