Report: Segregation in U.S. Schools is Increasing - washingtonpost.com

Report: Segregation in U.S. Schools is Increasing - washingtonpost.com: ATLANTA (Reuters) - Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June, according to report published Wednesday. The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.

Many segregated schools struggle to attract highly qualified teachers and administrators, do not prepare students well for college and fail to graduate more than half their students.

Stereotypes turn girls off to math, science - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

Stereotypes turn girls off to math, science - LiveScience - MSNBC.com: "The days of sexist science teachers and Barbies chirping that 'math class is tough!' are over, according to pop culture, but a government program aimed at bringing more women and girls into science, technology, engineering and math fields suggests otherwise.

Use the link to read five myths about girls and science that still endure, according to the National Science Foundation's Research on Gender in Science and Engineering program.

Top Hispanic Degree Producers : HSIs : Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Others

Top Hispanic Degree Producers : HSIs : Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Others: Each year when we do our Top 100 undergraduate degree producers, we get calls from Hispanic-serving institutions asking why they didn’t make the list. Out of the Top 100 schools that confer the most bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics in 2005-06, just 33 percent were HSIs. According to Excelencia in Education’s analysis of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2005-2006, some 252 institutions met the basic criterion for an HSI. Out of these 252 institutions, roughly 50 percent (125 institutions) were four-year institutions (54 were public and 71 were private institutions). The other 50 percent (127 institutions) were two-year. Hispanic-serving institutions are defined not by their institutional mission, but by their total Hispanic enrollment. “HSIs are public and private not-for-profit degree-granting institutions of higher education with 25 percent or more undergraduate full-time equivalent Hispanic enrollment,” according to Excelencia in Education.

NYC to Pay Poor Parents to Help Their Kids - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

NYC to Pay Poor Parents to Help Their Kids - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com: Paying kids for good grades is a popular (if questionable) parenting tactic. But when school starts next week, New York City will try to use the same enticement to get parents in low-income neighborhoods more involved in their children's education and overall health. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has raised more than $40 million (much of it from his own money and the Rockefeller Foundation) to pay families a modest amount for small tasks—$50 for getting a library card or $100 to take a child to the dentist—that could make a big difference.
The experimental program, called Opportunity NYC, is modeled on a 10-year-old Mexican program called Oportunidades, which has been so successful in reducing poverty in rural areas that it has been adopted by more than 20 countries, including Argentina and Turkey. International studies have found that these programs raise school enrollment and vaccination rates and lower the number of sick days students take. Bringing this idea to Harlem and the South Bronx may not make a radical difference, concedes Linda Gibbs, the deputy mayor for Health and Human Services. But, she adds, "It makes these activities matter in a new way." Gibbs thinks that the money could also make parents more active in asking for services that might not exist in their neighborhoods. "A mother might demand an early-intervention evaluation [to look for developmental or learning disabilities] for a child" to get the $150 payment, Gibbs says. "If she can't find a doctor to do it, the cash incentive might make Mom more likely to ask why those services aren't available in her community." Schools chancellor Joel Klein says he hopes that the money will "get our students more interested in performing well at school, and the positive reinforcement they receive as well will, in turn, get them excited about the learning."

Finding Their Voices - washingtonpost.com

Finding Their Voices - washingtonpost.com: ... The teens are participating in the annual, highly competitive J.B. Fuqua Urban Debate League Novice Celebration in Atlanta, where 14 of the top teams from around the country have convened for the season-culminating competition. The Reagan students came prepared to debate the official resolution -- a proposal to increase young people's national service in organizations such as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Teach for America and the armed services. They have been researching and debating this very topic all year. They have tons of material about volunteerism sorted into files, placed in rubber bins and dragged halfway across the country on a plane from Milwaukee. They have been eating, sleeping and dreaming 'volunteerism' for months, debating both the pros and cons of this issue at competitions across the Midwest.

Poll: 1 in 4 read no books last year - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

Poll: 1 in 4 read no books last year - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com: ... One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices. The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.

