No-loan Financial Aid, Diversity, and Ivy League Universities - Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth

No-loan Financial Aid, Diversity, and Ivy League Universities - Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth: "

Just the Stats: Does No-Loan Financial Aid Really Improve Diversity?
By Olivia Majesky-Pullmann


In an effort to increase racial and economic diversity, many Ivy League institutions are implementing very generous financial aid policies that guarantee that low-income students will graduate without incurring debt. But are these aggressive new policies really working?

To find out, Diverse took a look at some of the top Ivy League universities, including Dartmouth College, Princeton University and Harvard University. "

Hispanic Teenagers Join Southern Mainstream - New York Times

Hispanic Teenagers Join Southern Mainstream - New York Times: While Hispanics now account for more than 20 percent of the population here, they still live mostly on the margins of society, largely invisible in local politics and the upper echelons of business. As adults, Hispanics, blacks and whites rarely mix socially.

But in the bustling classrooms of Atkinson High, Hispanic teenagers are slowly but steadily integrating into student life. The transition is sometimes awkward and painful, but young people here are casually challenging the traditional social hierarchy in ways once unimaginable.

BEING A BLACK MAN - series: In or Out Of the Game? - washingtonpost.com

In or Out Of the Game? - washingtonpost.com: "A guy once told him something he still finds profound: The reason the guy smoked drugs, he said, was because he was afraid his life wouldn't turn out well. 'You go to Georgetown, and see white people all chipper,' James says. 'And then you go to the neighborhood and our people are all mad. And the question you have to ask yourself is: Why?'

Study Links Obesity and Bottle-Fed Child - New York Times

Study Links Obesity and Bottle-Fed Child - New York Times: WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 (AP) — Far too many children are fat by preschool, and Hispanic youngsters are most at risk, according to research that is among the first to focus on children growing up in poverty.

One important predictor of a pudgy preschooler was whether the child was still using a bottle at the age of 3, said the study, which was published online Thursday by the American Journal of Public Health.

“These children are already disadvantaged because their families are poor, and by age 3 they are on track for a lifetime of health problems related to obesity,” said the lead researcher, Rachel Kimbro of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Seventeen percent of American youngsters are obese, and millions more are overweight. Dr. Kimbro focused on poverty, culling data on more than 2,000 3-year-olds from a study that tracks from birth children who were born to low-income families in 20 large American cities.

Thirty-two percent of the white and black children studied were overweight or obese, as were 44 percent of the Hispanic children.

Why were the Hispanic children at higher risk? Dr. Kimbro checked a long list of factors, but nothing could fully explain the difference. Children were particularly at risk if their mothers were obese. So were those who still took a bottle to bed at age 3, as did 14 percent of the Hispanic youngsters, 6 percent of the white children and 4 percent of the black children.

The Old Kinship - washingtonpost.com

The Old Kinship - washingtonpost.com: Once, they were young men, living in the South, raised by a black community that provided love and sustained attention. They folded into a fraternity of men who preached self-reliance and offered protection, humor and support during their shared struggles. In white places, where a black boy could be jailed or beaten, the world was fraught and perilous. And they might be the last generation of black men who share the memory of being deliberately taught how to walk in the world.

'When we were in the South, that's all we had was each other. We were still competing in school or athletics or whatever, being the best we could be, but we still had the community,' Hodges said. And community held you up. Black people have lost that, the bowler said. 'We're separate now. Now, we're fragile.'

NPR : Covert, Michigan: A History in Black and White

NPR : Covert, Michigan: A History in Black and White: On the Midwestern frontier in the 1860s, the settlers of Covert, Mich., lived as peers, friends and sometimes even kin. What makes the story unusual is that they were both black and white.

The graveyard is eloquent testimony to their remarkable lives. There are hardscrabble pioneers and a lumberman whose tombstone has been cast from a tree trunk. The cemetery is one of very few in the country where black and white Civil War veterans lie together.

