Experts Urge ‘Culturally Competent’ Programs for Educating Hispanic Families

With an already exploding population growth, Hispanic people will have a growing impact on all policy matters related to the family, and in effect, health care and education, according to a new report.

The Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute held a forum Nov. 15 in collaboration with the Annie E. Cassey Foundation to discuss trends affecting Hispanic familiesand actions that policymakers can take to strengthen them. “The Hispanic Family in Flux,” a working paper by Roberto Suro, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication, was released at the forum.

Suro says the growth of the Hispanic population has already slowed the decline of the two-parent parent family in the United States by addingyoung adults with a higher propensity to marry than their native-born peers, both Latino and non-Latino.

“But immigration is also producing a disproportionate number of Hispanics who are geographically separated from their spouses,” says the report. “The dynamics shaping the Hispanic family are both complex and fluid.”

Just the Stats: Fewer Hispanics Study Music Than Other Groups

Hispanics are less likely than their minority peers to participate in music education throughout their lifetime, and yet they earn the most music degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). More than 80 percent of Blacks will have taken some sort of musical education training throughout their lifetime, compared to 73 percent of Hispanics.

A new report was recently released illustrating the direct effects of musical education on personal fulfillment, career success, and higher education attainment. The survey was conducted independently by Harris Interactive�, an online polling company.

Despite the lack of musical participation, Hispanics outnumber Blacks in earned degrees in music. Based on data from the NCES in 2005, Hispanics represented 12.7 percent of all music associate degree holders, while Blacks earned 8.8 percent of the all music degrees. Similarly, Hispanics represented 6.4 percent of all music undergraduate degree holders, compared to 5.3 percent for Blacks.

Report: Minority Doctoral Recipients Gaining Momentum

Report: Minority Doctoral Recipients Gaining Momentum Twenty percent of the U.S. citizens awarded research doctorates from American universities in 2006 were ethnic minorities, according to a recent report released by the National Science Foundation in conjunction with the National Opinion Research Center and an assortment of government agencies.

It was the largest percentage ever recorded for minority recipients in the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates. This data and other findings can be found in the 2006 summary report of Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities.

Doctoral Degrees Conferred, 2005-06
African Americans 1,659
Asians/Pacific Islanders 1,619
Hispanics 1,370
American Indian 118

During the 2005-06 academic year, U.S. universities awarded 46,596 research doctoral degrees, improving 5 percent from the year before. This total, which includes international students, represents the highest number of research doctoral recipients in U.S history, researchers say.

A total of 5,211 minority students were awarded research doctorates; a 2.6 percent increase over 2005. While minorities made up 20 percent of U.S. awardees, they made up 11 percent of all doctoral recipients, including international students.

Breast cancer risk tool revised for blacks- msnbc.com

Breast cancer risk tool revised for blacks- msnbc.com: WASHINGTON - A widely used tool for predicting a woman’s risk of breast cancer is getting an update — to better reflect black women’s risk.

At issue is the National Cancer Institute’s online risk calculator. Answer a few questions — such as current age, age when your first child was born, family history of breast cancer — and learn your odds of getting breast cancer in the next five years.

But the calculator has a caveat: It was created using studies of breast cancer in white women. A warning flashes telling non-white women that the answer they’re about to get comes with some uncertainty.

Now scientists are updating the calculations to reflect newer data on black women and cancer.

It turns out the original calculator had been slightly underestimating risk for black women 45 and older — and slightly overestimating risk for younger black women, NCI researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Neediest kids live in rich states - USATODAY.com

Neediest kids live in rich states - USATODAY.com: Low-income children who fare the worst in health care, education and family structure live in some of the nation's wealthiest states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, a study to be released next week reveals.

The report is the first to look at the well-being of low-income children by state, says co-author William O'Hare, demographer and senior fellow at the Kids Count program of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for needy children and families. The report is based on newly available federal data.

"Many states that looked as if they're doing quite well when all children were assessed don't look so good when you assess only low-income children," O'Hare says.

Those states have big cities with pockets of poverty and more households headed by single women, says Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families.

