Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
New Zealand Earthquake; Earl Weakens to Cat 1 Storm; Virtual K- 12 Schools; Earl Weakens to Category 1 Storm; Education in Other Countries; Hot Bread Kitchen: Yeast + Flour + Water = Future; The Stakeout: President Obama Speaks on Job Numbers; XYZ: The Truth Behind the Numbers
Aired September 03, 2010 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Got some breaking news on the earthquake in New Zealand.
I want to go right to our weather center. Reynolds Wolf is tracking this very closely.
Reynolds, this has been developing a little bit for us as we're getting more information in. And what have you got now?
REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. The latest that we have -- just to give our viewers at home a little bit of the bearings, it's in the southern hemisphere. We're talking about New Zealand, of course. Christchurch is located right here in this specific point.
Now, we've got a map that kind of tells the story in terms of what kind of damage we might expect in this area. I can tell you, it's going to be quite severe.
You're going to take a look at this map. You see, of course, Christchurch not far from the coast at all. You've got the town of Lincoln, you've got Kaiapoi, you've have Deerfield (ph).
A 7.2 magnitude earthquake. And you see this area that has been shaded in the red, the orange. According to this color code, that's an area where you would have the most violent, extreme, heavy damage, widespread damage across the area.
This area of Christchurch is actually the second largest populated town in New Zealand. In fact, it's home to over 370,000 people.
This quake struck at 4:35 in the morning, in the dead of morning. On a Saturday morning this struck. We've been told so far the damage is reported to be widespread. Power outages, as you might imagine, are also widespread.
Here's some of the damage, some of the earliest footage that we're getting. You see the debris all over the place. I'm sure we're going to see countless more images like this.
This is, again, a catastrophic event that we've been seeing. We've got another shot we wanted to show you in mere moments that Chad's going to show you, the inside of a dwelling. I believe that's going to pop up in just a little bit.
When you have something that shakes this violently, obviously you're going to have some damage. There have already been aftershocks reported in the area, a 9.5 (ph) aftershock that has popped up. We may see subsequent aftershocks in just a matter of minutes, perhaps, in the next couple of hours or even days.
What's interesting though is that once you have something that would actually be higher than a 7.2, if we would have had, say, a 7.5, it would be considering a new earthquake. But anything smaller than that number, 7.2, would be considered an aftershock.
It's not the only thing we're following, though. On the other side of the planet, the Northern Hemisphere, we're following this, which was at one time just yesterday the largest storm on the planet.
Right now it is a Category 1. It's gone through an amazing metamorphosis due to the dry air that's been coming in from the western half of the storm. It's still going to pack a punch, bringing heavy surf to much of the New England coastline.
We've seen now it's pulling away from the Outer Banks, but now it's going to bear a lot of the brunt of that heavy brain, and of course the rough surf, along parts of the Jersey shoreline, even into western Long Island, where, let's see, we've got about an hour or so until they have high tide. High tide around 3:15 or so.
That high tide, combined with a 10-foot surf, could make things pretty interesting there. The heavy rainfall was actually expected to continue to march to the north.
And the latest that we have for that, Ali, is this path expected just to go to the east of Cape Cod. But still, with a storm that is so wide, hundreds of miles wide, I can tell you that downtown Boston, many places in Cape Cod, even if it's not a direct hit, you're still going to have some strong winds, some heavy surf, some heavy rainfall.
This storm is expected to make its way just to the south of Cape Cod, east of New York by 8:00 p.m. this evening with winds of 80 miles per hour this evening. But as it moves into an area of much colder, colder water, and with some stronger upper level winds, the winds of the storm itself expected to weaken to below hurricane force, 70 miles per hour sustained, some gusts up to 85. And then it moves farther up to the Bay of Fundy and then out of harm's way.
That is the latest we've got for you, a full plate. We're covering the Earth, we're covering these storms. A lot to talk about on this Friday.
Let's send it back to you.
VELSHI: So you were just talking about Long Island. Where is it in relation -- where is the storm right now in relation to Long Island? WOLF: Anyone who happened to be tuning in from Long Island can actually step outside, look up, and you're going to see some clouds. Some of them are going to really be thick. A few spots you might see the sun coming through.
That's going to be just the outer fringes of the storm. It still has a ways to go before it gets just equidistant to Long Island.
VELSHI: Right.
WOLF: I'd say that's going to be around 8:00 tonight. We give it simple (ph) circulation. But you're going to be feeling the effects of it long before then and for hours after.
