Mercedes-Benz First Teen Driving School in the United States to Open in Los Angeles

Learn to drive in style.

MONTVALE, N.J.- Mercedes-Benz USA announces today that it is opening the company's first Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy in Los Angeles in October 2011, offering a fully integrated driver's education program and school that incorporates online, classroom and behind-the-wheel training for Los Angeles-area teens.

The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy is unveiling details for its teen driving school at the annual California State PTA Convention, where approximately 2,500 California PTA members are attending from April 28 - May 1, 2011 in Long Beach, CA.

Mercedes-Benz is appointing Carolyn Duchene as Director for the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy, and she will be responsible for the launch and management of daily operations. A Mercedes-Benz USA employee since 1994, Duchene has held several positions in the areas of marketing, digital media, training and education, and customer service.

"In addition to a unique educational approach, our highly qualified staff will be a key differentiator for the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy. We are recruiting and hiring the best talent for all areas of operation," said Duchene.
"The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy will connect with students and parents using a personalized, customer-centric approach that truly creates a unique offering among driver's education services for new teen drivers."

In preparation for its fall launch, the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy is actively recruiting uniquely qualified driving instructors, who will be groomed to deliver the Academy's research-based program in a highly effective coaching style. The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy instructors are going to be Mercedes-Benz employees and eligible to receive Mercedes-Benz USA benefit packages.

Several auto manufacturers and third-party organizations are currently offering teen driving programs which primarily focus on crash avoidance and defensive driving exercises. However, Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy aims to be the only car manufacturer to offer a California DMV-approved program, fully integrated with the Graduated Driver Licensing framework. The goal of the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy is to prepare students for today's driving environment by going beyond basic car control skills and rote learning of traffic rules.

The core program utilizes multiple teaching techniques and delivery methods ranging from online learning to interactive classroom sessions and behind-the-wheel training. The program will incorporate approaches such as digital animation to visualize road hazards in an online program, problem-solving exercises in the classroom, and hands-on experience of risky situations and in-car coaching techniques based on questioning rather than instruction. This approach is combined with consistent feedback from driving coaches to parents, which aims to assist them in planning their supervised driving practice. The overall collective curriculum aims to benefit and appeal to the vast spectrum of learning-styles which will ensure greater engagement and absorption of skills and knowledge.

A fully integrated California-focused curriculum will take a student from their instruction permit license stage through their provisional license. Other offerings include an on-road only curriculum for those who have chosen to complete their driver education requirement through other means, and a tailored program that takes into account individual driver's needs to further develop and improve driving skills.

"Vehicles, highways, and the driving environment have changed dramatically over the past 60 years, however driver education remains relatively unchanged in the U.S.," said Alexander Hobbach, Senior Manager of Business Innovation at Daimler AG. "Mercedes-Benz feels there is opportunity to better prepare teens for today's driving conditions, and while our offering will have premium pricing over existing schools, we are dedicated to delivering significant value based on unique coaching methods and curriculum that is aimed at teaching new teens how to drive safely."

The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy is working with several advisers in the finalization of its proprietary curriculum including Daniel R. Mayhew, Senior Vice President of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF); Allan Williams, Ph.D., former Chief Scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS);and Bill Combs, Executive Director of the Driver Education and Training Administrators and former Director of Communications at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

"A teenager's ability to drive safely should be one of the most important priorities for parents and it is extremely imperative that parents take a very active part in this process from researching driving schools to following through on supervised driving," said Mayhew.

Beyond curriculum development that sets new industry standards, The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy is building on strategic partnerships in an effort to raise awareness about teen driver safety and to also engage educators and parents to ultimately combat the leading cause of deaths among teens, which is motor vehicle crashes according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy, in conjunction with Impact Teen Drivers, will be delivering a public service outreach program through 2-hour parent/teen workshops, delivered in local Los Angeles- area high schools. These workshops will raise awareness on the importance of teaching teens the proper way to drive. Through interactive work groups, parents and their children will discuss the responsibility they have to each other when it comes to driver education while acknowledging that driving is an important part of teenager's life that leads to more freedom and independence. With the help of the California PTA, approximately twenty schools will be identified to host the workshops beginning late summer.

"The opportunity to have Mercedes-Benz step-up to work with Impact Teen Drivers and law enforcement and education partners to offer driver safety seminars at no cost to Los Angeles-area schools is commendable," said Kelly Browning, PhD, executive director of Impact Teen Drivers. "It is crucial that we educate teens and empower them to promote the safe driving message in order to have a fundamental and sustained behavior shift. This isn't about bad kids doing bad things, but good kids making poor choices. One poor choice can alter or end their lives and the lives of those they care about."

Impact Teen Drivers, Inc., which was founded by the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, the California Teachers Association, and California Casualty, provides education to teens and parents regarding the dangers of reckless and distracted driving through breakthrough campaigns delivered online and in schools.

Committed to raising the level of driver education and increasing road safety, the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy continues Mercedes-Benz long-standing corporate dedication to driver safety. For continuous updates before the October 2011 opening and employment opportunities, please visit mbdrivingacademy.com for information.

The Limits of School Reform - NYTimes.com

The Limits of School Reform - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from article. PLEASE READ ENTIRE.

Going back to the famous Coleman report in the 1960s, social scientists have contended — and unquestionably proved — that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute lists dozens of reasons why this is so, from the more frequent illness and stress poor students suffer, to the fact that they don’t hear the large vocabularies that middle-class children hear at home.

