Schools Should Have Set Protocol for Educating and Retaining Immigrant Students, Educators Say

Schools Should Have Set Protocol for Educating and Retaining Immigrant Students, Educators Say: Schools need to have a protocol for educating and retaining immigrant students — documented and undocumented — and they must also engage in community outreach initiatives to build up trust among immigrant families, National Education Association (NEA) leaders and educators said during a panel on Friday at the organization’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.

At “The Challenges of Educating Immigrant Students” session, one of many that allowed educators to discuss key issues affecting public education, panelists highlighted the special needs of immigrant children seeking an education in American schools.

“These kids are bright and smart but they may lack the language skills to shine,” said Jeanne Batalova, a policy analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based organization, Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

The nonprofit think tank explores the movement of people worldwide and brainstorms appropriate responses to the challenges and opportunities large-scale migration presents to communities around the globe.

Births fueling Hispanic growth - USATODAY.com

Births fueling Hispanic growth - USATODAY.com: Births, not immigration, now account for most of the growth in the nation's Hispanic population, a distinct reversal of trends of the past 30 years.

The Hispanic baby boom is transforming the demographics of small-town America in a dramatic way. Some rural counties where the population had been shrinking and aging are growing because of Hispanic immigration and births and now must provide services for the young.

'In all of the uproar over immigration, this is getting missed,' says Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. 'All the focus is on immigration, immigration, immigration. At some point, it's not. It's natural increase.'

This natural increase — more births than deaths — is accelerating among Hispanics in the USA because they are younger than the U.S. population as a whole. Their median age is 27.4, compared with 37.9 overall, 40.8 for whites, 35.4 for Asians and 31.1 for African Americans.

Blacks given 'ghetto' names in yearbook - Race & ethnicity- msnbc.com

Blacks given "ghetto" names in yearbook - Race & ethnicity- msnbc.com: COVINA, Calif. - Phony 'ghetto' names were printed under a yearbook photo of Black Student Union members at a suburban Los Angeles high school, leaving some angry students and parents calling for an apology and a reprint.

'Tay Tay Shaniqua,' 'Crisphy Nanos' and 'Laquan White' were among the nine names placed next to the club's photo in Charter Oak High School's yearbook, Charter Oak Unified School District Superintendent Clint Harwick said.

'A yearbook is very significant and something you always hold on to,' said Toi Jackson, whose daughter, Evanne, is a BSU member at the school in Covina. 'When she shows it to her kids she will have to explain why she has the name Crisphy.'

School ended about two weeks ago, and authorities said the names were discovered only after the yearbooks were handed out.

"Someone was just trying to be funny, but it's not funny," said Jordan Smith, a BSU member. "It's upsetting. It's a mistake that should not have been overlooked."

Board president calls it 'atrocious'
The district office and the school were closed Friday. Joseph M. Probst, the school board's president, called the incident "atrocious" in an interview with the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

"I am sure the students will be spoken to and given an apology if they haven't been already," he said.

Probst said the student responsible for the names will be a senior next year. He did not know the student's race or gender but said that "appropriate actions will be taken."

Students were given printed stickers with the correct names to put into the yearbook.

But some of the BSU members and their parents want the books recalled and reprinted. Toi Jackson told the Tribune that on the last day of school, her daughter was given a handful of stickers and told to pass them out to her friends.

"How humiliating," she said. "The school is responsible, and they ask the victim to pass out the stickers."

Officials at the 2,000-student school about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles say the student body is about 4.5 percent black, 45 percent Hispanic and 30 percent white.

University Business School Programs Tap Into Hispanics’ Entrepreneurial Spirit

University Business School Programs Tap Into Hispanics’ Entrepreneurial Spirit: While corporate America translates advertising messages into Spanish and crafts culture-specific ad campaigns, Hispanics have continued to follow the path of past waves of immigrants and start their own businesses.

The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that there are currently 2 million Hispanic-owned businesses operating in the United States, generating close to $300 billion per year. The number of businesses is expected to grow to 3.2 million by 2010 and generate $465 billion per year.

Furthermore, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the Hispanic population will grow to 50 million by 2010. It is also estimated that Hispanic purchasing power in the United States will reach $1 trillion by 2010, according to HispanTelligence, the research arm of Hispanic Business magazine.

So it’s no coincidence that university business schools, particularly those that serve a large Hispanic demographic, are tapping into that entrepreneurial spirit.