U.S. Education Secretary Wooing Students from Brazil, Chile to Reverse Post 9/11 Decline

SAO PAULO, Brazil
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings looks more like a college recruiter this week, traveling through South America with American university leaders to woo back international students spooked by lengthy visa delays linked to post-9/11 security.

“American higher education is open for business to students from our neighbors,” Spellings said in Santiago, Chile, before meeting Tuesday with Chilean students and university rectors. Her next stop on Wednesday is Sao Paulo, the continent’s largest city.

The number of foreign students enrolling in American universities is rebounding following a drop due to extra visa security precautions after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of visas are granted to students seeking to study for a year or more is still less than before the terrorist attacks.


Only 5,881 F-1 student visas were handed out in Brazil in 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, down from 12,325 in 2001, according to the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia.

And competition for students is growing fast from nations like Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Even South Africa is in the race to attract South America’s best and brightest.

American universities depend on foreign students for teaching and research help, and policymakers consider them essential so that future foreign leaders will be familiar with the United States. It also has an economic effect: Foreign students provide of billions of dollars annually to the U.S. economy.

Cornel West Debates Michael Eric Dyson Over Use of the N-Word on New CD

Cornel West Debates Michael Eric Dyson Over Use of the N-Word on New CD: Dr. Cornel West, one of the nation’s most recognized Black public intellectuals, this week released his second hip-hop CD, a collaborative project with some of the biggest names in rap and R&B. The CD titled, “Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations,” by West, who teaches religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, enlists the sounds of artists like Prince, Talib Kweli, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, KRS-One and the late Gerald Levert. It’s the second socially conscious CD for the academic who released “Sketches of My Culture” in 2001, a CD that was harshly criticized by former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers who publicly questioned West’s scholarship. Summers ridiculed the CD, arguing that it was not befitting of real scholarship. The public spat eventually caused West — who felt disrespected — to abandon his alma mater for Princeton. “Sister Tilghman is qualitatively different than Brother Summers,” says West, referring to Dr. Shirley Tilghman, the current president of Princeton University, who helped to lure West to Princeton from Harvard. “The hip hop scared Brother Summers. It’s a stereotypical reaction.”

Tolerance.org: Teaching Tolerance: The Question of Class

Tolerance.org: Teaching Tolerance: The Question of Class: Paul C. Gorski challenges educators to push beyond a one-dimensional understanding of poverty. Rather than examining a so-called 'culture of poverty' -- a term used by the very popular Ruby Payne and others who write and speak about poverty at the national level -- Gorski urges educators to question the culture of classist assumptions that infiltrates our classrooms and schools.

Just the Stats: The Top Hispanic-serving Degree Producers

Each year when we do our Top 100 undergraduate degree producers, we get calls from Hispanic-serving institutions asking why they didn’t make the list. Out of the Top 100 schools that confer the most bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics in 2005-06, just 33 percent were HSIs. According to Excelencia in Education’s analysis of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2005-2006, some 252 institutions met the basic criterion for an HSI. Out of these 252 institutions, roughly 50 percent (125 institutions) were four-year institutions (54 were public and 71 were private institutions). The other 50 percent (127 institutions) were two-year.

Hispanic-serving institutions are defined not by their institutional mission, but by their total Hispanic enrollment. “HSIs are public and private not-for-profit degree-granting institutions of higher education with 25 percent or more undergraduate full-time equivalent Hispanic enrollment,” according to Excelencia in Education.

So why don’t more HSIs make the top 100 list? Eliminating the community colleges brings us down to 125 schools. In our Top 100 analysis, we usually exclude schools in Puerto Rico so that they don’t dominate the list, skewing the results and making it difficult to see how other schools are doing when it comes to graduating their Hispanic students. Out of the 125 institutions, 45 are in Puerto Rico. Most HSIs don’t make the Top 100 list simply because their enrollment is much smaller than the schools that do make the list.