It's the sense of shared fate that attracted historian Anna-Lisa Cox to Covert. For more than a decade, she traced the tales of the town's pioneers. Earlier this year, she published a book on the subject.

The Roods -- Mayflower descendants -- came to Covert in the 1860s. So did the Pompeys, who were farmers and black soldiers.

'And they're actually about as close in the graveyard as they were in life,' Cox says.

Covert was not one of the abolitionist colonies established in the Midwest at the time, following an anti-slavery philosophy. Nor was it a free African-American settlement protected by the Quakers. It wasn't a utopian social experiment. It was, quite simply, tough frontier, and somehow it was a place where individuals laid the foundation for a culture of trust in one another.

And it endured.

Nanny Hunt Can Be a ‘Slap in the Face’ for Blacks - New York Times

Nanny Hunt Can Be a ‘Slap in the Face’ for Blacks - New York Times: Numerous black parents successfully employ nannies, and many sitters say they pay no regard to race. But interviews with dozens of nannies and agencies that employ them in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Houston turned up many nannies — often of African-American or Caribbean descent themselves — who avoid working for families of those backgrounds. Their reasons included accusations of low pay and extra work, fears that employers would look down at them, and suspicion that any neighborhood inhabited by blacks had to be unsafe.

The result is that many black parents do not have the same child care options as their colleagues and neighbors. They must settle for illegal immigrants or non-English speakers instead of more experienced or credentialed nannies, rely on day care or scale back their professional aspirations to spend more time at home.

“Very rarely will an African-American woman work for an African-American boss,” said Pat Cascio, the owner of Morningside Nannies in Houston and the president of the International Nanny Association.

Many of the African-American nannies who make up 40 percent of her work force fear that people of their own color will be “uppity and demanding,” said Ms. Cascio, who is white. After interviews, she said, those nannies “will call us and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me’ ” the family is black?

Special Agent - washingtonpost.com

Special Agent - washingtonpost.com:... Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he had known guys like the one he was pretending to be, but he had avoided them. He was the Boy Scout who never used drugs or smoked, the kid who worked his way through Catholic school and college, who had gone on to command a platoon in the Marines.

'I wanted to stand up and tell everybody, 'Yes, I'm a black man,' ' he said. 'But I'm an FBI agent. I was in the Marines. I'm a college graduate.

'People were looking at me like I was dirt. Like I was trash.'

And there it was. For his entire life, Mason had been determined to not be defined by race. But race was a formidable foe. Even though he knew the arrest was fake and he probably would never see the onlookers again, the feelings had cornered him there on the ground -- and they cut deep.

NPR : A Close Bond Sheds Light on Race Relations

NPR : A Close Bond Sheds Light on Race Relations: When Amanda Fernandez met Sarah Luzietti three years ago, she knew right away that there was something special about her fellow ninth grader.

She saw Luzietti under a tree, listening to jazz music. 'I knew that white people listened to jazz, but I didn't know that kids my age could appreciate the original black music. She was listening to Ella and she had Miles in there. It was just like, 'Wow, there's something different about her.''

It was a difference that felt familiar to the girls, who are now both 17 and seniors at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Educators want to reopen 'Brown v. Board' school - USATODAY.com

Educators want to reopen 'Brown v. Board' school - USATODAY.com: Fifty-six years ago, the Rev. Oliver Brown and 12 other black parents helped kick-start the civil rights movement when they tried to enroll their children in all-white schools in Topeka, Kan. The schools' refusal helped give rise to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, which led to school desegregation nationwide.

Brown's old neighborhood school, Sumner Elementary, has been shuttered for years. Now two black Kansas educators want to turn it into a charter school for at-risk students, most of whom, they say, will be black or Hispanic. Their bid, which goes before the Topeka school board next month, has a certain symbolic importance: Not only would it reopen the landmark building, potentially to children of all races — it illustrates just how far the discussion on race and schooling has moved since Brown.