Study shows blacks don't share similar views of world - USATODAY.com

Study shows blacks don't share similar views of world - USATODAY.com: NEW YORK — As a black man, John Bess says it has been important for him to know much about the white world, yet he says whites have not been so curious about his.

'We've always known what's happening in the white sector,' says Bess, a 56-year-old consultant in New York City, 'but they (whites) have no idea who we are, what we're about. … My mother may take one position and I take another and my brother takes another. You have to talk to the segments of our community.'

A study out Friday provides a nuanced portrait of black Americans' social views, consumer tastes and notions of identity, undermining the idea that most black Americans share a similar world view

Sweeping national study finds African Americans in U.S. diverse, optimistic - USATODAY.com

Sweeping national study finds African Americans in U.S. diverse, optimistic - USATODAY.com: The digital divide between blacks and whites is fast disappearing. The hip-hop generation, often portrayed as rebellious, has tremendous respect for its elders. Prejudice persists, but most blacks are optimistic about their future.

Those are among the findings of one of the largest surveys ever taken of black Americans and to be released Friday.

The national study, taken by Yankelovich and commissioned by Radio One, offers a detailed glimpse of the varied expectations, life circumstances and interests of the nation's 39 million African Americans.

"There's a difference (between) articulating that we're not a monolithic community and quantifying it," says Catherine Hughes, founder and board chairwoman of Radio One, the largest radio broadcasting company in the U.S. primarily targeting African Americans. "We really needed to take a snapshot of the black community with all of its textures and nuances and debunk the myth. … We wanted to quantify and qualify the incredible diversity in our community."

Other findings:

• 68% of those surveyed use the Internet. By contrast, a study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that, as of December, 70% of all Americans ages 18 and older — and 72% of non-Hispanic whites — were online.

• Blacks are nearly evenly divided about what they prefer to be called — 42% favor "black" and 44% favor "African American."

• 88% of respondents — and 84% of teenagers — have tremendous respect for the opinions and desires of their elders.

• 24% say they had experienced bigotry personally within the past three months, and 82% believe it is "important for parents to prepare their children for prejudice."

• Many still deeply mistrust police, courts, government and mainstream media.

• 60% say "things are getting better for me," while more than half are positive about the future of the black community.

Bill Moyers Journal . Documentary Preview: TRACES OF THE TRADE | PBS

Bill Moyers Journal . Documentary Preview: TRACES OF THE TRADE | PBS: BILL MOYERS JOURNAL presents a special preview of the documentary which opens the 21st season of P.O.V. TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY OF THE DEEP NORTH tells the story journey of discovery into the history and consequences of slavery. In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, one might think the tragedy of African slavery in the Americas has been exhaustively told. Katrina Browne thought the same, until she discovered that her slave-trading ancestors from Rhode Island were not an aberration. Rather, they were just the most prominent actors in the North's vast complicity in slavery, buried in myths of Northern innocence.

Browne — a direct descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the first slaver in the family — took the unusual step of writing to 200 descendants. She invited them to journey with her from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back, retracing the Triangle Trade that made the DeWolfs the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Nine relatives signed up. TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY FROM THE DEEP NORTH is Browne's account of the journey.

TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY FROM THE DEEP NORTH premieres on P.O.V. on June 24, 2008. Check local listings.

Bringing Diversity to the World of Classical Music

Bringing Diversity to the World of Classical Music: ...Dworkin’s brainchild has since become the Sphinx Organization, which in addition to sponsoring its unique competition has distributed over $1 million in prize money and scholarships to promising classical musicians of color since its founding in 1996. Today, with an annual budget of about $3 million, Sphinx also offers a wide range of professional development and music-education programs to performers and audiences in the Detroit area and beyond.

This small empire sprang from the Sphinx Competition, which is now entering its 12th year and will be held again Jan. 28-Feb. 1, 2009, in Detroit. Most of the applicants are encouraged to participate in the competition by their music teachers, who are aware of its reputation and prestige. Once audition recordings of the competitors have been received, a screening committee chooses a group of semifinalists in the junior and senior divisions. From this group, three finalists (laureates) are chosen by a panel of distinguished judges.

Coalition Says Using a Culturally Based Education Model Could Help Close Achievement Gap

Teachers must be sensitive and inclusive to all students’ cultural backgrounds, educators and advocacy organizations said during a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

The briefing, “Culturally Based Teaching: A Model for Student Success, ” provided educators and student advocates with the opportunity to share their views and provide federal policymakers with first-hand accounts on how using a culturally based education model will empower students and help close the achievement gap.