Study: Overweight Kids Being Teased Out of an Education

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University have found that obesity is linked to high absenteeism rates in school-aged children.

The study of more than 1,000 students in 4th, 5th and 6th grades in the Philadelphia school system determined that body mass index, or BMI, is as significant of a factor in determining absenteeism from school as age, race, socioeconomic status and gender, formerly the four main predictors.

The study, conducted from 2003-2004, also found that overweight children were absent on average 20 percent more than their normal-weight peers.

Dr. Gary D. Foster, who runs the Center for Obesity Research and Education, received funding from the National Institutes of Health to measure the height and weight of the students. Researchers then calculated the students BMI, which relates height to weight.

Based on BMI, 2 percent of the children were underweight, 58 percent were normal weight, 17 percent were overweight, and 23 percent were what the researchers consider obese.

Researchers examined school attendance records of close to 1,200 students who attend the city’s poorest schools. More than 80 percent of students at these schools were eligible for free and reduced-cost meal plans. The study reveals that the obese children missed 12 days of school during the school year, compared to 10 days for children with normal weight.

Hispanic Outreach By Non-HSIs Lacking, Study Indicates

Hispanic-serving institutions make up only 6 percent of all colleges, but enroll half of all Hispanic college students, raising questions in a new study about outreach and diversity efforts at majority schools.

“There are more than 3,000 higher education institutions in the U.S., and all of them say they aspire to create a more diverse student body. While the high-achieving students that took part in our research could have gone anywhere, they largely chose HSIs,” said Sarita Brown, president of Excelencia in Education, the Hispanic education think thank that conducted the study.

“Latino students are sending a clear message on what they value in a college. If mainstream colleges and universities truly want to be more diverse, they should take note,” Brown said in a statement.


}The Ford Foundation-sponsored study, titled “Choosing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs): A Closer Look at Latino Students’ College Choices,” also finds that most Hispanics enrolled in HSIs didn’t do so intentionally, and are motivated by factors such as open admissions policies, locations in close proximity to large Latino populations, and cost. Subsequently, many colleges that fit into that criteria reach the 25 percent threshold qualifying them for federal HSI designation quickly.

“So many of these students are first-generation college-goers. And that means they don’t have the kitchen-table conversations about college options and trade-offs that might be occurring in families where at least one parent has gone to college,” says study author Dr. Deborah A. Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education. “That level of awareness by institutions at whatever level of selectivity is absolutely critical. There has to be that awareness within the institution that they’re reaching out to students that don’t have that intrinsic knowledge.”

Jazz Musician Max Roach Dies at 83 - washingtonpost.com

Jazz Musician Max Roach Dies at 83 - washingtonpost.com: Max Roach, the dazzling drummer who helped create the rhythmic language of modern jazz while expanding the expressive possibilities of the drums, died Aug. 15 in New York. He was 83 and had been ill for several years. Mr. Roach was a founding architect of bebop, the high-speed, harmonically advanced music of the 1940s that helped elevate jazz from dance-hall entertainment to concert-stage art. In dozens of landmark recordings with such musical giants as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk -- including a 1953 performance that has entered legend as 'the greatest jazz concert ever' -- he pioneered a new approach to jazz drumming that remains the standard to this day.

Professor dies from malaria in Egypt | ajc.com

Professor dies from malaria in Egypt | ajc.com: Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, who as a teacher, psychologist and historian shaped the minds and laid the groundwork for future African-American students, died Sunday while on a trip to Egypt. He was 73. Since 1980, Dr. Hilliard was the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University. He died two days before classes were to begin at the university.

... Dr. Hilliard often was called upon by school districts, public advocacy organizations, government agencies and private businesses to validate testing, advise on African content in curricula and identify biases for training programs.

He served as an expert witness in several cases that have resulted in the elimination of admissions tests as the sole criterion for college admission and led to the revamping of achievement testing.

Dr. Hilliard wrote more than 200 research reports, books and articles on testing, ancient African history, teaching strategies, African culture and child growth and development.

He was a founding member of the National Black Child Development Institute and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations.

