A Woman Called Moses - washingtonpost.com

A Woman Called Moses - washingtonpost.com: "The legendary exploits of a heroine who went from bondage to bravery.

Reviewed by Fergus M. Bordewich

HARRIET TUBMAN
Imagining a Life By Beverly Lowry

It's no wonder that we continue to be mesmerized by Harriet Tubman, this brilliant, bold, coarse-grained former field hand who brazenly defied 19th-century assumptions about what women -- especially black women -- were supposed to be. Although a latecomer to the Underground Railroad, she has become the paramount icon of the entire far-flung system, which spirited fugitive slaves northward in the decades before the Civil War.

Respecting Black Women

Respecting Black Women: "C. Vivian Stringer, the head coach of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, urged the audience at a symposium on respecting Black women to remain vigilant and to broaden the conversation from the Don Imus incident to all of the ways in which Black women are degraded and disrespected on a daily basis.

Her comments were directed to a group of journalists, clergy, activists and educators who converged on the historic Schomburg Center for Research in Culture in Harlem Tuesday evening to participate in a lively symposium titled, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T When Did We Lose It? How Do We Get It Back?”"

Supreme Court Rejects School Race Plans

Supreme Court Rejects School Race Plans: The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected school diversity plans that take account of students' race in two major public school districts but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricts how public school systems may attain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

MiamiHerald.com | Afro-Latin Americans

MiamiHerald.com | Afro-Latin Americans

In this series, the black experience is unveiled through a journey to Nicaragua, where a quiet but powerful civil and cultural rights movement flickers while in neighboring Honduras, the black Garifuna community fights for cultural survival, to the Dominican Republic where African lineage is not always embraced; to Brazil, home to the world’s second largest population of African descent, to Cuba, where a revolution that promised equality has failed on its commitment to erase racism, and to Colombia, where the first black general serves as an example of Afro-Latin American achievements.

Study: Whites Just Don’t Understand the Black Experience

Study: Whites Just Don’t Understand the Black Experience: To White Americans, giving up television is a hardship; being Black is not. That’s the upshot of a series of studies by researchers at The Ohio State University.

As part of the studies, Whites of different ages and geographic regions were asked how much they deserved to be paid for living the rest of their lives as an African-

Respondents generally requested less than $10,000 to become Black. However, they said they’d have to be paid $1 million to give up television for the rest of their lives.

“The costs of being Black in our society are very well documented,” says study co-author Philip Mazzocco. “Blacks have significantly lower income and wealth, higher levels of poverty and even shorter life spans, among many other disparities, compared to Whites.

“When Whites say they would need $1 million to give up TV, but less than $10,000 to become Black, that suggests they don’t really understand the extent to which African-Americans, as a group, are disadvantaged,” says Mazzocco."

Black college enrollment in South passes milestone - CNN.com

Black college enrollment in South passes milestone - CNN.com: RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- For the first time ever in the South, blacks are as well represented on college campuses as they are in the region's population as a whole -- something not yet true of the country overall.

The milestone is noted in a new fact book to be released Monday by the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonprofit organization that promotes education.

In the 16 states measured, the number of blacks enrolled in colleges has risen by more than half over the last decade. They now make 21 percent of college students and 19 percent of the overall population.

The number represents progress but it also has to be seen in context. A major contributing factor is the South's rapidly growing Hispanic population, which has reduced the proportion of the population that is black, and thereby made the milestone easier to reach mathematically.

And educators also stressed that the number should not obscure the persistent achievements gaps affecting blacks both in the South and nationally. In particular, black enrollment rates for college-age students, while improving, still lag well behind those of whites, as do the graduation rates of black college students.

Mentors Help Boys Become Men - washingtonpost.com

Mentors Help Boys Become Men - washingtonpost.com: For many teenagers, Saturday mornings are reserved for sleep.

But not for a group of students in the Suitland High School library at 10 a.m. one recent Saturday. They were part of a weekly academic tutoring program, 'Go-to-High-School, Go-to-College,' sponsored by Pi Upsilon Lambda, the Prince George's County chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

The program provides no-cost academic support to county high school students as part of the fraternity's effort to boost the number of youths from Prince George's who graduate from high school and go to college.

"Education is the foundation for everything this chapter does," said Anthony Harris, associate editor of the Sphinx, the chapter's publication.

The fraternity brothers began tutoring in Prince George's County high schools in 1993, the same year the chapter was founded. The chapter has grown to about 70 members, many of whom volunteer as tutors from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.