The teaching model encourages quality instructional practices rooted in cultural and linguistically relevant contexts. During the briefing, many of the panelists agreed that educators and advocacy organizations must provide statistical data and other information to encourage lawmakers to support and fund the cultural-based teaching model.

The event sponsor, Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE), acts as a diverse coalition of national organizations representing communities of color that believe high schools should prepare every student for graduation, college, work and life.

Dr. Sheryl Denbo, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center, which works with educators to close the achievement gap among students in Mid-Atlantic states including Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, said students who feel that their culture is validated in school will be more likely to participate and take an active role in advancing their education.

Report: Racial gap narrows, but what did No Child law do? - USATODAY.com

Report: Racial gap narrows, but what did No Child law do? - USATODAY.com: WASHINGTON — Math and reading test scores are up in most states since the No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002, but it's impossible to know how much credit the law deserves, a new report says.

In an exhaustive study released Tuesday, the Center on Education Policy also concluded that the historically wide achievement gap between black and white children has generally narrowed in many states — exactly what NCLB supporters said they wanted to achieve when President Bush signed the law.

But the law's contributions are hard to measure because a number of states already were taking steps to boost reading and math, the study's authors say. And because every public school falls under the law, there is no group of students to use for comparison, they said.

Analysis: U.S. poor are vulnerable to 'neglected' diseases - USATODAY.com

Analysis: U.S. poor are vulnerable to 'neglected' diseases - USATODAY.com: Tropical diseases that ravage Africa, Asia and Latin America commonly occur among the poor in the USA, leaving thousands of people shattered by debilitating complications including mental retardation, heart disease and epilepsy, an analysis showed Monday.

The diseases, caused by chronic viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, disproportionately strike women and children and are largely overlooked by doctors, says author Peter Hotez of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, part of Sabin Vaccine Institute.

Hotez says the diseases go untreated in hundreds of thousands of poor people who live mainly in inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Mexican borderlands.

In many cases, he says, the infections cause disabilities that trap sufferers in lasting poverty. His analysis, called 'Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States,' appears in the journal he edits, PloS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

EPA Fellowship Seeks to Build a Pipeline of Minority Scientists in Environmental Studies

EPA Fellowship Seeks to Build a Pipeline of Minority Scientists in Environmental Studies: When Dr. William H. Sanders joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more than 30 years ago, he found something problematic — there simply weren’t enough minorities or women represented in the federal agency.

Sanders, who is the director of the National Center for Environmental Research in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, says the agency is making a long-term commitment by seeking out more minorities to enroll in the EPA’s Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) Fellowship Program.

Sanders says that while the numbers of underrepresented groups have risen since the beginning of his career with the EPA in 1973, more needs to be done to recruit underrepresented groups into the fields of science and math.

“There are a lot more of the best and brightest out there,” Sanders says. However, “we never see enough.”

With its GRO program, the EPA hopes to help build capacity in universities that have limited resources for research and development by awarding fellowships to students in environmental fields in an effort to support some of the nation’s most promising undergraduate and graduate degree candidates in environmental studies.

Immigrants - Breaking Down Barriers to Get Parents Involved - NYTimes.com

Immigrants - Breaking Down Barriers to Get Parents Involved - NYTimes.com: In this era of hovering parents, the principal of Brien McMahon High School noticed one group conspicuously on the sidelines: immigrant parents.

They care very much about their young, but some of them don’t understand the American system, Suzanne Brown Koroshetz discovered last summer when she became McMahon’s principal. She made it a priority to reach out to this sizable community.

At McMahon, one of the three public high schools in Norwalk, about 27 percent of its 1,617 students are Hispanic, officials said, and almost a third come from non-English-speaking homes.

With money from the United Way of Norwalk and Wilton, the Voices of Immigrant Parents Program was formed under Ms. Koroshetz’s stewardship. At twice-monthly meetings, its 14 members developed strategies to help immigrant families navigate their way through the school system. The organization is managed by the Peace Project, a program of the Center for Youth Leadership at McMahon.

A bilingual open house and three evening workshops, all translated into Spanish, and sometimes French for the school’s Haitian families, grew out of those meetings. The first workshop — on academics, report cards and standardized testing — drew nearly 300 parents.

Slavery By Another Name | Douglas A. Blackmon

Slavery By Another Name | Douglas A. Blackmon: Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude.

