Educational Challenges of Some Asian Students Being Overlooked, Says GOA Report

Educational Challenges of Some Asian Students Being Overlooked, Says GOA Report: The perception of Asian American and Pacific Islanders as the “model minority” because of their exceptional educational achievement needs reevaluation, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are categorized as one big group, masking the challenges faced by students in some of the Asian subgroups, according to “Information Sharing Could Identify and Address Challenges That Some Asian American and Pacific Islander students Face.”

If Asian and Pacific Islander students were grouped into a more specific demographic categories -- Indian, Chinese, Laotians, Hmong, Samoan, for example-- the report suggests then educators would see that the needs of certain students are similar to that of Blacks and Hispanics.

Although they make up about 5 percent of the population, in 2005, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders age 25 and older had the highest number of college degrees at 48 percent, followed by Whites at 30 percent; Blacks at 17 percent and Hispanics at 12 percent.

However, looking at each of the different subgroups, only certain groups are educationally successful. For example, the largest degree holders in the subgroups were Asian Indians and Chinese.

Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling - washingtonpost.com

Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling - washingtonpost.com: About 10 years ago, a group of graduate students lodged a complaint with Linda C. Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University: All their male counterparts in the university's PhD program were teaching courses on their own, whereas the women were working only as teaching assistants.

That mattered, because doctoral students who teach their own classes get more experience and look better prepared when it comes time to go on the job market.

When Babcock took the complaint to her boss, she learned there was a very simple explanation: "The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, 'I want to teach a course,' and none of the women had done that," she said. "The female students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, 'Who wants to teach?' " The incident prompted Babcock to start systematically studying gender differences when it comes to asking for pay raises, resources or promotions. And what she found was that men and women are indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations.

These differences, Babcock and other researchers have concluded, may partially explain the persistent gender gap in salaries, as well as other disparities in how people rise to the top of organizations. Women working full time earn about 77 percent of the salaries of men working full time, Babcock said. That figure does not take differing professions and educational levels into account, but when those and other factors are controlled for, women who work full time and have never taken time off to have children earn about 11 percent less than men with equivalent education and experience.

The Myth About Boys - TIME

The Myth About Boys - TIME
... In particular, Mead decided that boys from middle- and upper-income families--especially white families--are doing just fine. "The biggest issue is not a gender gap. It is these gaps for minority and disadvantaged boys," she told me recently in the think tank's conference room. Boys overall are holding their own or even improving on standardized tests, she said; they're just not improving as quickly as girls. And their total numbers in college are rising, albeit not as sharply as the numbers of girls. To Mead, a good-news story about the achievements of girls and young women has been turned into a bad-news story about laggard boys and young men.

KIDS COUNT State-Level Data Online

KIDS COUNT State-Level Data Online: KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is a national and state-by-state effort to track that status of children in the U.S. By providing policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being, KIDS COUNT seeks to enrich local, state, and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all children.

Md. falls in child welfare ranking -- baltimoresun.com

Md. falls in child welfare ranking -- baltimoresun.com: Maryland is one of the nation's wealthiest states, yet its infant mortality rate increased 11 percent between 2000 to 2004 and ranked as the nation's ninth worst, according to the 2007 Kids Count Databook, a report released yesterday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

'Maryland's current rate of 8.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births is nearly 23 percent higher than the national rate,' says the report, also noting that the number of low birth-weight babies increased by 8 percent and was more than 15 percent higher than the national rate.

The Kids Count Databook uses 10 indicators to measure how children are faring nationally in the areas of health, education and safety. The indicators include death rates of children and teenagers, parents' employment and income, and teen pregnancy and dropout rates.

Rising Voices of America - washingtonpost.com

Rising Voices of America - washingtonpost.com: This land is your land, this land is their land, and they hail from California to the New York island -- 34 of the best and brightest Latino college students, sojourning in Washington to do the congressional summer intern thing.

They arrived just in time to witness the spectacular flameout of the Senate's immigration reform bill in June, then to read about attempts to deny services to illegal immigrants in Prince William and Loudoun counties, then to immerse themselves in a project to provide services to one and all in Columbia Heights.

Washington makes them mad. And it inspires them.

It also has made them think deeply about who they are, and where they fit into this turbulent feat of political imagination and plain winging-it called America.