Before joining the GSU faculty, Dr. Hilliard spent 18 years at San Francisco State University. He was chairman of the secondary education department, dean of education and a consultant to the Peace Corps.

Dr. Hilliard earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in counseling from the University of Denver, where he also taught in the College of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences. He received a doctorate in educational psychology there, as well.

NPR : Counties See Minorities Become the New Majority

NPR : Counties See Minorities Become the New Majority: Tell Me More
Immigrants who were once attracted to big cities like New York and Los Angeles are instead heading to the suburbs. Zala Siddiqui, living in Chicago's suburbs, and Narsi Narasimhan, from the Atlanta area, tell their stories.

NPR : Schools Worry About Fate of Desegregation Efforts

NPR : Schools Worry About Fate of Desegregation Efforts: Schools are reopening this year under a new legal cloud: Districts around the country must decide whether they can continue using race to assign students to schools. In June, the Supreme Court struck down the use of race in school assignment plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. Those districts are already revising their assignment plans. But many other school systems are hoping that local support will help them avoid court challenges to their desegregation efforts. Chester Darling has been fighting desegregation plans for decades. The Massachusetts attorney hailed this year's Supreme Court ruling and says he knows what he would like to do about school systems that still use race to decide who attends a particular school. 'I would go after every single one of them,' Darling announces. 'It's wrong. You just don't sort kids by color and deny benefits to them because of the color of their skin.' Desegregation is still a touchy issue around Boston, the scene of violent protests over school busing in the 1970s. Supporters of desegregation plans now worry the pendulum has swung back to those bad old days.

Just the Stats: How To Increase Minority Presence in STEM Fields at Your Institution

A few weeks ago, I started to look at the programs that work to boost minority participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, specifically Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. The Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE) is another successful program that focuses on helping STEM students by providing long-term institutional funding to Hispanic-serving institutions, historically Black colleges and universities, and tribal colleges and universities. The National Science Foundation provides funding for both programs.

Each MIE institution focuses on student support systems, undergraduate research opportunities, faculty development through technology and curriculum, outreach recruitment programs for K-12 students, STEM educational infrastructure, internal and external institutional assessment and evaluation, and partnerships and collaborations with business for student internship programs.

Currently there are several institutional partners actively involved: Bowie State University in Maryland; Spelman College in Atlanta; Universidad Metropolitana in Puerto Rico; The University of Texas at El Paso; Xavier University of Louisiana; Oglala Lakota College and Sisseton Wahpeton College in South Dakota; and Sitting Bull College in North Dakota.

In 2003-2004 there were roughly 34,810 undergraduate students enrolled in the MIE institutions, with 20 percent (6,950) in STEM fields. More than 40 percent of the 6,950 students enrolled in STEM are Hispanic, and 37 percent are Black.

Black History AP Course Faces Obstacles by College Board

Some K-12 school district officials have proposed a remedy to the lack of Black student enrollment in Advanced Placement classes: an AP course in African-American History.

“My thinking is, if we can get [Black students] to engage in one AP course, then eventually they will enroll in others,” says Dr. Linda Lane, the deputy superintendent for instruction for the Pittsburgh Public School District.

However, the officials at the College Board, which oversees the AP tests, say the likelihood of a Black history AP course coming to fruition is slim to none. Adding a new subject to the AP curriculum is up to colleges, who at this point are cool to the idea, says Trevor Packer, vice president of the AP program.

“We could not find a single college that shared an interest [in having an AP course in African-American history,” he says. “What [our member colleges and universities] explained to us is that though the issue is important, they don’t want to lose enrollment in their African-American studies.”

Instead, Packer says, colleges and the College Board believe it would be more effective to place an increased emphasis on African-American history in the existing AP U.S. history course. Other options include offering pre-AP courses in middle schools and providing support to teachers in predominately Black high schools so more can qualify to teach AP classes.

Packer says that of the 5,200 College Board members — which include private and public high schools, colleges, universities and minority-serving institutions — none, including HBCUs, expressed interest.

