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Five Tips for Recent College Graduates!

21 May

 

 

 It’s graduation time and thousands of college grads are hopeful about what the future holds. For some, that future is a vision they can see clearly and for others, it’s fuzzy and they are just hoping for the best. If you are one of the thousands of graduates donning a cap and gown this spring – or you know someone who is, consider these five pearls of wisdom as you head into the “real world.” Ten to twenty years after graduation, these are the pearls of wisdom many grads say they wish they’d known when they graduated. Shorten your learning curve and embrace this wisdom now:

1. Go for what you really want.

Don’t downsize your dream before you’ve even attempted it. Go directly for the type of job you want while simultaneously being flexible. It is a challenging job market, but it is not impossible. Remember the phrase, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among stars.” It applies here. Don’t allow fear to keep you from going after what you really want.

2. Place is more important than position.Smiling Black woman holding graduation diploma and hugging husband

Landing a job in your field sometimes means landing a job that is beneath your skill level. But if that job puts you in the right environment, you can make connections and be ready when the right opportunity opens up. Be willing to pay your dues by getting your foot in the door, then show your employer your energy, dedication and ability. You may get an opportunity to move up once you’ve proven yourself.

3. No one owes you anything.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from leaders in today’s organizations is that too many young people have a sense of entitlement. Experience is a great teacher. Soak up all the knowledge you can. Get a mentor. Listen more than you speak. Don’t expect a promotion or raise because you show up and do your job. That’s what you’re paid to do. Employers don’t owe you appreciation, more money or a bigger job title.

4. Build a foundation for where you want to be ten years from now.

Know where you want to be in five years or ten years. If you’re not living your vision, you’re probably living someone else’s. So have a vision for where you want to go so you don’t wander aimlessly in your career, only to find yourself frustrated later because you didn’t aim high.

5. Build a life, not just a career.

Work hard, yes, but also play hard. Think about what you want for your personal life. Don’t live to work, work to live. When you consider jobs, think about the lifestyle you want to lead – do you want to be on call 24-7? Do you want to live near family or do you really not mind moving across the country or around the world? Are you willing to live far away for a few years, but plan to move back to your current area? Will your job give you time for a life outside of work?

Written by Valorie Burton
 
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Posted by on May 21, 2013 in African American Education News, African American Employment

 

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Canada’s Approach to School Funding

14 May

 

 
by Juliana Herman
 
 

SOURCE: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Over the past few decades, Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario—three of the four most populous provinces with student populations of a similar size to those in most U.S. states—each moved to a unique version of a provincial-funding system.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this report.

The academic success of Finland, South Korea, and others on recent international tests has sparked a renewed interest among educators and those concerned with education policy in the United States in looking to other countries for examples of how we might improve our education system. Teacher training and quality in leading countries has received a lot of attention, but we should also be paying attention to and trying to learn from the way other countries fund their schools. Many high-achieving countries have attained greater equity in their systems of school finance, and their methods and approaches can and should serve as examples for how U.S. states could implement more equitable funding schemes.

Specifically, this report looks at how our neighbor to the north, Canada—a country that has consistently preformed well on international tests—funds its schools. Several provinces have successfully implemented school-funding systems that are more equitable than those in most U.S. states. To determine how Canada has gone about designing a more equitable school-funding scheme, this report focuses on three provinces—Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario—each of which has adopted provincial-level funding systems that aim to achieve greater school-funding equality and equity. In these systems the province—which in terms of government organization roughly parallels the state level in the United States—has taken on full responsibility for its own education funding.

This report explores the design of these three provinces’ different school-funding systems. For each province, we look at where education dollars come from; who has the taxing authority; how school resources are allocated and whether that allocation is more or less equitable; and what other education money is raised and how that might impact the broader goal of equality and equity of school resources.

A few key findings emerge from this analysis:

  • These three provinces have successfully transitioned from a joint provincial-local funding system to a provincial-level funding system—a system that has the potential to promote at least equality, if not equity, in school funding.
  • Each province has taken a different approach to designing and implementing a provincial-level funding system, which has included tailoring their system based on specific needs and priorities. This is especially true regarding the role and use of local property-tax dollars under the provincial-level funding system. Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario thus provide three different models of how such a system might work.
  • There is a great deal of flexibility when it comes to determining how much power local boards and schools retain in terms of their ability to raise local taxes, fundraise, or charge school fees. To highlight this point, in no case were schools denied the ability to raise additional funding, but the parameters of that varied depending upon the province.
  • Each province maintains and reinforces a strong commitment to local control of education. School boards, for the most part, have the power over and authority to decide how to spend and allocate funding, despite the provincial-level funding system. School boards are elected in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.
  • A provincial-level funding system may allow for more stable and predictable school budgeting. Funding schools at the provincial level creates a broader tax base than the more traditional system that depends on local property wealth, which has inevitable yet less predictable and often very unevenly dispersed fluctuations in value and thus revenue.
  • These provincial-level funding systems serve as a clear reminder of the key distinction between equality and equity and underscore the fact that how dollars are allocated is just as important as the amount and sources of funding.
  • Provincial-level funding systems are not without drawbacks and are not a foolproof plan for either sufficient or equitable school resources, but they may offer a way to implement a more equitable funding system and therefore are worthy of study.

States in this country should not be afraid of undertaking systematic funding. Certainly, there will be political and implementation challenges, but a growing number of policymakers, voters, advocates, teachers, parents, and students are becoming dissatisfied with the status quo. Questions of education governance and school finance require both bold thinking and innovative action.

It is important to note that this report only looks at the method of funding school districts. It does not address the essential questions of how funds are distributed to schools within a district or the capacity of the provinces or school boards to do so. Yet for a system to be truly equitable, it must allocate dollars at all levels based on student needs—something that many school districts fail to do in the United States. Adopting a more equitable system of funding school districts and even moving to a state-level funding system would thus only be one element in creating and implementing a fully equitable school-funding system.

Finally, we know that adopting equitable funding systems will not in itself lead to equal educational opportunities, but equitable school funding is an essential factor in creating a system in which all students have access to a high-quality education and therefore have the chance to achieve academic success.

Juliana Herman is a Policy Analyst with the Education Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

 
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Posted by on May 14, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Using education to sustain Africa’s growth

09 May

By JOHN FALLON

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report tells us that sustained economic growth across Africa is due, at least in part, to institutional reforms in the health and primary education sectors.

Education increases economic growth, helps families and communities to prosper, and empowers people to gain employment and live healthier, more fulfilling lives. In the 21st century global economy, a well-educated and skilled workforce is critical for countries and companies to thrive. That is why we should all be concerned that many parts of Africa continue to suffer from high levels of unemployment and chronic skills shortages. So, how the global community frames a post-2015 development goal on education will have a real impact in sustaining GDP growth across Africa.

There has been substantial progress in improving access to education – 39 million more children are now in school and enrolment rates have improved to over 80 percent. However, what really matters is that once inside the classroom, children learn the literacy, numeracy and life skills that will enable them to succeed throughout childhood and as adults. If 10 million children in sub-Saharan Africa drop out of primary school every year, and 40 percent of African children leave school illiterate, we cannot claim that the current Millennium Development Goal on access to primary schooling has been enough.

Therefore, a post-2015 education goal must focus on learning outcomes as well as access, prioritising not just enrolment and completion numbers, but also longer-term school progress and student achievement. Measuring learning outcomes is no easy task, but it is essential to improving the quality of global education.

Since mid-2012, Pearson has co-chaired (with UNICEF and Pratham) the Learning Metrics Task Force, which brings together 30 different organisations from around the world to make sure that the post-2015 goals include a focus on learning. In consultation with experts from across the education and development communities, the Task Force is working to build consensus on global measures and practical actions for delivering progress on learning.

The Task Force has identified six areas for measurement spanning early childhood, primary school and secondary school. In my view these could be brought together as targets under a post-2015 education goal, articulated along the following lines: all children should  receive a quality education with good learning outcomes – in order to become active global citizens and secure meaningful employment.

Setting a goal, of course, is one thing; delivering on it is what really counts. To resolve the learning crisis and bridge the financing gap of $26bn that UNESCO says is required to meet existing education targets, governments and the private sector must step up investments in education.

Companies can support initiatives such as the Global Business Coalition for Education (Pearson is a founding member), the Global Partnership for Education (for which we represent the private sector on the Board), and the Global Education First campaign, which all mobilise the collective expertise, efforts, and resources of multiple actors to achieve greater scale and impact on joint education priorities.

Business, with its capacity to move quickly, try new approaches and then scale successful innovations, can often take risks that other actors cannot afford to make. In 2012, for example, Pearson launched the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund, which makes minority equity investments in private companies committed to improving access to quality education for the poorest families in the world through innovative approaches.

This does not diminish the need to ensure public funding is spent more efficiently and effectively, and with more accountability. Pearson is also working with academics, practitioners and policymakers on data collection and analysis to deepen our collective knowledge. We need to open up the ‘black box’ of education data to understand what really drives learning outcomes, in order to help teachers and policymakers base their work on evidence.

Education and learning do not occur in a vacuum, of course. A child who is sick, hungry, or malnourished will have a hard time learning at school. But education can lead to better healthcare and nutrition, declining birth rates and poverty reduction. A child born to a mother who can read is 50 percent more likely to survive past the age of five. Therefore, any post-2015 education goal should recognise the interdependencies between education and other development goals.

John Fallon is the CEO of Pearson

 
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Posted by on May 9, 2013 in African News

 

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FAFSA Modernizes to Recognize LGBT Families

07 May

by Crosby Burns and David A. Bergeron
SOURCE: AP/ Cheryl Senter

Kim Pollock, 17, goes through college materials in her bedroom in Bedford, New Hampshire. FAFSA will soon start recognizing same-sex parents on their financial aid applications.

When lawmakers first created the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, in 1992, no state recognized civil unions or domestic partnerships between same-sex couples, let alone the freedom to marry. Ten states and the District of Columbia currently confer the rights and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples—and that number is swiftly increasing.

Recognizing this changing landscape, the U.S. Department of Education announced last week a small but significant change to the FAFSA that will make the application a more fair, effective, and efficient tool for students seeking financial aid to help pay for their college education. Starting in 2014 the Department of Education will begin collecting demographic and financial information about families headed by same-sex parents to determine eligibility for and amounts of Pell Grants and federal student loans.

Each year more than 20 million families complete the FAFSA, and these families do not necessarily all have the same family structures that the FAFSA—with its roots in the 1950s—presumes. The announced change from the Department of Education simply brings the FAFSA up to date to reflect the changing nature of the American family. What’s more, because many states, colleges, universities, and other providers of financial aid build out from the information already collected on the FAFSA or are modeled after the FAFSA, the proposed changes will likely have a trickle-down effect such that the entire process will become more fair, efficient, and effective for all families.

Below we take a look at the changes to the FAFSA, what they mean for families with same-sex parents, and remaining issues for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, applicants.

The FAFSA will include language allowing applicants with same-sex parents to accurately fill out the form

The FAFSA currently uses the terms “mother/stepmother” and “father/stepfather” when requesting information about an applicant’s parents. Applicants with same-sex parents must then either arbitrarily designate one parent as “mother” and the other as “father,” or omit one parent from the form entirely. In other words, the current FAFSA puts these applicants in a lose-lose scenario, forcing them to complete and submit an application that does not accurately reflect their family structure and that is therefore inaccurate.

The department’s proposal will change that. For the 2014-15 FAFSA, the department plans to replace “mother/stepmother” and “father/stepfather” with “parent 1” and “parent 2.” This change means that for the first time the department will collect same-sex parents’ financial information in the same way that it does today for married different-sex spouses. These changes not only accurately reflect—for the first time in the FAFSA’s history—the existence of LGBT families; they also capture the economic situation of these families so that students applying for aid can get the support based on financial need without any bearing on their parents’ sexual orientation.

This change mirrors similar changes made by other federal agencies. In 2011, for example, the U.S. Department of State initiated reforms to give passport application forms a more gender-neutral parental designation. Doing so required minimal changes to federal forms while significantly enhancing the accuracy, fairness, effectiveness, and efficiency of government operations. More importantly, this change effectively protects LGBT families by requiring both parents to ascend to a child’s passport application, ensuring that one parent cannot take the child and leave the country without the other’s permission.

The FAFSA will be a more efficient, effective, and accurate application

At its core, this much-needed change to the FAFSA achieves two important policy objectives.

First, it guarantees that all families are treated fairly and equally in the higher-education financial-aid process. Without accurate language to describe their families, students with same-sex parents are likely to see their application delayed due to often-unavoidable inconsistencies. More concerning is the fact that some children of same-sex couples may not apply for aid at all due to the complexity and confusion caused by the FAFSA’s use of gendered language. What results is inequitable access to financial aid for students with same-sex parents. This change, however, significantly levels the playing field for these applicants. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in announcing the proposed change: “All students should be able to apply for federal student aid within a system that incorporates their unique family dynamics.”

Second, this change advances the efficiency and effectiveness of delivering aid based on need by not allowing irrelevant characteristics such as sexual orientation factor into the application process. Financial aid should be allocated based solely on financial need. Allowing other factors—such as sexual orientation—to enter the process results in the imprudent use of taxpayer dollars. In this way, the proposed change from the department would be a significant step toward enhancing the efficient use of federal funds.

But that is not to say this is the overarching goal of this change. Importantly, the change was made not to save the federal government money, but instead to ensure greater equity among aid applicants. Without accurate data on the LGBT community, we simply do not know how many families will be impacted by this change. We therefore do not know how this change will impact the budget in aggregate, since some families are likely to see larger financial-aid packages while others may see smaller ones with this change.

In announcing the change, Secretary Duncan said, “These changes will allow us to more precisely calculate federal student aid eligibility based on what a student’s whole family is able to contribute and ensure taxpayer dollars are better targeted toward those students who have the most need, as well as provide an inclusive form that reflects the diversity of American families.” With this change, if both parents are living together, both of their incomes will be considered when determining eligibility for federal aid. This will be true whether the parents are married or not and whether they are the same sex or opposite sex.

Remaining LGBT issues with the FAFSA

While the department’s proposed change is welcome news for students with same-sex parents, problems still exist for LGBT applicants.

First, even with this proposed change, antigay laws will continue to prevent the Department of Education from recognizing same-sex spouses or partners. Passed in 1996 the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, defines marriage for the purposes of federal law as the union between one man and one woman. This law effectively denies more than 1,000 federal benefits and protections to legally married same-sex couples. That includes the ability to name a same-sex partner or spouse—and often their dependents—on the FAFSA. By excluding certain family members, the FAFSA calculates an “expected family contribution” that ultimately distorts the amount of aid these applicants should receive.

Second, transgender applicants face unique obstacles in obtaining financial aid. Transgender applicants often encounter problems when data mismatches occur, particularly with regards to a changed name or the gender markers on government-issued identification. If financial-aid institutions encounter data mismatches on applicants’ identification markers, this could delay the process of transgender students’ applications for financial aid. These data-mismatch issues can significantly impair these students’ ability to access aid. This is particularly problematic for transgender individuals that were identified at birth as male, as these students are required to register with the Selective Service upon turning 18 years old.

Third, accessing federal financial aid poses unique problems for LGBT youth coming from unsupportive or hostile families. The FAFSA requires most young applicants to submit their parents’ or legal guardians’ financial information, as well as provide their signatures to successfully submit an application for aid. This requirement may prove difficult for LGBT applicants who come from homes where they are unloved, neglected, abused, or even kicked out because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Luckily, the federal financial-aid system recognizes the difficulties facing youth with uncooperative parents by allowing them to bypass many requirements to submit their application, while asking the aid officer on campus to override the dependency determination. Still, that option is not foolproof. Some aid officers on college campuses are reluctant to do a dependency override in any circumstance and more must be done to ensure all children—estranged or not—receive the aid to which they are entitled.