Latino officers group rips NYPD bias study - Race & ethnicity- msnbc.com

Latino officers group rips NYPD bias study - Race & ethnicity- msnbc.com: NEW YORK - A national Latino law enforcement group on Thursday blasted an outside report that concluded the New York Police Department demonstrated no clear racial bias with its aggressive 'stop-and-frisk' policy.

The policy resulted in more than 500,000 stops of pedestrians last year, most of them black or Hispanic, but the report said RAND Corp. researchers found only 'small racial differences in the rates of frisk, search, use of force and arrest.'

The National Latino Officers Association of America said the report confirmed what it already knew: 'You get exactly what you pay for.'

In Brief: Schools Chief Tells Principals No Assemblies for Ethnic Groups

In Brief: Schools Chief Tells Principals No Assemblies for Ethnic Groups: Schools Director Tells Principals No Assemblies for Ethnic Groups LA VERGNE, Tenn.

Rutherford County Schools Director Harry Gill said he will tell his principals to avoid special assemblies for ethnic groups after complaints about a high school gathering for Black and Hispanic students to discuss improving test scores, a district spokesman said.

La Vergne High School Principal Melvin Daniels, who is Black, held the Friday assembly that offended some students who felt the meeting was unfairly targeted at minority students.

“What Mr. Daniels was talking about was total outrage,” said senior Stephanie Dement, noting that she’s a B student with hopes of becoming a pediatrician.

A lot of the students were upset about it, she said. “We felt like he was calling us Black people dumb.”

Daniels said his goal was to encourage the students to improve their test scores on Gateway exams in Biology I, English II and Algebra I. Student must pass the test to graduate, as well as the 11th-grade writing assessment.

U.S. scores on international test tossed - Education- msnbc.com

U.S. scores on international test tossed - Education- msnbc.com: WASHINGTON - The reading scores of U.S. students on an international test are being tossed out due to a problem with how the test was printed, federal officials said Monday.

Scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, are due out next month. Fifteen-year-olds in more than 50 countries took the test. It focused on science this time but also included math and reading questions.

Only the reading portion is being set aside, and only for U.S. students, said Mark Schneider, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department.

Researchers Urge Caution On Using Genetic Ancestry Tests

The availability of genetic ancestry tests has generated considerable interest among Americans eager to learn about the racial background of their ancestors. Last month, a University of Texas assistant anthropology professor, in association with 13 researchers from across the United States, urged the scientific community to better inform the public about the shortcomings of the tests and called upon consumers to consider the tests with caution.

In recent years, DNA ancestry testing has found unique favor among African-Americans. Given the tragic dislocation of the transatlantic slave trade, many African-Americans have had difficulty tracing their ancestry through surname research and other archives. DNA testing has offered African-Americans what many believed is a compelling new tool to discover more information about their heritage. In the PBS documentary “African-American Lives,” show host Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the producers had the DNA of prominent African-Americans, such as Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones, tested for the geographic origins of their ancestors.

Dr. Deborah Bolnick, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, and fellow researchers urged caution with genetic ancestry tests in “The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing,” which appear in the Oct. 19 issue of Science. The article reports that at least two dozen firms offer genetic ancestry tests, which usually range from $100 to $900, to help consumers learn the racially and ethnically correlated origins of their ancestors. More than 460,000 people have purchased the tests during the past six years.

NAEP Data Shows Improvements in Math, Yet Widening Achievement Gap in Urban Districts

NAEP Data Shows Improvements in Math, Yet Widening Achievement Gap in Urban Districts: A new report on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores for the largest urban school districts shows overall improvement in math for the mostly low-income and minority students who make up these districts, but a widening achievement gap between minority and White students.

The Nation’s Report Card on Thursday released two new reports on student achievement on the NAEP for both fourth- and eighth-graders: “The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2007: Trial Urban District Assessment and The Nation’s Report Card Reading 2007: Trial Urban District Assessment.” Overall, test scores show encouraging growth in mathematics, but mixed results in reading achievement.

Students were compared throughout 11 of the nation’s largest city school districts. The NAEP assessment, dispensed by the U.S. Department of Education, reflected data on a representative sample, which illustrated a collective baseline for student attainment. The districts are: Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Cleveland; Houston; Los Angeles; New York City; San Diego; and Washington, D.C. Jointly, they make up the districts whose 37,000-38,000 fourth- and eighth- graders were tested in reading and math and whose collective results are tracked through The Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA).