VELSHI: All right. Reynolds, thanks very much.
WOLF: You bet.
VELSHI: We'll be back to you shortly.
Let's go to Long Island right now. CNN is your hurricane headquarters. We've got this covered up and down the East Coast.
And Allan Chernoff is standing there. That is Montauk Long Island, in East Hampton Township. It is the furthest out you can get on Long Island. He's been there all day.
Look at that wave. I hope he's standing far enough away from that.
Allan, what's the situation where you are?
ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN SR. CORRESPONDENT: Ali, you know, Reynolds was just talking about the power of those waves. Boy, he was not exaggerating.
Have a look behind me. And if you can see maybe about 80 yards down, just the power of those waves coming, crashing down, it is something else. And we are approaching, as he said, high tide.
I'm going to make sure that I step in a little bit because I certainly don't want to get swept out by that water. But it certainly is quite a sight. A lot of folks have been coming to the beach just looking at those waves. Nobody dare go in today, for sure. We've had a little bit of rain, absolutely no wind right now, which is interesting.
Now, in terms of the preparations, first of all, the emergency authorities here, they've set up shelters. They've even got a shelter for animals.
A lot of folks have their windows boarded up, but many are not doing that. And the Long Island Railroad, they've suspended all service to the eastern portion of Long Island, way out here. And most significant of all, the Long Island Power Authority, they are ready for a killer storm. They have tripled their number of workmen who are ready to fix any power lines that come down. Fortunately, no damage just yet. But they've brought people in from as far as Detroit, Michigan, contractors who are ready to get the power back up if it does go down.
Now, as I said, some people not taking this all that seriously. This morning we met a few fishermen out here. One of them said this is definitely the time to go fishing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The rougher it gets, the better the fishing gets.
CHERNOFF: Why is that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know.
(LAUGHING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anybody that says they know, they're lying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHERNOFF: Well, he was able to catch five striped bass. He has to throw them back, though. Ali, apparently the rule is they've got to be 28 inches for you to hold on to them. I saw one of them. It was pretty big, maybe about two feet long. Not big enough -- Ali.
VELSHI: This is like earlier. We saw Ocean City, Maryland, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Cape Cod. This is the weekend, this is the Friday. It's now that people would normally be heading out.
Montauk is a long way out. It's a few hours' drive from New York.
Are tourists out there right now? What's happening with the people who are summering in Long Island and the people who would otherwise be spending their Labor Day weekend there?
CHERNOFF: Ali, as you're speaking, here comes the water. I'm standing in a couple of inches of it right now.
There definitely are tourists. In fact, right behind our camera is one family with a young boy. They're just taking some pictures, enjoying the view here.
But people are out here. As I said, they can't take the train, so they have got to make alternate plans. But already there are lots of tourists.
Last night we saw quite a few people playing mini golf out at the bars. So there was certainly a crowd.
They're not afraid. People are not shying away. Nobody's been evacuating. It's not that situation. It's more, check out Mother Nature.
And boy, that is some sight. Look at those waves.
VELSHI: It is a sight. I've got to tell you, sometimes you're somewhere and you think it's a sight and it goes on TV and it sort of diminishes the whole thing. Let me tell you, Allan, this looks as dramatic as it is.
You are a thrill seeker and you are a guy who we send to these things, so I'm not too worried about you, Allan. As I postulate that the storm weakens by the time it passes tonight, I suspect you're going to end up in the unlucky situation of being stuck in a remarkable holiday paradise on Long Island.
But, Allan, stay safe nonetheless. We will check in with you.
CHERNOFF: Well, that's OK. Ali, I like thrills but I'm not stupid. OK?
VELSHI: You're not going in the water. You're not going in the water.
Well, we'll check in with you a little later on.
Allan Chernoff on Montauk, the easternmost point on Long Island.
I want to -- let me just ask Kelly (ph) what she wants me to do at this point.
All right. We are going to be talking about schools, taking schools into the virtual world. We'll take a look at a new high-tech alternative to the traditional K through 12 public schools.
That's coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Hey, we're following developments in New Zealand, an earthquake in New Zealand.
I want to go right there to Paula May, who is in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Paula, are you on the line?
PAULA MAY, CHRISTCHURCH RESIDENT (via telephone): Yes, I am.
VELSHI: Paula, give us some sense of what you know and what you have felt or heard.
MAY: Well, at the moment, it happened just before 5:00 a.m., so it's pitch black. And we've had no power. I mean, it was a terrible, terrible earthquake.