Expect More Challenges to Diversity Programs, Says Spelman President

Expect More Challenges to Diversity Programs, Says Spelman President: Spelman College President Beverly Tatum has championed racially diverse relationships for most of her life: as a child growing up in New England, as a young professor teaching about the psychology of racism and as an author writing about cross-racial interaction. Her perspective as a self-titled “integration baby” led her to predict the June 28 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down voluntary integration efforts in two public school districts. “The current composition of the Supreme Court … increases the possibility that the Court may side with the Department of Education and rule that any use of race as a selection criteria is unconstitutional,” she wrote in her latest book, Can We Talk About Race? which was published in April. The topic of resegregation has been on many minds following the high court’s decision. The Court voted 5-4 to strike down school integration plans in Louisville, Ky. and Seattle. While the decision does not affect several hundred public school districts under federal court order to desegregate, it does jeopardize similar programs in hundreds of cities and counties using voluntary integration as a means to diversify their schools.

Research shows that non-English-speaking young children learn more quickly with immersion - News - inRich

Research shows that non-English-speaking young children learn more quickly with immersion - News - inRich: Chesterfield County school officials are planning changes for the county's limited-English-speaking students. Non-English-speaking students made up about 3.7 percent -- 2,125 students -- of the county's nearly 58,000 students last school year. That's more than triple the number in 2000. The current English as a second language program serves students in 18 elementary schools, five middle schools and two high schools. Students attend the ESL school closest to them. But starting with the 2008-09 school year, school officials are going to eliminate those school-based ESL centers and instead send ESL students to their 'home' schools. The plan still is being developed, but the idea is that limited-English students will be placed in more regular education classes, while continuing ESL learning based on their level of English. Students on levels 1 or 2 -- those with very limited English skills -- spend more time with ESL teachers than those on levels 3 and 4. But research shows that young children, such as pre-kindergartners and kindergartners, learn more quickly when immersed in regular education classes where they're learning sounds and symbols along with their English-speaking peers.

Closing learning gaps

... Research shows that children, particularly those from low-income families, slip in reading and math over the summer if they don't receive appropriate enrichment to reinforce school lessons. The findings have grabbed attention in Washington, where Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama are co-sponsoring a bill that would, among other things, grant $100 million to five states selected by the U.S. secretary of education to fund summer programs for children from disadvantaged families.

"Everyone would expect an athlete or a musician's performance to suffer if they didn't practice. The research suggests the same is true for students and their academic work," said Ron Fairchild, executive director for the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. "We know, through research, that students who don't practice lose ground every summer. Those losses are cumulative and grow the achievement gap that schools are working so hard to erase."

The latest study from Johns Hopkins, which tracked 325 Baltimore students from first grade to age 22, found that by the end of the ninth grade, students from disadvantaged homes performed more than three grade levels below their peers in higher socio-economic families on reading comprehension tests. Two-thirds of that gap, Hopkins sociologist Karl L. Alexander found, was attributable to the lack of adequate summer enrichment in the early years. By the time the same students graduated, the disadvantaged students were performing six grade levels below their peers.

Immigrant parents struggle to keep their children bilingual - The Boston Globe

Immigrant parents struggle to keep their children bilingual - The Boston Globe: ... According to research presented to Congress in May, even the children of immigrants prefer to speak English by the time they are adults. Rub�n G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California at Irvine, and his team of researchers looked at 5,700 adults in their 20s and 30s in Southern California from different generations to see how long their language survived. A key finding centered on 1,900 American-born children of immigrants. The shift toward English among them was swift: While 87 percent grew up speaking another language at home, only 34 percent said they spoke it well by adulthood. And nearly 70 percent said they preferred to speak English. 'English wins, and it does so in short order,' said Rumbaut, who presented his findings to the US House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration in May. 'What we're talking about is a real phenomenon.' It is difficult for children to sustain their parents' languages amid the tidal wave of American pop culture, including movies and television, coupled with societal pressure to speak only English. Most schools and communities do little to preserve bilingualism, Rumbaut said. Even bilingual education programs, which Massachusetts voters dismantled in 2002, were commonly designed to help students make the transition to English-only classrooms.