Students, schools fear end of racial diversity - washingtonpost.com

Students, schools fear end of racial diversity - washingtonpost.com: The fact that many U.S. schools remain starkly divided by race despite integration attempts is mostly the result of America's starkly divided neighborhoods, said John Powell, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Ohio.

He said many blacks are shut out of better white neighborhoods by systemic housing discrimination and since U.S. school funding is based on local tax receipts, poor neighborhoods beget poor schools.

'Blacks still overwhelmingly support integration,' Powell said. 'How do you train people to live in a diverse world when they're completely isolated growing up? Clearly it's harmful.'

Using income levels as an end-run around the race question has been implemented in some 40 districts across the United States, with mixed results. In small districts, all the children might be poor, making integration impossible.

The threat of lawsuits has convinced other schools to give up on diversity altogether -- a prospect Hardesty rejects.

'The board is not interested in a plan that would resegregate our schools but obviously we have to work within confines of the decision that we have,' he said.

House Approves Major Funding Increase For HBCUs

Citing the need for a dramatic funding increase, the House of Representatives has approved a plan to raise Black college funding by $125 million next year – 40 percent more than the current budget.

The chamber approved the plan as an amendment to the Education Department’s 2008 funding bill that members have been debating on the House floor much of this week. Of the new funding, $100 million would be divided among eligible HBCUs and $25 million would go to HBCU graduate institutions.

As originally written, the 2008 education bill had a 4 percent increase for HBCUs and graduate institutions. “That is not enough,” said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. “They need help, they need help now, and they need large amounts of help.”

The original plan earmarked $307 million for HBCUs and graduate programs. If enacted into law, the amendment would increase that amount to $432 million.

HBCUs have received only nominal increases in recent years, said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. “We need to fund these schools at a higher level,” he said. “The need has become greater and greater. These are students who need educational opportunities to move out and into the American dream.”

“There is still a critical need in this country for historically Black colleges and universities,” Cohen added.

Lawmakers would pay for the bill by cutting the U.S. Department of Education’s administrative funds by $125 million. That could pose a hardship for the department, sponsors acknowledged, but said they needed to find some offsetting funds. A House/Senate conference committee ultimately will settle details of a final spending bill later this year.

Challenges for Black Colleges’ Brightest in the Lab - New York Times

Challenges for Black Colleges’ Brightest in the Lab - New York Times: ... Yet such colleges, even decades after segregation fell, continue to award a disproportionate share of the bachelor’s degrees that black students receive nationwide. And going back to the Jim Crow era, when the South’s major universities barred black students, there was a pipeline carrying many of the most ambitious across the Mason-Dixon line for graduate study, especially at the Midwestern state universities of the Big Ten.

Adam W. Herbert knew of that legacy as the son and nephew of alumni of two historically black colleges, Langston in Oklahoma and Southern in Louisiana.

When he became president of Indiana University four years ago, the first black to hold that position, he set about trying to revive the tradition with a particular eye on science, technology, engineering and math, fields in which black students are woefully underrepresented.

A result of Dr. Herbert’s efforts, an initiative known by the acronym STEM for its four areas of concentration, started last month with the arrival of five students at Indiana-Purdue in Indianapolis and four at Indiana’s main campus in Bloomington. While the students receive research experience, the two universities get an inside track on recruiting talented blacks for graduate school.

Former World Leaders Unite to Confront Issues - washingtonpost.com

Former World Leaders Unite to Confront Issues - washingtonpost.com: Former South African president Nelson Mandela plans to announce on Wednesday the creation of 'the Elders,' a group composed mostly of retired global leaders that will seek to tackle urgent world problems unfettered by the politics of any one nation, officials with the group said.

It will have about a dozen members, including former president Jimmy Carter, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Among the organizers of the effort have been rock star Peter Gabriel and British airline mogul Richard Branson, who has used meetings at his Caribbean getaway, Necker Island, as an incubator for creation of the group.

Bullard: Green issue is black and white - CNN.com

Bullard: Green issue is black and white - CNN.com: As he surveys the nation's landfills, chemical plants, waste facilities, and smelters, Robert Bullard sees an insidious form of institutional racism.
"When you look at the neighborhoods that are where you have a lot of different waste facilities... the people who live closest are oftentimes the most vulnerable people who have the fewest resources to escape neighborhoods because of residential segregation, housing discrimination, and limited incomes," said Bullard, a professor at Georgia's Clark Atlanta University and the director of that university's Environmental Justice Resource Center.