The proposal is backed by Cheryl Brown Henderson, one of Brown's daughters, who heads the Brown family foundation. She is on the governing board, whose plan includes a proposal to buy Sumner from the city and raise up to $5.5 million to renovate it.

ESL Magazine - the leading magazine for American English language teachers for ESL EFL ESOL and TEFL - U.S. Language Demographics Online

ESL Magazine - the leading magazine for American English language teachers for ESL EFL ESOL and TEFL - U.S. Language Demographics Online: The Modern Languages Association (MLA) has launched a new online, interactive map profiling the multilingual demographics of the U.S. The map is derived from the results of the vast U.S. Census 2000 which collected detailed data on people living in the U.S. The huge database of results has been analysed and published and provides, amongst many other findings, a record of the languages spoken at home, as well as information about English proficiency. The MLA has used this data, together with state and zip information, to provide a accurate profile every region of the U.S. To view the map, visit www.mla.org/census_map

Despite Modest Increase, GED Test-Taking Still Hovering Near All-Time Low

Despite Modest Increase, GED Test-Taking Still Hovering Near All-Time Low: Given recent statistics that indicate that at least half of all Black and Hispanic high school students dropped out this year, the General Educational Development test, or GED, remains a critical second option. However, since 2002, when the test was revamped to address complaints that GED-holders lacked basic writing skills, the number of test-takers has fallen drastically, from 800,000 before 2002 to 665,927 in 2004.

However, a report issued by the GED Testing Service today entitled, “Who Passed the GED Tests? 2005 Statistical Report,” shows a modest 2.2 percent increase in the number of GED test-takers for 2005, to 680,874. Also, the total number of GED candidates who passed the test rose 4.4 percent to 423,714 from 405,724 in 2004.

All of this is good news for GED Testing Service Executive Director Sylvia E. Robinson who, after assuming her post in April, has been charged with boosting sagging GED test-taking numbers while steering the GED toward another redesign, scheduled for 2011. She says, however, that the GED has a long way to go.

Women in Science: The Battle Moves to the Trenches - New York Times

Women in Science: The Battle Moves to the Trenches - New York Times: HOUSTON — Since the 1970s, women have surged into science and engineering classes in larger and larger numbers, even at top-tier institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where half the undergraduate science majors and more than a third of the engineering students are women. Half of the nation’s medical students are women, and for decades the numbers have been rising similarly in disciplines like biology and mathematics.
Yet studies show that women in science still routinely receive less research support than their male colleagues, and they have not reached the top academic ranks in numbers anything like their growing presence would suggest.

For example, at top-tier institutions only about 15 percent of full professors in social, behavioral or life sciences are women, “and these are the only fields in science and engineering where the proportion of women reaches into the double digits,” an expert panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences reported in September. And at each step on the academic ladder, more women than men leave science and engineering.

Escaping 'Average' - washingtonpost.com

Escaping 'Average' - washingtonpost.com: The focus on helping average students also boosted minority enrollment in the most rigorous classes. The district has about 3,400 students, 40 percent black and slightly more than half white. Through the initiative, administrators found more black students doing well and going on to college.

Julius Mullen, who directs a Saturday program for young African American males in Seaford, said the students discovered they could advance if given more time and the assurance that they had their friends with them. 'When expectations are raised, I think students will grab for them if they have the support programs in place,' Mullen said. 'They have to see their friends achieving success.'

Ideas to aid black youths - baltimoresun.com

Ideas to aid black youths - baltimoresun.com: State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, chairwoman of the task force, said the next step is to define what body in Maryland is responsible for each of the recommendations in the report.

The report calls for school systems to stop placing large numbers of black males in special-education classes, where they are over-represented, and stop sending them home when they are suspended instead of providing constructive punishment inside the school.

The report also endorses the use of more single-sex classes inside regular schools, saying research points to a rise in academic achievement among boys segregated by gender.