Conclusion

Federal financial aid represents the gateway to a college education for many students in the United States.Individuals with a college education have higher earnings than those who do not, experience lower rates of unemployment and poverty, and have fewer health issues than those who do not or cannot attain a postsecondary education. Built into the system, however, are inherent biases against families with LGBT members, resulting in the discriminatory misallocation of federal dollars based on sexual orientation or gender identity—and not on an applicant’s financial need. With the upcoming changes to the FAFSA, one of those biases will be removed, which is good news for families headed by same-sex parents.

Because of the Defense of Marriage Act, nearly all government forms fail to recognize the diversity of today’s families. Forms such as the FAFSA continue to use gender-specific language when collecting information about parents and spouses that preclude same-sex couples from being fully recognized.

The U.S. Department of Education’s leadership on this issue, however, shows that even with DOMA, federal agencies can take steps to help families with same-sex parents when the executive branch has the flexibility to modify government forms. It’s an authority that should be leveraged wherever possible.

Crosby Burns is a Policy Analyst for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress. David Bergeron is the Vice President for Postsecondary Education at the Center.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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The Skills Gap: A Global Problem

30 Apr

As many countries celebrate International Workers’ Day tomorrow, let’s think about the importance of education in skills training for getting young people into work: http://bit.ly/12Xmrrw

 
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Posted by on April 30, 2013 in African American Education News, African American Employment

 

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No Rich Child Left Behind

30 Apr

By SEAN F. REARDON

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

In a more recent study, my graduate students and I found that 15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did.

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Before we can figure out what’s happening here, let’s dispel a few myths.

RELATED
A Look at the Data

75 ThumbnailGraphs highlight some of the trends described in this article.

 

The income gap in academic achievement is not growing because the test scores of poor students are dropping or because our schools are in decline. In fact, average test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called Nation’s Report Card, have been rising — substantially in math and very slowly in reading — since the 1970s. The average 9-year-old today has math skills equal to those her parents had at age 11, a two-year improvement in a single generation. The gains are not as large in reading and they are not as large for older students, but there is no evidence that average test scores have declined over the last three decades for any age or economic group.

The widening income disparity in academic achievement is not a result of widening racial gaps in achievement, either. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades, trends that actually keep the yawning gap between higher- and lower-income students from getting even wider. If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole.

It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t important differences in quality between schools serving low- and high-income students — there certainly are — but they appear to do less to reinforce the trends than conventional wisdom would have us believe.

If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

My research suggests that one part of the explanation for this is rising income inequality. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting.

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more — more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time” — in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich.

The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,” a phrase that nicely captures the growing perception that early childhood experiences are central to winning a lifelong educational and economic competition.

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools and the behavior of the poor for trends that are really the result of deepening income inequality and the behavior of the rich.

We’re also slow to understand what’s happening, I think, because the nature of the problem — a growing educational gap between the rich and the middle class — is unfamiliar. After all, for much of the last 50 years our national conversation about educational inequality has focused almost exclusively on strategies for reducing inequalities between the educational successes of the poor and the middle class, and it has relied on programs aimed at the poor, like Head Start and Title I.

We’ve barely given a thought to what the rich were doing. With the exception of our continuing discussion about whether the rising costs of higher education are pricing the middle class out of college, we don’t have much practice talking about what economists call “upper-tail inequality” in education, much less success at reducing it.

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think.

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

But we need to do much more than expand and improve preschool and child care. There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and “improving teacher quality,” but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents so they can better invest in their children.

This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves. This might include strategies to support working families so that they can read to their children more often.. It also means expanding programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership that have proved to be effective at helping single parents educate their children; but we also need to pay for research to develop new resources for single parents.

It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone.

The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills — how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate — essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.

Sean F. Reardon is a professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

 
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Posted by on April 30, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Scholarships Served Up for Nutrition Students

25 Apr

Scholarships are available for students who are interested in studying nutrition and dietetics. Scholarships are available for students who are interested in studying nutrition and dietetics.

There are few things more important to your health and well-being than knowing what kinds of food you should – and shouldn’t – put into your body.

With 60 million Americans over the age of 20 that are obese, and 9 million children and teens overweight, the subject of proper nutrition is a hot topic right now – so much so that even the first lady is getting involved in a big way. Michelle Obama has initiated a campaign to eliminate childhood obesity and speaks regularly about the importance of childhood nutrition, advocating for healthier school lunch options, a new food pyramid and access to affordable healthy food.

With so much attention being paid to a proper diet, you can bet there will be plenty of jobs available for those who are looking at a career in nutrition and dietetics. If you’re passionate about healthy eating, these scholarships for nutrition majors may be right up your alley.

If you’re enrolled in a nutrition or dietetics program, you should seriously consider joining The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. For only $50, you can become a student member and take advantage of the many benefits the Academy offers, including the opportunity to apply for scholarships.

In fact, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation is the largest provider of dietetic scholarships to students at all levels, awarding scholarships ranging from $500 to $10,000 every year. To learn more about the application process, visit the academy’s website. In addition to scholarships, there’s also the opportunity to apply for one of their continuing education, recognition or program development awards.

Scholarships are also available through many of the organization’s individual affiliate dietetic associations and practice groups. Just be aware that some require specific group membership or residency in a specific state.

Another great scholarship opportunity for those interested in studying nutrition comes from CANFIT, an organization committed to working with communities and policymakers to ensure kids in low-income communities and communities of color are in healthy eating and physically active environments. Students living in California and of African-American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian American, Pacific Islander or Latino/Hispanic descent are encouraged to apply for CANFIT’s graduate and undergraduate scholarship opportunities.

Finally, if you’re enrolled at an institution with an accredited dietetic or nutrition program, make sure you check with your financial aid office to learn what other scholarship opportunities are available to you through your school.

Many institutions will offer scholarships just for those enrolled in the program – which hopefully means less competition! Michigan State University, Simmons College, Georgia State University and the University of Utah, among others, all offer nutrition scholarships and internship opportunities.

Whether you’re looking forward to planning food and nutrition programs, or you’re anxious to advise people on healthier eating habits and diet modifications, you couldn’t have picked a better time to become a nutritionist. With America’s population aging, there will soon be an increase in demand for nutritionists at nursing homes and home care agencies.

Many people will turn to nutritionists to help combat America’s growing obesity problem. Whatever career path you choose, there are bound to be scholarship opportunities out there to help you fulfill your dream of helping others make healthy food choices.

 
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Posted by on April 25, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Higher education leaders move to ease online rules

25 Apr

 

Higher education leaders are pushing to expand the online market by simplifying the rules colleges must follow to enroll students from around the country.Under a system based on oversight of brick-and-mortar campuses, colleges generally must obtain authorization from every state where they want to offer online programs. Requirements and fees vary from state to state.
Education leaders say that system is too costly and cumbersome at a time of fast-growing interest in distance learning, with millions of students now using online technology to access higher education.On Thursday a commission led by former U.S. education secretary Richard W. Riley proposed that states enter reciprocity agreements for regulation of online programs. That would mean authorization from a single home state — upholding minimum standards for institutional quality and consumer protection — would enable colleges to enroll students from other states that volunteer to participate.“It is my belief that this proposal will make a real difference in the ability of higher education institutions to effectively deliver distance education courses across the country,” Riley, who served in the Clinton administration, said in a statement. He added: “This system will increase opportunity and access for students across the country, bringing us closer to the goal of leading the world in college completion rates.”

Riley’s commission, launched last year by the State Higher Education Executive Officers and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, had 21 members drawn from colleges, accreditors and states.

Next week, members said, representatives from most states will meet in Indianapolis to discuss how to put the plan into action. Key to the proposal are four regional higher education groups that would coordinate the reciprocity agreements.

Paul Shiffman, a commission member and assistant vice president at Excelsior College, an online-focused institution based in New York, said current state-by-state regulations often deter colleges from offering online courses in certain places. Excelsior, he said, recently decided not to register one of its programs in Massachusetts because of expenses and red tape. “It’s a business decision,” he said.

Under the current system, the commission said, a public community college with 257 students in five states could pay $76,100 to comply with regulations, and a public university system could pay $5.5 million to comply with rules in 49 states. Often colleges must bear expense of staff time as well.

But consumer protection is a key issue, the commission warned. “States … must be vigilant in investigating and resolving consumer complaints,” the commission said in a report. “A prerequisite for state participation, therefore, will be a clear process for receiving and resolving consumer complaints.”

(The Washington Post Company’s Kaplan education unit provides online higher education programs.)

 
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Posted by on April 25, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Moving Away from Credit Hours in Higher Education

24 Apr

by David A. Bergeron
SOURCE: AP/Seth Perlman

Gloria Newton Davlantis speaks with students seeking employment during a University of Illinois Job Fair in Springfield, Illinois. Higher Education based on credit hours in the United States often leave graduate unprepared for jobs.

The credit hour is currently the basic unit of measurement for student progress in higher education in the United States. The credit hour informs aspects of administration of higher-education institutions throughout the United States, including establishing teaching loads and graduation requirements, and is the basic structural unit of most college-level courses as well as the basis for federal student aid.

Despite this fact, the term was formally undefined until 2010 when the U.S. Department of Education reluctantly defined a credit hour as the amount of work associated with intended learning outcomes that can be verified with evidence of student achievement.

There is growing dissatisfaction with credit hours, however, because they measure time instead of educational attainment and fail to provide any useful understanding of what students actually learned. This criticism is heard most loudly in the debate around credit transfers from one institution to another. In reality, however, this distrust of credits earned elsewhere reflects the fact that it’s difficult to place accurate value on earned credits even though those hours came at a great price to the student, his or her family, and taxpayers.

Consider this question: Why do so many graduates of highly regarded institutions need unpaid internships in order to demonstrate jobs skills before an employer will hire them? Often it is because the accumulation of credit hours, even in an appropriate field of study from a renowned program, does not necessarily demonstrate that the graduate has acquired the knowledge and skills necessary for performance in a specific job. College transcripts show courses and grades but shed little light on what students actually know in regards to a job.

A small but growing number of educational leaders are advocating a move away from assessing student progress by credit hours and toward clear demonstrations of competence. Such a change will profoundly effect not only our higher-education system but also the entire human-capital system in the United States.

The Department of Education’s recently approved associate’s degree in business administration at Southern New Hampshire University is an example of how programs can be delivered and assessed without the credit hour.  Typically, colleges and universities offer programs based on courses that they hope will prepare students for jobs with prospective employers in various industries. Southern New Hampshire University, however, intentionally sought help from employers by asking them to specifically explain the skills they desire in new hires. The program is structured around 120 different competencies—what students know and can do—that are measured by rigorous assessments to demonstrate proficiency, rather than by three-credit courses, which is the norm in most higher-education institutions. This system helps the school ensure that every student who completes the associate’s degree program demonstrates knowledge in every area represented by the degree.

The competency-based approach ensures that employers can hire graduates of the Southern New Hampshire University associate’s degree program with confidence. To the extent that unpaid internships reflect a need for assurance that graduates can perform professionally, any graduate under this model should be able to move directly into the paid workforce. This will make it more likely that every graduate will be able to begin repaying his or her federal student-loan debt without becoming delinquent.

Another significant benefit of transitioning to competency-based models will likely be that graduates will incur less debt. Consider the fact that a student who comes into the program with some relevant academic or work experience will be able to move through the program more quickly than those without such experiences. In the Southern New Hampshire University program, dubbed College for America, a student can conceivably complete an associate’s degree in six months and for only $1,250—far below the average length and cost of even community college programs.

Additionally, employers are more likely to invest in a competency-based degree program for continuing the education of current employees. Large-scale employers such as ConAgra Foods and FedEx already accepted this model. These employers are investing significantly in the development and early implementation of the competency-based program at Southern New Hampshire University and will no doubt continue to do so. Employers recognize that they will benefit from their contribution because they will be able to influence the ongoing improvement and regular updating of the program.

A 2012 study called “Education to Employment” by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, found that only 42 percent of U.S. employers believe college graduates are adequately prepared for work, while 72 percent of educational institutions think their graduates are ready for employment. Employers already think in terms of competencies, meaning these new competency-based programs offer educators and employers a common language and barometer of student achievement.

While it is unlikely that competency-based models will solve all the problems plaguing higher education today—and they certainly will not address all the inefficiencies in the current labor market—competency-based models will improve the connection between the higher-education system and employers. This will benefit current and future students, and that is what it ultimately is all about.

 
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Posted by on April 24, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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5 Ways No Child Left Behind Waivers Help State Education Reform

23 Apr

by Robert Hanna
SOURCE: AP/ Daniel ShankenBarbra Fry teaches vocabulary during an English as a Second Language class at South Side Elementary School in Harrisburg Pa. The Secretary of Education has offered states flexibility from the No Child Left Behind Act to design and implement strategies that better meet the needs of today’s students and their teachersOver the past year the U.S. Department of Education has approved requests from 34 states to waive certain impractical requirements from the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, or NCLB. The current law hinders states’ actions as they work hard to fulfill the main goal of No Child Left Behind: ensuring that all students have the opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach proficiency on challenging academic standards. But many students, especially the nation’s most disadvantaged, continue to receive low-quality education.Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education are introducing these NCLB waivers as robust and complex education reform takes place across the country. States are implementing the new Common Core State Standards to improve math and English/language arts learning and are instituting more meaningful approaches to evaluate teachers and support their growth. While educators almost universally recognize that schools need to be held more publicly accountable for their results,  NCLB’s original metrics are not the right approach to accomplishing that goal. Measurement such as “adequate yearly progress”—annual progress against school benchmarks for student proficiency, not learning gains—did not provide the right incentives for states, districts, or schools to improve their students’ educational experiences.

To be sure, the federal government must still play an active role through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in ensuring that states are held accountable for providing all students, particularly the most disadvantaged, with a globally competitive education. States should not be able to use this new flexibility to water down their expectations for school performance.

Increased flexibility gives states the opportunity to fulfill the spirit of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is currently stalled in Congress, while also allowing them to design and implement strategies that better meet local school needs. Most states are seizing this opportunity not in order to change direction but rather to “accelerate” existing reforms by removing unhelpful federal constraints.

Flexibility from the No Child Left Behind Act provides states with five important opportunities to increase the odds that state education reforms will be successful.

States can match specific solutions to schools’ particular needs

The interventions required under the No Child Left Behind Act left states with few options when schools failed to meet annual performance targets. The law forced states to take action in underperforming schools under a strict timeline through a fixed set of options. Given these severe guidelines, the opportunity to regain some control over school improvement motivated many states to apply for a waiver and gain more flexibility. Florida, for example,pointed out how their waiver would allow them to “strengthen the state’s ability to tailor its program to meet Florida’s unique educational needs.”

To be sure, even with new flexibility, the Education Department still determines which schools and districts the state should focus on, but their guidelines are much less prescriptive about how states should intervene. States must intervene in their lowest-performing schools, for example, in ways that are consistent with the Education Department’s “turnaround principles” such as “ensuring that the instructional program is research-based, rigorous, and aligned with State academic content standards.” States can meet these principles more on their own terms, however, determining timelines and actions that match schools’ particular needs.

States gain more legitimacy to sustain necessary reforms

With public agreement that the No Child Left Behind Act no longer serves a purpose, states now have the political support necessary to pursue waivers and to continue with bold, critical reforms. Pursuing this “new way” increases states’ legitimacy for current reform efforts such as teacher evaluations where it can be challenging to establish broad popular support. Many teachers express concern, for example, about the design and use of new evaluation systems. In exchange for increased flexibility from the No Child Left Behind Act, the Education Department requires states to commit to meet four principles:

  • Adopting college- and career-ready expectations for all students
  • Creating state-defined accountability systems that reward success and promote improvement
  • Supporting effective instruction and leadership, including the adoption of teacher- and principal-evaluation systems
  • Reducing redundant or unnecessary reporting requirements for schools and districts

Within these larger principles, the Education Department made specific requests. States can “borrow strength” from the federal government when the Education Department sets national priorities for education. In order to receive flexibility, for example, the department requires that principal and teacher evaluations include student-growth data. Across the country, evaluating teachers partly based on student test scores remains very controversial. Through its flexible guidelines, the department has put forward a more balanced approach that is the new norm for teacher evaluation: Student learning is a critical component of teachers’ work, but their test scores should be one of many aspects when measuring effective teaching. The department’s position establishes the right path by moving state reform forward and ensuring that evaluations include meaningful student performance. At least 27 states are already developing or implementing teacher- and principal-evaluation systems that would satisfy the waiver requirements. Discontent with the existing NCLB law combined with these new requirements increases states’ power to sustain necessary but politically difficult reforms.