There's a lot of damage. I mean, we haven't got a radio or power, but it's the worst earthquake. And we just had many, many aftershocks.
VELSHI: So you are feeling aftershocks. And are they feeling as substantial as the initial earthquake, or do they feel smaller to you?
MAY: They're a lot smaller, but there's been a couple where you wonder whether it's going to keep going. But earthquakes here -- we would have had about 20.
VELSHI: Wow. You are in Christchurch?
MAY: Yes, in central Christchurch.
VELSHI: So you said you've lost power. Do you have a visual of any damage around you or have you seen -- I mean, what's happened in the place that you're in right now?
MAY: In the house, we've got everything down in the rooms. You know, sections of the walls. Our pool in the back garden sort of lost about two foot of water. But as I say, we're only just coming to daybreak now, and so we can't see a lot.
VELSHI: What time does the sun usually rise where you'd be able to get a good view of things?
MAY: It's starting to come now. So 6:00, 6:30. You know.
VELSHI: Have you been in contact with other friends or family to get a sense of what they've experienced?
MAY: Yes. Everyone I know seems to be OK. Lots of glass, lots of -- a few buildings down. At this stage, it doesn't feel like -- I mean, I can see some buildings around me now. They're not all down.
VELSHI: OK. But you have heard that there are some buildings down?
MAY: Yes. Some old, old stone buildings, masonry-type (INAUDIBLE) and stuff.
VELSHI: OK. Are you in your home at the moment? I assume at 5:00 in the morning you're in your home.
MAY: Yes, we are.
VELSHI: OK. And are there sirens? Are there noises outside? Are people sort of panicking, or is everybody in their home, as far as you can tell?
MAY: Everyone is in their homes. Some people -- someone else I spoke to said they were almost into the hills with fear of tsunami. But I don't think there is -- we are quite close to the sea, but I think (INAUDIBLE) from Christchurch.
VELSHI: All right.
Have I got Tim Dower on the phone? Tim are you there?
TIM DOWER, NEW ZEALAND JOURNALIST (via telephone): Yes. Hello, Ali. How are you?
VELSHI: Good. How are you? Tell me where you are and what you know about this.
DOWER: I'm about 1,000 kilometers away at the (INAUDIBLE), and we're collating information that's coming to us from all over the country. The epicenter just off Christchurch, around about 30 kilometers west of the city, out to sea, right about 33 kilometers down, a 7.4 initial report. 7.2, the U.S. Geological Survey says now.
Very significant earthquake from our perspective. We have earthquakes here all the time, of course -- 3s, 4s, 5s. But when one of this magnitude comes along, people certainly feel it, and particularly when it's shallow.
Reporters working for this network in the south island are genuinely shaken up and quite frightened by what's occurred. We've had a number of reports of facades of buildings collapsing in Christchurch, many stone buildings in that part of the country. And a lot of those have come down.
A lot of rubble in the streets. Some people saying that car tires have been punctured by damage that's been done to the roads. A hospital emergency department in central Christchurch, chaotic, in the words of a spokesman there.
We don't have any reports of significant injuries at this stage, but there has been material falling. I guess you could say, Ali, very fortunate that this would happen at 4:30 in the morning local time. In other words, most people would not have been in the streets. Most people would have been at home in bed.
VELSHI: Let me just ask you a little bit about Christchurch. The epicenter looks to me to be directly northwest of Christchurch. How far northwest? Do you know what we're looking at in terms of distances?
DOWER: Ali, we're talking about 30 kilometers. And that would put it off shore.
VELSHI: Off shore, OK.
DOWER: Yes. We have had no warning of tsunami or anything -- quakes like this can cause a local tsunami rather than a Pacific sort of tsunami. But we've had no reports of that.
But we are getting reports of damage in various degrees from all over Christchurch at the moment. Some people have rung to say their water cylinders have split, the pipes have come away and there's flooding in their home. Other people reporting more significant damage than that.
But so far, I'm happy to say we have no reports of any significant injuries. That, of course, may change.
The Civil Defense Service is operating out of Wellington, our capital city on the north island, which is, ironically, the place more people have been concerned about from the point of view of a significant earthquake. It sits right on a fault.
But they're operating their national implementation plan as of now. And local time staffed (ph) at 6:00 a.m. here.
VELSHI: And Tim, Christchurch is the second biggest city in New Zealand, on the south island. About 400,000 people, maybe, the population? And just describe to it us a little bit.