"Just because you're poor, just because you live physically on the wrong 'side of the track' doesn't mean that you should be dumped on."

Those people are predominantly minorities, Bullard said. In fact, more than half of the 9 million people living within two miles of the nation's hazardous waste facilities are minorities, according to "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism," a recent report that Bullard co-wrote.

Widely acknowledged as a pioneer in environmental justice, Bullard has worked in the field since 1978. He is the author of several books on the topic, including "Confronting Environmental Racism," "Dumping on Dixie" and "Unequal Protection."

In his nearly two decades of work in the field, Bullard said little has changed.

Few Minorities Use Hospice Care Services - washingtonpost.com

Few Minorities Use Hospice Care Services - washingtonpost.com: ... Blacks seek hospice care in disproportionately smaller numbers than whites partly because of cost, health insurance and cultural factors, including a sense of being denied medical care on the basis of race, according to health care specialists.

'Some people think that if a doctor wants them to stay home and not come into the hospital, that the medical system isn't truly concerned about them,' said Jon Radulovic, vice president of communications for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Many in the hospice industry are reaching out to blacks and the growing Hispanic population, but Madison said no one had ever approached her about it until January.

Schools Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some - New York Times

Schools Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some - New York Times: When San Francisco started trying to promote socioeconomic diversity in its public schools, officials hoped racial diversity would result as well. It has not worked out that way.

Abraham Lincoln High School, for example, with its stellar reputation and Advanced Placement courses, has drawn a mix of rich and poor students. More than 50 percent of those students are of Chinese descent.

“If you look at diversity based on race, the school hasn’t been as integrated,” Lincoln’s principal, Ronald J. K. Pang, said. “If you don’t look at race, the school has become much more diverse.”

San Francisco began considering factors like family income, instead of race, in school assignments when it modified a court-ordered desegregation plan in response to a lawsuit. But school officials have found that the 55,000-student city school district, with Chinese the dominant ethnic group followed by Hispanics, blacks and whites, is re-segregrating.

The number of schools where students of a single racial or ethnic group make up 60 percent or more of the population in at least one grade is increasing sharply. In 2005-06, about 50 schools were segregated using that standard as measured by a court-appointed monitor. That was up from 30 schools in the 2001-02 school year, the year before the change, according to court filings.

Top 100 Popular Graduate Disciplines

Top 100 Popular Graduate Disciplines: As encouraging as the numbers of minorities earning advanced degrees may have been, gender differences across racial lines continue to persist at the master’s and doctoral levels. In the print edition of the Top 100 Graduate Degree Producers, released July 12, Diverse reviews the increase and decrease in minority students at the graduate level. The new online tables look at the popularity of various disciplines by race and gender. With the additional online analysis, we review how gender within ethnic groups affects the popularity of each discipline, and the patterns associated with that.

About the data: it is provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and allows us to look at the Top 100 institutions that awarded the most graduate degrees to minorities during the 2005-2006 academic years. The list only includes institutions eligible for Title IV funding that are located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

U.S.-born Latinos not as healthy as immigrants - More Health News - MSNBC.com

U.S.-born Latinos not as healthy as immigrants - More Health News - MSNBC.com: WASHINGTON - Hispanics born and raised in the United States may be in poorer health than new immigrants — with higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

Poor eating habits, smoking and a lack of exercise are all likely to blame, the team at the University of Southern California, the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Pennsylvania said.

The researchers looked at surveys of more than 4,200 whites, blacks and Hispanics aged 40 or older interviewed by federal researchers from 1999 to 2002.

NAACP delegates 'bury' the N-word - CNN.com

NAACP delegates 'bury' the N-word - CNN.com: Hundreds of onlookers cheered Monday as the NAACP put to rest a long-standing expression of racism by holding a public burial for the N-word during its annual convention.

The ceremony included a march by delegates from across the country from downtown Detroit's Cobo Center to Hart Plaza. Along the way, two Percheron horses pulled a pine box adorned with a bouquet of fake black roses and a black ribbon printed with a derivation of the word.

The coffin is to be placed at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery and will have a headstone.

'Today we're not just burying the N-word, we're taking it out of our spirit,' said Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. 'We gather burying all the things that go with the N-word. We have to bury the 'pimps' and the 'hos' that go with it.'