States can use federal resources more effectively to improve schools

Flexibility gives state education leaders the option to put federal dollars to better use in accomplishing important educational goals. Consider, for example, the funds of the 21st Century Community Learning Center, or 21st CCLC, that were established through No Child Left Behind to support academic enrichment activities for students outside of school hours. Without a waiver, states can only use this money for afterschool and out-of-school activities. Flexibility, however, enables states to use these funds to expand the school day or year to provide more time for student learning—a powerful intervention when students use the additional time for high-quality activities.

As recent CAP publications highlight, Massachusetts, New York, and at least a dozen other states have already pledged to use 21st CCLC funds to provide more learning time for students in more schools. Before Massachusetts signed the waiver, for example, about 75 schools in the state operated under an expanded school calendar. With new flexibility, the state intends to increase the number of schools using expanded learning time as a way to improve many more of its lowest-performing schools. This is a promising development, and CAP has called on more states to follow their lead.

Ambitious school-performance goals can now meet states’ needs

With new flexibility state education leaders no longer need to manage their schools under two accountability systems—one developed by the state and one prescribed by federal law. States can move away from the No Child Left Behind Act’s narrow, unrealistic, and unpopular goals to broader, more attainable, but still ambitious objectives. Many states applied for waivers, for example, to guarantee “a unified accountability system.” North Carolina no longer requires schools to met “adequate yearly progress,” a one-dimensional measure not useful for planning improvements. Instead, the state will be able to provide useful information across a small set of state-determined school-performance measures, holding local leaders accountable for student proficiency and growth in ways more directly linked to action.

In the process of obtaining flexibility, states such as North Carolina worked with the U.S. Department of Education to set performance goals that meet federal expectations and states’ specific needs. Such shared work between state and federal education agencies is unprecedented and sets the stage for future collaborative work that continues to serve the best interests of students.

States increase their capacity for school improvement

The U.S. Department of Education recognized that one of the No Child Left Behind Act’s unintended consequences was “an over-identification of schools as ‘failing,’” and therefore requiring automatic attention. The nation’s schools need a great deal of improvement, of course, but states lack the capacity to improve all of their so-called failing schools at the same time. Before receiving flexibility, states used their limited time and expertise attempting to “assist” too many schools at once with only a light touch. The waivers allow them to focus their attention and money on the schools that need the most support.

Twenty-two states recently asserted that their new accountability and support systems will strengthen state education agencies’ capacity and effectiveness. Now these states can leverage their limited staff and funding in ways that support a much more manageable set of schools, which will significantly improve the odds of successful school improvement.

Conclusion

Flexibility from the No Child Left Behind Act gives states new opportunities to implement important education reforms such as evaluating teachers more meaningfully, expanding learning time for students, and setting higher standards for student learning in English and math. Now states can determine realistic and ambitious expectations for school performance and can provide more personalized and stronger support to the schools most in need. Moving forward the Education Department and states should continue to work together to ensure that states will meet their pledged goals.

 
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Posted by on April 23, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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The Benefits of Being Stupid at Work

22 Apr

By Megan Hustad | Fortune –

  • Yahoo! Finance/Getty Images -

Would you rather be thoughtless and successful or intelligent and frustrated?

A recent article in the New Scientist addressed the never-ending ignorance-as-bliss debate with the following question: If being intelligent was an evolutionary advantage, “why aren’t we all uniformly intelligent?” The obvious, unscientific answer: Probably for the same reasons we aren’t uniformly good-looking. But is being smart always to your benefit? Are there instances when stupid works better?

Stupidity can increase efficiency, claims Mats Alvesson, professor of organization studies at Lund University in Sweden. In a Journal of Management Studies article titled “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organisations” Alvesson and colleague André Spicer explain how what they call “functional stupidity” generally helped get things done. “Critical reflection and shrewdness” were net positives, but when too many clever individuals in an organization raised their hands to suggest alternative courses of action or to ask “disquieting questions about decisions and structures,” work slowed.

The study’s authors found that stupidity, on the other hand, seemed to have a unifying effect. It boosted productivity. People content in an atmosphere of functional stupidity came to consensus more easily, and with that consensus came greater roll-up-our-sleeves enthusiasm for concentrating on the job.

Superior intelligence often comes with hidden costs. Say you’re a person for whom schoolwork was always effortless. You may be more likely to become frustrated when a job doesn’t yield readily to effort.

“I often think that having had to work harder for good grades would have taught me much earlier that not everything worth doing comes easily — and not being immediately good at something doesn’t mean that mastery can’t come with hard work,” says Sara Grace, host of Ferrazzi Greenlight’s “Social Capitalist” podcast.

Decreased diligence is only half of it. In some job situations, being smarter, faster, and more rhetorically gifted might also keep you stuck in your current role longer than your peers.

“When you have a lower-level job, being exceptionally good at it is usually a deterrent to getting promoted,” says Lilit Marcus, author of Save the Assistants: A Guide for Surviving and Thriving in the Workplace. For example, “when you’re such a great assistant that your boss has difficulty functioning without you, it means that he or she will keep you on as an assistant as long as possible and will not consider promoting you out of their service.”

This echoes some of the wisdom dispensed in the 1970s bestseller The Peter Principle. Smart people are more likely to imagine they can push their way up an organization. But critical career advancements, as Sheryl Sandberg confesses in Lean In, are often made when a sponsor higher up on the ladder decides to pull you up with them.

Falling flat on your face — either from stupidity or attempting something you don’t do well — can also quiet your critics, as the author F. Scott Fitzgerald discovered when his play — the unfortunately titled The Vegetable – opened to withering reviews. “Ever since he started to write … it has been difficult for us to forgive him his brilliance,” Frederic F. Van de Water wrote. “Now that he has written The Vegetable it should be easier.”

But one can’t in good conscience recommend public failure as a career-builder. After all, there is a major difference between actually being slower on the uptake and acting as if you are a few cards short of a deck. The trick is not to play dumb, exactly, but rather to learn when to assert your superior intelligence and when to hide your light under a bushel. (And mix metaphors.)

In other words, there’s being terrifically clever, and there’s making sure everyone realizes you’re terrifically clever. Those of us who don’t feel the urge to make sure everyone in the room understands, at every available opportunity, just how smart we are might do best of all.

For one, it can help you avoid unnecessary confrontation. A New York-based property developer says that instead of constantly arguing with a partner who bi-weekly comes up with impossible schemes, he responds as if he has no objection with the proposed idea whatsoever. So the business partner wants to walk away from a $500,000 project? Sure! Let’s do that. Great idea. Then, he says, he quickly pivots into implementing the plan — asking which four employees they’d need to can, what orders should be cancelled, and so on down the list of implications. Invariably, the partner reconsiders.

By acting as if he was unable to marshal a strong argument against an iffy plan, the developer let his partner maintain a sense of superiority and spared himself the fallout from a potentially long and drawn-out conflict.

If you’re not worried about being perceived as a bit slow, you can ask better questions — better in the sense that they will likely yield more illuminating answers. This is particularly helpful during negotiations. Asking “dumb” questions “draws out more information that the opposing party may not have shared otherwise,” says project manager turned travel entrepreneur Jeni James. “There is also basic psychology around people being uncomfortable with silence and therefore, if you just remain quiet, appearing ‘slow,’ the opposing party will become uncomfortable, trying to fill the silence and talk, revealing details they maybe shouldn’t.”

When discussing Google’s radically pared-down look — just a search bar on an otherwise empty page — Marissa Mayer explained that its simple interface was a conscious attempt to mimic a Swiss Army knife. “When you see a knife with all 681 functions opened up, you’re terrified,” Mayer, then Google’s (GOOG) product manager, told an interviewer back in 2002. “That’s how other sites are — you’re scared to use them. Google has that same level of complexity, but we have a simple and functional interface on it, like the Swiss Army knife closed.”

“Functional” is the key word here. Stupid works if you’re smart enough to know when not to be.

 
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Posted by on April 22, 2013 in African American Employment

 

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Turning on Turnitin: Software to detect student plagiarism is faced with renewed criticism

16 Apr

Software to detect student plagiarism is faced with renewed criticism from the faculty members who may confront more plagiarism than do most of their colleagues – college writing professors.

Members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication passed a resolution at their annual convention last month to denounce plagiarism detection services, including products like Turnitin.

According to the resolution, “plagiarism detection services can compromise academic integrity by potentially undermining students’ agency as writers, treating all students as always already plagiarists, creating a hostile learning environment, shifting the responsibility of identifying and interpreting source misuse from teachers to technology, and compelling students to agree to licensing agreements that threaten their privacy and rights to their own intellectual property.”

The resolution formalized a long-simmering faculty resistance to the services, which come in the form of software. While many faculty members use the software enthusiastically, some — especially in composition — argue that the software oversimplifies a complex issue, shifts responsibility from people to technology and breeds mistrust between students and teachers.

CCCC Chair Chris Anson said there were a number of problems with the detection services, including instructors who rely on the software to do key parts of their job.

“Their job is to pay attention to assignments,” Anson, a professor at North Carolina State University, said of faculty members. “They shouldn’t be finding ways to get around that responsibility, which is an important one.”

The makers of Turnitin, a product that is used to check 80 million student papers for plagiarism and other issues, called the vote by the CCCC the action of a vocal minority.

“Like any technology that is highly adopted, it is going to have its critics and we have a small, vocal minority in the four Cs [as the composition group is known] that, we believe, misinterpret how the technology is used,” said a company spokesman, Chris Harrick.

It’s unclear how many CCCC members voted on the resolution, but the vote took place during a “business meeting” that Anson said was attended by a smaller group.

Why wouldn’t professors want help detecting cheating in an age where students can copy and paste material from the Internet, turn in others’ old work as their own or even buy custom term papers?

Anson said plagiarism could be reduced and made easy to detect with the human eye if professors gave students unique assignments and worked with students rather than cutting them loose with a deadline.

“Those kind of practices can help teachers teach better and help students subvert the possibilities of plagiarism, which can often happen because they are unsupported,” Anson said.

He said professors can cut down on the necessity or possibility for plagiarism by tweaking assignments. For instance, instead of asking about characterization in King Lear, Anson suggested professors ask students to write letters from the point of view of Cordelia, Lear’s loyal but shunned daughter.

“The most easily plagiarized papers are the ones on the most stereotypical projects,” he said.

Anson said CCCC members also feel the goal of software like Turnitin is to “catch and punish” students rather than to teach them. He said some cases of suspected plagiarism the software flags are not plagiarism but poor citation or students who do not understand academic conventions.

Renee Swensen, a professor at Saddleback College who does consulting work for Turnitin and responded to questions about CCCC’s resolution on behalf of the company, said she uses it as a tool to help students.

“It’s an opportunity for discussion rather than some sort of ancillary tool for the instructor to see what the students have been doing behind closed doors,” Swensen said.

Swensen, who has attended CCCC’s convention in the past, said this year’s vote was “somewhat myopic” and the product of a vocal few who have been agitating against the technology for years.

“It’s a tool,” she said. The important question is “how do you use it?”

Anson also complained about Turnitin’s practice of building its database by including submitted student papers. The company says it has “300+ million archived student papers” to aid its plagiarism detection efforts. The practice has been the subject of unsuccessful litigation against the company.

“Talk about taking work without attribution – they are taking students’ work without compensation. So it’s a strange, underhanded violation of intellectual property rights on behalf of students,” Anson said.

 
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Posted by on April 16, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Department of Education announces that 20 new schools will open in the Bronx next fall

11 Apr

New high schools will prepare students for careers in health or software engineering


BY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Samuel Gompers High School, where new HERO high school will be located.

ERICK VIVIDOR VIA PANORAMIO

Samuel Gompers High School, where new HERO high school will be located.

Bronx high schoolers can prepare for careers in health care and software design at two new schools set to open in September.

When pulpils attending the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering (BASE) or the Health, Education and Research Occupations (HERO) High School graduate, they can transition directly into careers or college, according to city education officals.

“It’s really just an incredible opportunity for students,” Kristin Cahill, the proposed principal of the 650-student HERO High School said. “We will offer a very safe, supportive and inclusive environment.”

The two high schools are among 20 new schools scheduled to open in the borough next school year – including the Highbridge Green School, which is environmentally friendly.

In total, 78 new schools will open citywide in September.

At the software academy, located at the Grace Dodge High School campus near Fordham University, students will learn programming languages like Java and C++, mobile app development for smart phones and web design.

Ben Grossman, proposed principal for the BASE high school in Belmont, said the high school will enable graduates to excel in the computer science, programming and software engineering industries.

“We are very much building a program to reflect the new, knowledge-based economy,” Grossman said. “Students will be studying computer science from their first day of high school, all the way to their senior year.”

At HERO High, students can obtain their associates degree at the school, for free, Cahill said. They’ll have access to all of the facilities at Hostos Community College, HERO’s partner school, and have opportunities for work experience at Montefiore Medical Center.

When they graduate, HERO students can obtain employment as registered nurses or community health workers. Cahill noted registered nurses can draw beginning salaries of $68,000 a year.

Cahill said her vision for the 650-student school, located on the Samuel Gompers Campus, is a place that will give students the skills they need for well paying, sought-after careers while closing the achievement and income inequality gap.

“In order to fill these jobs, we need to prepare students,” Cahill said. “Students need those academic skills and technical training.”

jcunningham@nydailynews.com.

 
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Posted by on April 11, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Male African-American unemployment is over 50 percent among dropouts

05 Apr

More than half of male African-American high school dropouts are unemployed, according to a new online analysis of unemployment data by Remapping Debate, a left-of-center news site in New York.

“This is an emergency, this is a catastrophe [but Washington is] not rating it as a catastrophe,” said the site’s editor, Craig Gurian, told The Daily Caller.

The rate is “unbelievable, it is unbelievable,” said a Republican Senate staff member.

The online data shows the unemployment rates for 270 subgroups of Americans.

White men with a university degree have the lowest level of unemployment, at only 2.9 percent, when averaged over the last year, according to the analysis.

The group with the highest average unemployment rate are young male African-American high school dropouts, at 51.6 percent.

The unemployment rate for all male and female African-American dropouts is 30 percent, said the report.

But African-Americans who graduated from high-school did little better. Their 12-month unemployment rate is 26 percent.

Those rates do not include people who have given up looking for work or part-time workers who want full-time jobs, said Gurian.

In contrast, the national employment rate for younger college grads of all types is 7.1 percent.

The database was released as progressive activists and corporations push for passage of a new immigration bill that would allow companies to bring in more unskilled and professional foreign workers, provide work permits to 11 million illegal immigrants that are already in the country, and also allow those immigrants to win visas for members of their extended family.

The top leaders of most African-American advocacy groups, including the NAACP and the Urban League, have lined up with other progressive leaders — led by President Barack Obama — to support the proposed immigration reforms.

According to multiple economic analyses offered by advocates and opponents of large-scale immigration, the inflow of foreign workers hits low-skilled Americans hardest.

In contrast, wealthier Americans gain from cheap labor as reduce the price of labor-intensive personal services, such as gardening and daycare, and by increasing the value of company stocks.

The RemappingDebate chart illustrates the sharp divide between the employment of low-skilled people and those who graduate from college, including those who graduate with no technical skills.