Dropout Risk Factors and Exemplary Programs

NDPC/N - Featured Articles: This study, conducted by NDPC/N, and sponsored by Communities In Schools Inc., finds that there are multiple risk factors which increase the likelihood that students will drop out. The evidence clearly shows that dropout is always the result of a long process of disengagement that sometimes begins before the child enrolls in kindergarten. The report also provides information on 50 programs that were found to be effective in addressing these risk factors.

Annual U.S. Data Report Probes AP Trends

Statistical tome cites surge in test-taking by Hispanics and blacks.
The numbers of black and Hispanic students in public and private high schools who are taking Advanced Placement exams soared from 1997 to 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s latest annual compendium of education statistics.

The report, released today, documents a 213 percent jump over the nine years of the study in the number of Hispanic students taking the college-level Advanced Placement, or AP tests, and a 177 percent increase over the same period for African-American students.

Those increases were the sharpest amid a nationwide surge in recent years in the numbers of students from all racial and ethnic groups who take rigorous courses in high school. Across the board, the number of students taking the AP tests more than doubled over the same period, growing from 567,000 in 1997 to 1.2 million two years ago.

Contrary to some expectations, though, the influx of test-takers led to only minor declines in AP-test scores. According to the federal data, the proportion of students who earned a 3 or better on the college-level exams fell from 65 percent to 59 percent over the nine-year study period. Most colleges award students credit for their high school AP courses for exam scores of 3 or higher on a scale of 1 to 5.

Education Week: Computer Training Found to Help Those With ADHD

Education Week: Computer Training Found to Help Those With ADHD: Scientifically speaking, treatment options for students with attention deficits have long been limited. Outside of stimulant medication, and some behavior-modification strategies, few interventions have much of a research base to show that they can help.

That situation could change, though. Recent studies have shown that a computer-based training program developed in Sweden helps sharpen the “working memory” skills of children and teenagers with some form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. And, in the process, the studies show, the program can alleviate some of the problems they have with paying attention, controlling their impulses, and solving problems.

Working memory is the ability to keep information in mind and work with it at the same time. The brain calls on working memory, for example, when people solve mathematical problems or try to follow through on plans they’ve made.

Experts believe that working memory can be particularly difficult for many people with ADHD, a condition that afflicts an estimated 3 percent to 5 percent of school-age children, as well as for people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries or strokes.

African Students Open Window on Their Lives - washingtonpost.com

African Students Open Window on Their Lives - washingtonpost.com: "Living in Silver Spring and attending Springbrook High School as a student of African heritage, Aminata Sesay wanted her classmates to understand how her life was different from theirs.

So she decided to write a play with her friend and fellow Springbrook senior, Gifty Addai.

The resulting work, "Who Am I?," explores the issue of identity through the viewpoint of an immigrant teenage girl who is being raised by her African father in the United States. Switching between the settings of an unnamed, war-torn African country in 1968 and the present in the United States, the story deals with the timeless issue of communication between parents and teens -- compounded by cultural clashes.

"The idea was already in all of our minds, to express how we felt as African American students," said Sesay, an 18-year-old whose family left Sierra Leone 13 years ago. "We wanted to show everyone what we go through every day."

Education Week: Black Boys’ Educational Plight Spurs Single-Gender Schools

Education Week: Black Boys’ Educational Plight Spurs Single-Gender Schools: In the face of mounting evidence that schools are losing alarming numbers of young black men, a small band of educators gathered here recently to bolster one response to the crisis: creating public schools designed to serve African-American males.

Haunted by the specter of a bleak future for millions of young men—and aware that single-gender programs can face legal and political opposition—the two dozen principals were nonetheless united in their conviction that it is high time to build education programs that meet the academic and emotional needs of black boys.

“[People] ask us why we are doing single-gender education, as though what the kids are currently involved in is working,” David C. Banks, the founding principal of the Eagle Academy for Young Men, a 3-year-old public school that serves predominantly low-income black and Latino boys in New York City, told a roomful of educators, scholars, and policymakers. “When you recognize that you are in crisis, you have to do more.”

Drug-Resistant Breast Cancer Afflicts Blacks - washingtonpost.com

Drug-Resistant Breast Cancer Afflicts Blacks - washingtonpost.com: ... Women such as Williams have become the focus of an intense effort to solve one of the most pressing mysteries about breast cancer: Why are black women, who are less likely to get the disease than white women, more likely to get it when they are young -- and much more likely to die from it?