Hate Crime Reporting Uneven - washingtonpost.com

Hate Crime Reporting Uneven - washingtonpost.com: ...In 'Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police,' an article based on the National Criminal Victimization Survey and Uniform Crime Reporting, statistician Caroline Wolf Harlow said the nation had an annual average of 210,000 hate crimes between July 2000 and December 2003. About 92,000 crimes were reported to police, Harlow wrote.

An ordinary crime becomes a hate crime when a perpetrator chooses a victim because of a particular characteristic, Harlow wrote. It can be skin color, sexual orientation, physical disability or religion. And there must be evidence that hate prompted the crime. According to the FBI's latest report, most people who commit hate crimes are white -- about 59 percent. Twenty percent are black.

In incidents involving racial bias alone, blacks represented 66 percent of the victims, the report said. Jews were more often the victims of religious violence, at 65 percent. Hispanics were more likely to be the targets of ethnic crimes, at 63 percent, and gay men, at 62 percent, were the most common victims of attacks related to sexual orientation.

FBI: Hate crimes up by 8 percent - Crime & courts- msnbc.com

FBI: Hate crimes up by 8 percent - Crime & courts- msnbc.com: WASHINGTON - Hate crime incidents in the United States rose last year by nearly 8 percent, the FBI reported Monday, as racial prejudice continued to account for more than half the reported instances.

Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7.8 percent from the 7,163 incidents reported in 2005.

Although the noose incidents and beatings among students at Jena, La., high school occurred in the last half of 2006, they were not included in the report. Only 12,600 of the nation’s more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies participated in the hate crime reporting program in 2006 and neither Jena nor LaSalle Parish, in which the town is located, were among the agencies reporting.

Thousands protest over civil rights - USATODAY.com

Thousands protest over civil rights - USATODAY.com: WASHINGTON — Thousands of protesters are marching past the Justice Department headquarters Friday to show their displeasure with the department's enforcement of civil right laws, especially those relating to hate crimes.

'The people are tired and we've given them the opportunity to express themselves,' said activist Al Sharpton, who marched arm-in-arm with radio host Tom Joyner, comedian Steve Harvey and Martin Luther King III, among others. The relatives of victims of police shootings attended the rally to bring attention to their cases.

'I don't want this to happen to any other family,' siaid Nicole Poultre Bell, 23, of Queens, New York, whose fiance, Sean Bell was shot 50 times by police the night before his wedding. Three officers are awaiting trial on charges that Bell's shooting was unjustifiable.

4 nooses found in Central Michigan University classroom - CNN.com

4 nooses found in Central Michigan University classroom - CNN.com: (CNN) -- A student found four nooses in a classroom at Central Michigan University earlier this week, the school said Thursday.

The student found the nooses in a section of the Engineering and Technology Building typically used by senior engineering students. They were made of compressed gas lines that are typically used in laboratory work, according to a news release.

Michigan state Sen. Hansen Clark said he met with the university president to discuss how to handle the incident. He plans to make a statement Friday on whether the university will ask federal authorities to investigate the case.

'There was no reason for the nooses to be hung like that,' Hansen said. 'The community is looking at this as a racist act.'

Students and employees at the school's Mount Pleasant, Michigan, campus are being questioned about the incident, university Police Chief Stan Dinius was quoted as saying in the news release."

Study: Foreign Language Courses See Gains on Campus

Study: Foreign Language Courses See Gains on Campus: Foreign language courses are booming on American college campuses, a new study finds, with enrollment in Arabic more than doubling from 2002 to 2006.

The latest figures from the Modern Language Association of America, released Tuesday, reflect a major push toward internationalization on college campuses, more government support for language study and simply more interest from students. Over four years, total enrollment in language courses has grown 12.9 percent.

Spanish remains the most popular subject, with more than 823,000 students enrolled, up 10.3 percent since 2002 and nearly four times higher than No. 2 French.

But Arabic is the fastest-growing major language, breaking the top 10 for the first time with just under 24,000 enrollments, compared to about 10,600 in 2002. The number of institutions offering Arabic has nearly doubled to 466, including both two- and four-year colleges.