The unemployment rate for all college grads is 3.9 percent.

White college graduates’ rate is a little lower, at 3.7. The unemployment rate for Hispanic college grads is 5.3 percent, and the unemployment rate for African-American college grades is 6.2 percent.

In contrast, the unemployment rate is 18.9 percent for young people who only graduate from high-school and did not attend any college. It is 27.4 percent for people who did quit high-school without a diploma.

The college-high school gap in employment and wages widened during the 1990s and 2000s as companies hired people to build and install waves of new, productivity-boosting technology, such as computers, robots and automated services.

But since the decade-long property bubble bust in late 2007, that gap has narrowed, according to a new study by Paul Beaudry, an economist at the University of British Columbia. The paper, titled The Great Reversal in the Demand for Skill and Cognitive Tasks, was published at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The gap has narrowed because the economy has stalled, and because increased productivity since 2000 means that relatively fewer high-skilled people are needed by companies, said Beaudry’s paper.

These days, young and older college grads are being forced to take unskilled jobs, which were previously held by unskilled Americans.

The new database doesn’t show what kind of jobs are held by college grads, said Gurian. “That college grad could be in fact be employed at The Gap [retail store] and it would still show up as somebody who is employed,” he told The Daily Caller.

The marketplace trend was showcased by a March 27 article in the Wall Street Journal, which quoted an African-American woman from Chicago, Tamela Augusta. The 42-year old woman, who spent two years in college, lost her secretarial job and now finds herself competing against college grads for a new job.

“In the past, [employers] were pretty much looking for people that had a high school diploma,” she said.

 
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Posted by on April 5, 2013 in African American Employment

 

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The Economics of Leaning In

03 Apr

Sheryl Sandberg is being cast as the Betty Friedan of her generation.

In case you missed the 43-year-old Facebook executive speaking with Oprah or on the cover of Time, the thesis of her “Lean In” book is this: We have educated a generation of women well, but too few make it to the top rungs. That’s partly because of societal barriers and subtle biases remain, partly because of women’s behavior.

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Ms. Sandberg argues that, among other things, this is economically self-defeating. “If we tapped the entire pool of human resources and talent, our collective performance would improve,” she says.

That part of her memoir-cum-manifesto sounds appealing. Is it true?

One clue lies in looking at how far we’ve come. In 1960, about 95% of U.S. doctors and lawyers were white men. By the end of the 2000s, about two-thirds were. To varying degrees, the same goes for other high-skilled professions.

The U.S. economy has had a pretty good run since 1960, despite its recent travails. Per capita income has increased about 2.75 times.

Economists at Stanford University and the University of Chicago wondered how much of that growth came from harnessing the talent of women and blacks who previously had been barred from schooling or excluded from choice jobs or entire professions.

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Sheryl Sandberg

Their answer: a lot.

They estimate that between 1960 and 2008, about 15% to 20% of the growth in productivity, or output per hour of work, came from removing the barriers that blocked many white women and blacks of both genders from realizing their potential. Most of the economywide gains came from white women because they’re a bigger fraction of the workforce than blacks.

“In the 1960s, there were a large number of women and blacks who had the talent to be very successful and productive doctors, lawyers and managers,” says one of the economists, Stanford’s Chad Jones. “In 1960, some barriers kept them from working in occupations best suited to their talents. Over time, this has changed. The ever-improving allocation of talent has led to substantial productivity.”

Talented women have plenty of drive, says Jody Greenstone Miller in a conversation with WSJ Weekend Review editor Gary Rosen. What they need is employers with the imagination to accept a new approach to structuring work.

That’s convincing. Barriers that blocked women hurt the entire economy.

“A lot has happened since Betty Friedan wrote her book ["The Feminine Mystique"] in 1963,” says Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economic historian. “It’s amazing.” More than 57% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2011 went to women, according to the Department of Education. So did 51% of doctorates, 48% of M.D.’s, 47% of law degrees and 45% of master’s degrees in business.

Yet only 14% of Fortune 500 chief executives are female. Fewer than one in five law-firm partners is female; the same ratio goes for the House of Representatives.

Ms. Sandberg asks: How come? “It’s time for us to face the fact that our revolution has stalled,” she writes.

“Sheryl is saying that women aren’t, for some reason, allowing themselves to get to the top,” says Ms. Goldin, who has studied women’s changing roles in the economy.

The Sandberg recipe for women who want to change that: 1) Sit at the table. You’re as good as anyone else there. 2) Don’t curtail your career aspirations in anticipation of having children. As she puts it, “Don’t leave before you leave.” And 3) find a mate who wants for you what you want, as Ms. Sandberg did on her second try.

That is sound advice.

But it doesn’t tell us how much more oomph the U.S. economy would get if it achieved Ms. Sandberg’s version of nirvana in which “women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”

To the extent that couples are making choices that prompt one of them, in Ms. Sandberg’s words, to “pull back” from high-powered careers rather than “lean in,” the dollars and cents of the nation’s gross domestic product is reduced.

That doesn’t, of course, mean the nation is worse off. Investing in the kids doesn’t show up immediately in the GDP, but surely pays off—both in satisfaction and in future prosperity.

Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate who pioneered the study of the economics of discrimination, says, “A lot of barriers [to women and blacks] have been broken down. That’s all for the good.”

But, he adds, “it’s much less clear what we see today is the result of such artificial barriers. Going home to take care of the kids when the man doesn’t: Is that a waste of a woman’s time? There’s no evidence that it is.”

Calculations by Mr. Jones and his co-authors, though, suggest there’s still a long way to go: There are still obstacles to be dismantled, whether societal or inside women’s heads.

“We are little over halfway there,” says Mr. Jones. There are still men holding jobs that women would do better. “Productivity could be 9% to 15% higher, potentially, if all barriers were eliminated.”

That’s big.

 
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Posted by on April 3, 2013 in African American Education News, African American Employment

 

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College Admissions: Ivy League Acceptance Rates Decline

03 Apr

College Admissions
DANIEL BARRY / BLOOMBERG / GETTY IMAGESStudents walk across the campus of Columbia University in New York City

Gaining entry into an Ivy League school is getting tougher every year. The prestigious group of eight colleges and universities recently made their admissions decisions, and all but one decreased their already low acceptance rates.

Harvard University was the most selective of the bunch, accepting a record-low 5.8% of its 33,531 applicants. It was followed by Yale University, which admitted 6.72% of its record-high 29,610 applicants, and Columbia University, which dropped its acceptance rate from 7.4% last year to 6.89% this year.

A larger applicant pool helped fuel increased selectivity. Cornell University received a record 40,006 applications and accepted 15.2% of them — down from 16.2% last year. The University of Pennsylvania saw applications inch up from 31,218 to 31,280 this year, and admitted 12.1%. Brown University saw applications dip very slightly, but still accepted just 9.2% of applicants. Princeton University, which has seen a 93.5% increase in applications in the past nine years, accepted just 7.29% of this year’s 26,498 applicants. Princeton says its acceptance rate was down from 7.86% last year because it overenrolled the current freshman class by about 50 students and is compensating by accepting 18 fewer students each year for the next three years. Dartmouth College was the only member to increase its rate of admission, which rose slightly from 9.8% last year to 10.05%. Taken together, the Ivy League received 247,283 applications and admitted 23,010 prospective students, making for a collective acceptance rate of 9.3%.

Even more selective than the Ivy schools was Stanford University, which has developed a reputation for minting technology entrepreneurs. The Palo Alto, Calif., university accepted a record-low 5.69% of its 38,828 applicants this year, down from a 6.6% admit rate last year. “We’re not doing that and then gloating,” says Richard Shaw, Stanford’s dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid. “I’m disappointed by it. My message is, I’m really sorry to all those kids who are really amazing and we can’t accommodate.” Shaw says the primary reason for Stanford’s lowered acceptance rate was a record-high number of applicants, especially among first-generation and international students.

Admission to other coveted universities was just as hard to come by. The University of Chicago accepted 8.8% of the record 30,369 applications it received. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just 8.2% of a record-high 18,989 applicants were accepted — a new low for the school. “We’re becoming more popular — that’s good, I suppose,” says Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions. He says the school had to be particularly rigorous this year because last year so many of their admits chose to enroll that they were unable to accept any wait-listed students.

 

For many of these schools the ever lower acceptance rates are the result of bulging application pools. According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, the number of high school graduates in the U.S. steadily increased for 15 years before peaking at 3.4 million graduates in 2010–11. But there are still some 3.2 million students graduating each year, and they’re applying to colleges alongside high school seniors from around the world. And all those students are applying to more colleges than ever, thanks in large part to the Common App, a single application and essay that is accepted at 488 schools, including the vast majority of selective schools. According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 79% of students in 2011 applied to three or more colleges, up from 67% in 2000. “More people are applying for the same small number of elite colleges than there ever have been — there are a gazillion applications for every spot,” says Rachel Toor, an author, college-admissions counselor and former Duke University admissions officer. “Even when you tell them only 6% get in, they still think, maybe I’ll be the one. Mostly, they’re not.”

Though prestigious schools get thousands more applications than they could ever accept, they don’t exactly discourage the interest. “Everyone wants to keep their admit rate low because that makes you more selective, which gives you a higher place on the college rankings,” Toor says. “People in admissions say they don’t pay attention to rankings, but of course they do.”

While highly selective schools issue a lot of noes, there are some 2,000 other universities in the U.S. with much higher admission rates — many of which accept more than 50% of applicants. “In the end, they’re all going to go to a college, and the vast majority of our applicants will go to college and be very happy,” says Stanford’s Shaw. “It’s just a matter of accepting that there are great alternatives.”

 

 
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Posted by on April 3, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Helping adults plan for their education futures

03 Apr

 

Esmeralda Cruz was nervous about making the transition from Milwaukee Area Technical College to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Michael Brown wanted to complete his GED (General Education Diploma) and begin to turn his life around after some struggles.

Both Cruz and Brown found support in reaching their goals through the federally funded Educational Opportunity Center (EOC), based at UWM but serving eligible adults from all over Milwaukee County.

The center’s advisers help students set education goals, plan for the future and enroll in programs. The EOC’s services are free to low-income adults who are residents of Milwaukee County and the first in their families to go to trade or technical schools or college.

Success stories

Cruz, who is now a business management major at UWM, was worried about making the transfer from MATC to the university. “I was concerned UWM would be very different from MATC, and I wasn’t sure how I would do. I had stereotyped myself…that as a Latina woman and an older student I wouldn’t be able to do it. I know better now, but at the time I was concerned.”

With a daughter in third grade, Cruz was also concerned about balancing family needs with her academic work.

“The Educational Opportunity Center helped me make that transfer from MATC to UWM.” Now she’s confident that she will earn that accounting degree so she can help her husband in their family business, and perhaps become an entrepreneur herself.

Brown was working to overcome personal problems when he discovered the EOC. “I was determined to do something to help myself and the Lord presented this opportunity.” EOC director and adviser Rita Muwonge was working at an EOC location near his home, and helped him get started on his journey to a new life.

With her help and encouragement, he went on to earn his high school diploma and enrolled at MATC in Oak Creek, learning the skills for a new career as a carpenter and cabinetmaker. “I’ve always liked working with my hands, but before I didn’t have the education to do the measuring and drafting.”

Those success stories and others illustrate the work of the EOC, says Muwonge.

“Our mission is to expand awareness about educational opportunities and postsecondary education options to low-income, first-generation college students who are Milwaukee County adult residents,” she adds.

The EOC works in collaboration with MATC, the YWCA, United Migrant Opportunity Services (UMOS), the Social Development Commission and a wide variety of community-based social service providers, employment agencies, and other organizations.

A wealth of services

EOC advisers can help adults plan for their individual career and academic goals.

They also work with potential students to select a college and handle admission and financial aid applications.

The advisers can help students with study habits, time management and computer skills, and connect them with mentors and tutors.

In addition, the EOC holds workshops on resources, financial aid and transferring from two-year to four-year programs, and hosts a variety of cultural programs.

“We all know that education is an important key to advancement, but the choices are sometimes complicated, and mistakes can be expensive,” says Muwonge.

“The college or university needs to fit an individual’s needs and financial situation.

“Many students we work with also have jobs and families to balance with their education. Our goal is to help them make the best decisions to meet their goals.”

For more information about the services of the EOC, call 414-229- 2917 or visit the website athttp://www4.uwm.edu/trio/eoc/.

Photo captions

Photo of Esmeralda Cruz by Peter Jakubowski. Photo of Michael Brown by Troye Fox.

 
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Posted by on April 3, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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African American Parents Gather To Address Student Performance Gap

02 Apr

Monday night meeting with the Newark Unified School District is similar to prior efforts to enlist parents of Latino and special education students in raising their test scores.

  

Parents of African American students met with officials of the Newark Unified School District Monday night in the first of what will likely be a series of meetings to get parents involved in efforts to raise their kids’ student test scores.

School Superintendent Dave Marken told Patch that Monday’s meeting was similar to gatherings that the district has already conducted with parents of Latino and special education students.

Marken said each of these three categories of students have been identified by state authorities as “significant groups” whose performance in standardized tests and other measures needs to be improved.

“The only way to find out their specific needs is by asking them,” Marken said of the parents invited to Monday’s meeting.

Marken said the District has been holding such conclaves with Latino parents for a couple of years. The parents of special needs students tend to get together at the school level when issues arise, he said.

Monday’s meeting was the District’s first effort to get African American parents into the process of figuring out how to help their children close a performance gap. Marken said about two dozen parents attended the 90-minute meeting.

“It’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child,” Marken said, characterizing Monday’s meeting as an effort to connect with parents who may feel “disenfranchised” by the school system.

 
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Posted by on April 2, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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10 Models for Student-Loan Repayment

26 Mar

 

by Sarah Ayres
Metropolitan State StudentsSOURCE: AP/Ed AndrieskiStudents walk the campus at Metropolitan State University in Denver, Thursday, February 28, 2013.Download the details of all 10 models (PDF)Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.

As more students are struggling to pay back their student loans after graduation, it is now more important than ever for borrowers to have access to a student-loan-repayment plan that eases the burden of repayment and minimizes the risk of default. Students today face staggeringly high tuition bills, a youth unemployment rate of 12.5 percent, and a complicated assortment of student-loan-repayment plans that can be difficult to navigate even for the borrowers lucky enough to find well-paying employment. Recognizing these obstacles, President Barack Obama and Congress have expanded student-loan repayment options, and advocates have proposed various plans to make it easier for borrowers to pay back school debt. Even with these advances, however, it is clear that existing student-loan-repayment options aren’t working for many borrowers.

Borrowers of federal student loans are finding it increasingly difficult to make timely payments on their debt. With $864 billion in federal loans and $150 billion in private loans, student debt in America now exceeds $1 trillion. More than 13 percent of students whose loans came due in 2009 were in default on their debt as of September 2012, meaning that they hadn’t made a payment in at least nine months. What’s more, another 26 percent of borrowers were delinquent on their loans, meaning that they missed payments on their loans for more than 60 days. Borrowers who fall behind on their student-loan payments can face poor credit ratings and wage garnishment, and the federal government incurs additional costs as it attempts to recover the loans.

The Higher Education Act—which authorizes federal student-aid programs for postsecondary education and is up for reauthorization in 2013—provides an opportunity for policymakers to redesign the student-loan-repayment system. As Congress considers possible changes, it is important for everyone to understand the various options.

Everyone can agree that making it easier for students to pay back their loans will benefit both borrowers and federal balance sheets, and there are a number of existing and proposed plans designed to achieve this objective. As lawmakers evaluate the options, they should keep in mind that any student-loan-repayment system should be designed to provide a safety net to the low-income borrowers who need it most, to minimize defaults, and to be accessible and easy for students to use.

This issue brief will outline the parameters of 10 different student-loan-repayment plans, highlight the benefits of each, and suggest issues for policymakers to take into account when considering each plan.