It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.

Most Hispanic Students Say College Too Costly

About half of Hispanic high school students in Indiana would be the first in their families to attend college, and most feel they can't afford a higher education, according to a new survey.

Learn More Indiana's annual survey of high school freshmen and juniors found that most students expect to earn a four-year college degree. But fewer Hispanic students expected a four-year degree compared to their peers.

The study emphasizes the need for all students to consider themselves "college material," said Elizabeth Crouch, spokeswoman for Learn More Indiana, a group of education organizations.

"The majority of students are saying they want to go to college," Crouch said. "When asked if they have a plan or way to pay for it, they don't know."

Following the roadmap to college, a path filled with tests, applications and deadlines, can be more difficult for students without family members who have gone to college. About a quarter of Black and White 9th grade students in the 2007-2008 school year said no one in their household attended college, compared to 50 percent of Hispanic freshmen.

Potential first-generation college students often face more obstacles than others in high school. Researchers say those teenagers sometimes lack the rigorous academic preparation and family encouragement that others have.

Sometimes parents without college degrees urge their children to get a job instead of continuing their education.

Report: To Serve Hispanics, Schools Should Look to the Success of HSIs

Report: To Serve Hispanics, Schools Should Look to the Success of HSIs: By looking at the success of Hispanic-serving institutions, other colleges and universities can find ways to support the growing number of Hispanic college students nationwide, according to a report released Wednesday by the higher education policy group Excelencia in Education.

The report, “Modeling Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs): Campus Practices that Work for Latino Students,” focuses on the best access and retention practices of 12 successful HSIs, including community colleges and public universities, that are among the nation’s leaders in Hispanic enrollment and degree completion. These schools boast 25 percent or more Hispanic undergraduate enrollment.

“What was particularly impressive was how these student-rich and resource-poor institutions have increased results for Latinos under increasingly tight economic constraints,” said Sarita Brown, president of Excelencia in Education, in a statement.

The report listed eight guidelines practiced by these institutions. One guideline suggested sharing data about Hispanic students’ progress with faculty, staff and students at least once a year to encourage all parties to become engaged and active in institutional efforts.

Artist Modifies Design of Martin Luther King Memorial Statue - washingtonpost.com

Artist Modifies Design of Martin Luther King Memorial Statue - washingtonpost.com: Members of a powerful federal arts commission expressed satisfaction today with changes to a memorial statue of Martin Luther King Jr. after the architect smoothed away wrinkles in King's brow and re-shaped the mouth to impart a hint of a smile.

The design had run into trouble with the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which has the power to veto projects such as the King memorial on the Tidal Basin. The commission's secretary said in an April letter that the depiction of King with his arms crossed was too "confrontational" and reminiscent of the "Social Realist style" popular in Communist countries. Last year, critics complained after a Chinese sculptor, Lei Yixin, was selected for the memorial.

At their monthly meeting this morning, commission members reviewed illustrations of proposed changes to King's face and to the bottom and sides of the sculpture. Several said most of their concerns had been addressed.

Gifted Programs in the City Are Less Diverse - NYTimes.com

Gifted Programs in the City Are Less Diverse - NYTimes.com: When New York City set a uniform threshold for admission to public school gifted programs last fall, it was a crucial step in a prolonged effort to equalize access to programs that critics complained were dominated by white middle-class children whose parents knew how to navigate the system.

The move was controversial, with experts warning that standardized tests given to young children were heavily influenced by their upbringing and preschool education, and therefore biased toward the affluent.

Now, an analysis by The New York Times shows that under the new policy, children from the city’s poorest districts were offered a smaller percentage than last year of the entry-grade gifted slots in elementary schools. Children in the city’s wealthiest districts captured a greater share of the slots.

The disparity is so stark that some gifted programs opened by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in an effort to increase opportunities in poor and predominantly minority districts will not fill new classes next year. In three districts, there were too few qualifiers to fill a single class.

The new policy relied on a blunt cutoff score on two standardized tests. According to the analysis, 39.2 percent of the students who made the cutoff live in the four wealthiest districts, covering the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Staten Island and northeast Queens. That is up from 24.9 percent last year, even though those districts make up 14.2 percent of citywide enrollment in the entry-level grades: kindergarten or first grade, depending on the district.

Students in 14 districts where the poverty rate is more than 75 percent account for more than a third of enrollment but received only 14.6 percent of the offers for spots in gifted programs this year, down from 20.2 percent last year.