AP: Nutrition education ineffective - USATODAY.com

AP: Nutrition education ineffective - USATODAY.com: PANORAMA CITY, Calif. — The federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on nutrition education — fresh carrot and celery snacks, videos of dancing fruit, hundreds of hours of lively lessons about how great you will feel if you eat well.

But an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success in changing the way kids eat — or any promise as weapons against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.

'Any person looking at the published literature about these programs would have to conclude that they are generally not working,' said Dr. Tom Baranowski, a pediatrics professor at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine who studies behavioral nutrition.

The results have been disappointing, to say the least:

Last year a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to school children showed fifth graders became less willing to eat them than they had at the start. Apparently they didn't like the taste.

Bettering the Odds for Young Black Men - washingtonpost.com

Bettering the Odds for Young Black Men - washingtonpost.com: Kelvin James said nobody cared whether he stayed in school. So he quit.

'Half the time when I went to school, I wasn't going on time,' said James, 19, of Forestville. He left Crossland High School in Temple Hills as a senior. 'Sometimes I would stay in class and go to sleep. Other times, I would just go get in my car and leave.'

Like James, who is black, more than 50 percent of black males nationwide do not graduate with their class each year, according to a recent study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

In Maryland, 46 percent of black male students dropped out during the 2003-04 school year, the year rates were analyzed for the Schott Foundation report.

Prince George's and Montgomery counties are credited with success at retaining black male students, even though more than a third of the black males in each jurisdiction dropped out -- 39 percent in Prince George's and 36 percent in Montgomery, the report showed. The study did not include statistics on other suburban Maryland school districts. The Maryland jurisdiction with the lowest graduation rate for black males was the City of Baltimore, where 69 percent of them dropped out, the report said.

Students Take to the Road for Social Justice - washingtonpost.com

Students Take to the Road for Social Justice - washingtonpost.com: In the basement of Maryland Del. Jeffrey D. Waldstreicher's house lies a chunk of drywall that has motivated him over the years as he has navigated the political world.

Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery) gathered his treasure on a summer trip 11 years ago with Operation Understanding D.C., a group that each year takes more than 30 African American and Jewish students on a tour of the South to meet with civil rights leaders. Waldstreicher went during the summer that several black churches were burned in Alabama, and part of the trip was spent helping a congregation rebuild. He kept a memento.

"That piece of drywall is often an inspiration for me," said Waldstreicher, who lives in Kensington. "It helps to prevent cynicism from creeping up, and it's easy to let that happen when working in politics."

This morning, 31 students are set to embark on a 25-day journey to learn how they can continue a shared legacy of social change. The trip will take them to New York to visit historic synagogues and churches, and they will head south through North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. They are scheduled to meet such people as Joe Levin, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Rev. C.T. Vivian, an activist who challenged officials in Selma, Ala., over the right to register black voters.

The trip is part of a year-long program in which students are immersed in African American and Jewish cultures through such things as lectures and potluck dinners. They also visit places of worship during Passover and Easter.

Asian Americans value racially diverse public schools

When the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on Seattle's and Louisville's school integration cases came down, our offices received a flurry of calls inquiring how the rulings impact Asian Pacific Americans. Without a doubt, the court should have found these integration plans to be constitutional and legal efforts to diversify classrooms. In that regard, these decisions were dead wrong.

However, it should be noted that the court did not prohibit all consideration of race in school assignment plans. Justice Anthony Kennedy clearly states that "A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue... . Race may be one component of [student] diversity, but other demographic factors ... should also be considered."

One of the court's primary criticisms of the Seattle and Louisville plans was their lumping of various races into two categories -- black versus non-black in Louisville, and white versus non-white in Seattle. Both plans determined whether schools were integrated using only two categories. School districts across the country should adjust their school assignment plans to consider the diversity interests of many ethnic and racial communities, including those of Asian Pacific Americans, albeit in the more limited manner prescribed by the court.

Some would argue that race-conscious school assignment plans harm Asian Pacific Americans, but this is false. Asian-American students, like all others, benefit from diverse learning environments. The court's decisions leave room for school districts to address the very concerns described in our amicus brief in these cases, where we show that Asian-American parents greatly value racially integrated schools. They know integrated schools will prepare their children to succeed in a diverse society. Further, immigrant Asian Pacific American students feel racial integration decreases harassment in the long run by fostering cross-racial dialogue and friendship. Finally, racial segregation impedes the social and educational development of students, including in particular those who are linguistically isolated.