10 student-loan-repayment plans

Existing repayment plans

Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan

The Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan is a plan that is currently available to all borrowers of federal student loans. Under the plan, the borrower fully repays the loan with interest by making the same fixed monthly payment every month for 10 years.

A borrower with a starting balance of $25,000 at 6.8 percent interest, for example, would make 120 payments of $287.70 each, for a total of $34,524.10.

The advantages of the Standard Repayment Plan are that borrowers will pay off their loans sooner—compared to most other repayment plans—and end up paying the least interest overall. The disadvantage of this plan, however, is that borrowers who start their careers with a low income may find making payments in the early years to be difficult or even impossible.

Graduated Repayment Plan

The Graduated Repayment Plan is also currently available to all borrowers of federal student loans. Under the plan, the borrower fully repays the loan with interest by making monthly payments that increase in time for 10 years.

The same borrower with a starting balance of $25,000 at 6.8 percent interest, for example, would make 120 monthly payments that start at $197.54 in the first two years of repayment and increase every two years until they reach $431.55 in the last year of repayment, for a total of $36,388.89.

The advantages of the Graduated Repayment Plan are that borrowers will still pay their loans off sooner than is the case with most other plans and are able to make lower monthly payments in the first years of employment, when their incomes are likely to be lowest. The disadvantages of the plan, however, are that borrowers will end up paying more interest than they would if they repay according to the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan; borrowers who start off with a very low income may still find that the early payments are difficult or impossible to make; and borrowers must make payments in later years that are substantially higher than they would have been under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan.

Extended Repayment Plan

The Extended Repayment Plan is currently available to borrowers of federal student loans who have a starting balance of more than $30,000. Under the plan, the borrower fully repays the loan with interest by making either fixed or graduated monthly payments for up to 25 years.

A borrower with a starting balance of $45,000 at 6.8 percent interest, for example, could make 300 payments of $312.33 each, for a total of $93,699.73. Alternatively, he or she could make 300 graduated payments—starting at $258.93 in the first two years of repayment and ultimately reaching $435.36 in the last year of repayment—for a total of $100,910.03.

The advantage of the Extended Repayment Plan is that borrowers with more debt are able to make lower, more affordable payments by extending the length of the repayment period. The disadvantages of the plan, however, are that borrowers will pay more interest overall and borrowers who start off with a very low income may still find that the early payments are difficult or impossible to make.

Income-based repayment

Borrowers who took out loans before 2008 are eligible for income-based repayment, in which they may make monthly payments based on 15 percent of their discretionary incomes if they face financial hardship. Under income-based repayment, a borrower makes monthly payments equal to 15 percent of his or her income above 150 percent of the poverty line and any unpaid principal or interest is forgiven after 25 years. Under the plan, the minimum monthly payment may never be greater than what the borrower would have paid under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan. Under income-based repayment, borrowers employed full time in public service may qualify for loan forgiveness after 10 years.

A borrower with a starting balance of $25,000 at 6.8 percent interest, for example, would make monthly payments of $38 in his or her first year of repayment when his or her income is $22,000. Years later, when the borrower’s income increases to $70,000, he or she would only have to make minimum monthly payments of $289—the same amount he or she would have paid under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan.

The advantages of income-based repayment are that borrowers will have manageable payments when their incomes are low and loan forgiveness after 25 years of payments. The disadvantages of income-based repayment, however, are that borrowers will accrue more interest than they would if repay according to the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan; they must submit annual documentation of income and family size to demonstrate eligibility; and they will have to pay taxes on any loan forgiveness that occurs after 25 years.

Pay as You Earn

Borrowers who took out loans after 2008 are eligible for Pay as You Earn, in which they may make monthly payments based on 10 percent of their discretionary incomes if they face financial hardship. Under Pay as You Earn, a borrower makes monthly payments equal to 10 percent of his or her income above 150 percent of the poverty line and any unpaid balance is forgiven after 20 years. As with income-based repayment, the minimum monthly payment may never be greater than what the borrower would have paid under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan. Also as with income-based repayment, borrowers employed full time in public service may qualify for loan forgiveness after 10 years.

Under Pay as You Earn, the borrower in the earlier example with a starting balance of $25,000 at 6.8 percent interest would make monthly payments of $25 in his or her first year of repayment when his or her income is $22,000. Even when the borrower’s income grows to $60,000, he or she would only have to make monthly payments of $284, less than the amount he or she would have paid under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan.

The advantages of Pay as You Earn are that a borrower will have low monthly payments when his or her income is low, although the payments for low-income borrowers are not significantly less than they would be under income-based repayment—$25 instead of $38 in the above example. The borrower also has the opportunity for forgiveness after just 20 years.

The disadvantages of Pay as You Earn, however, are that borrowers must submit annual documentation of income and family size to demonstrate eligibility and will have to pay taxes on any loan forgiveness that occurs after 20 years. As analysts at the New America Foundation have suggested, the biggest beneficiaries of the program might be high-income, high-debt borrowers who receive substantial loan forgiveness after 20 years.

Consolidation

Consolidation is currently available to borrowers who have multiple loans and would like to combine them into a single loan. Under consolidation, the newly combined loan carries a fixed interest rate based on the weighted average of the interest rates of the underlying loans rounded to the nearest higher one-eighth of a percent and not exceeding 8.25 percent. A borrower with $15,000 in unsubsidized federal Stafford loans at 6.8 percent and $20,000 in federal direct PLUS graduate loans at 7.9 percent, for example, would be able to consolidate his or her loans into one $35,000 consolidation loan at 7.5 percent.

After consolidating, a borrower repays the loan by making payments that are fixed, graduated, or income-based for up to 30 years, with the length of the repayment period depending on the size of the loan. Under the Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan, for instance, the borrower in our example would make payments of $281.96 per month, for a total of $67,669.83.

The main advantage of consolidation is that a borrower can combine his or her multiple loans into a single loan with a single monthly payment. The disadvantage of consolidation, however, is that a borrower will pay more interest overall by extending the length of the repayment period.

Options for repayment reform

New America Foundation plan

Under the New America Foundation’s new proposal to reform federal student aid, all borrowers would repay their loans based on a percentage of their incomes. A borrower whose income is less than 300 percent of the poverty line would make minimum monthly payments of 10 percent of his or her income above 150 percent of the poverty line. A borrower whose income is greater than 300 percent of the poverty line would make minimum monthly payments of 15 percent of his or her income. Unlike both income-based repayment and Pay as You Earn, there is no upper limit on the minimum payment amount—a borrower must always make payments equaling 15 percent of his or her discretionary income.

Under the New America Foundation plan, student-loan interest rates are set at the 10-Year Treasury rate plus 3 percent. Under that formula, the rate on loans taken out in the 2012–13 academic year would be 4.9 percent. Borrowers with an initial loan balance of less than $40,000 would have any unpaid debt forgiven after 20 years, and borrowers with an initial loan balance of more than $40,000 would have any unpaid debt forgiven after 25 years. Unlike the current system, the New America Foundation plan would eliminate taxes on loan amounts that are forgiven.

The advantages of the New America Foundation plan are that borrowers will have low monthly payments when their incomes are low, loan forgiveness after either 20 or 25 years, and will not have to pay taxes on debt forgiveness. Furthermore, the plan targets federal dollars toward the low-income borrowers who need the most help. A possible disadvantage of the plan, however, is that students who take out loans when Treasury rates are high will face significantly higher interest rates on their loans.

Australian model

Under Australia’s current student-loan repayment plan, all borrowers repay a percentage of their incomes through payroll withholding. When a borrower reaches a minimum income threshold equivalent to about U.S. $50,000, a payment of 4 percent to 8 percent of income is collected through routine payroll deduction. Instead of charging interest, all loans are assessed a set fee of 25 percent of the initial balance of the loan, and the balance of the loan is then adjusted annually for inflation.

The advantages of the Australian model are that borrowers have either low or no payments when their incomes are low, never pay more than 8 percent of their incomes, and do not have to worry about paying more in interest if they take longer to repay their loans. Furthermore, borrowers do not have to choose between multiple repayment plans, set up monthly payments, or document their income in order to qualify for low or no payments.

A disadvantage of the Australian model, however, is that—because repayment occurs through tax collection—graduates who leave the country do not pay back their loans. According to a recent report by Australia’s Grattan Institute, an estimated 20 percent of Australian student-loan debt will never be paid off due to borrowers either earning too little or moving out of the country.

Petri Bill (ExCEL Act)

Under legislation proposed late last year by Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI), all student-loan borrowers would repay 15 percent of their discretionary incomes through payroll withholding. The bill would combine all federal loans into one loan with a fixed interest rate based on the 10-year Treasury rate plus 3 percentage points for loans up to $31,000 and 4.1 percentage points for loans exceeding $31,000. A borrower would repay 15 percent of his or her income above 150 percent of the poverty line through routine payroll deduction. Unlike with current repayment options, interest accrued during repayment would not compound, and interest would stop accruing when the total amount of interest accrued equals 50 percent of the loan’s original balance. Under the plan, there is no loan forgiveness for public service.

A borrower with a starting balance of $40,000, for example, would make monthly payments of $103 when his or her income is $25,000. Later, when his or her income increases to $75,000, he or she would make minimum monthly payments of $728.

The advantages of the Petri model are that borrowers have either low or no payments when their incomes are low and can only accrue a limited amount of interest. Moreover, they do not have to choose between multiple repayment plans, set up monthly payments, or document their income in order to qualify for low or no payments.

Additional issues to consider with this model involve the interest-rate calculation, the treatment of loans held by public servants, and the lack of deferment or forbearance. While 10-year Treasury rates have recently been as low as 1.9 percent, rates were as high as 15 percent in the 1980s. Under the Petri formula, this would result in student-loan interest rates ranging from 4.9 percent to 18 percent. The cap on accrued interest, however, may offer some protection to borrowers from extremely high interest rates. The Petri bill also eliminates loan forgiveness for public service and the option for deferment or forbearance that is currently available to borrowers in other plans under special circumstances such as economic hardship.

Lumni model

Lumni is a social enterprise that provides loans to students who agree to pay back a set percentage of their incomes to the lender after graduation. Under the Lumni model, the borrower typically agrees to pay between 4 percent and 8 percent of his or her first 10 years of income, with the percentage depending on the size of the loan and the borrower characteristics. The loan does not accrue interest, and the borrower may end up paying back more or less than the original amount of the loan depending on his or her income over 10 years.

In one example provided by Lumni, a nursing student in Colombia borrowed $8,530 from Lumni in exchange for agreeing to repay 14 percent of his salary for 118 months. If he makes the expected salary for a nurse, he will end up paying the equivalent of a 17 percent interest rate. If he is unable to find employment for a portion of that time, however, he might only repay the balance of the loan—or repay even less, if his eventual earnings are low.

An advantage of the Lumni model for students is that a borrower who struggles to find work or ends up in a low-paying career will never have to pay more than a certain percentage of his or her salary. A disadvantage, however, is that high-income borrowers may end up paying the equivalent of extremely high interest rates. One issue to consider is how Lumni determines payments—is there a poverty exemption, for example, or is there a salary below which borrowers do not make repayments?

Conclusion

Rising student debt and high default rates on student loans indicate that the safety net for student-loan borrowers is insufficient. This brief outlines 10 commonly discussed models for student-loan repayment, ranging from existing repayment plans to foreign models to proposed legislation. Key principles for student-loan repayment are that the system should:

  • Provide a safety net for borrowers who need it
  • Minimize defaults and delinquencies
  • Be easy to use

Easing the burden of repayment is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to fixing America’s student-debt crisis. Reforms must also address the rapidly increasing cost of college, the rise of for-profit colleges offering worthless credentials, expensive private student loans, the inability of borrowers to refinance their student loans at lower interest rates, and the restriction against discharging student loans in bankruptcy. As part of these broader reforms, lawmakers should place a priority on creating a student-loan repayment system that provides an adequate safety net for borrowers.

Sarah Ayres is a Policy Analyst with the Economic Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

 
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Posted by on March 26, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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School Closings: Subtle Move toward ‘Privatization’

25 Mar

 

  • Written by  Dorothy Rowley
Critics of the latest round of school closings mandated in January under the Gray/Henderson administration, doubt if they will result in improvements. In 2008, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee closed dozens of schools.Critics of the latest round of school closings mandated in January under the Gray/Henderson administration, doubt if they will result in improvements. In 2008, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee closed dozens of schools.Photo courtesy of Empower DC

Hundreds gathered for yet another rally last week to send a clear message to District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) Chancellor Kaya Henderson that her controversial plan to shutter 15 schools by the end of 2014 is a violation of civil rights.

Organizers provided an update during “The Save Our Schools Summit” on a lawsuit that will be filed next week to short-circuit Henderson’s mandate. The rally was co-sponsored by education councils from wards 5, 6, 7 and 8 and the grassroots advocacy group, Empower DC. The event, which took place on March 14 and attracted more than 200, was held at the Temple of Praise in Southeast, where the majority of the targeted schools are located.

“The closings are a cycle of unjust and discriminatory tactics,” said Daniel del Pielago, Empower DC education organizer. “… Under the previous administration, we’ve seen 29 schools close in the District, but with no notable increase in educational outcomes or savings to the city.”

Henderson has been under mounting pressure from parents and other critics since November when she first revealed her plan. But she has insisted that the closings are in the best interest of the 2,000 students who will be impacted.

Del Pielago, 39, added that in all probability, there won’t be any monetary savings with the round of closings slated to begin in August.

“The main problem that we see in this is that it’s disproportionately affecting communities of color and low-income students in the District,” del Pielago said. “The way they’re trying to reform D.C. public education is by closing down schools – and no one on the D.C. Council, not even the mayor is doing anything to control the growth of charter schools which are growing at a much faster rate than our traditional public schools.”

Empower DC initiated plans for the lawsuit which will be handled by former American Civil Liberties Union attorney Johnny Barnes, the self-described “people’s lawyer.” Barnes, 64, said in a recent interview that his strategy will be to stop the school closings altogether.

“Black and brown children are treated differently than others in this plan. Local and federal laws do not permit this.”

When Henderson, 43, unveiled her plan in November, 20 schools across the city were slated for closure. She said all of them were either under-enrolled or under-performing.

At the recommendation of the Chicago-based Illinois Facilities Fund – which invests heavily in charter schools in the Midwest – schools on Henderson’s list that were deemed under-performing would be merged with high-performing charter schools. That set off a flurry of public resentment, and following a series of community meetings – some of which Henderson attended – the chancellor returned to the table in January with a pared-down list of closings.

According to a report from the Northwest-based DC Fiscal Policy Institute, it’s doubtful if Henderson’s plan will be effective. The Institute reported that the two dozen schools that were ordered closed in 2008 by the former chancellor, cost District taxpayers more than $17 million and did not improve student test scores.

Henderson, who has been mum about the closings since her January announcement, was contacted for updated comments, but had not responded by WI press time.

Meanwhile, other community advocacy organizations are rallying behind Empower DC’s efforts, pointing out that closing schools east of the Anacostia River near the Maryland state line, is a front for gentrification and the eventual privatization of the DCPS system.

“They’re talking about closing schools in wards 6, 7 and 8, which are predominantly African-American populations, where at the same time, gentrification is taking place,” said Ayesha Fleary, a member of the grassroots coalition, Black is Back. “There’s already violence, poor teacher performance and [ineffective] programs in District public schools – and it’s not because the city doesn’t have the money to make improvements,” she said. “The education budget is there. They just chose not to spend it in those schools. They decided to close those schools because they decided that our children are disposable.”

Tim Baldauf-Lenschen, from the online-based UrWorld News and Media, cited capitalism as a root source for the closings.

“What we see going on is a privatization of the people’s common goods. Privatization even takes place with our drinking water with people around the globe having to pay. Just like privatization is taking away our natural resources, these school closings are taking away the right to public education.”