African-American males also need to be challenged in higher-level courses and need to understand what it takes to get into college, the report says. So it recommends increasing the number of students who take PSATs and Advanced Placement classes.

The disparity in academic achievement for African-American males has remained a persistent problem.

In 2003, 76 percent of white males graduated from high school, compared with 53 percent of black males in Maryland.

For every four black men in college, there are three behind bars.

Only a small percentage of black men get to college, and fewer still graduate. In Maryland, black men earn 15 percent of master's degrees and 7 percent of doctorates.

Special-Ed Changes To Get Trial Run - washingtonpost.com

Special-Ed Changes To Get Trial Run - washingtonpost.com: Ten Montgomery County middle schools plan a new approach to special education next year that stresses academic progress and includes special-needs students in mainstream classrooms as a means to jump-start lagging performance under the federal No Child Left Behind initiative.

The pilot program, called hours-based staffing, is part of an urgent effort around the region to rethink special education, or risk widespread failure under the federal mandate. Poor performance by special education students is the leading reason Maryland schools have not made 'adequate yearly progress' toward proficiency levels all students are supposed to meet by 2014. Special education was the sole factor for half of the 38 Montgomery schools that missed the targets this year.

Program Widens School Funding Gap, Report Says - washingtonpost.com

Program Widens School Funding Gap, Report Says - washingtonpost.com: Rich States Are Found to Get More Than Poor Ones in $13 Billion Effort to Aid Low-Income Students

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 21, 2006; Page A04

A $13 billion federal program to help students from low-income families has actually widened an education funding gap between rich and poor states, according to a study released yesterday.

The program, known as Title I, is part of a slew of federal, state and local policies that direct more resources to the nation's wealthiest children than to its poorest, the study concluded. It found that the highest-poverty school districts receive an average of $825 less each year per student in state and local funding than the wealthiest districts. It also found that state and local money often flows disproportionately to wealthy students within districts.

Study Warns of Hunger Problem Among Hispanics - washingtonpost.com

Study Warns of Hunger Problem Among Hispanics - washingtonpost.com: Nearly one in five Hispanics lacks sufficient access to nutritious food and one in 20 regularly goes hungry, posing serious health and economic risks to the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group, according to a new study.

The National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, noted in its study that the 'food insecurity' rate of Hispanics is nearly as high as that of non-Hispanic blacks and substantially greater than that of non-Hispanic whites, of whom only about 5 percent suffer from limited access to nutritious food, according to U.S. government statistics.

Dad, Redefined - washingtonpost.com

Dad, Redefined - washingtonpost.com: ... In many ways, this is a new norm. Single black mothers almost outnumber black two-parent families, and absentee black fathers have become a staple of conversations, sermons and stand-up comics. Some 48 percent of all black children live without their fathers in the home, nearly double the rate of any other ethnic group in the United States. On his block, Tim Wagoner knows more guys his age who have been shot than who are married with kids.

Many single women make it work. But according to the census, children in mother-only families, regardless of race, are more likely to live in poverty, be arrested as juveniles or have children in their teenage years -- all things that lead to a lifetime of difficulty.

But what defines 'absentee'? If you see your child once a month, does that make you a nonexistent father? Once a week?

Study: Top college sports jobs lack diversity - Other Sports - MSNBC.com

Study: Top college sports jobs lack diversity - Other Sports - MSNBC.com: ORLANDO, Fla. - White men dominate the leadership positions in college sports, a new study says, with women and minorities making only slow progress moving into the top jobs.

Athletic directors, conference commissioners and university presidents overwhelmingly are white, the study released Wednesday by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found.

“There’s a gradual movement toward positive change both in terms of race and gender, but it’s been very slow,” Richard Lapchick, the institute’s director, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The situation still remains that people who lead college sports in America are still white, which doesn’t reflect the student athletes on the teams they represent.”