Between 2002 and 2006, Arabic enrollment jumped from 222 to 482 at Georgetown University, from 37 to 156 at Boston College and from 65 to 184 at Arizona State. "

NPR : Poll: Education, Income Segregates Blacks

NPR : Poll: Education, Income Segregates Blacks: One of the most damaging forces tearing at young black people in America today is the popular culture's pernicious image of what an 'authentic' black person is supposed to look like and how that person is supposed to act.

For example, VH-1's highly rated Flavor of Love show features a black man in a clownish hat, a big clock hanging around his neck, spewing the N-word while demeaning black women. And hip-hop music videos celebrate the 'Thug Life' and 'gansta' attitude for any young black person seeking strong racial identity.

But a critic who points out that this so-called culture is defeatist and damaging — because it leads to high drop-out rates, record black-on-black murder statistics and a record number of out-of-wedlock births — is dismissed as a prude and a censor. Anyone questioning lyrics that glorify violence and make it cool to treat women as sex toys is told that the words reflect the reality of black life, and that they are 'acting white.'

Well, today there is new fuel for the debate.

UCLA Study See Inequities for Latino Students

: Latino students lag far behind White and Asian students on every indicator of school success — achievement, high school graduation, and college preparation, according to a study by the University of California-Los Angeles Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.

The study said, “The result is that Latinos are dramatically underrepresented in California’s public institutions of higher education, in high-paying jobs, and in middle-class lives.”

“California’s Latino students also have limited access (both in absolute terms and in comparison to White and Asian students) to the resources and opportunities they need to graduate from high school prepared to succeed in higher education and careers, and to be ready for significant participation in public life,” the report summary said.

The study by the institute directors, Jeannie Oakes and John Rogers, found that many African-American and Latino students are attending “segregated” schools, those with enrollments that are more than 90 percent or more Latino and African-American students.

Racial disparities in Alzheimer’s survival - Alzheimer's Disease- msnbc.com

Racial disparities in Alzheimer’s survival - Alzheimer's Disease- msnbc.com: WASHINGTON - U.S. Latinos and blacks live longer after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease than whites even as autopsies show that the severity of the disease is similar among them, researchers said on Wednesday.

Latinos lived approximately 40 percent longer than whites after diagnosis with the disease, and blacks lived about 15 percent longer than whites, the researchers reported in the journal Neurology.

The researchers tracked 30,916 people ages 65 and older with Alzheimer's disease from across the United States.

Racial bias seen in foster care - Behavior- msnbc.com

Racial bias seen in foster care - Behavior- msnbc.com: BOSTON - The white social worker looked at the dark spots on the black child's body and assumed the youngster had been beaten. The family denied it, but the social worker insisted.

It turned out the child had 'Mongolian spots' — harmless skin blotches common among black children. The social worker's mistake was discovered before the parents got into trouble.

But researchers and policymakers say such episodes help explain why black, Hispanic and other minority children in the United States are far more likely than white youngsters to be taken from their homes and placed in foster care.

Poll: Blacks grow more pessimistic - USATODAY.com

Poll: Blacks grow more pessimistic - USATODAY.com: WASHINGTON — Black Americans are more dissatisfied with their progress than at any time in the past 20 years, and less than half say life will get better for them in the future.

A poll released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that one in five blacks say things are better for them now than five years ago. In 1984, almost two in five blacks said things were better than they were five years earlier.

Less than half of blacks surveyed say they think life will get better, compared with 57% in 1986.

"There's a great deal of anxiety, cynicism and pessimism today," says Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. He says growing rates of crime, unemployment and mortgage foreclosures are shrinking wealth in black communities, which contributes to the dissatisfaction.

Young English Learners A Rising Tide in Suburbs - washingtonpost.com

Young English Learners A Rising Tide in Suburbs - washingtonpost.com: Parents do not show up at Highland Elementary School merely to drop off students.

On a recent morning, one mother arrived seeking help in filling out a job application. Another needed a Spanish speaker for a teacher conference about missed homework. Someone else wanted to know how to get health insurance for her son. Twenty parents waited in the computer lab for a class that would cover little more than how to turn the machines on and off.

This year, for the first time, more than half the students at the Silver Spring school spoke limited English. It's a milestone for the school and for the Montgomery County school system, where the term "English language learners" was seldom heard before the middle of the last decade.