 
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Posted by on March 25, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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City students can’t seem to catch a (Spring) break

18 Mar

By SHEILA ANNE FEENEY

quot;Spring Breakersquot; movie (YouTube)

Photo credit: “Spring Breakers” movie (YouTube)

The boozy debauchery depicted in the new movie “Spring Breakers” appears to reflect a world of the past, and not a reality for most New York City college students.

Experts say the steam-releasing antics of spring break are increasingly giving way to staid studying, internships, and anything else to give future graduates an edge in a volatile economy.

“It’s a very competitive job market and people are really strapped with debt right now,” with college kids worried about diminishing job prospects, said Stephanie Sarkis, PhD, an adjunct assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

The pressures are higher for New York City students, according to Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, an assistant psychology professor at CUNY.

“Students here don’t have that many resources to go (on a beach vacation with friends) and the money they have they prefer to spend in other ways,” she said.

Jose Martinez, 20, a junior at NYU, is considering visiting his family in San Antonio, where Spring Break, he said is still “a big deal.”

Sivan Bruce, 19, a Columbia economics and sociology major, will be spending part of her vacation following a CUNY sociology professor in an internship.

“You have to do as much as you can to make yourself marketable: ‘Good luck on that midterm with the information you’ll probably never use for that job you’ll never have!’ Students here make a lot of jokes like that,” she said. As for the days she’s not shadowing the professor, “I really just want to get some sleep, honestly,” she said.

“In high school, I did things like that. I went to Panama City once,” recalled Derek Kim, 18.

Not now, though. This year, the Columbia freshman will be doing a Hallmark television internship with a Columbia alumnus to beef up his marketing skills. “I have a tendency to stress about things like careers,” he explained.

Those lucky enough to let loose and grab some rays after a long academic grind are acutely aware that certain past times need not be broadcast on line, where they risk an unfavorable judgment by potential employers.

Quentin Grigsby, 22, a Columbia senior who has a finance job lined up after graduation, will be going to Cabo San Lucas with friends.

The group, he said, has “a pact that all photos have to be approved,” before they are posted online. “Everyone here has a post-collegiate career they’re looking forward to,” Grigsby explained, adding, “You don’t want something like Spring Break to get in the way of that.”

(with Anna Sanders)

 
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Posted by on March 18, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Getting Married Later Is Great for College-Educated Women

15 Mar

Americans are getting married later and later. The average age of first marriage in the United States is 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 23 for women and 26 for men in 1990 and 20 and 22 (!) in 1960.

But what are the consequences of this trend? Who benefits and who suffers? “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America,” a new report from the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project examines those questions and, unsurprisingly, concludes that the answers are different depending on who you are. “The new norm has very divergent impacts on different groups of people,” said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and a sociology professor at UVa. “The benefits of delayed marriage in America really vary by class.” Indeed: College-educated women have largely benefited from marrying later; other demographic groups, however, are having a harder time adjusting to the rising marriage age.

Financially, college-educated women benefit the most from marrying later Women who marry later make more money per year than women who marry young. The average annual personal income for college-educated women in their mid-30s who married after age 30 is $50,415, compared with $32,263 for college-educated women of the same age who married before age 20–a 56 percent difference. Female high-school graduates who attended some college also enjoy higher wages if they wait to marry, though the gap is not as wide: Those who marry after 30 earn $22,286 a year by their mid-30s, while those who marry before 20 earn $18,234, a 22 percent difference.

knotyet_income.jpg

Financially, men of all education levels benefit from marrying earlier Men who marry in their 20s make more money by their mid-30s than men who marry after 30, regardless of education level.

knotyet_incomemen.jpg

College-educated women are unlikely to have a child before getting married For college-educated women, the average age of first birth (30) has risen along with the average age of marriage (27). Only 12 percent of births by college graduates are to unmarried women.

Women without college degrees are very likely to have a child before getting marriedLess-educated women have a much different experience with marriage and childbirth. For women without a college degree, the average age of first birth has not risen apace with the average age of marriage. The average age of first birth for this group is lower than the average marriage age. For women who dropped out of high school, the average age of first birth is 20, while the average marriage age is 25; 83 percent of first births in this demographic are to unmarried mothers. For women who graduated from high school and went to some college, the average age for first birth is 24 and the average marriage age is 27; 58 percent of first births are to unwed mothers.

Couples who are not married when they have children are far more likely to split upWhen couples are married when their first child is born, there’s a 13 percent chance they’ll separate within the first five year’s of the child’s life. When couples are cohabitating, their chances of breaking up within that period are 39 percent.

So the bottom line is, college-educated women are reaping most of the benefits of later marriage: They can enjoy the greater economic security that comes with marrying later, while still being able to have children in the relatively stable context of marriage. Women with lower education levels get a much smaller economic bump for marrying later and are less likely to to be married when they have their first child.

 
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Posted by on March 15, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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A Debt-Free Approach to Graduate Education for African-Americans

15 Mar

by Kelley Bass Jackson

Vinson

Bradley and Bonita Vinson suggested ways that African-American students can obtain a debt-free graduate education.

African-Americans bear a disproportionate amount of consumer debt in our nation’s economy. The wealth gap between African-Americans and average Americans continues to widen. One way to close that gap is through higher education.

The pursuit of graduate education increases the likelihood of even greater earning potential; however, more student loan debt can be a barrier to African-American students’ pursuit of graduate enrollment and completion and adversely impact their financial futures.

In a recent presentation to attendees of the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education’s (AABHE) Annual Conference, husband and wife finance gurus Bradley and Bonita Vinson exhorted that financial empowerment is the key to financial success. As the proprietors of Vinson Financial Consulting Services and creators of Your Personal Economy Financial Empowerment Seminars, Bradley and Bonita shared the fallacy of credit, the harmful effects of debt, how to get out of debt, and offered debt-free options to pursue when seeking advanced degrees.

Not only is living debt-free the bottom line of the Vinson’s lecture, it is also the premise. Before the Vinson team offered the debt-free approach to obtaining higher education, they felt it very important to share where African-Americans stand financially as a community and “how we got in here” in the first place.

Research studies reveal startling statistics and information about African-Americans’ economy. Taken from the Vinson’s presentation, let’s look at the statistics:

The Financial Status of African-Americans:

  • More than 1 trillion per year in buying power. (Making us the 16th largest country)
  • 48% adversely affected by the real estate crisis
  • 39% deals with lack of disposable income
  • 12% fear debt is unmanageable
  • 20% have taken loans from their 401K/retirement accounts to deal with debt

 

How we got here:

  • African-Americans earn only 61% of White Americans’ income
  • 54% of African-Americans have no savings
  • Less than 50% of African-Americans own a home compared to 70% of Whites
  • African-Americans are most frequent users of payday loans
  • African-Americans spend double that of Whites on the lottery

 

Where do we go from here? Firstly, there are practical things we can do to improve our individual financial statuses.

“The first thing I tell people to do is see where you are financially. A lot of people aren’t broke; they just mismanage their money,” Bradley Vinson said. “Pay yourself first. You don’t see wealthy people standing in the lottery lines. You see poor people standing in the lottery lines,” he said. “A lot of times it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you are giving away.”

The Vinsons preach a “debt-free” mantra to teach others how to get there. “The only thing a good FICO score will do for you is help you get into more debt,” he declared, adding that the way to financial success is not through an ability to acquire more debt, but through prudent money management and increasing your income.

“This is why graduate education is important, especially in the African-American community,” Bonita Vinson said. “The good news is the more education we have the more likely we are to earn more money.”

Based on the Vinson’s research, studies show that, as the educational level goes higher, African-Americans are less likely to have attained advanced degrees than non-Hispanics and Whites. Studies also show that, as even higher education levels are attained, the more the average income increases for those who have obtained advanced degrees.

There are other benefits to expect from receiving a graduate education in addition to increased wages. You can expect financial security; you can expect upward economic mobility; and you can expect increased career opportunities and options.

The Vinson’s acknowledge the actual and perceived barriers to getting a graduate education, such as the need to earn money, the need to support a family, the accumulation of more debt, and/or the inability to save. However, Bradley Vinson said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

The duo offered several avenues to finance a graduate education while overcoming some of those financial barriers.

 

Get paid to study:

  • Teaching/Graduate Assistantships
  • Employee Education Benefits (working for the federal government, banks, college Institutions, and other corporations that will supplement your education as an employee)
  • Internal and External Fellowships
  • Minority tuition and fee waivers/ Minority student stipends
  • Join professional organizations related to major African-American associations
  • Research fellowships, grants, stipends and loan forgiveness programs

 

Organizations that serve as a clearinghouse for assistance and guidance on educational funding:

  • The PhD Project (phdproject.com)
  • Commission on Institutional Cooperation (cic.uiuc.edu)
  • National Black Graduate Student Association (nbgsa.org)

 

Sample fellowships include:

  • Fellowships through Honor Societies, Fraternities, Sororities
  • Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral, Dissertation and Post-Doctoral Fellowships for Minorities
  • Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies
  • National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellowships

 

The Vinson’s encourage those applying for graduate fellowships to apply early. The deadlines are typically between September and February.

As certified financial consultants, Bonita and Bradley Vinson travel the country lecturing on financial empowerment. They believe it is their calling to teach others how to improve their finances and live debt-free. They teach from experience. They both acknowledge that getting there wasn’t always an easy road. But financial freedom has improved their lives so much that there is no going back.

Bradley Vinson’s final thought, “If you’re already hurting, at least hurt trying to get somewhere.”

 
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Posted by on March 15, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Routine Wrap-up: iPad Apps For Kids For Dummies® Shares Four Fantastic Apps to Help Your Preschooler Develop Routines

14 Mar

Hoboken, NJ (March 2013)—As all parents know, preschoolers are more excited about incorporating some “big kid” habits into their lives than they are about others. Specifically, a lot of resistance tends to happen in the realms of routine and hygiene. If you haven’t experienced whining, tears, or an all-out meltdown associated with bathtime, teeth brushing, or bedtime, for instance, you might want to double-check that your preschooler isn’t actually a robot!

All kidding aside, helping youngsters develop helpful and healthy habits can often seem like an uphill battle for parents. But before you throw in the towel and decide that hair brushing just isn’t worth the shrill protests that accompany it, For Dummies® suggests that you try one more strategy: letting your child play games on your iPad. Yes, you read that right!

“Believe it or not, there are numerous iPad apps that are designed to help kids build important routines into their daily lives,” says Jinny Gudmundsen, author of iPad Apps For Kids For Dummies® (Wiley, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-1184-3307-2, $19.99). “It’s a win-win situation: Your preschooler has tons of fun playing with Mom’s or Dad’s iPad, and you get more pint-sized buy-in when it comes to important daily habits.”

Gudmundsen, who is the respected USA TODAY Kid-Tech columnist, has made it her mission to provide a reliable iPad resource for parents. She has personally taken a multitude of kid-friendly apps on a test run, and in iPad Apps For Kids For Dummies® she breaks them all down. Whether you’re searching for apps that will appeal to a dinosaur lover, have strong girl role models, or will keep the whole family entertained on the road, you’ll find them all—and more—in this volume.

“Especially if your child is preschool aged, it may not have occurred to you to put your expensive iPad in little hands,” Gudmundsen acknowledges. “But the truth is, as long as you can provide a little supervision, there are plenty of inexpensive iPad apps that youngsters will find entertaining and educational, and that will make your job as a parent a little bit easier.”

Here, Gudmundsen shares four apps that will help your preschooler learn about and build routines.

Bo’s Bedtime Story ($1.99 US/$1.99 CAN/£1.49 UK, Ages 3–5, Heppi). In this wonderful app, Bo is a little giraffe that needs help going to bed. Through ten different scenes, kids learn Bo’s bedtime routine and, in the process, practice early learning skills like sorting, color recognition, matching, counting, listening, and fine motor control. Over the course of the game, players help Bo sort and put away his toys, place his dirty clothes in the hamper and his boots on the shelf, take a bath, brush his teeth, and get into bed. These tasks are often infused with charming whimsy that preschoolers love. For instance, when it’s time for bed they can catch letters falling off the ceiling so that Bo can read a bedtime story, and count kisses so he can fall asleep.

“Bo is adorable and makes a good role model for how to follow a bedtime routine,” Gudmundsen comments. “I especially like that this app looks for little ways to reinforce learning, including identifying Bo’s body parts as kids wipe off the water droplets following his bath. If your preschooler falls in love with Bo and wants to start copying his routines, be aware that Bo also stars in another app about dinnertime routines called Bo’s Dinnertime, which is equally fun, endearing, and educational.”

The Going to Bed Book ($3.99 US/$3.99 CAN/£2.49 UK, Ages 2–4, Loud Crow Interactive Inc.). In an engaging storyline, kids meet ten animals that live together on a boat. They are just starting to get ready for bed, beginning with taking a bath—all together in the tub. Kids help them by turning on the water and popping bubbles that appear. Next, the animals need to hang up their towels, but when your toddler tries to help, he (hilariously!) hangs up the elephant and the lion too. The routine continues with putting on pajamas, brushing teeth, exercising, heading off to bed, and then turning out the lights.

“Your child can make something silly happen during each of these steps, including turning on the hot water to steam up the screen during tooth brushing (so you have to wipe it off) and pulling down a cord to turn off the light, only to discover that the pig is dangling from the cord,” describes Gudmundsen. “And don’t miss filling the night sky with stars on the last page—just tap the dark-blue sky. You can choose to read this story yourself or listen to the droll narrator, accompanied by gentle piano music. This app is a relaxing, humorous read for the end of the day.”

Dr. Panda’s Hospital—Doctor Game for Kids ($1.99 US/$1.99 CAN/£1.49 UK, Ages 3–6, TribePlay). If your child likes to “doctor” stuffed animals, dolls, and—of course—you, then this is a cute app to download. It’s also helpful to play before your child’s next doctor’s appointment. Kids join Dr. Panda in his hospital and are tasked with healing eight adorable but sick animals that need treatment for stomachaches, eye and ear infections, broken bones, problems in the mouth, and bumps on the skin. From within the hospital waiting room, players select an animal to help. The scene then changes to a hospital bed where the patient awaits. Kids can make the animal’s bed linens look like a red roadster, a princess bed, or a bed of daisies, and “treatments” involve interactive games, such as putting drops in a bear’s eyes until they turn from red to white.

“What’s fun about this game is that the ailments of the animals vary,” Gudmundsen explains. “The first time you see the monkey, he might have broken ribs; but the next time he visits you, he’s got chicken pox. Kids get to perform some realistic actions, such as pumping up the blood pressure sleeve or delivering a shot (and putting on a Band-Aid, of course!). Some minigames aren’t realistic, though, and are just for fun. Because this app puts kids in control, it might help them become more comfortable with what happens when they go to the doctor’s office themselves.”

Pepi Bath ($1.99 US/$1.99 CAN/£1.49 UK, Ages 3–6, Pepi Play). Teaching preschoolers about hygiene isn’t always easy, but it is a must. If you’re encountering resistance from your child, this app can help. Kids start by deciding whether they want to play with a boy or girl Pepi, both of whom are adorable. Then, with their chosen Pepi, they’ll explore four different hygiene tasks: brushing teeth, going to the toilet, taking a bath, and washing clothes. At each location, kids play by handing Pepi items or helping her do things like brushing her teeth, which involves rubbing the toothbrush back and forth until Pepi’s teeth shine. There are lots of helpful “spin-off” hygiene tasks, too; for example, while at the sink helping Pepi brush her teeth, you can also help her wash her hands, comb her flyaway hair, and cut her nails using nail scissors.

“On the surface, these tasks may sound rather boring, but because Pepi is so expressive and responds to the player’s every action, the game is actually very engaging,” Gudmundsen shares. “For instance, she wrinkles her nose when you spray air freshener and contorts her face when trying to go potty. Pepi is both silly and serious, and always polite and appreciative. Her routines might not completely mesh with what you’re teaching your child, but that’s okay because the point of the app is to show your kids that other children also have routines. Best of all, you may find that your child wants to clean up and copy Pepi.”