Yet the reformers act as if a student’s home life is irrelevant. “There is no question that family engagement can matter,” said Klein when I spoke to him. “But they seem to be saying that poverty is destiny, so let’s go home. We don’t yet know how much education can overcome poverty,” he insisted — notwithstanding the voluminous studies that have been done on the subject. “To let us off the hook prematurely seems, to me, to play into the hands of the other side.”

That last sentence strikes me as the key to the reformers’ resistance: To admit the importance of a student’s background, they fear, is to give ammo to the enemy — which to them are their social-scientist critics and the teachers’ unions. But that shouldn’t be the case. Making schools better is always a goal worth striving for, whether it means improving pedagogy itself or being able to fire bad teachers more easily.

Deepwater Horizon, Fukushima, the Chilean Miners and the Human Cost of Energy - Ecocentric - TIME.com

"Blood per Kilowatt." (Never thought I would see this idea in secular print.)
Deepwater Horizon, Fukushima, the Chilean Miners and the Human Cost of Energy - Ecocentric - TIME.com

"It isn't just oil or electrons that flows in our pipelines and transmission wires. It's blood.

In fact, the blood cost is another way to calculate the energy equation: blood per kilowatt."

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/04/22/on-earth-day-contemplating-the-human-cost-of-energy/#ixzz1KUe0akRx

NY case underscores Wi-Fi privacy dangers - Yahoo! News

NY case underscores Wi-Fi privacy dangers - Yahoo! News
What it should be: "I think it's convenient and polite to have an open Wi-Fi network," said Rebecca Jeschke, whose home signal is accessible to anyone within range."Public Wi-Fi is for the common good and I'm happy to participate in that — and lots of people are," said Jeschke, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that takes on cyberspace civil liberties issues.

What it is: Wi-Fi and Internet was never invented or intended for criminal use or criminals--of any sort. Why should the innocent pay a price for the dammed? Love good, hate evil. Society is always burdened with what to do about evil, as it infects just about everything. Evil is inconvenient to those who are just. Concentrate on incarcerating the dammed and leave the innocent alone. Open and unsecured Wi-Fi or hotspots, as they were called back in the day before the widespread use of wireless internet, are just as the EFF spokeswoman said.

Homeless woman prosecuted for enrolling son in Conn. school - Yahoo! News

Homeless woman prosecuted for enrolling son in Conn. school - Yahoo! News
This is an unfortunate shame. It is as if we as a body of people, who form this country, have no common sense. Why put this woman in jail and kick her friend out? Isn't their another way? The harshness of the law meets these women because they are poor and black or because the law regarding changing school districts is harsh?

Change Your Eye Color Surgery: Eye Surgery Safety | Suite101.com

Change Your Eye Color Surgery: Eye Surgery Safety | Suite101.com

Some who have undergone this groundbreaking surgery express regrets and have developed vision problems.

State Rep. Charlie Brown: IBLC Condems Affordable Health Care Repeal

State Rep. Charlie Brown

INDIANA BLACK LEGISLATIVE CAUCUS FORMALLY CONDEMNS
U.S. HOUSE REPEAL OF AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE

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INDIANAPOLIS —— Members of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus today condemned the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives for voting to deny millions of Hoosiers basic health care coverage, including affordable prescription drugs and protections against unreasonable premium increases.

“Today, the Republicans who run the U.S. House have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” said State Rep. Vanessa Summers (D-Indianapolis), chairwoman of the caucus. “This means they are more interested in protecting big insurance companies, rather than the millions of Hoosiers who will benefit from the provisions of this act.”

State Rep. Cherrish Pryor (D-Indianapolis) added, “If this repeal is approved in the U.S. Senate—which thankfully looks very unlikely at this point in time—we would see a return to the days when children with pre-existing medical conditions would be denied coverage, when people who are sick would see coverage cancelled, and when the amount of care a person receives would be based on the arbitrary whims of insurance industry bean-counters, not doctors.”

Caucus members noted that the impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act would be felt across all segments of Indiana’s population:

• More than 21,000 young adults would lose their insurance coverage through their parents’ health plans. (The Act allows young adults to stay on their parents’ plans up to the age of 26 if they do not have coverage of their own.)


• More than 3.8 million Indiana residents with private insurance coverage would find themselves vulnerable again to having insurance companies place limits on how much will be spent on their health care.


• Nearly 280,000 Hoosiers again would be at risk of losing their insurance at the moment they are in an accident or fall sick, simply because of a mistake made on their application for coverage.


• More than 950,000 older Hoosiers who have Medicare coverage would be forced to pay extra for annual check-ups, and they would have to help pay for services like mammograms and colonoscopies.


• More than 66,000 Hoosiers on Medicare would lose the discounts they were set to receive for falling into the “donut hole” coverage gap, which means they would be paying significantly more on their prescription drugs.

“Beyond all of these things, repealing this act would prevent Indiana from getting the federal resources that would help us crack down on unreasonable insurance premium increases,” noted State Rep. Charlie Brown (D-Gary), ranking Democrat on the Indiana House Public Health Committee and a long-time advocate of universal health care.

“In addition, we wouldn’t be getting the federal funds needed to start health insurance exchanges to drive down costs and we wouldn’t have the support needed to start a consumer assistance program designed to protect all of us from the worst insurance industry practices,” Summers continued.

Pryor said, “Repealing this act will bring a return to the worst abuses that created our country’s health care crisis. We are hopeful that the U.S. Senate will do what’s right and stop this travesty by refusing to follow the House’s lead.”

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If you have an opinion you would like to share about this issue or any other topics related to Indiana state government, you can contact Rep. Brown directly.