The population of students learning English is rising briskly in school systems in the Washington suburbs. Elementary school students with limited English proficiency (LEP) now number 20,000 in Fairfax, 10,000 in Montgomery, 9,000 in Prince William and 8,000 in Prince George's counties. Just seven years ago, those four counties accounted for 23,000 elementary-grade LEP students.

These newest LEP students are largely U.S. citizens, born within a few miles of their school but raised in homes where English is not spoken.

Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families - washingtonpost.com

Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families - washingtonpost.com: Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study -- a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

Study: Foreign Students Added to Economy - New York Times

Study: Foreign Students Added to Economy - New York Times While foreign students at American colleges and universities are most often singled out for their scientific and cultural contributions, their growing numbers help make them an increasingly important economic force as well, according to a new report from the Institute of International Education.

In the 2006-7 school year, the report found, international students’ net contribution to the United States economy was nearly $14.5 billion — up a billion dollars from the previous year, the largest annual increase to date.

“These are foreign people buying an American product, and the Department of Commerce says international education is our fifth-largest service export, bigger than medical services,” said Allan E. Goodman, president of the institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes international study. “It’s a huge factor in a lot of cities, including New York, where international students contribute about $1.5 billion, more than the Yankees, the Mets, the Rangers, the Knicks and the Giants combined.”

College Basketball Graduation Rates - NCAA Men's Basketball

College Basketball Graduation Rates - NCAA Men's Basketball Basketball athletes at Division I universities are bringing in the ‘game,’ but are they making the ‘grade?’ Here, Diverse presents basketball student-athlete graduation rates for NCAA Division I schools and historically Black colleges and universities.

Methodology:
Most of the data below comes from the National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS database on enrollment and six-year graduation rates at major institutions, broken down by sport and race, as reported by students. The 2002 numbers reflect how many students who enrolled in 1996 graduated by 2002. The data only reflect those who have received athletic financial aid. However, IPEDS did not have graduation data for all Division I teams. For example, most Ivy League institutions did not report student-athlete graduation data because they do not offer athletics aid.

For the most recent data, graduation rates for 2006, we have to turn to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which receives data directly from the schools and makes them available faster than NCES. The NCAA only provided Graduation Success Rates (GSR) for schools by race/ethnicity, sport and gender, but not raw enrollment data.

ESL Courses for a Global Workforce

School Tries New Ways to Teach Growing Numbers of Immigrants

In a typical language course, a teacher might limit a discussion on the meaning of "chameleon" to its two well-known definitions: a lizard that changes colors or a person who, figuratively, does the same thing in different situations.

But at Montgomery College, it's only the beginning for students whose first language is not English.

In the Cultural Identity in a Changing World course, 16 students sitting in a four-hour class last week learned about chameleons in apartheid South Africa, people whose official racial designation was changed by the government through the stroke of a pen. Indians became colored. Chinese became white.

The course is designed to teach the nitty-gritty of language acquisition -- reading, writing and oral communication -- through the context of content rather than through drilling of basic skills, something common in traditional classes for nonnative English speakers.

American Chronicle: National American Indian Heritage Month Of November

American Chronicle: National American Indian Heritage Month Of November:
It's November and this month has been set aside for National American Indian Heritage Month. Summer is over and the tree leaves are turning bright multi colors, the farm crop's have been harvested. Now it's time to celebrate the year and look forward to the new one coming up.

During the month of November each year, American Indians display their rich and colorful heritage nation wide. All across America, Indian Nations will hold special events to include Indian feasts and Pow Wows. School children will take part in making Indian crafts and learning about the life of First Americans history, traditions and culture.

...American Indian Heritage Month is celebrated to recognize the intertribal cultures, the perseverance and unity of their people to overcome all obstacles laid before them while striving for a better future for all. It's about paying tribute and giving thanks to Mother Earth for making life possible with all her bountiful foods, water and shelters. This belief and lifestyle has been the core center of the American Indian community from the beginning of their life on Mother Earth.

Diverse To Host a Web Chat on Black Greek Letter Organizations

Diverse To Host a Web Chat on Black Greek Letter Organizations

Please join us for an exciting Web chat discussion about the state of Black Greek Letter Organizations at 1 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 14. Our panel includes Dr. Ricky L. Jones, author of “Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities and Dr. Gregory S. Parks, editor of the new book “Our Fight Has Just Begun: The Relevance of Black Fraternities and Sororities in the 21st Century,” among others.