“Don’t be surprised if some of these apps become favorite activities in your house,” Gudmundsen concludes. “Your preschooler will be having so much fun interacting with his new iPad ‘friends’ that he won’t even notice how much he is learning about big kid routines!”

 
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Posted by on March 14, 2013 in African American News

 

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Feds probing Seattle schools’ treatment of black students

11 Mar

 

As the U.S. Department of Education investigates whether Seattle Public Schools discriminated against African-American students by disciplining them more frequently and more harshly, Superintendent José Banda promises to find solutions.

by Keith Ervin and Maureen O’Hagan, Seattle Times staff reporters

The numbers are stark, although Seattle schooladministrators and many parents have been aware of them, and troubled by them, for years.

African-American students are suspended from school more than three times as often as white students from elementary schools to high schools.

More than one-fourth of black middle schoolers have received short-term suspensions every year since 1996. Native Americans are disciplined more often than Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Now the U.S. Department of Education is investigating whether Seattle Public Schools discriminates against African Americans by disciplining them “more frequently and more harshly than similarly situated white students,” department spokesman Jim Bradshaw said Tuesday.

The “compliance review” began in May but didn’t become public knowledge until it was reported Tuesday by KUOW radio.

District Superintendent José Banda acknowledged problems with student discipline — and said he intends to do something about them.

Banda pledged cooperation with the investigation and said he expects the Department of Education will find disproportionate disciplining of black students.

“I think we have a serious problem here,” Banda said. “We do. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge the fact that the data is clear that there is a disproportionate number of students of color being suspended and expelled.

“It’s something that we’re moving on, in addition to working with the Department of Education, who are conducting their own review,” he said.

Seattle Public Schools has set up two advisory committees — one called Positive Climate and Discipline, the other Equity and Race — that are studying disproportionality in discipline.

Banda said he didn’t know how long the federal compliance review will take, and the Department of Education’s Bradshaw declined to provide additional information.

In September the department settled its first discipline-related compliance case in years when it reached an agreement with California’s Oakland Unified School District.

Oakland school officials agreed to avoid suspensions or expulsions as much as possible; to collaborate with experts to create positive, nondiscriminatory school climates; to give more help to at-risk students; to revise discipline policies; and to survey students, staff members and families each year.

James Bible, president of the Seattle-King County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, welcomed the federal investigation, saying uneven treatment of races is “so deeply embedded in the fabric of this particular school district, and perhaps others in our region, that it’s absolutely necessary for outside entities to intervene.

“I think that until we have true transparency and something in place in terms of the outside looking in, we’re not going to see much in terms of change here,” Bible said.

Doug Honig, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said the group is concerned about the 50,000 students suspended or expelled in the state each year, both because of racial disparities and because too many of those students receive no education while they’re being punished.

“In effect, the suspension or expulsion can put them so far behind in schoolwork that it becomes an educational death sentence,” Honig said.

About two years ago, Seattle’s School Board asked to see statistics on expulsions.

“Those numbers showed us we had a growing problem,” said board President Kay Smith-Blum. “They showed a disproportionate amount of students being disciplined at the suspension or expulsion level in our minority groups.”

Banda and several board members said discipline policies should be clear and consistent and should, in most cases, provide a way for students to continue their studies even if they are removed from their regular classrooms.

“The goal should be, obviously, to get every kid in school so that we can teach them. It’s hard to teach a student who’s not in school,” said board member Harium Martin-Morris.

Board member Marty McLaren said she wants to shut down the “schools-to-prison pipeline” that can begin with inappropriate discipline.

Several board members and a district spokeswoman said they weren’t aware of the federal investigation, which began last year. “I just became aware of that myself,” Banda said.

The district’s new attorney, Modessa Jacobs, recently told other district officials the Department of Education was requesting district data as part of its review.

Stephanie Alter Jones, a Seatle school parent and a community organizer in Southeast Seattle, said that while she wasn’t aware of the investigation, discipline has been a topic of much debate both in Seattle and in the Legislature.

Kids who are tossed from the classroom are often “the ones most in need of the education,” she said.

 
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Posted by on March 11, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Teachers ditch student desk chairs for yoga balls

11 Mar

Matt Rourke / AP

Students in Robbi Giuliano’s fifth grade class sit on yoga balls as they complete their assignments at Westtown-Thornbury Elementary School Monday, Feb. 4, 2013, in West Chester, Pa. The exercise gear is part a larger effort to modernize schools based on research linking physical activity with better learning, said John Kilbourne, a professor of movement science at Grand View State University in Allendale, Mich.

By Kathy Matheson, Associated Press

Robbi Giuliano thinks ditching students’ desk chairs in favor of yoga balls is one of the best decisions she ever made in 11 years of teaching.

Replacing stationary seats with inflatable bouncers has raised productivity in her fifth-graders at Westtown-Thornbury Elementary School, helping students focus on lessons while improving their balance and core strength, she said.

“I have more attentive children,” Giuliano said. “I’m able to get a lot done with them because they’re sitting on yoga balls.”

The giant rubber spheres, also called stability balls, come in different sizes, colors and degrees of firmness. By making the sitter work to stay balanced, the balls force muscle engagement and increased blood flow, leading to more alertness.

The exercise gear is part a larger effort to modernize schools based on research linking physical activity with better learning, said John Kilbourne, a professor of movement science at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich.

Traditional classroom setups are being challenged as teachers nationwide experiment with yoga balls, footrests and standing desks, which give children outlets to fidget without disrupting class.

“It’s the future of education,” Kilbourne said.

Stability balls, frequently used in yoga, Pilates and physical therapy, have even begun appearing in offices after recent studies stressing the dangers of sedentary work environments.

The balls first began to surface in schools as aids for kids with attention problems or autism, said Michelle Rowe, executive director of the Kinney Center for Autism at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The equipment has since gone mainstream.

“It takes away the taboo of wiggling, which most kids do anyway,” said Rowe, who also is a professor of health services.

Giuliano began using the balls in her class in West Chester, a Philadelphia suburb, about three years ago after her husband mentioned how they increased productivity at the holistic wellness company where he worked.

Student Ashley Hasson conceded that adjusting to her dark pink ball was tough at first.

“But once you get used to it, it’s not that hard because basically you’re just sitting down,” she said.

Another student, Kevin Kent, said the ball makes it easier for him to concentrate and keeps his back from getting stiff. Now, he said, sitting in a chair is “weird, because you’re all bent up.”

Some health experts cautioned against the possibility of student horseplay and falling off the balls. But Giuliano’s 24 students know they must keep their bottoms on the balls and feet on the floor at all times, though they can bounce and bob as much as they like.

The same goes for Dannielle Doran’s fourth-graders at Merion Elementary School in a nearby district, where misbehavior risks loss of the ball and a return to a four-legged seat.

“They like sitting on them so much, and they don’t want to lose that privilege,” Doran said. “It seems to almost … motivate better behavior.”

At Namaste Charter School in Chicago, which is guided by the philosophy that healthy and active kids perform better in class, all students learn to use stability balls during physical education.

Yet they’re used as seats in academic settings only on a case-by-case basis, principal Allison Slade said.

“Fifth-graders are so antsy that, for some kids, this is really good for them,” Slade said. “But for others, I think it could be really distracting.”

To be sure, the balls are not mandatory in Doran’s or Giuliano’s classes, but Giuliano noted only one student in three years has opted to continue using a chair.

Parents have been supportive as well, voluntarily purchasing the $5 balls for their kids. Some even ended up buying balls for themselves to use at home and work, said Giuliano, who wants to spread the word to other teachers.

“I don’t like sitting on a chair all day … so I started sitting on a yoga ball, and I find I’m more alert,” Giuliano said. “And my message is to try it with your class and see if it works for you.

 
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Posted by on March 11, 2013 in African American Education News, African American Health

 

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Adults Are Flocking to College That Paved Way for Flexibility

01 Mar

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In September, Jennifer Hunt of Brown County, Ind., was awarded a bachelor’s degree from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey without ever taking a Thomas Edison course. She was one of about 300 of last year’s 3,200 graduates who managed to patch together their degree requirements with a mix of credits — from other institutions, standardized exams, online courses, workplace or military training programs and portfolio assessments.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Pilar Mercedes Foy of New Jersey earned a Thomas Edison State College degree mainly through classes at her job.

Aaron P. Bernstein for The New York Times

Jennifer Hunt of Indiana took equivalency exams.

Years ago, fresh out of high school, Ms. Hunt had finished enough advanced work to enter the University of Texas at Austin with sophomore standing. But after a year, homesick, she returned to Virginia. Then she married and eventually moved to Indiana. She had 10 children, whom she home-schools, and worked in her husband’s business.

About a year ago, at 39, she resolved to complete a degree. In a kind of a higher-education sprint, she took a number of college equivalency exams, earning 54 credits in 14 weeks.

“I tried to do an exam a week at the University of Indianapolis test center,” where the exams could be proctored, she said. “Each test cost about $80.”

Ms. Hunt estimated that her degree in business administration, plus a simultaneous associate degree in applied science, had cost her $5,300, including books and fees. There are almost as many routes to a Thomas Edison degree as there are students. In a way, that is the whole point of the college, a fully accredited, largely online public institution in Trenton founded in 1972 to provide a flexible way for adults to further their education.

“We don’t care how or where the student learned, whether it was from spending three years in a monastery,” said George A. Pruitt, the college’s president, “as long as that learning is documented by some reliable assessment technique.”

“Learning takes place continuously throughout our lives,” he said. “If you’re a success in the insurance industry, and you’re in the million-dollar round table, what difference does it make if you learned your skills at Prudential or at Wharton?”

At a time when student debt has passed $1 trillion, such institutions seem to have, at the very least, impeccable timing. Thomas Edison, New Jersey’s second-largest public college, and two like-minded institutions — Charter Oak State College in Connecticut and the private, nonprofit Excelsior College in New York — are all growing. Thomas Edison’s graduating class last fall was a third bigger than the class five years earlier. And the idea of measuring students’ competency, not classroom hours, has become the cornerstone of newer institutions like Western Governors University in Utah.

At Thomas Edison and the other such colleges, almost all students are over 21, many are in the military, and few have taken a direct path to higher education.

Pilar Mercedes Foy, 31, a Thomas Edison graduate whose parents did not go to college, said after she got an entry-level job at PSEG, the New Jersey energy company, she realized that she would need a degree to advance. She earned the bulk of her credits through heavily subsidized evening classes offered at work, supplemented by classes at Union County College and 12 credits from the CLEP Spanish exam. For her, earning a degree without taking on a penny of student debt was enough of a milestone that she invited her husband, parents, siblings, in-laws and nieces to the September graduation ceremony.

Thirty years ago, when Dr. Pruitt became president, the Thomas Edison approach was controversial. Some academics, in particular, were skeptical, he said, almost believing that “if we didn’t teach it to you, you couldn’t have learned it.”

Results have quieted most naysayers, Dr. Pruitt said. For example, Thomas Edison graduates had the highest pass rate on the exam for certified public accountants in New Jersey, in the latest national accounting-boards report. Still, the approach raises real questions about the meaning of a college degree.

“If I’m giving you a degree, I’m vouching for you, testifying to your competence,” saidClifford Adelman, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington. “With these nomad students in higher education, whose students are they? There are questions of ownership and ethical responsibility.”

Most Thomas Edison students arrive with some credits, at times earned many years earlier. Others get credits by submitting a portfolio of their work or passing standardized exams like the College Level Examination Program, administered by the College Board. Many complete online college courses from Thomas Edison or “open courseware” sources like the Saylor Foundation. Many bring transcripts from the American Council on Education’s credit recommendation program, certifying their nontraditional programs.

Arthur C. Brooks, a former economics professor at Syracuse who heads the American Enterprise Institute, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Thomas Edison in 1994, at age 30, after a decade as a musician. He took correspondence courses, he said, “at the cheapest places I could find.”

Mr. Brooks believes he did the same homework, wrote the same papers and took the same tests as on-campus students at other colleges, without meeting a single professor. To get his degree, he had to prove mastery of economics in a two-hour telephone conversation with a professor at Pace University.

“It was like a field exam,” said Mr. Brooks, now 48. “He asked about Adam Smith, John Keynes, supply and demand, macro and micro — everything an economics major at any university would be expected to know.”

David Esterson, 45, of Whittier, Calif., started taking college classes while in high school, attended the University of Washington for a year, was a photographer in Los Angeles, then started a music business. About three years ago, when his nephews began talking about college, Mr. Esterson decided he should complete his degree.

He took online courses at the University of Minnesota and the University of Phoenix before trying a couple of California community colleges and an acupuncture school. He finally earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Thomas Edison in September.

“It sounded like a scam, but the fact that it was a state school, and accredited, made it more real,” Mr. Esterson said.

And it has been real, he said: “Nobody I contacted about graduate programs seemed to look down on the Edison degree, and I got into every grad school I applied to.”

Now enrolled in two graduate programs — an online master’s in leadership at Northeastern and a dual-degree executive M.B.A. program from Cornell University and Queen’s University in Canada — Mr. Esterson is a booster for his alma mater. “I’ve never been there, but I did buy a sweatshirt,” he said.

 
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Posted by on March 1, 2013 in African American Education News, African American Employment

 

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The Real Forces That Keep Low-Income Kids Out of College

28 Feb

The Real Forces That Keep Low-Income Kids Out of College
O. Perry Walker High School

One spring afternoon, O. Perry Walker High School Principal Mary Laurie made her way to the school’s courtyard, where a lone student sat at a picnic table with a large stack of papers in front of him and a frustrated look on his face. Laurie recognized the student as a shy senior with one of the highest GPAs in his class.

The documents, it turned out, were all from Tuskegee University. Tuskegee had accepted the 18-year-old, offering him a full scholarship. But they required a $500 deposit within the next few days if he wanted to secure his spot. The student had no idea what to do.

“If that’s where you want to go, let me know,” Laurie said. “I’ll try to get the five hundred dollars.”

The student said nothing.

“You want to go to college, baby?” Laurie asked gently.

The young man nodded and wandered off, a confused look on his face.

If one of Walker’s top students was struggling to navigate the college-admissions and financial-aid maze, Laurie worried about how less-motivated students were faring. Earlier that winter, she had decided Walker needed to do a better job helping its students sift through the process. Now she saw how far the school still had to go.

Walker employed two college counselors, but they had their hands full helping caseloads of hundreds. Laurie wanted someone to create a comprehensive data system so the school knew, at any given moment, how many of its students had taken the ACT, been accepted into colleges, and qualified for the state’s main college scholarship program, known as TOPS.

Data had not always been Walker’s strongest suit. More intangibly, Laurie hoped to do a better job ensuring “everyone was speaking the same language” when it came to college admissions and financial aid.

She hired Andrea Smith Bailey, the wife of assistant principal Mark Bailey, to help with these new tasks. Andrea, who was finishing a master’s degree in counseling psychology, began working at Walker part-time. But her job could have kept a team of full-time employees busy.

Creating a data system was the easy part, even though new information about college acceptances, ACT scores, and grade point averages poured in daily. Translating the “language of college” proved far more difficult. The labyrinthine rules and processes surrounding scholarships, loans, and financial aid did not account for the messy realities of poor families’ lives.

One senior, for instance, qualified for a state scholarship that provided full tuition at a two-year technical or community college. The student couldn’t access the money, however, because he lived on his own and had no parent or guardian to sign for him. Bailey tried to register him as “homeless” so he could sign his own forms.

She discovered it took mountains of paperwork even to qualify as homeless–particularly since one of the boy’s grandmothers had falsely claimed him as a dependent on recent tax forms. “We have a lot of kids who just don’t fit in the federal government parameters of what’s a family, what’s a parent,” Bailey said.

