Questões de Inglês do ENEM

Irma and Harvey lay the costs of climate change denial at Trump’s door

The president’s dismissal of scientific research is doing nothing to protect the livelihoods of ordinary Americans. 

Bob Ward - Sunday 10 September 2017 

As the US comes to terms with its second major weather disaster within a month, an important question is whether the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma will convince Donald Trump and his administration of the reality of climate change. 

The president’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida may escape Irma’s wrath, but with the deaths of so many Americans, and billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses, the costs of climate change denial are beginning to pile up at the door of the White House. 

Just days before Harvey formed in the Atlantic last month, Trump signed an executive order to overturn a policy, introduced by his predecessor Barack Obama, to help American communities and businesses become more resilient against the risks of flooding, which are rising because of climate change. 

But the merciless assault on the US mainland by Harvey and Irma should be forcing the president to recognise the consequences of his arrogance and complacency in dismissing the research and analysis carried out by scientists. 

The flooded streets of Houston and the wind-ravaged homes of south Florida bear the unmistakable fingerprint of extreme weather made worse by manmade greenhouse gas emissions. 

A hurricane is a huge, rotating cluster of thunderstorms that forms above a sea surface that has a temperature of at least 26.5C. It is like a giant engine, transferring heat from the sea surface up into the atmosphere and generating strong winds and heavy rain in the process.

Climate change cannot be blamed for the hurricane count in any single season, nor for the occurrence of any single storm, but there are some ways in which it is making the consequences worse. 

Adapted from: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/10/hurricane-irma-harvey-climate-change-trump>. Acesso em: 17 set 2017. 

Supreme Court Expands Rights for Students with Disabilities

By Lauren Camera, Education Reporter - March 22, 2017. Adaptado.

In a unanimous decision with majorn implications for students with disabilities, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that schools must provide higher educational standards for children with special needs. Schools must do more than provide a ‘merely more than de minimis’ education for students with disabilities and instead must provide them with an opportunity to make "appropriately ambitious" progress in line with the federal education law.

“When all is said and done,” wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts, “a student offered an education program providing a ‘merely more than de minimis’ progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all.” He continued, citing a 1982 Supreme Court ruling on special education: “For children with disabilities, receiving an instruction that aims so low would be equivalent to ‘sitting idly... awaiting the time when they were old enough to drop out.’”

There are roughly 6.4 million students with disabilities between ages 3 to 21, representing roughly 13 percent of all students, according to Institute for Education Statistics. Each year 300,000 of those students leave school and just 65 percent of students with disabilities complete high school.

The case which culminated in the Supreme Court decision originated with an autistic boy in Colorado named Endrew. His parents pulled him out of school in 5th grade because they disagreed with his individualized education plan. Under federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), schools must work with families to develop individualized learning plans for students with disabilities.

While Endrew had been making progress in the public schools, his parents felt his plan for that year simply replicated goals from years past. As a result, they enrolled him in a private school where, they argued, Endrew made academic and social progress.

Seeking tuition reimbursement*, they filed a complaint with the state’s department of education in which they argued that Endrew had been denied a "free appropriate public education". The school district won the suit, and when his parents filed a lawsuit in federal district court, the judge also sided with the school district. In the Supreme Court case, Endrew and his family asked for clarification about the type of education benefits the federal law requires of schools, specifically, whether it requires ‘merely more than de minimis’, or something greater.

“The IDEA demands more,” Roberts wrote in the opinion. “It requires an educational program reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.” *reimbursement – a sum paid to cover money that has been spent or lost.

In: <https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2017-03-22/supreme-court-expands-rights-for-students-with-disabilitie> 30.03.2018