You were saying there's a lot of stone churches. When you look at Christchurch, if you see pictures, or if you go there, it's got almost a European feel.
DOWER: Very much so. Very much so.
VELSHI: They've got those old churches.
DOWER: Yes, you're on to it. It's got very much a European sort of feel to it, very English sort of feel to it. And a lot of your viewers will have seen Cathedral Square in central Christchurch and may have thought that they were in Salisbury, somewhere like that.
It's very flat, surrounded by hills. And it's the sort of place I guess that's prepared for the worst of this.
VELSHI: All right. Tim, thank you very much for updating us on this. We appreciate it. We'll be in touch with you. If there's more news, we'd like to hear it. We're very anxious to hear if there are any casualties and hoping that there are none.
Stay safe. Thanks for the information you're giving us.
Tim Dower. And we just spoke to Paula May, who is in Christchurch herself, says she's lost power, there's some mayhem around her house. And she's heard from people that buildings are down, but there are no reports yet of casualties, very few reports of injuries right now.
A 7.2 earthquake, a shallow earthquake, about 30 kilometers away from Christchurch, New Zealand.
OK. Taking schools into the virtual world. We're going to take a look at a new high-tech school in "Fixing Our Schools" when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: "Fix Our Schools" -- those three words have driven much of what you've seen on CNN this week because we sent reporting teams across the country to document the education crisis in America. Now, most importantly, we've been shining a light on success stories that can help empower us to offer our children so much more than they're getting right now.
Kindergarten through 12th grade classes are now being offered online. Each year, more students and parents are choosing to go with virtual school over regular brick-and-mortar school.
And nationally, there are about -- this is fascinating -- there are about 200,000 full-time virtual charter school students. Many say these online schools offer the intimacy of homeschooling while maintaining the structure of a traditional public school. Thirty-two states have virtual school programs, 25 of those states allow full- time virtual school instruction.
Our next guest hopes to increase those numbers in years to come.
Joining me now is Susan Patrick. She is the president and CEO of the International Association for K through 12 Online Learning.
Susan, thank you very much for being with us.
I've got to say, most of the stuff we discuss in education falls into a few buckets. This one is not one we've talked a whole lot about -- 200,000 K through 12 students in online school?
SUSAN PATRICK, PRESIDENT AND CEO, iNACOL: Right. And there are more than two million students taking online courses across elementary school through high school.
We're in a new global era of needing to provide a world-class education for every student. The demand from our students in high schools for online learning is outstripping the supply right now, even with these 32 states and 25 states offering full-time opportunities. We just really need to work and find new innovative ways of personalizing instruction for every student's needs.
VELSHI: Who's this for? I mean, when you say personalizing things for students' needs, are you talking about students who would otherwise be homeschooled or in remote areas or who have a particular educational need, or is this a logical option for students who are otherwise attending a normal bricks-and-mortar school?
PATRICK: It's for both, Ali. It's for both students that are looking for full-time online options for a variety of reasons. If they're homebound students and they have special needs because of health reasons, if they're students that are enrolled in a regular brick-and-mortar school, they want to take one or two classes -- for example, 40 percent of our nation's high schools do not offer any advanced placement classes. Those tend to be in low-income areas, in areas with rural populations, and higher minority populations.
We have got to level the playing field so that all of our student cans access the highest quality classes to make them college-ready.
VELSHI: What are the features of online education? I mean, it seems relatively obvious, but there's a remarkably important social component to your early grade school years. I suppose in some fashion, online education has got to compensate for that?
PATRICK: Absolutely. And if you think about in colleges and universities today, one in four college students takes an online course. When you look at online learning in an elementary setting, you have much stronger interactions and facilitation with adults and students, providing those students support.
Those students are not being left alone. Those students are being helped one-on-one with a variety of -- you've got your online teacher, you've got your face-to-face facilitator. And what it really does is allow for students to go at their own pace and access content, really learning beyond textbooks, having that kind of digital content and simulations that will allow them to really expand the resources for their personalized learning.
VELSHI: Let me ask you one thing. What do you need in terms of teacher training to teach online courses?
PATRICK: Yes, this is a huge issue. For our virtual schools, they are taking teachers that have sometimes eight or more years of experience and have to completely retrain them with a new set of skills, not only to use the technology and the new tools, use digital content, but to have that collaborative interaction and more authentic assessments of learning for learning to allow students to do any pace, but also to collaborate and do group activities through online and face-to-face.
VELSHI: Susan, this is a very interesting conversation. I love it when I learn something about something I didn't know about.