Now, researchers have uncovered a crucial clue: Black women, particularly young ones, get hit much more often by an aggressive form of breast cancer that is invulnerable to many of the latest treatments.

That discovery, however, has raised a thicket of new questions and an intense debate. Are black women prone to the deadlier cancer for genetic reasons? The same deadly form of breast cancer turns out to be extremely common in parts of Africa where the slave trade was centered, indicating that genes play a role. Or is it something else? Researchers have also found evidence that other factors, such as breast-feeding patterns, may be key.

The findings have prompted a flurry of research, but the intensifying effort is also raising concern among some doctors. They fear that the focus on biology is distracting from the more critical problem of eliminating racial disparities in care, and that it is reinforcing old prejudices about biological differences among races.

Study: Americans use ‘Diversity’ To Cover-Up Their True Views About Race

A new study by the University of Minnesota’s sociology department say that though Americans are optimistic about the word “diversity,” it is often used as a blanket to cover their true feelings about the “R” word — race. The respondent’s biggest fear, according to the study, is that America is transforming into a multicultural nation overnight. The researchers say American diversity talk is sort of a ‘happy talk,’” an upbeat language that is now part of everyday conversation.

“The topic of race lies outside of the realm of polite conversation,” says Joyce Bell, a graduate student who co-authored the study with associate sociology professor Dr. Doug Hartmann. “Everyone, regardless of their race, political affiliation and even rhetorical ability, had real trouble talking about the inequities and injustices that typically accompany diversity in the United States.”

The study is based on a telephone survey of more than 2,000 adults between the ages of 20 and 75 living in households in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul, from areas selected as diverse settings; neighborhood organizations, interfaith religious initiatives and cultural festivals.

According to the report, respondents generally agreed that diversity is positive. However, a large portion of interviewees fumbled for words when asked in-depth questions about diversity. Among the general questions asked were “What does diversity mean to you?” and “What is positive about diversity?”

Hartmann said several of the responses seem to indicate that respondents don’t necessarily understand what the word “diversity” means.

Examining Black-Latino Relations, Gently

“Platanos & Collard Greens”
In its ethos and sentiment, the play rests somewhere between a civics lesson and Howard Finster’s folk art. Mr. Lamb doesn’t traffic in the imperatives of angry reproach. “Platanos & Collard Greens” is a simplistic morality tale rendered in cheerful tones, a look at the refraction of racial prejudice from one minority group to another, and a primer in how best to curtail pernicious stereotype.

The story, some of which is told in belabored hip-hop rhymes, revolves around a group of ambitious students at Hunter College, an election for student body president and a chaste love affair between a young African-American man and Dominican woman whose mother disapproves of the relationship. Mr. Lamb removes the potentially complicating factor of class so that the mother’s criticism of her daughter’s boyfriend is rooted purely in the color of his skin. Hard working, the boy comes from a well-educated family. The mother, in denial of her own African roots, is the sort of woman who admonishes her daughter to stay out of the sun so as not to look like “those Haitians.”

The particulars of the storyline have made the play quite popular on college campuses, where Mr. Lamb is typically asked to stage it at the invitation of student minority groups. In the past few years, “Platanos & Collard Greens” has been produced at more than 100 colleges and universities across the country, including Princeton, Cornell and Wesleyan.

Winston-State University Teams up with NASCAR for a Degree Program

Winston-State University Teams up with NASCAR for a Degree Program: WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.
Winston-Salem State University has teamed up with NASCAR to launch the nation’s first motorsport management bachelor’s degree program at a historically Black college or university. The program is one of the initiatives NASCAR has undertaken to introduce minorities to some of the behind-the-scenes opportunities in auto racing.

The program was approved by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors last week and will begin this fall.

“This is great news for WSSU,” says the university’s interim chancellor, Dr. Michelle Howard-Vital. “This degree will help prepare a whole new generation of students to excel in the management aspects of motorsport.”

Vital, who has been the interim chancellor since July 2006 at the university, was recently selected as the new president of historically Black Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, and will begin her tenure there on July 30th.

Home Alone

For decades, students of American society have offered dueling theories about how encountering racial and ethnic diversity affects the way we live. One says that simple contact — being tossed into a stew of different cultures, values, languages and styles of dress — is likely to nourish tolerance and trust. Familiarity, in this view, trumps insularity. Others argue that just throwing people together is rarely enough to breed solidarity: when diversity increases, they assert, people tend to stick to their own groups and distrust those who are different from them.