U.S. Department of Education Determination Letters on State Implementation of the IDEA

U.S. Department of Education Determination Letters on State Implementation of the IDEA: For the first time, the U.S. Department of Education has issued determination letters on implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to each state education agency for Part B and to each lead agency for Part C. The determinations, required under the statute, are part of the on-going efforts to improve results for children and youth with disabilities.

As amended in 2004, the IDEA requires the Secretary of Education to make an annual determination as to whether each state is meeting the requirements of the statute. Under the IDEA each state is required to have in place a State Performance Plan (SPP) that evaluates the state's efforts to implement the requirements and purposes of Parts B or C of the IDEA, and describes how the state will improve its implementation of these programs. Each state must then submit an Annual Performance Report (APR) detailing its progress in meeting the targets it established in its SPP.

The department approved states' SPPs in 2006 and states submitted their first APRs under the SPPs in February of 2007. The letters the department issued announce and explain the first determinations made under these new requirements of the IDEA.

Hispanic Magazine.com

Hispanic Magazine.com - March 2006 - Features: Not only is the number of Hispanics attending college on the rise, but latinos are also enrolling in higher numbers in the county's best schools, changing the faces of the most selective academic institutions.

What distinguishes a college from being excellent overall to being more specifically the best for Hispanics? There are many criteria to consider.

Not only has HISPANIC Magazine considered the essentials—an institution’s selectivity, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratio, and academic excellence with the help of U.S. News & World Report—but, we’ve also considered other important factors such as Hispanic enrollment, cultural programs, organizations and support for Hispanic students, and the percentage of Hispanic faculty. Twenty-four of our top 25 schools were also recognized by Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education in their annual “Publisher’s Pick List.”

Hispanic Magazine.com

Hispanic Magazine.com - June-July 2006 - Panorama: Up Front: When it comes to language, a lot of Hispanics become so emotional that they can’t think clearly.

For instance, they sometimes let the fact that they were once upon a time discouraged from speaking Spanish—even to the point of being punished in school—fuel their support of bilingual education for the students of today. They’ve also been known to make fellow Hispanics who don’t speak Spanish feel as if they aren’t Hispanic enough.

I know this from experience. When the time came to take the E.L.T. (Ethnic Litmus Test), I flunked the verbal—the section dealing with language. As a second- generation Mexican American, I speak English. What I don’t speak well—at least not as well as many of my fellow Hispanics would like—is Spanish.

For that, I offer no apologies. This is the United States and this is how it is supposed to be. Assimilation happens.

But if Hispanics are a little weird about language, so are other Americans. Many of the native-born feverishly insist that the United States is an English-speaking country and that anyone who lives here ought to speak, well, you know. And yet they turn a blind eye to the billions of dollars that U.S. companies spend in Spanishlanguage advertising each year in the hopes of grabbing a slice of the nearly $1 trillion that Hispanics have in annual
buying power.

CALIFORNIA / Nonwhite parents' high hopes

CALIFORNIA / Nonwhite parents' high hopes: California parents who are black, Latino and Asian American voiced big aspirations for their children and support for early childhood education in a new poll commissioned by New America Media, a national media association based in San Francisco.

More than 85 percent of African American parents interviewed across California said they expect their children to complete college or complete college and graduate school, while 80 percent of Latino and 90 percent of Asian American parents had the same hope. More than 75 percent of each group disagreed with the statement that 'children under 5 are too young to be attending any type of school.'

Based on telephone interviews with 602 parents in April and May conducted in English, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese, the poll revealed that at least 46 percent of parents in each ethnic group said the two most crucial challenges California faces are to provide good public education and sufficient moderate-priced housing.

Making It Happen

Making It Happen: Four Latinas discuss how they, against the odds, realized their higher education and professional dreams.
It wasn’t too long ago that the primary lifetime expectations for women included getting married and having children. These traditions were — and in many regards continue to be — more entrenched in the Latino community, but things are changing. Latinas who earn a degree are no longer the exception. In fact, more Latinas earn doctoral degrees today than their male counterparts.

And yet, Latinas still encounter obstacles like low expectations, financial constraints and a lack of knowledge about what it takes to apply and graduate from college.

Four accomplished Latinas speak to Diverse about how they, against the odds, realized their higher education and professional dreams.