Susan Patrick is the president and CEO of the International Association for K to 12 Online Learning.
Thanks very much for telling us about this.
PATRICK: Thank you very much.
VELSHI: As you know, we've all been spending a lot of time this week looking at education. On this show, by the way, we talk about it all the time. Today's CNN Hero is a woman who's working to educate the children of Cambodia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PONHEARY LY, CHAMPIONING CHILDREN: In the countryside in Cambodia, some children, they come to school but not very regular because the family needs to have them on the farm. The school is free, but they don't have any money. How can they have the money for uniforms and supplies?
My name is Ponheary Ly, I help the children to go to school.
The education is important for me because my father was a teacher. During the Khmer Rouge time, my father was killed. If we tried to study, we could be killed.
My soul, always go to school.
TEXT: Ponheary Ly is a tour guide who started using her tips to help children in rural Cambodia get an education.
It only costs $20 per child to help for a whole year.
LY: At the beginning I got only one girl. After that, 40 children and now 2,000. After several years, I see the change because they know how to read and write and they borrow the books from our library to read for their parents.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Because when we study we gain knowledge and understand other issues and it leads us to a good future.
LY: I need them to have a good education to build their own family as well as to build their own country.
My father, he has to be proud of me here in heaven and in my heart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: Great story.
All right. We've got a few things on the go right now. We're following that earthquake in New Zealand. We are also following that storm right here in the United States, Hurricane Earl.
I've got the latest on the storm's track and your plans for Labor Day weekend right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right. We are continuing to cover -- this is your Hurricane Headquarters and we are covering Hurricane Earl. It has weakened, but it is still a hurricane. Bonnie Schneider is in our Weather Center.
Bonnie, what have you got?
BONNIE SCHNEIDER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, the latest, Ali, is the storm has weakened, but you have to remember that Earl is a massive storm, very, very wide, those tropical storm-force wind extend hundreds of miles, which means the radius of the storm is at least a couple of hundred miles wide.
That's when you look at our satellite view, we're getting clouds and heavy downpours of rain all the way from southern New England down to areas of extreme north of North Carolina, although the storm is pulling away from the Carolinas and you can barely make out an eye.
What you're seeing here in the bright orange and purple, those are the higher cloud tops we're getting precipitation mainly concentrated to the center, but we are starting to see those rain bands work their way into the New England area. Let's take a look at the track because New England is really where we'll feel the biggest effects on the storm as we go through. You can see the storm is working its way to the northeast and it will be encountering some cooler water. But we are anticipating the strength to pretty much stay the same at least for now and then eventually weakens.
So here's the track as we go through the next couple of days. You can see the storm working its way, getting very close to the cape and the outer islands. There's Nantucket in that Conevan (ph) certainty as well as extreme eastern Cape Cope.
As it works its way to Newfoundland by the time we get to Saturday morning with gusts only a little stronger at 85 miles per hour. So still a weak Category 1 hurricane, but still strong enough that we still have to be mindful of the warnings even though this storm could have been a lot worse for North Carolina.
We're still looking at warnings and watches posted up and down the mid-Atlantic and the eastern seaboard. Here's we look at the way it shapes up now. Notice the tropical storm warnings extended much further east and a much more concentrated area including the Jersey shore down to coastal Maryland and Delaware and all the way up across Suffolk County in Long Island, parts of Nassau and certainly into areas into northern New England.
But we do have a tropical storm watch further to the north for coastal Maine. We actually had some stronger advisories that had been discontinued in the latest advisory. As we zoom in to Massachusetts, here's what you need to know.
A hurricane is warning in effect for the cape and the islands. What is that mean? It means that this particular part of Massachusetts will likely see winds as strong as 74 miles per hour or greater so that's where the most intense wind damage will be right through this region.
Otherwise, we're looking at a tropical storm warning, meaning winds up to 39 miles per hour or stronger for Boston, for example, itself and also we're looking at the risk possibly for flooding, but it's a smaller risk. Why? Ali, because the storm is moving so fast. If it was a slow-mover, we'd see a lot more flooding with this.
VELSHI: Bonnie, very thorough. I keep learning about this. I've been talking about it for 72 hours and I keep learning new stuff about it. We are continuing to track it. Bonnie Schneider in our Severe Weather Center. This is your Hurricane Headquarters.
We will bring you up to speed as this storm continues to make its way up the coast. We've been spending the week looking at ways to fix our schools here in America. What are they doing in other countries? I got to tell you right after we take a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) VELSHI: We've been looking how to fix America's schools. For our "Globe Trekking" segment, it did tell me a little different. We've asked our CNN correspondents how other countries handle public education.