Maryland Humanities Council : : Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation

Maryland Humanities Council : : Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation: The Maryland Humanities Council (MHC) has introduced a special initiative, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation, which uses the humanities to stimulate open, inclusive conversations about race, one of the most critical — and difficult — issues in our state. Through cross-racial dialogue, MHC is engaging Marylanders in an examination of the legacy of Dr. King, the current state of race relations in their communities, and ways to bridge the racial divide and resolve racial differences.

MHC sponsors a wide range of public education programs which reflect the theme of the special initiative. These include Living History Presentations, Speakers Bureau, Poetry Programs, Oral History Workshops, Maryland History Day, Letters About Literature, One Maryland/One Book, and Chautauqua 2008. These programs will explore various aspects of race relations and the Civil Rights Movement.

Gender Balance in Science Settings May Explain Female Performance

Gender Balance in Science Settings May Explain Female Performance: PALO ALTO, Calif. With the ratio of men to women in math, science and engineering (MSE) settings typically being three to one, such imbalance may contribute to a decrease in women’s performance expectations, as well as actual performance, according to a new study by Stanford University psychologists.

Building their study from the idea that gender imbalance may create an identity threat for women, Drs. Mary Murphy and Claude Steele contend that the organization of math, science and engineering environments has a major role in contributing to a lag in expectations and performance by women. Study results demonstrate that rather than being inherent to women, the experience of an identity threat in MSE settings can be attributed to the gender balance. The study appears in the October 2007 edition of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Perspectives: Exposure, High Expectations and Academic Rigor are Critical for Achieving College Success

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, only 18 high school freshmen out of every 100 students nationally will graduate from college on time, which is now considered to be within six years of enrollment. Taking an even more profound look at the 68, on average, who will complete high school, only 40 will enter college immediately after their high school graduation and many will enter unprepared.

These statistics are staggering and appear especially dismissal when focusing on the Black students who graduate from high school at a rate much lower than the national average. Just 56 percent of Blacks graduate from high school, of which 40 percent enter a post-secondary institution immediately after high school. Unfortunately, the overall results of the 2006 ACT tests clearly demonstrates the fact that Black youth are entering their post-secondary careers with substantial deficiencies. In fact, only 3 percent of Blacks taking the 2006 test met or exceeded benchmarks on all four tests.

Many Black students, valedictorians included, are entering college completely ill-equipped academically and with the false perception of post-secondary education as being a form of “advanced high school.” The problems in education are twofold: the failure to graduate and the failure to graduate students prepared for success in college. A lack of exposure to higher education, increasingly lowered expectations in the classroom, and an effortless high school course load completely devoid of rigor are all factors which can be ascribed to such a low level of preparedness and rate of retention.

Subprime Mortgages - Race - Blacks - Hispanic-Americans - Foreclosures - Housing - Banks - New York Times

Subprime Mortgages - Race - Blacks - Hispanic-Americans - Foreclosures - Housing - Banks - New York Times: High-cost subprime mortgages have often been framed as loans that catered to people with blemished credit records or little experience with debt.

There has been less attention paid to the concentration of these loans in neighborhoods that are largely black, Hispanic, or both. This pattern, documented in federal loan records, holds true even when comparing white middle-income or upper-income neighborhoods with similar minority ones.

Consider two neighborhoods in the Detroit area. One, located in the working-class suburb of Plymouth, is 97 percent white with a median income of $51,000 in 2000. To the east, a census tract in Detroit just inside Eight Mile Road has a very similar median income, $49,000, but the population there is 97 percent black.

Last year, about 70 percent of the loans made in the Detroit neighborhood carried a high interest rate — defined as 3 percentage points more than the yield on a comparable Treasury note — while in Plymouth just 17 percent did.

Last year, blacks were 2.3 times more likely, and Hispanics twice as likely, to get high-cost loans as whites after adjusting for loan amounts and the income of the borrowers, according to an analysis of loans reported under the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. (Asians are somewhat less likely than whites to take out high-cost loans.)