But what if diversity had an even more complex and pervasive effect? What if, at least in the short term, living in a highly diverse city or town led residents to distrust pretty much everybody, even people who looked like them? What if it made people withdraw into themselves, form fewer close friendships, feel unhappy and powerless and stay home watching television in the evening instead of attending a neighborhood barbecue or joining a community project?

This is the unsettling picture that emerges from a huge nationwide telephone survey by the famed Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues. “Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation,” Putnam writes in the June issue of the journal Scandinavian Political Studies. “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

Laying Out a Blueprint for Diversity

... 2004 statistics from the American Institute of Architects — the profession’s leading membership association — indicate that just 7 percent of its licensed or registered members are underrepresented minorities. Only 12 percent are women. As Blacks and Hispanics each make up about 13 percent of the overall population and women comprise roughly half of the population, this gaping disparity has prompted widespread calls for change.

Though fields such as law and medicine have become increasingly inclusive, architecture remains “a profession dominated by White males, whereas many other professions have overcome that. Architecture seems to be slow in overcoming that,” says University of Maryland architecture professor Gary A. Bowden. “Part of that, I think, goes back to the fact that architecture traditionally has been such as patronage kind of relationship between a rich architect and his rich clientele.” That historical relationship, he says, creates and maintains a closed circle of architects from privileged social classes, and “minorities tend to be left out.”

But that may be starting to change. The AIA has named Washington, D.C.-area Marshall E. Purnell, of Devrouax and Purnell, as its first Black president. Prior to his election, Purnell had been already named an AIA Fellow, the association’s highest honor. Another Black architect, Boston Architectural College President Theodore Landsmark, is the current president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture — the second Black to serve in that role. Hampton University Department of Architecture Dean Bradford Grant was the first. Landsmark says he is uniquely positioned to respond to the architecture profession’s diversity imperative.

KEEP KIDS SHARP THIS SUMMER

Harris Cooper, professor of psychology and director of the Program in Education at Duke University, says long summer breaks can diminish academic skills, especially in math, without some form of regular instruction. He offers these tips:

Consider summer school. Summer programs aren't just for struggling kids. Many provide enrichment activities that can build on what's learned during the school year. Look into math programs because there's less opportunity to practice math outside school. If your child does have an academic weakness, summer is the perfect time to help strengthen it.

Look for academic-related activities in your community. Museums, zoos and national parks aren't just places for fun, they're opportunities for learning as well. Your local library probably has a summer reading program for emerging and beginning readers. Even local businesses and factories may provide educational tours.

Plan your summer trip with an educational theme. When deciding where to take your family on vacation, think about what educational benefits are available. Take advantage of geological or historical tours when you're at a national park. Have your child read a book about where you're going before you leave. Find out what your child will be studying in the coming school year and visit a related site.

Talk to a teacher in your child's next grade. If your child is an emerging or beginning reader, ask the teacher to suggest books you can read to and with them. Ask what the content of the math curriculum will be and then visit a local teachers supply store.

Make it educational without making it seem like school. Academic-related activities over summer shouldn't last all day every day, but neither should down time. Parents should avoid letting summer turn into a cartoon-and-video-game marathon for their kids.

More grads opt to serve the poor - USATODAY.com

More grads opt to serve the poor - USATODAY.com: Recent college graduates, including tens of thousands graduating this spring, are seeking community service jobs, where they can learn marketable skills while doing work they find meaningful. For many, it offers a chance to test out a career before settling into one.

But as interest in service grows, some organizations are getting more selective; others are feeling the squeeze of a competitive market for idealistic young adults.

•AmeriCorps, a federal program that offers stipends of about $10,000 a year and a $4,725 education award in exchange for a 10-month term of service, has seen enrollments among college graduates climb to 13,447 this year from 7,608 in 1999. Numbers are based on a one-day snapshot taken in February each year.

•Teach for America, which places recent graduates in public-school teaching jobs in low-income areas, accepted about 2,400 of its 19,000 applicants in 2006. That's up from 13,500 applicants in 2004.

•The Peace Corps, which sends volunteers overseas, has seen applications rise to 12,242 in 2006 from 8,917 in 2001.

But Eckerd Youth Alternatives, whose programs include a wilderness program for troubled youth, has seen applications for counselors slip to fewer than 8,000 this year from about 11,000 in 2002. Because the position requires a special person, Eckerd no longer advertises in mass media but instead recruits at targeted events such as "Life After AmeriCorps."