Let's start in Asia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDREW STEVENS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Andrew Stevens in Hong Kong.
Here in Asia, educational systems in Japan, South Korea and Singapore are rated among the world's best. Students perform well on standardized tests, attendance rates are very high and higher education is also very common. Why? What is the secret of this success?
All three places have highly competitive systems that value long hours of study and hard work. And parents very often sign their children up for cram schools or private tutoring. In Japan, the average family pays about $2,000 for a middle school-aged child every year on education. Singapore doesn't shy away from tracking students. That's a statewide primary school exam that determines what level middle school kids go to next.
Though societies also place a heavy emphasis on education, the government is closely involved in education policy and practice. Families see performing well in school as a child's ultimate priority and one that secures economic and financial success in life.
Critics say it places too much pressure on young children and also fails to encourage critical thinking or creativity. So over the past 10 years, there have been several experiments to try and loosen up these systems to try to encourage this style of education. But there are so many critics who say it's just not working with East Asia's rigid education systems.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FREDERICK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Fred Pleitgen in Berlin.
The German education systems really suffers from a lot of the problems that the American education suffers from as well. Many people believe that it's underfunded, that a lot of the teachers are not being paid enough.
Colleges here in Germany are generally free however, they're not really perceived as being among the best in the world. However, it does appear as though getting a university education is a lot more accessible here in this country than it is for instance in America.
Now the big standout here in Europe is definitely Finland where a lot of people think that that country actually has one of the best education systems in the world. It usually scores the highest here in Europe.
And their big issue is they try to get as many people access to education as possible. That means free universities, but it also starts at a very young age where people get free access to daycare as well.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: England's pretty high in international education rankings. Education experts I've spoken to here say that one of the reasons is because there's been massive government spending in education and more money has meant better results. They see a definite link between the two.
The other reason is data. English educators have access to incredibly detailed information. They take that information, they look at the programs their schools are teaching and they see if the teaching techniques need to be changed at all. It also means that the teachers at schools like this one are going to be held more accountable.
The third important reason is that students are now assessed differently. They have a better idea of the structure of the courses and it's clearer as to what they need to do. It's not so much as though the exams have gotten any easier. It's that students know more what to expect.
The other important thing to understand, too, is that they're two different education systems. In the United States, there's the GPA system. In England and many other places around the world, there are final exams. What that means is that students in countries like this one just need to remember stuff for a much longer period of time.
So what teachers try and do at schools is to focus on the retention of students because they need to remember things in detail after a long time to pass those final exams.
Zain Verjee, CNN, London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right, it's almost snack time. I've got a story about a bakery that not only makes fresh bread, but it offers job training for its workers. It's today's "Mission Possible." It's coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: OK, I want to tell you -- we've got an interesting "Mission Possible" today. Fifty percent of the immigrants in the United States are women. That makes sense. Foreign-born women happen to be some of the lowest paid employees in the United States. So enter Hot Bread Kitchen. It is a social purpose bakery. Not only provides jobs, provides job training for people who need it.
Take a look at what they do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bread is like a universal symbol of home, family and life. In North America, we think of the baker and we think of a man, but across the world, women are baking.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hot Bread Kitchen is aiming to help women get jobs that are management tracked, living wage jobs.
JESSAMYN WALDMAN, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HOT BREAD KITCHEN: We bake multi-ethnic breads from the country that women come from and we train women in commercial and industrial baking and entrepreneurship.
We have three full-time employees and eight women who bake with us right now. When we're up to scale, we're going to be able to train 80 women per year based on the breads that we're selling. Eventually it will be a six months training program.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Jessamyn Waldman is the founder and executive director of Hot Bread Kitchen. She joins me now and she brought food. So however long we were going to use this - use to take the segment, we're going to take twice as long.
Great to see you. All right, let's just understand this. You want to provide a living wage, you want to provide management track jobs, and you actually trained to become a master baker to do this.
JESSAMYN WALDMAN, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HOT BREAD KITCHEN: I did, yes.
VELSHI: What motivated you to do this?
WALDMAN: You know, the idea and the passion from Hot Bread Kitchen is something I've had for 10 years before I launched. My background is immigration policy and immigration advocacy. I came from the U.N. It just made so much sense to me that there would be a women's baking collect - an immigrants women --
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: -- about the baking that is significant? I mean, couldn't this be anything?