Education - One new school, three languages - sacbee.com

Education - One new school, three languages - sacbee.com: A new charter school that will teach children in three languages -- Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and English -- is scheduled to open in September in the North Sacramento School District with about 120 children in kindergarten through third grade. Students at the Lindsay Global Language Academy, as the charter school is called, will learn all their subjects in the three languages from teachers who are native speakers. And they'll practice conversation skills by participating in video conferences with students in Beijing, Shanghai and Mexico City, said Linda Ventriglia, a former Sacramento City Unified educator who created the school. 'Kids that don't get out of Sacramento now are going to see people around the world,' Ventriglia said. 'We're trying to create a 21st century school.'

English Instruction Touted for Immigrants - washingtonpost.com

English Instruction Touted for Immigrants - washingtonpost.com: Spending on English instruction must be quadrupled to more than $4 billion a year for the next six years to make legal and illegal adult immigrants proficient in skills crucial to their assimilation and the economic future of a country whose population is increasingly foreign-born, a new national report says. In the first nationwide study of its kind, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that an additional $200 million a year is needed to improve legal immigrants' English skills enough for them to pass a citizenship test and 'fully participate in the country's civic life.' An additional $2.9 billion a year is required for illegal immigrants to meet those standards, the report says.

Federal and state governments currently spend about $1 billion a year on English as a Second Language instruction for adults, most of which comes from the states.

The report calls English acquisition by immigrants the "most important integration challenge" facing the country. English proficiency among immigrants is linked to higher earnings and tax contributions, lower welfare dependency and greater educational and economic advancement in the second generation, the study notes. Given global economic competition and the stagnant growth of the native-born labor force, spending on English instruction should be seen as an investment, the authors argue.

Gender Public Advocacy Coalition : About GenderPAC

Gender Public Advocacy Coalition : About GenderPAC: WASHINGTON – A new study shows that teachers tend to view the behavior of black girls as not 'ladylike' and therefore focus disciplinary action on encouraging behaviors like passivity, deference, and bodily control at the expense of curiosity, outspokenness, and assertiveness. Based on two years' observation at a Texas middle school, the Ohio University study found that teachers' class- and race-based assumptions of black femininity made them more likely to discourage behaviors and characteristics that lead to class involvement and educational success. The teachers' actions appeared to be less the result of conscious racism or sexism than an unwitting tendency to view the behavior of black girls through a different lens than that of their peers.

Study: Rate of black men slain in U.S. rises - USATODAY.com

Study: Rate of black men slain in U.S. rises - USATODAY.com: WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly half of the nation's murder victims in 2005 were black, and the number of black men who were slain is on the rise. A majority of the black murder victims were relatively young — between 17 and 29, the Justice Department said in a study released Thursday. The department's Bureau of Justice Statistics report offers a snapshot of racial disparities among violent crime victims. Black people represented an estimated 13% of the U.S. population in 2005, the latest data available, but were the victims of 49% of all murders and 15% of rapes, assaults and other non-fatal violent crimes nationwide. Most of the black murder victims — 93% — were killed by other black people, the study found. About 85% of white victims were slain by other white people. National Urban League President Marc Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans, said the data reflect a trend that cannot be reversed by law enforcement alone. It will require changes in public education and a revival of federal summer jobs programs for economically disadvantaged young people, he said.

Minorities become the majority in 10 percent of U.S. counties - CNN.com

Minorities become the majority in 10 percent of U.S. counties - CNN.com: Whites are now in the minority in almost one in 10 U.S. counties.

And that increased diversity, fueled by immigration and higher birth rates among blacks and Hispanics, is straining race relations and sparking a backlash against immigrants in many communities.

"There's some culture shock," said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based research agency. "But I think there is a momentum building, and it is going to continue."