Districts Adopt Mexican Curriculum to Help Hispanic Students

: Several school districts in the South and West that serve large populations of Spanish-speaking immigrant students are moving to align their middle- and high-school curriculae with what is being taught in Mexico.

Public school districts in California, Texas, Washington state, Florida, Oregon, among others, are desperately looking for ways to prevent large numbers of immigrant students from falling behind in their classes while they struggle to learn English. Providing bilingual education can be a daunting task where there is a dearth of Spanish-speaking teachers. In Oregon, while just 2 percent of teachers are Hispanic, 15 percent of students are of that background.

One of the most creative solutions to this problem is to use supplemental and Web-based Spanish language curriculum that is being provided in cooperation with the Mexican Ministry of Education. Mexico has a single national curriculum, and the central government has developed high-quality materials, including many more distance-learning classes designed for self-study, than are being used in American schools.

Hispanic Students Thrive More in Culture of Community, Says Report

: Hispanic students tend to succeed more at institutions where there is a culture of inclusiveness and an explicit commitment from the leadership to serve the community, according to a new report from The American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ (AASCU).

The association conducted a study aimed at understanding why some state-supported four-year colleges and universities retain and graduate Hispanic students at much better rates than their peers.

The “Hispanic Student Success Study” selected 11 public universities for two reasons: their high graduation rates with little or no difference in the rates for Hispanic and non-Hispanic students, or because they experienced an increase in Hispanic students’ graduation rates since 2000. Among the chosen few, George Mason University had the smallest percentage of Hispanics in the student body with 7.6 percent, and the largest was Texas State University at San Marcos with 20.1 percent.

Big East Grants Show Commitment to Diversity In Athletics Administrators Ranks

Big East Grants Show Commitment to Diversity In Athletics Administrators Ranks: The need is there. Just a quarter of the women and minority collegiate athletics staff seeking the Big East Professional Development Grant for Women and Ethnic Minorities received funding this year. Now, advocates hope the program, which they say demonstrates a commitment to diversity, can set an example that other Division I conferences will follow.

“Women and minorities are underrepresented in administration in athletics,” says 2006 grant recipient Maisha Palmer, athletic academic advisor/life skills coordinator at Rutgers University. “It’s important for the Big East to continue to sponsor programs like this that give the tools and the resources for minorities and women to advance themselves and get out there and advocate to college presidents and athletic directors to really expand their searches when they’re filling senior positions.”

LA official proposes ban on 'N-word' - USATODAY.com

LA official proposes ban on 'N-word' - USATODAY.com: LOS ANGELES (AP) — A city councilman and former police chief on Tuesday introduced a symbolic resolution calling on residents of the nation's second-largest city not to use a common racial slur.

City Councilman Bernard Parks, who is black, said he proposed the measure partly because of recent situations carrying racial overtones, including noose-hanging incidents.

The N-word 'connotes a lazy person with no self-respect or regard for family, a person who is ignorant, stupid, slow moving, does not speak proper English and has childlike qualities,' Parks wrote in the resolution. The non-binding resolution calls on residents to stop using the slur 'and to encourage all others whom they may encounter in their daily routine to cease from using the word as well.'

The City Council was scheduled to vote on it Friday.

Immigration chief apologizes for 'offensive' costumes at her party - CNN.com

Immigration chief apologizes for 'offensive' costumes at her party - CNN.com: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Department of Homeland Security will investigate a Halloween costume party hosted by a top immigration official and attended by a man dressed in a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and darkened skin make-up, a costume some say is offensive, the department's secretary said.

Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and host of the fundraising party, was on a three-judge panel that originally praised the prisoner costume for "originality."

Myers later apologized for "a few of the costumes," calling them "inappropriate and offensive." She said she and other senior managers "deeply regret that this happened."

A department photographer photographed Myers with the man, but the images were deleted after the costume were deemed offensive, ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said.

Foster Children at Risk, and an Opportunity Lost - New York Times

Foster Children at Risk, and an Opportunity Lost - New York Times: Two decades ago, New York City embarked on an experiment aimed at better assisting and protecting its most vulnerable black and Latino children. At its heart, the effort involved creating and supporting foster care agencies that would, at long last, be run by men and women of color.