WALDMAN: The significant thing about baking is that women do it. In most parts of the world, women are the bakers. You know, somehow in the European tradition, we picture a French man doing the baking. But in most places, it's the women making whatever bread it is that's consumed in the home and New Yorkers love this. Everyone in America is going crazy for these breads so there's a market and there's a demand for the jobs we're producing.
VELSHI: Where do these all get sold? And if you're putting food in front of me, it's going to get eaten.
WALDMAN: Great. Well, what you're trying now is our Moroccan M'smen. This bread, you can buy in Union Square Farmer's Markets and a bunch of other farmer's markets around the city.
This is Armenian-style lavash cracker, we make it in six flavors. It's available at Dean & Deluca, Eli's, other stores. Mainly, right now, we're selling in New York City.
And this is a very unique product, it's a handmade corn tortilla. We hand grind the corn, non-GMO, organic blue corn --
VELSHI: Genetically modified.
WALDMAN: Yes, genetically modified organism. People don't want it in their corn and so we are one of the only makers on the market that's selling this particular type of corn.
VELSHI: Are you making any money?
WALDMAN: We are making money and all of the money is going back into the training of the women.
VELSHI: And what are you training them for?
WALDMAN: We're training them for management-track positions in the culinary industry. So the hope is, women come to us, they have this passion for food, when they're done with us, they're able to get better jobs in the culinary industry.
A lot of immigrant women in this city and this country end up in low-paying jobs where there's no professional trajectory. So they might be domestic workers or doing home health care. You know, they're good jobs, but you start at about $15,000 to $20,000 and you sort of stay there.
If you get into management-track positions in union bake shops, in some of the big industrial places, you have the potential of earning $60,000 a year and getting benefits.
VELSHI: How do we replicate this? How does this idea become bigger? Does this idea become bigger with you or does this -- I mean, this is the microfinance of what you're doing. It's a start small and have -- help individuals become better breadwinners, no pun intended.
WALDMAN: Exactly. This is a scalable model and Hot Bread Kitchen is going to expand to five cities in five years. We're thinking big. We're thinking about taking this nationally. Right now, more migrants coming to this country are women than men, and that's the same thing in every developed country. That's same thing in Canada, that's the same thing in Europe. There's nothing about this model that doesn't work elsewhere. There's a demand for these products and there's women who need these better jobs.
VELSHI: How do you recruit them?
WALDMAN: Through a network of community-based organizations. So there's a lot of great organization that are already serving these women, we ask them to identify entrepreneurial women who are passionate about food who want to get better jobs. And we get right now, unfortunately, more applicants than we can place.
VELSHI: When you stop talking, I've got to stop eating so --
WALDMAN: The exciting news is we're moving to a new facility. We just got a big grant from New York City to move to East Harlem.
VELSHI: Very nice.
WALDMAN: So we're taking our entire operation, our classrooms, our baking facilities, we're moving uptown to a 4,600-square foot facility.
VELSHI: OK, I mean, I have been hearing from people since it was announced that you were going to be on the show. You've got a lot of fans, people really admire the model. I love the way it melds the work that you want to do on a social level with business. I mean, it's just a great answer. So congratulations.
WALDMAN: Thank you.
VELSHI: We'll keep on doing it. We're going to keep on eating this food.
Jessamyn Waldman is the founder and executive director of Hot Bread Kitchen. And Hot Bread is the brand, so that's what you'll find if you want to support the training of immigrant women who can earn a living wage and be in management-track positions.
If you want more information about Jessamyn Waldman and her company, Hot Bread Kitchen, you can go to my website, CNN.com/Ali and we'll have it there.
I don't know, for all my friendship with Ed, I don't know whether he knows how to cook anything or not. He's standing by at the White House. We're going to take a break, I'm going to ask him what he knows how to cook or whether he can bake when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Are we back? Ed, are you there? Ed?
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, what are you doing? You're chewing on bread.
VELSHI: I'm eating the food. She left me a little bit of bread.
Can you talk for a minute or two?
HENRY: You know it's funny, you were going on and on about that. You know, you were asking me, I actually make a pretty mean chicken parmesan, I think it'll probably would go good with that bread.
And I was watching the show a little earlier, what's this about you and Tony Harris having a date night or something to spark the economy?
VELSHI: Tony thinks that if people go out on date night, spend some money at a movie and at a restaurant, it will goose the economy.
HENRY: Oh, goose? OK, it was goose the economy? I wasn't sure. I didn't hear the whole thing.