The results reflect a head-on collision of two key themes in the Bloomberg administration’s overhaul of the school system. On the one hand, the city has centralized and standardized admissions procedures, including those for pre-kindergarten and high school, to even the playing field and eliminate any advantage held by certain parents.

Scientists at University of North Dakota Find More Correlation Between Diabetes, Mental Health Among Native Americans Than Whites

A new study, 'Mental health status and diabetes among Whites and Native Americans: is race an effect modifier,' is now available (see also Mental Health). 'Depressive symptoms are common among patients with diabetes and may have a significant impact on self-management and health outcomes. The prevalence of both depression and diabetes varies by race,' investigators in the United States report.

'We examined whether race is also an effect modifier in the association between mental health rated 'not good' and diabetes using the national Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data from 2002 to 2005. We found that the prevalence of diabetes among Native American respondents was almost double that among Whites. Respondents with at least two weeks of mental health rated 'not good' are significantly higher among diabetic patients than among non-diabetic patients. Native Americans (NAs) with at least two weeks of mental health rated 'not good' were more likely to have diabetes. This association is stronger in NAs than in Whites,' wrote A.E. Sahmoun and colleagues, University of North Dakota.

The researchers concluded: 'Future research should focus on a better understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying this plausible association between poor mental health and diabetes.'

‘Creating an Atmosphere Of Acceptance’

‘Creating an Atmosphere Of Acceptance’:
When it comes to learning disabilities, minority students are often misdiagnosed.

The faces on a Bowie State University (BSU) Web site are well known: Abraham Lincoln, Stevie Wonder, Albert Einstein, Magic Johnson and Harriet Tubman. But BSU’s Office of Disability Support Services has added the largely unknown information that they all had a disability: Lincoln was depressed; Wonder is blind; Einstein was considered retarded as a child; Johnson has attention deficit disorder; and Tubman developed epilepsy.

'It's the most successful group of 'disabled' people you could ever imagine,” says BSU’s coordinator of disability support services, Mike Hughes. “I deliberately put them there because the most important part of my job is creating an atmosphere of acceptance.”

According to the Advocacy Institute, a nonprofit that works to develop products, projects and services that improve the lives of people with disabilities at the college level, approximately 7 to 8 percent of all students have some sort of disability, with specific learning disabilities (LDs) such as ADHD, dyslexia or dysgraphia, making up slightly more than half — 50.5 percent — of those conditions.

Feds Fund Three Types of Minority-serving Institutions

Feds Fund Three Types of Minority-serving Institutions: Under new education department programs, money for eligible colleges and universities is up for grabs.

Colleges that do not qualify as historically Black colleges or tribal colleges but that still serve a significant number of African-Americans or American Indians have until late June to make their case for a share of $20 million in new federal funds for such institutions.

Funds are available under two new U.S. Department of Education programs approved by Congress: $15 million in grants for predominantly Black institutions (PBIs) and $5 million for non-tribal colleges, mostly in the western United States, that serve American Indian students.

To qualify as a non-tribal, Native American- serving institution, a college need only have an undergraduate enrollment that is 10 percent American Indian, the regulations state. The criteria for a predominantly Black institution are more detailed, although a core requirement is that the college or university have “at least 40 percent Black American students,” the Department of Education says.

Hispanic Scholars, Students Pressure Princeton for Latino Studies Program

Hispanic Scholars, Students Pressure Princeton for Latino Studies Program: For more than 30 years, students have been urging the administration to bring Latino studies to Princeton University. Students have met with university officials over the years and staged a famous sit-in with Asian students in 1995, but those efforts didn’t bear much fruit.

“The university has had the opportunity since the ’70s to begin to increase the number of Latino faculty and to build Latino studies and they just haven’t,” says Dr. Raul A. Ramos, assistant professor of history at the University of Houston and 1989 Princeton graduate. “There is a huge student demand and it’s a demand that has been there a long time.”

It appears that Princeton may finally defer to the three decades of demands due to the latest efforts by Hispanic students, aided by a group of Latino alumni. A Center for Latino Studies with a certificate program modeled after Princeton’s nationally renowned Center for African American Studies could come on board as earlier as the fall of 2009, says Victoria C. Laws, who led the student movement for Latino studies and helped write the proposal for the center.