...Twenty years later, the city’s ambitious undertaking to improve foster care for the city’s black and Latino children has spanned four mayoral administrations and consumed hundreds of millions of dollars in city, state and federal money. The New York Times spent months examining the investment in minority-run agencies — what once seemed a bold and overdue shift in one of the most challenging areas of social policy.

It is as much a story of trouble as of triumph. The Miracle Makers Inc. of Brooklyn, which swiftly grew into one of the largest of the minority agencies, was banished from foster care in 2005 after years of poor performance that shortchanged children. Two other minority agencies, responsible for hundreds of children, were shuttered and their officials convicted of stealing money. Another closed after city investigators found that agency staff members were giving jobs and contracts to relatives.

Districts Adopt Mexican Curriculum to Help Hispanic Students

Districts Adopt Mexican Curriculum to Help Hispanic Students: Several school districts in the South and West that serve large populations of Spanish-speaking immigrant students are moving to align their middle- and high-school curriculae with what is being taught in Mexico.

Public school districts in California, Texas, Washington state, Florida, Oregon, among others, are desperately looking for ways to prevent large numbers of immigrant students from falling behind in their classes while they struggle to learn English. Providing bilingual education can be a daunting task where there is a dearth of Spanish-speaking teachers. In Oregon, while just 2 percent of teachers are Hispanic, 15 percent of students are of that background.

One of the most creative solutions to this problem is to use supplemental and Web-based Spanish language curriculum that is being provided in cooperation with the Mexican Ministry of Education. Mexico has a single national curriculum, and the central government has developed high-quality materials, including many more distance-learning classes designed for self-study, than are being used in American schools.

University of Delaware Halts Controversial Diversity Program

University of Delaware Halts Controversial Diversity Program: Amid growing public scrutiny, the University of Delaware last week halted a controversial residence hall program that critics say tried to force students to accept university-approved ideologies on moral and social issues.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, UD president Patrick Harker said the program for dormitory residents on the Newark campus would be halted immediately for review.

“While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware, there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled,” Harker stated. “It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.”

Harker said that after conferring with Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert and Dr. Kathleen Kerr, director of residence life, and he then directed that the program be stopped immediately.

19 Public University Systems Commit To Closing Achievement Gap

19 Public University Systems Commit To Closing Achievement Gap The numbers tell the story.

African-American college students earn bachelor’s degrees at nearly half the rate – Hispanic students are nearly worse at less than a third – than white students. Low-income students get their undergraduate degrees at one-eighth the rate of economically more advantaged students.

Minority and low-income high school students find it tougher than other students to even afford a college education as costs continue to rise nationwide.

Nineteen public higher education systems across the country have banded together to try to reverse those trends. They are participating in the Access to Success initiative, a National Association of Systems Heads (NASH) project aiming to shave at least to half the gaps in both college-going and degree completion rates that separate low-income and minority students from others.

“This has the potential to be one of the most significant initiatives impacting the future of higher education in America,” said Dr. Ralph Slaughter, president of Southern University System, the nation’s only historically Black university system. “Recognizing the need to make attaining a college education, not only more accessible to minority and low-income students, but to develop strategic efforts in key areas that ensure their success and ability to graduate places this as a revolutionary move.”

Minority Enrollment at Michigan Holds Steady Following Affirmative Action Ban

Minority Enrollment at Michigan Holds Steady Following Affirmative Action Ban The number of minority freshmen at the University of Michigan this fall remains about the same as in 2006, a notable departure from the steep drops that other flagship public universities have experienced immediately after affirmative action was banned in Michigan a year ago.

For every minority group except Asians, the percentage of freshmen declined slightly because Ann Arbor campus enrolled a bigger class than it did last year. The 11 percent increase, including international students, may have made it possible for the university to admit more students of color than it would have been able to otherwise.

“We have worked hard to inform prospective students about U-M’s ongoing commitment to diversity and will continue to reach out to as many students as possible to ensure the most highly qualified and diverse applicant pool,” said Senior Vice Provost Lester Monts.

The Noose: An American Nightmare

CNN.com: The noose, a symbol of hatred from America’s dark past, has resurfaced. Why is it back? CNN’s Kyra Phillips investigates the shocking history of the noose and its re-emergence across the United States. Watch Thursday, November 1, at 8 p.m. ET.