Museum examines black Vietnam experience - Race in America - MSNBC.com

Museum examines black Vietnam experience - Race in America - MSNBC.com: PITTSBURGH - A pair of combat boots. A wristband woven from boot laces with several bullets dangling. A photo of black servicemen standing outside a makeshift African temple.

The items are part of 'Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era,' a new exhibit at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center that examines the black experience in Vietnam in the context of the era's domestic social fabric.

Samuel W. Black, curator of the center's African American Collections, conceived the exhibit, in part because his older brother, Jimmy McNeil, served two years in Vietnam.

Poll: Most Americans see lingering racism -- in others - CNN.com

Poll: Most Americans see lingering racism -- in others - CNN.com: (CNN) -- Most Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people who are racist, according to a new poll.

But few Americans of either race -- about one out of eight -- consider themselves racist.

And experts say racism has evolved from the days of Jim Crow to the point that people may not even recognize it in themselves. (Watch how many blacks are still afraid to stop in a Texas town Video)

A poll conducted last week by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN indicates that whites and blacks disagree on how serious a problem racial bias is in the United States.

Almost half of black respondents -- 49 percent -- said racism is a 'very serious' problem, while 18 percent of whites shared that view. Forty-eight percent of whites and 35 percent of blacks chose the description 'somewhat serious.' (See the poll results)

Asked if they know someone they consider racist, 43 percent of whites and 48 percent of blacks said yes.

But just 13 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks consider themselves racially biased.

The poll was based on phone interviews conducted December 5 through Thursday with 1,207 Americans, including 328 blacks and 703 non-Hispanic whites.

With Subtle Reminders, Stereotypes Can Become Self-Fulfilling - washingtonpost.com

With Subtle Reminders, Stereotypes Can Become Self-Fulfilling - washingtonpost.com: ... Ambady said that drawing attention to the girls' individuality -- by asking about their favorite book or movie, for example, or asking them to list a few things about themselves that they liked and disliked -- caused them to do much better on math tests compared with girls primed with a negative gender stereotype that subtly reminded the girls of their group identity.

In another intriguing study, David Butz, a psychology graduate student at Florida State University, found that displaying the American flag in a room when students are asked to solve math problems or anagrams can influence performance. As with other experiments, the students themselves were not aware that the subtle cue made a difference -- in fact, most said they did not even notice the flag.

Butz designed the study after Florida law mandated that an American flag be hung in public classrooms. He found that the flag boosted the performance of white students but not minorities. White students given a math test in a room without a flag solved 44 percent of the problems. Those shown the flag solved 51 percent. Minorities solved 42 percent of the problems without the flag and 41 percent with it -- no difference.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it, about the hidden power that lies in the ordinary things around you?

"Colorism" Still Thrives

"Colorism" Still Thrives
Over the summer, Matthew Harrison, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia, released the results of a study showing dark-skinned blacks at a significant disadvantage for employment.

Harrison studied 240 psychology students and found that even if they possessed higher educational achievement and had more qualified resumes, dark-skinned blacks were less likely to get the job than their light-skinned counterparts.

'The findings in this study are, tragically, not too surprising,' Harrison said when the study was released. 'We found that a light-skinned black male can have only a bachelor's degree and typical work experience and still be preferred over a dark- skinned black male with an MBA and past managerial positions, simply because expectations of the light-skinned black male are much higher, and he doesn't appear as 'menacing' as the darker-skinned male applicant.'

In September, 'A Girl Like Me,' an eight-minute documentary produced by 17-year-old film student Kiri Davis, showed Davis duplicating the 'doll test' used in the Brown vs. Board of Education case that outlawed legal segregation in the schools.

Among children in a Harlem, N.Y., day care center, 15 of the 21 children surveyed in 2005 preferred the white doll over the black one.

History tells us that during slavery, the tone of a black person's skin ultimately affected his or her status.