The College Board Says SAT Writing Section Is More Predictive of College Success Than High School GPA for Minorities

The College Board Says SAT Writing Section Is More Predictive of College Success Than High School GPA for Minorities: The writing portion of the SAT, added three years ago, is the best predictor of college performance for incoming college freshmen, according to a new report released by the College Board, owner of the SAT.

Lawrence Bunin, senior vice president of the College Board, reported during a teleconference Tuesday that the SAT overall was almost as predictive as four years of high school grades and asserted that the new writing section was more predictive than high school grades for all minority groups.

For Blacks, the SAT was a better predictor of first-year college success than the GPA by a measure of .03. For Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the SAT was a better predictor of college success by .01. For Hispanics, the SAT was a better predictor of college success by .01.

Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry - NYTimes.com

Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry - NYTimes.com: ...The success of the Indian School’s poetry program has particular importance in New Mexico, where 10 percent of the population is American Indian and where Indian students from grades 3 to 11 lag behind all other groups in reading proficiency, according to a 2007 state report.

Teachers and administrators at the Indian School say the program counters any perception that Indian students cannot excel in English and writing.

“Tears dance down my cheeks in the rhythm of Santo Domingo’s corn dance/Tattered textbooks and Presbyterian Bibles bark violent incantations and shriek curses of assimilation,” thundered April Chavez, a senior reciting her poem “Indian Education” at a recent rehearsal.

Marriott Foundation Bridges The Career Gap For 10,000 Youth And Young Adults With Disabilities

Marriott Foundation Bridges The Career Gap For 10,000 Youth And Young Adults With Disabilities: BETHESDA, MD,. - June 17, 2008 - The Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities announced today that more than 10,000 youth and young adults with disabilities have been competitively placed in jobs nationwide through its program. During the annual awards gala being held this evening, the non-profit organization will recognize 19-year old, D.C. native Reggie Randolph as this year's Youth Achievement Award winner, and Washington, D.C.-based Giant Food, as the Employer of the Year.

"We are excited about the success of the program," said Richard Marriott, chairman, Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities and chairman of Host, Hotels and Resorts. "Young people like Reggie face imposing challenges, but they want nothing more than to contribute to society and have independence. We're thrilled that through Bridges, and employers like Giant, people with disabilities are able to achieve their career goals."

Abroad - For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope - NYTimes.com

Abroad - For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope - NYTimes.com: PARIS — When Youssoupha, a black rapper here, was asked the other day what was on his mind, a grin spread across his face. “Barack Obama,” he said. “Obama tells us everything is possible.”

A new black consciousness is emerging in France, lately hastened by, of all things, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. An article in Le Monde a few days ago described how Mr. Obama is “stirring up high hopes” among blacks here. Even seeing the word “noir” (“black”) in a French newspaper was an occasion for surprise until recently.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, 60 cars were burned and some 50 young people scuffled with police and firemen, injuring several of them, in a poor minority suburb of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne region of northeast France.

Americans, who have debated race relations since the dawn of the Republic, may find it hard to grasp the degree to which race, like religion, remains a taboo topic in France. While Mr. Obama talks about running a campaign transcending race, an increasing number of French blacks are pushing for, in effect, the reverse.

Surviving triple negative breast cancer - CNN.com

Rare breast cancer targets women of color



Surviving triple negative breast cancer - CNN.com: ...Reed, 40, has breast cancer; not just any form of the disease, but a rare, aggressive and difficult to treat version called triple negative.

Of the estimated 180,000 women who learn they have invasive breast cancer this year in the United States, about 15 percent will have triple negative.

Like Reed, the majority of triple negative patients will be young African-American women.

'It never occurred to me that I'm going to die from this,' Reed said. 'I was like, 'I've got breast cancer, let's take care of it.' '

Reed did take care of it. For eight months during 2006, she endured chemotherapy and radiation treatments. She thought the cancer was in remission, but it returned last November. This time, it had spread to her liver, lungs and chest wall.

'Triple negative cancers do tend to be aggressive in their natural histories, so they have a very high rate of recurrence or relapsing,' explained Dr. Ruth O'Regan, Reed's oncologist at the Winship Institute.

Education Sector: Research and Reports: Graduation Rate Watch

Education Sector: Research and Reports: Graduation Rate Watch: ...By reaching out to low-income and first-generation students as early as the sixth grade and providing a steady stream of advice and support through their high school and college careers, FSU has managed to defy the prevailing wisdom that low minority college graduation rates are regrettable but unavoidable. FSU is not alone. In the last six years, a significant number of colleges and universities have achieved small or nonexistent graduation rate gaps between white and black students.