As of 2006, non-Hispanic whites made up less than half the population in 303 of the nation's 3,141 counties, according to figures the Census Bureau is releasing Thursday. Non-Hispanic whites were a minority in 262 counties in 2000, up from 183 in 1990.

The Census Bureau's report has population estimates by race and ethnicity for every county in the nation. They are the first such estimates since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, scattering hundreds of thousands of people.

Va. Lawyer Was at Fore of Attack on Segregation - washingtonpost.com

Va. Lawyer Was at Fore of Attack on Segregation - washingtonpost.com: Oliver W. Hill, 100, a Virginia lawyer who helped overturn legal segregation in his native state and was one of the country's foremost civil rights defenders during a six-decade career, died yesterday at his home in Richmond. He had a heart ailment.

Hill was an instrumental member of an NAACP-affiliated legal team that persistently attacked segregation. He also was a lead lawyer on a Virginia case later incorporated into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools unlawful.

He lacked the renown of his Howard University Law School classmate Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Supreme Court justice, but at one time, Hill had 75 civil rights cases pending. He is estimated to have won $50 million in better pay and infrastructure needs for the state's black teachers and students during his career.

Harvard Study Examines Hidden Biases Among ER Physicians

A new Harvard University study reports that physicians’ subconscious racial biases play a significant role in the care and treatment they provide to patients and is a contributing factor to the health disparity that exists between Black and White patients.

“We have a very serious problem in health care today,” says Dr. Alexander Green, the leading author of the study. “It has become very clear that minority patients are less likely to get certain important tests and treatments than White patients.”

The study examined the actions of nearly 300 resident physicians in Atlanta and Boston as they determined the best method of care for patients suffering from heart disease, the number one killer of Blacks.

First, the study participants were presented with the medical histories and images of either a 50-year-old Black or White man and asked how they would treat each patient if the patient showed up in the emergency room complaining of chest pains.

Researchers then asked the doctors, depending on their initial response, whether they would diagnose the man as a heart attack victim and, if so, whether they would prescribe thrombolytics, drugs commonly used to treat heart attacks.

The study also had doctors take the Implicit Association Test, a computer survey that detects hidden biases. Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a psychology professor at Harvard and a co-author of the study, co-designed the test. It was first introduced in 1998 and is widely used to measure unconscious biases.

The result of the study showed that White physicians were less likely to prescribe potentially life-saving medications or treatments to Black heart attack patients.

However, Black physicians were consistent in the care they provided for their patients.

Multicultural Dorm Project Rewarded For Retention Results

Multicultural Dorm Project Rewarded For Retention Results: Five years ago, when Purdue University’s administrators sat down to brainstorm ways to improve diversity and retain students, they came up a solution they never thought would become an award-winning retention program.

In their program, “Multicultural Learning Communities,” a diverse selection of students studying the same discipline live in the same dorm as well as take the same classes. MCL project enforce the importance of living and learning from a multiple perspectives by requiring students in the courses to live and learn together.

Purdue, the University of Central Michigan and West Virginia UniversityOrlando. received the Lee Noel and Randi Levitz Retention Excellence Award earlier this month at the higher education consulting firm’s 2007 National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing and Retention, in

“The winning programs…went above and beyond in terms of generating identifiable and measurable institutional outcomes, demonstrating originality in program development and using resources in a creative manner,” said Tim Culver, vice president of the firm.

English Instruction Touted for Immigrants - washingtonpost.com

English Instruction Touted for Immigrants - washingtonpost.com: Spending on English instruction must be quadrupled to more than $4 billion a year for the next six years to make legal and illegal adult immigrants proficient in skills crucial to their assimilation and the economic future of a country whose population is increasingly foreign-born, a new national report says.

In the first nationwide study of its kind, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that an additional $200 million a year is needed to improve legal immigrants' English skills enough for them to pass a citizenship test and 'fully participate in the country's civic life.' An additional $2.9 billion a year is required for illegal immigrants to meet those standards, the report says.