A Gadget to Acclimate Immigrants - washingtonpost.com

A Gadget to Acclimate Immigrants - washingtonpost.com: ... They were acclimating themselves to a new world of high-tech academic tools. For many of the students in the program, Dominion High offers more than a meal and additional help with geometry assignments. It also offers Palm handheld computers.

The devices act as music players, pocket translators, alarm clocks, planners, word processors and, for some, their first personal computer. In Loudoun County, where the high-tech corridor gives way to rolling hills studded with the homes of affluent families, many students leave well-equipped computer labs at school to find bedrooms stocked with video games and laptops.

But that is not true for everyone.

Report -More students getting free breakfast - CNN.com

Report:�More students getting free breakfast - CNN.com: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Students from low-income families are eating more free and reduced-price breakfasts at school, an anti-hunger group said Thursday.

The federal breakfast program feeds only two in five who need it. Still, it reached a record 7.7 million low-income children in the 2005-2006 school year, according to a report from the Food Research and Action Center.

New Mexico posted the biggest increase, with 58 children getting breakfast for every 100 getting free and reduced-price lunches, up from 53 a year earlier.

State officials there spent nearly half a million dollars to boost breakfast participation in schools struggling to meet standards under President Bush's No Child Left Behind program, said James Weill, the center's president.

Kids learn better when they're not hungry, Weill said.

'It's not a solution to the problems in America's schools, but it's the fastest, easiest, cheapest way of boosting school performance that we have,' he said. 'It's the closest thing schools have to a magic bullet.'

New Mexico moved to second place in the rate of participation, behind West Virginia and ahead of South Carolina, Kentucky, Oregon, Vermont, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi.

States with the lowest participation rates were Pennsylvania, Nebraska, New Jersey, Colorado, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Alaska, Utah, Illinois and Wisconsin.

World Bank Reports Poverty Programs Ineffective - washingtonpost.com

World Bank Reports Poverty Programs Ineffective - washingtonpost.com: NEW YORK, Dec. 7 -- Despite an intensified campaign against poverty, World Bank programs have failed to lift incomes in many poor countries over the past decade, leaving tens of millions of people suffering stagnating and even declining living standards, according to a report released Thursday by the bank's autonomous assessment arm.

Among 25 poor countries probed in detail by the bank's Independent Evaluation Group, only 11 saw reductions in poverty between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, while the other 14 suffered the same or worse rates over that term. The group said the sample was representative of the global picture.

"Achievement of sustained increases in per capita income, essential for poverty reduction, continues to elude a considerable number of countries," the report declared, singling out as particularly ineffective programs aimed at the rural poor. Roughly half of such efforts from 2001 to 2005 "did not lead to satisfactory results." During that period, new World Bank loans and credits aimed directly at rural development totaled $9.6 billion, or about one-tenth of total bank lending, according to the group.

Poverty shifts to the suburbs - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com

Poverty shifts to the suburbs - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com: WASHINGTON - As Americans flee the cities for the suburbs, many are failing to leave poverty behind.

The suburban poor outnumbered their inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas released Thursday.

“Economies are regional now,” said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “Where you see increases in city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in suburban poverty.”

Systems Struggling to Address Student Health - washingtonpost.com

Systems Struggling to Address Student Health - washingtonpost.com: In urban school systems across the country, children who live in poverty suffer from higher rates of health problems -- asthma, malnutrition, obesity and mental disorders -- than the more affluent, and the academic consequences are very real, according to researchers who have studied how health affects academic achievement.

'Good dental care doesn't make you a good student, but if your tooth hurts, it's hard to be a good student,' said Geoffrey Canada, president and chief executive of the Harlem Children's Zone, a large-scale initiative designed to improve the social, health and educational conditions in entire neighborhoods of Harlem.

Asian-American Teens More Likely Than Whites, Latinos To Learn Healthier Lifestyles

Asian-American Teens More Likely Than Whites, Latinos To Learn Healthier Lifestyles: Adolescents whose families emigrated from Asia improve their health habits with every generation born in the United States, more than their white and Latino peers, new research suggests.