The Regrets of a School Dropout - washingtonpost.com

The Regrets of a School Dropout - washingtonpost.com: ...Statistics show that more than 50 percent of black male students fail to graduate with their class each year. In some urban jurisdictions such as New York and Chicago, upwards of two-thirds of them leave high school before graduation, according to a study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

In Maryland, 46 percent of black male teenagers dropped out during the 2003-04 school year, compared with 22 percent of white males. In Virginia, 47 percent dropped out, compared with 27 percent of white male students, and in the District, the dropout rate for black males was 51 percent, compared with 5 percent of white males, the report said.

Experts said the implications are stark: Dropouts struggle to find good jobs; they become teen fathers, get arrested and abuse drugs and alcohol at a much higher rate than that of their counterparts who graduate from high school.

Racism’s Hidden Threat

Racism’s Hidden Threat: Discrimination is hurtful and nasty, but researchers are now discovering that it can lead to drug abuse as well. Psychologists at Iowa State University studied more than 600 Black adolescents from Georgia and Iowa and found that those who experience racial discrimination prior to age 12 are twice as likely to use drugs by the time they’re teens. In fact, incidents of racial discrimination are the strongest predictors of subsequent drug use among Black teens. Among those who experienced early discrimination and also exhibited some form of conduct disorder — such as vandalism or burglary — more than half reported drug use within five years of the experience, researchers found.
“In making that conclusion, it should be emphasized that African-American kids use substances, including drugs, significantly less than White kids — in spite of the fact that they experience this additional stress [from discrimination],” says Dr. Rick Gibbons of ISU’s Institute for Social and Behavioral Research.

Hispanic Students Hungry for College

Hispanic Students Hungry for College: Some 98 percent of Hispanic high school students say they want to attend college, according to a new study. But according to the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau report, only 25 percent of Hispanics are currently enrolled at the nation’s colleges and universities. Activists are now trying to bridge that gap by addressing the factors that impede Hispanic students from fulfilling their dream of pursing a higher education.

The study, entitled the “College Preparation 2007,” was released this week in conjunction with a press conference and symposium to address college access issues. Activists and students at the symposium said the environment in which many Hispanics grow up in is simply not nurturing and fails to promote higher education as a viable option.

The Hispanic Heritage Fund, Excelencia in Education and the Hispanic College Fund called on the federal government to fund more college access programs for Hispanics.

“The environment that many Latino high school students experience is not as supportive as it needs to be in order to see college enrollment rates as high as their peers in other ethnicities,” said Ryan Munce, a researcher with the National Research Center for College and University Admissions, which conducted the study with the Hispanic Heritage Fund this year.

House Committee Approves Increase in Pell Grant, New Funding For Black Colleges

House Committee Approves Increase in Pell Grant, New Funding For Black Colleges: The House education committee on Wednesday approved a higher education bill that would increase Pell Grants, cut lender subsidies and make wide-ranging changes to help low-income students and minority-serving colleges.

The College Cost Reduction Act would reduce lender subsidies and channel much of the money toward need-based financial aid. The maximum Pell Grant would increase to $5,200 within five years, and colleges could receive more Pell funds if they keep their tuition increases in line with an annual college price index.

Sponsors said the bill also would support federal programs for historically Black colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions and create a new funding stream for predominantly Black colleges, or higher education institutions that are not HBCUs but have sizable enrollment of African American students.

Study: Race disparity in medical care persists - CNN.com

Study: Race disparity in medical care persists - CNN.com: WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Blacks were far less likely than whites to get specialized procedures after a heart attack and were more likely to die within a year, according to a study showing persistent racial disparities in U.S. medical care.

The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tracked 1.2 million Medicare patients at least 68 years old treated for a heart attack between January 2000 and June 2005 at 4,627 U.S. hospitals.

It found large differences in the way heart attacks are treated in black patients compared with white patients.

Black people were about 30 percent less likely to get procedures to open blood vessels such as angioplasty or open-heart surgery after a heart attack regardless of whether the hospital they checked into provided full invasive cardiac services, the study found.

Black people were 22 percent less likely to be transferred from a hospital that did not do such procedures to one that did, it found. And when they were, black people were 23 percent less likely to get these operations than white people, the researchers said.