VELSHI: Got any politics you want to talk about?
HENRY: Well, we have some new information. While you eat, I'll tell everyone. It's right now on CNN.com, we just posted this. President Obama's going to be going to Philadelphia on September 20th.
He's going to do a fundraiser for Joe Sestak, the democratic congressman running for Senate. Why that's significant, of course, is that President Obama originally opposed Sestak in that very divisive democratic primary there in Pennsylvania. He backed Senator Arlen Specter, who lost.
Then, you had all these nasty allegations that the White House had tried to get Sestak out of the primary with this promise of either a job or some sort of advisory position in the executive branch that he refused to take.
I guess time but also campaign money heals some old wounds here. He's going to be raising some big money.
And right now, Sestak is behind as much as double digits to the Republican, Pat Toomey. But we should point out, some of the recent polls show there's a huge bit of undecided people in Pennsylvania, anywhere from 15 percent to 26 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania is undecided. Joe Sestak feels maybe bringing the president in on September 20th going to make a difference.
VELSHI: Hey, anybody tweeting at the White House about the economy, those jobs numbers? They -- I mean, 54,000 jobs lost, that can't be good for most people, but it sounds better. It's fewer jobs than we've lost in the last few months and there's a lot of jobs in the private sector.
I'm wondering if the White House is crowing about this.
HENRY: Well the president did come out today, take a quick listen to how he put it and I'll tell you the details of what they're working on behind the scenes after that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The key point I'm making right now is that the economy is moving in a positive direction. Jobs are being created, they're just not being created as fast as they need to given the big hole that we've experienced, and we're going to have to continue to work with Republicans and Democrats to come up with ideas that can further accelerate that job growth. I'm confident that we can do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: There's the rub for the president right there. And I've been hearing you all morning and afternoon talking about how maybe there was maybe some good news in these job numbers. Private sector is starting to hire, not as fast, as the president noted, as the White House and people around the country would like to see.
But it's hard to convince the American people that it's getting better when they still see unemployment actually ticking up to 9.6 percent and they're just not quite feeling a recovery yet, and they billed this here at the White House as "Recovery Summer."
So the president's going on the road next week. He's going to be in Milwaukee on Monday, on Labor Day; he's going to Cleveland on Wednesday.
And what I'm hearing is behind the scenes they're working on another sort of economic measure. It's not going to be called a stimulus. They know the first one, marketing-wise, bad idea to do that.
But secondly, frankly, they don't have the money we're so deep in debt to come up with a huge stimulus package. But they're going to come up with some tax cuts, some other things behind the scenes. We'll hear the president roll a little bit of that out next week, Ali.
VELSHI: All right, Ed, you have a good weekend. We'll make a plan to have some of that chicken parm and some of this Hot Bread Kitchen stuff. Have a good one.
Ed Henry at "The Stakeout" at the White House.
As Ed just said, by the way, new monthly jobless numbers out today show the unemployment rate went up. More jobs were lost, what's the good news? I'll tell you when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Time for "The XYZ of It."
Stop your bellyaching. As badly as so many people wanted today's job numbers to confirm predictions of a double-dip recession, they didn't. For perspective , most economists say that the U.S. needs to add at least a couple hundred thousand jobs every month. America lost 54,000 jobs in August. That's the bad part. In fact, the government alone lost 121,000 jobs.
So why the heck am I so pleased? Because the private sector, i.e. businesses, added 67,000 jobs. I'll do the math for you -- 67,000 private sector jobs created minus 121,000 government jobs lost, that's 54,000 jobs lost.
I'm almost blind to those 121,000 government jobs that are lost, not to the people who are affected by it and their families, but the idea that job creation is supposed to come from the private sector is why I'm pleased about this.
The private sector, private businesses are the engine of economic growth in this country and in any free market system government. Spending and government jobs, that helps fill the gap when times are tough and companies pull back from spending, but the economy lives or dies ultimately on the strength of its business, small and large.
Here's another reason I'm feeling good -- every month when we get these number, we also get revisions to the previous couple of months, and even those improved. The job loss numbers for July, it turns out, are much lower than we first thought.
Look, enough people out there will disagree with me and you'll read and hear lots about why this economy is stuck firmly in the tank. There are some who will scratch their heads at the mere idea that a single lost job can be seen as a positive development.
But I see a trend growing here and it's a trend in the most important part of the economy -- jobs. To me, today, the glass is one-quarter full.
That's it for me. Rick comes to you at the other side of the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