'We were pleased by the marked improvement in physical activity and use of bicycle helmets, seat belts and sunscreen for Asian adolescents across the generations,' said lead author Michele Allen, M.D. 'This suggests that public health messages are reaching this population,' said Allen, currently an investigator in the health disparities research program at the University of Minnesota.

Allen and former colleagues at the UCLA/RAND Center for Adolescent Health Promotion examined data from a 2001 California-wide survey and included responses from 5,801 adolescents, age 12 to 17, who were asked about their preventive health habits including wearing bicycle helmets, using seat belts, physical activity and nutrition.

United Press International - Consumer Health - More mental-health risk for immigrant children

United Press International - Consumer Health - More mental-health risk for immigrant children: SEATTLE, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Recent studies have shown that immigrants to the United States may experience lower rates of mental-health problems, but their children may be at higher risk.

The children and grandchildren of immigrants may actually be more likely than their parents to suffer such mental-health woes, according to a study published in The American Journal of Public Health.

The study looked at the prevalence of depressive, anxiety and substance disorders in relation to ethnicity, nativity, generational status, English proficiency, length of time in the United States and age at migration to the United States for Latinos.

The researchers found the lifetime prevalence estimate for any psychiatric disorders was 28.1 percent for Latino men and 30.2 percent for Latina women. Puerto Ricans had the highest overall prevalence rate among the Latino ethnic groups for any disorder. There were higher rates of psychiatric disorders among U.S.-born, English proficient and third-generation Latinos, according to David T. Takeuchi of the University of Washington.

abc7news.com: Literacy Program Showing Strong Results

abc7news.com: Literacy Program Showing Strong Results: Dec. 4 - KGO - Studies show that for every 100 Latino students entering Kindergarten, fewer than eight will graduate from college. In this ABC7 Focus On Solutions, Karina Rusk reports on a program that's changing those odds in San Jose.

Ninety-seven percent of the students at McKinley Elementary School in San Jose are learning English as a second language. But just listen as Mario Morales tells us about his reading skills.

Mario Morales, sixth grade student: 'If I'm finished with a book I will get up and get another one and keep on reading because I know it will be easy because I can read.'

Study: Racial graduation divide at BCS schools - CNN.com

Study: Racial graduation divide at BCS schools - CNN.com: ORLANDO, Florida (AP) -- College football teams headed for the five major bowls this year performed better academically on the whole than the national average, according to a study released Monday.

At these top programs, however, the disparity between black and white graduation rates grows by nearly double.

The nation's best football teams are generally improving in the classroom, according to an analysis by Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

Of the 64 teams invited to bowls this year, 86 percent graduated at least half their players. And 40 of this year's top programs -- 62 percent -- matched or beat the NCAA's new Academic Progress Rate standard, which is intended to more accurately gauge grades and graduation rates.

The statistics Lapchick used are preliminary and don't include the most recent school year.

Perhaps most strikingly, white athletes in the Bowl Championship Series -- the top five bowls, including the BCS title game -- beat their counterparts among the 119 NCAA Division I-A schools by graduating 81 percent of the time, compared with 62 percent division-wide. The black athlete graduation rate was 56 percent among those schools, also better than the 49 percent overall rate.

But the discrepancy between white and black players' graduation rates for top bowl teams -- a 25 percentage point difference -- was nearly twice the 13-point divide within the NCAA average.

Supreme Court Weighs Race in Public School Admissions - washingtonpost.com

Supreme Court Weighs Race in Public School Admissions - washingtonpost.com: Several hundred demonstrators, many of them college or high school students, gathered on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court early this morning to proclaim support for using skin color as a factor in admissions in order to maintain racially diverse public schools.

The court is hearing arguments today in two high-stakes school desegregation cases-- the first test on the issue Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. since they were appointed to the court last term. Both justices in the past have been skeptical about the use of racial classifications.