In the third and final presidential debate, the topic of education got a fair amount of discussion. Barack Obama and John McCain had substantially different ideas about how to improve American education. Hopefully President-elect Obama will draw lessons from the 50 states currently serving as laboratories of education reform.

Florida, in particular, has enjoyed enormous success in boosting both early childhood literacy and the percentage of minority students prepared for college. Florida’s education reforms have slashed fourth grade illiteracy by 32 percent in 10 years. During the same period, the percentage of Florida students scoring “Proficient” on the Nation’s Report Card’s fourth grade reading test increased by 54 percent and the percentage scoring “Advanced” doubled.

Minority students have been a large contributing factor to that success. Florida’s Hispanic students now outscore the statewide averages for all students in 15 states on national fourth grade reading tests, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Florida’s African-American students outscore two statewide averages — Louisiana and Mississippi — and are within striking distance of several others.
continue reading "Fla. schools make money the old-fashioned way"

In many industries, you need to spend money to make money; this definitely holds true if you are an insurance agent. No, you do not have to spend thousands of dollars each day, but you will definitely want to have a small budget in which you can pull from on a regular basis. The fact of the matter is that the most successful insurance agents spend money so that they can make even more in the long run.

Do you know what to spend money on? If you are like most insurance agents, you will want to spend the majority of your budget on marketing related expenses. While this is a broad category, there is one area that you may want to specialize on: buying insurance leads online. Believe it or not, this is the best way to spend your marketing dollars. Sure, there are other options that may return results, but if you want to achieve a high level of success buying leads is something to seriously consider.

What is the point in spending money on leads? First and foremost, when you buy leads you do not have to spend a lot on other methods of marketing such as newspaper ads, billboards, etc. Additionally, buying online insurance leads will also save you a lot of time. And as you know, time is at a premium for most agents. You want to make sure that you are always spending as much time as possible on selling policies as opposed to other tasks.

Use your marketing dollars smartly, such as on the purchase of leads, and you will find that you are making more money than ever before.

For a limited time, QotesAuction.com is offering $200 worth of free leads to agents who setup and activate an account.