The scholarship parameters also weren’t designed with a thorough understanding of what low-income students are up against. TOPS promises qualifying students a free ride if they earn a 2.5 grade point average and score at least a 20 on the ACT. But the scholarship fails to cover numerous expenses, and this keeps many low-income students from even starting college.

One Walker student planned to attend Louisiana State University through a state scholarship. But the grant did not cover the $150 he needed to get on a wait list for a dorm room, or the housing deposit. Bailey delved into the student’s financials, trying to figure out when his next paycheck from Taco Bell would clear so he would not miss the deposit deadline and find himself homeless in Baton Rouge.

The communication barriers extend in all directions: The federal and state government bureaucrats little fathom the complexities of low-income students’ home lives. But the students, most of them first-generation college aspirants, often do not understand what a “loan” or “interest rate” means–much less how to make sure they maximize their TOPS and Pell Grant payouts if they qualify for both. (For reasons that were nebulous to Bailey, some students receive full payments from both while others do not.)

Bailey had worked as a family case manager for Habitat for Humanity between several education-related jobs, a position that frequently required her to delve into clients’ finances. Several times, she encountered applicants with outstanding student debt who never realized they had even signed for a loan. She grew convinced Walker needed to include “college-going skills” as part of its curriculum. And senior year was too late to start those conversations.

Even Walker’s best students struggled to find their way through the financial aid maze. The student bound for Louisiana State University, for instance, had previously considered Morehouse College, an all-male, historically black institution in Atlanta. He asked Bailey if he could borrow her phone one morning “to make a couple of calls about college scholarships.”

Bailey agreed, and a few minutes later she heard him asking someone at a college in New York for a scholarship to Morehouse. Bailey put the pieces together after some investigating, realizing the student had read something about a college in New York that was giving out scholarships. He had assumed that meant they were awarding grants to any college.

“He was just trying to do whatever he could,” she said.

Walker had already forged a strong relationship with one beleaguered local university, Southern University at New Orleans. Several of the school’s graduates enrolled there each year. Unlike others who dismissed SUNO as subpar–a destination only for those who could not get in anywhere else–Laurie saw the historically black university as a viable option for many of her students. In her eyes, the school’s proximity to students’ families, homes, and support networks was an asset for many. “This is a small town,” she said. “People don’t always leave.”

•       •       •       •       •

Arriving upstairs one morning, Walker’s upperclassmen encountered a gigantic banner from SUNO. Peppy university cheerleaders wearing short skirts in the school’s gold-and-blue colors greeted the Walker students with smiling faces at the recruiting fair.

It was Walker’s first SUNO Day, part of the growing partnership between the two schools. Table after table offered students information about the university’s admissions and financial aid, degree programs and extracurricular activities, along with free giveaways including Skittles packets and coin purses. Staff from both Walker and SUNO wore T-shirts honoring the two schools’ mascots. The leaders of both institutions–SUNO chancellor Victor Ukpolo and Mary Laurie–circulated in the background, lending the event an official air. Laurie paced behind the tables where Walker students gathered information, shouting each time they approached a dean or official, “Ask those critical questions! Ask those critical questions!”

SUNO is a part of the Southern University System, the only historically black university system in the country. The school opened in 1959 during the last gasp of school segregation–a final victory for advocates of Jim Crow. Construction began two years after the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared that separate was not equal.

Civil rights groups bitterly opposed SUNO at the outset, since its opening seemed to perpetuate a segregation they had long decried and the high court now pronounced illegal. The school opened in its first year with 158 freshmen and 15 professors in Pontchartrain Park, a neighborhood of subdivisions created for middle-class blacks after World War II.

Laurie graduated from the University of New Orleans, but she took some of her education-methods classes at SUNO. She says it would have taken her even longer than a decade to finish college had it not been for SUNO’s night classes, one of the many ways the four-year university tries to accommodate the schedules of working students. (Laurie raised three babies and worked nearly full-time while attending college.)

In Laurie’s five years at Walker, she forged a friendly relationship with the college, sending dozens of graduates there each year. Laurie saw parallels between the two organizations: Both were committed to open access and serving students whom other schools would not take. Both were led by African-Americans and known for the familiar, folksy warmth with which they treated students. Both struggled at times to “keep their numbers up” in an era of strict school accountability.

SUNO struggled more than Walker, though, a shortcoming that nearly led to the university’s demise. In 2009, the school posted a six-year graduation rate of 8 percent, the second lowest of any urban public college in the United States. SUNO’s critics dismissed the university in the same terms they used to describe the pre-Katrina New Orleans public schools: failing, inefficient, outdated, dysfunctional. But unlike the public schools, they added, SUNO failed to graduate most of its students and left many of them in crippling debt from student loans.

In January 2011, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal commissioned a study to explore the implications of a merger between UNO and SUNO, the only four-year public universities in the city. Most observers took the governor’s action as a sign he supported shuttering SUNO. The pushback, however, was swift and strong.

At a March 2011 rally, the Reverend Jesse Jackson mobilized the crowd by comparing the fight to keep SUNO open with the civil rights marches of the 1960s. “You weren’t born when the March on Washington happened,” he told the students and other SUNO supporters who crammed into the school’s gymnasium, “and you missed out on the march to Montgomery. But God always gives us other chances to sacrifice.”

Some of SUNO’s defenders worried its closure could shut hundreds of New Orleans high school students out of the chance at a college education. By 2011, SUNO was one of a dwindling number of public universities that tried to accept virtually any student, regardless of academic background. The debate over its future raised broader questions: Should universities be open to all, or serve only those with demonstrated academic abilities?

In Louisiana, meanwhile, the Board of Regents was phasing in tougher admissions standards across its four-year university system. Universities can no longer accept students who require a single remedial course. To avoid remedials, students usually need to earn at least an 18 on the ACT in English and a 19 in math.

New Orleans guidance counselors worry the tougher admission standards will disproportionately affect low-income minority students who, on average, score lower on the ACT. In 2011, the average composite ACT score for a New Orleans public school student was 18 on a 36-point scale. That means about half of the students who took the ACT–a select group in and of itself at some schools–did not qualify for admission to any four-year in-state university under the new standards. Walker posted an average score of 17.8 in 2011, and most of its graduates needed at least one remedial class.

Laurie supported SUNO, although she remained frustrated by the segregation that defined both New Orleans and American society more generally. When Laurie thought about race relations in 21st-century America, it reminded her of “parallel play”–the term used to describe toddlers playing side by side yet utterly disengaged from each other. It depressed her to think that the nation still resembled a bunch of self-absorbed two- and three-year-olds so wrapped up in their own lives that they remained oblivious to the range and diversity of experiences surrounding them. America had mastered the illusion of togetherness.

•       •       •       •       •

After encountering the straight-A student who had won admission to Tuskegee, Laurie summoned his guidance counselor.

The woman explained that three different universities had offered him full scholarships because of his high grades. While the offers made him the envy of his classmates, the teen had no idea what to do. As deadlines loomed, he sifted aimlessly through paperwork. The guidance counselor had reached out to his mother, but the woman brushed her off.

Laurie asked if there might be a substance abuse issue.

“No,” the counselor said. “I guess she didn’t want me to pressure her.” Laurie pondered this for a few seconds.

“Maybe if you’ve never been to college…” her voice trailed off.

“She might not know. I just don’t want him to miss these deadlines and end up with nothing.”

“Originally he wanted to go to college out West,” said the counselor. “But Mom said she didn’t want him going anyplace she couldn’t drive.” They limited their search to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana as a result.

Laurie thought a little more.

“I’m sure his mother wants him to go to college,” she said. “She just doesn’t know how it works. But at the same time, we dropped the ball. We shouldn’t be at this point.”

That night, Laurie called the student’s mother. The woman said she had left the decision up to her son.

“I got the feeling Mom had probably been in a situation where she had been talked down to,” Laurie said later. “Sometimes it can be intimidating to talk to someone who is telling you something and knows more about it. We are not doing a good enough job of helping them understand how college works. If one of our top students with all these scholarship offers doesn’t have a sense of how to make a best choice, what about all the rest?”

Teaching students and parents the intricacies of deposits, scholarships, interest rates, and loans can help only so much. It might, for instance, have prevented the eager student from calling up a college in New York and asking for a scholarship to Morehouse. But information and knowledge aren’t enough if families and students feel so disempowered they shut down whenever the subject of college comes up or they face a crucial decision.

That problem has deeper roots and more complicated solutions. It requires changing long-ingrained habits of mind and feelings of inferiority. As Laurie knows all too well, you cannot teach someone the language of college if he lacks the confidence to start the conversation.

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic. It is adapted from the book Hope Against Hope.

 
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Posted by on February 28, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Academic Jerks

26 Feb

It’s a discussion that started over beer and chips and grew into a blog post now grabbing attention in higher education circles: Do asses do better in academe than their more tactful peers?

“All of us had a story or two to tell about academic colleagues who had been rude, dismissive, passive aggressive or even outright hostile to us in the workplace,” Inger Mewburn, director of research training at Australian National University, wrote in a recent post called “Academic Assholes and the Circle of Niceness” for her popular blog, The Thesis Whisperer. “As we talked we started to wonder: Do you get further in academe if you are a jerk?”

She continues: “I assume people act like jerks because they think they have something to gain, and maybe they are right…. Cleverness is a form of currency in academia; or ‘cultural capital’ if you like. If other academics think you are clever they will listen to you more; you will be invited to speak at other institutions, to sit on panels and join important committees and boards. Appearing clever is a route to power and promotion. If performing like an asshole in a public forum creates the perverse impression that you are more clever than others who do not, there is a clear incentive to behave this way.”

Mewburn, whose 2-year-old blog is dedicated to minimizing attrition among Ph.D. students, said in an e-mail interview that she was inspired to write the piece in part by reading The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Bob Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. The book shed light on a difficult interpersonal dynamic at her previous institution, she said, “because up until then I had been trying to work out what I was doing wrong, how I had offended these people. I realized they were acting like assholes, not me.”

The idea is resonating with academics across the Internet; the post has generated more than 100 comments and has been shared thousands of times on Facebook, Twitter and other blogs. Ph.D. students in particular have responded to Mewburn’s observation that faculty jerks can use research critiques more as an opportunity to display their own academic prowess to each other – sometimes cruelly – than to examine the candidate’s work.

“Thanks for this; I’m a Ph.D. candidate who just got the true asshole treatment from a senior faculty member while doing a public presentation to recruit participants for a research study,” one student commented. “I guess the lab coat in a room of people casually dressed should have given away his status immediately….  Just wanted to let you know this post helped me deal with ‘why’ he was an ass. I don’t have any suggestions for how to make academia a kinder place, but hopefully if more people try to understand the reasons underlying negative behaviors, a cultural shift can take place.”

Certain disciplines or academic “cultures” are worse than others, Mewburn argues, citing her own background – architecture – as one where “vicious critique” is normalized. Mewburn also uses her own career as a case study for why nice people don’t always get ahead.

“I have quality research publications and a good public profile for my scholarly work, yet I found it hard to get advancement in my previous institution,” she wrote. “I wonder now if this is because I am too nice and, as a consequence, people tended to underestimate my intelligence. I think it’s no coincidence that my career has only taken off with this blog. The blog is a safe space for me to (show off) display my knowledge and expertise without having to get into a pissing match.”

Mewburn, who’s been working at Australian for three weeks, also cites research supporting the idea that mean guys finish first, including Teresa Amabile’s famous 1983 publication, “Brilliant but Cruel: Perceptions of Negative Evaluators.” In that study, negative evaluators of books were perceived as more intelligent, competent and expert than positive evaluators, even when the content of the positive review was independently judged as being of higher quality.

Amabile, now a professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Progress Principle, said in an e-mail that the “negativity bias” still broadly applies to both business and higher education, and that she’d come up with the study concept by observing that at academic colloquiums, seminars and workshops, the most harshly critical questions often were posed by the “lowest-status people” in the audience: doctoral students and junior professors. (In her piece, Mewburn also observes that hostile behavior often is displayed by those “lower in the pecking order.”)

“I think the mechanism could be a simple one,” Amabile said. “If I’m able to poke holes in what you think and what you say, I must be smarter and more insightful than you are.”

Although Mewburn spends much of the post describing how nasty behavior can advance one’s academic career, she argues that, in the end, the phenomenon hurts institutions because talented but polite people leave.

“Ultimately we are all diminished when clever people walk away from academia,” she wrote. “So what can we do? It’s tempting to point the finger at senior academics for creating a poor workplace culture, but I’ve experienced this behavior from people at all levels of the academic hierarchy. We need to work together to break the circle of nastiness.”

Amabile agreed that the cycle needs to be broken, for other reasons. “Although it’s important to have high standards in academia, I think that the negativity bias can have a chilling effect on creativity,” she said. “All new ideas seem odd and lack grounding when they are first put forward. If people fear getting slammed when they come out with something truly new, they can become very conservative.”

Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, said he wasn’t sure if higher education was any more rife with assholes than any other profession (he jokingly advised anyone who complains about the bullying dynamic in academe to “go work as a nurse for a day,” a profession in which bullying is well-documented and comes from a variety of sources). But, he said, there are certainly structural and personality factors that contribute to cruelty in academe. Scholars — many of whom enjoy working independently and can be “socially inept” to begin with — work “in a reward system in which we’re selected and rewarded and promoted and glorified and given raises for doing completely selfish things.” There are exceptions, he said, particularly, in the sciences, but academics largely advance professionally by winning awards and grants and publishing on their own.

To correct this, Sutton said, institutions can adopt their own, sometimes literal “no asshole rules” and reward systems that encourage scholars to consider others’ needs, along with their own. Such moves benefit the organization as a whole, he said, as negative attitudes are contagious and the “rotten apple” effect lowers productivity. Of course, he added, it’s important to be able to distinguish when peers are attacking an idea to advance it versus when they’re attacking a colleague for their own ends.

The idea that bad attitudes can be “contagious” is why Mewburn thinks her post has been so popular. “It chimes with our experience of everyday academic life,” she said. “A lot academic posturing is performance art. A colleague can be a shit to you in a seminar and then be perfectly nice at a party,” and no one is immune from such behavior.

“Most people think of themselves as nice, so the temptation is to relate to the article as victims,” she said, “but I was trying to point out that we all have the potential to catch the asshole virus and must be ever-vigilant.”

 
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Posted by on February 26, 2013 in African American Education News

 

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Not Loving It: Young Students Forced to Go McDonalds for WiFi After Libraries Close

12 Feb

Daryl Bingham takes a break at a McDonalds in Oak Brook, IL. (Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

In many parts of the country if your local library is closed and you need internet access, McDonalds may the only option you have.

There’s about 15,000 Wi-Fi-enabled public libraries in the country but after they close many young people with homework have to go to businesses that have free internet access.

McDonald’s restaurants are usually open late and the fast food chain has more than 12,000 Wi-Fi-equipped locations in the U.S., and for many black, Latino and rural children that’s where their connection to the Web lives.

Mary LaValle, a librarian from Harrison, Mich., told the Washington Post she often sees many students just move to the nearby McDonalds after her library closes at 6pm. She said the kids usually buy one drink and continue refilling it all night until their done with their homework.

Advocates say with black and Latino kids already at high risk for obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, many children are trading their health for Internet access.

The Media Action Grassroots Network and the Praxis Project have teamed up to launch a petition and use memes, twitter parties, and other social media strategies during Valentine’s Day Week to urge the Federal Communications Commission to expand free public WiFi throughout the country!

“Our communities shouldn’t be forced to sacrifice our health and wellbeing to connect to this essential communications service,” reads the group’s letter addressed to the commisioner and chairman of FCC. “We urge you to reform the universal service fund in ways that actually helps to bridge this divide, always considering the potentially devastating impact that being disconnected has on customers who lack affordable broadband, and who cannot obtain mobile wireless services provided on equitable terms.”

A third of households with income of less than $30,000 a year and teens living at home don’t have broadband access, according to the Pew Research Center.

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2013 in African American Education News, African American Health

 

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