Academy, AAUP Confronted on Low Faculty Diversity

Faculty members concerned about diversity took the academy as well as the American Association of University Professors to task for not doing enough to promote diversity at one session of AAUP’s 93rd annual meeting, “Telling the Truth at Difficult Times,” which started June 7 and concluded yesterday.
“Every time I come to AAUP, maybe I need to have my glasses checked, [but] it’s always been a [predominately] White organization,” said Dr. Anne Friedman, vice president for community colleges at Professional Staff Congress, a union that represents City University of New York workers. “You [AAUP] can’t talk about issues of race when you face it.”
Friedman was one of nearly 30 faculty and staff members who attended the “What’s Race Got to Do with It? Social Disparities and Student Success” panel hoping to get answers on how to recruit and retain minority faculty and staff at their institutions.
Out of the 282,429 tenured professors teaching in American institutions in 2003, 6.1 percent were Asian, 4.5 percent were Black and 2.9 percent were Hispanic. Just under 85 percent of tenured professors were White.
They shared their experiences of racism and some universities’ deferred efforts to diversify their institutions as part of a discussion to identify the problem behind low faculty diversity. Some blamed institutional racism, which they agreed to be the most dangerous form of racism, yet the most prominent on their campuses.

Minority Students Account for Over 40 Percent of U.S. School Enrollment - HispanicBusiness.com

Minority Students Account for Over 40 Percent of U.S. School Enrollment - HispanicBusiness.com: WASHINGTON -- Minority students now account for 42 percent of public school enrollments in the United States, up from 22 percent three decades ago, driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of Hispanics, U.S. media reported Friday.

A statistical survey of the nation's educational system portrays sweeping ethnic shifts that have transformed the schools. The changes have been most striking in the West, where, the survey says, Hispanic, black and Asian students together have outnumbered whites since 2003, The New York Times reported.

The annual survey was cited as showing that all regions in the country have seen growth in minority student enrollment, particularly by Hispanics, who accounted for one of five public school students in 2005, the last year for which data were available.

U.S. Data Show Rapid Minority Growth in School Rolls - New York Times

U.S. Data Show Rapid Minority Growth in School Rolls - New York Times: Driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of Hispanics, the nation’s population of minority students has surged to 42 percent of public school enrollment, up from 22 percent three decades ago, according to an annual report issued yesterday by the government.

The report, a statistical survey of the nation’s educational system, portrays sweeping ethnic shifts that have transformed the schools. The changes, with important implications for educators and policy makers, have been most striking in the West, where, the survey says, Hispanic, black and Asian students together have outnumbered whites since 2003. But all regions have seen growth in minority student enrollment, particularly by Hispanics, who accounted for one of five public school students in 2005, the last year for which data were available.

Higher Education Demographics: University Demographics: Statistics

Higher Education Demographics: University Demographics: Statistics: Minority students accounted for half of the growth in bachelor degree attainment over the last 20 years, and minorities with advanced degrees are more likely to have attended traditionally White institutions, according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

“The Condition of Education 2007” shows that although the percentages of students who were minorities were similar across types of 4-year institutions, minority students who attended doctoral and master’s institutions were more likely to be at an institution with a low-minority enrollment than at one with a high-minority enrollment. However, minority students who attended other 4-year institutions were more likely to be at an institution with a high- rather than low-minority enrollment, says the report.

In 2002, Blacks were more than twice as likely as Hispanics to attend an institution where they made up at least 80 percent of the total enrollment (12 vs. 5 percent) thus showing the continuing relevance of historically Black colleges and universities.

The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded increased by 33 percent between 1989-90 and 2003-04, while the number of associate’s degrees increased by 46 percent. Minority students accounted for half of the growth in bachelor’s and associate’s degrees.

At Med Schools, a New Degree of Diversity - washingtonpost.com

At Med Schools, a New Degree of Diversity - washingtonpost.com: In the past 15 years, U.S. medicine has seen a huge influx of first- and second-generation immigrants. It follows and augments a different demographic trend that began 30 years ago with the acceptance of increasing numbers of women into medical schools. As a result of that earlier revolutionary change, half of new practitioners today are women.

From 1980 to 2004, the fraction of medical school graduates describing themselves as white fell from 85 percent to 64 percent. Over that same period, the percentage of Asians increased from 3 percent to 20 percent, with Indians and Chinese the two biggest ethnic groups.

Counted in the "white" category, moreover, are a moderate number of ethnic Persians whose families fled the 1979 Iranian revolution, and a smaller number of more recent arrivals from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the "black" category is an unknown number of graduates whose families recently arrived from Africa, predominantly Nigerians and Ghanaians.