But for every Florida State, there are many other, similar universities where students of color are far less likely to succeed. Those institutions are not failing because they don’t realize they have a problem, or because FSU has discovered a secret formula that others have yet to learn. They fail because at many institutions the success of undergraduates, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, is not the priority it should be.

Read the full report: Graduation Rate Watch: Making Minority Student Success a Priority (pdf file).

More Schools Trying Separation of the Sexes - washingtonpost.com

More Schools Trying Separation of the Sexes - washingtonpost.com: ...The Fairfax County school, in the academic year that is ending, joined a small but fast-growing movement toward single-sex public education. The approach is based on the much-debated yet increasingly popular notion that girls and boys are hard-wired to learn differently and that they will be more successful if classes are designed for their particular needs.

With encouragement from the federal government, single-sex classes that have long been a hallmark of private schools are multiplying in public schools in the Washington area and elsewhere. By next fall, about 500 public schools nationwide will offer single-sex classes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Montgomery County. That's up from a handful a decade ago. The approach is especially attractive to some struggling schools in the market for low-cost reform.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law cites single-gender classes as one "innovative" tool to boost achievement. But anti-discrimination laws banned widespread use of such classes, allowing them only in certain instances, such as sex education lessons. A change in federal regulations in 2006 gave schools more flexibility, allowing boys and girls to be separated as long as classes are voluntary and "substantially equal" coeducational classes are offered.

Educators see civil rights issue in bad schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — If Johnny can't read and Sally can't add, it's often because of the color of their skin and their ZIP code, educators and activists said Wednesday.

The heads of the New York City and Washington, D.C., school systems joined with civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton and others to press for a shake-up of public schools from coast to coast to narrow the achievement gap between white students and black and Hispanic students. The group called the gap the nation's most pressing civil rights issue.

By the time they near high school graduation, black and Hispanic teenagers on average have math and reading skills no higher than that of white middle-school students four years younger.

Nationally, 55 percent of black males graduate high school on time, compared to about 78 percent for whites, according to recent data released by Education Week with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"All the numbers, no matter how you look at it, are shocking," said Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City school system, the nation's largest.

Klein, Sharpton and D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee appeared together to announce the creation of the Education Equality Project, an advocacy group to reform a public education system they say has been paralyzed by special interests like teachers unions as well as political and parental indifference.

NPR: John Ridley's Visible Man

NPR: John Ridley's Visible Man: I previously noted the recent passing of Mildred Loving. However, I thought on the day honoring both Mildred and her husband Richard it was worth remembering their bravery once again with this commentary from Morning Edition:

You may not know it, but June 12th is day of great historical significance.

Forty-one years ago, the Green Bay Packers were the first Super Bowl victors, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released its debut album, the Beatles put out a little thing called Sergeant Pepper, and interracial couples could still not legally marry in 16 of 50 of these United States.

Hence, the significance of June 12th. Loving Day is a little observed, but considerable day of remembrance -- particularly for those with some connection to an interracial relationship, as Loving Day marks the end of one of the last 'slave laws' that remained on the books in many Southern states.

Mississippi School Holds First Interracial Prom : NPR

Mississippi School Holds First Interracial Prom : NPR: Mississippi integrated its public schools in 1970, but segregation still haunts parts of the culture. One example of this could be found at Charleston High School. The Delta town had maintained a system of separate proms — organized privately — for black and white students.

As far back as 1997, actor Morgan Freeman, a Charleston local, offered to pay for the dance if everyone could go. This year, officials finally accepted the offer. A Canadian film crew led by Paul Saltzman documented the event for the upcoming Prom Night in Mississippi.

A photographer working with the crew says people in Charleston didn't question the segregated dances. But as the big night approached, the importance of the change became clear. Catherine Farquharson followed several kids as they washed their cars and had their hair done.

She describes one encounter in an African-American beauty parlor, in which an elderly woman who'd been part of the civil rights movement stopped in to see what the hubbub was about. The woman ended up giving an impromptu testimony about the history these young people were about to make. 'It was almost like it didn't occur to a lot of the kids, until the day of the prom, how important what was going on really was,' Farquharson reports.

Apartheid Inequalities Linger in South Africa Schools : NPR

Apartheid Inequalities Linger in South Africa Schools : NPR: Morning Edition, June 12, 2008 � Public education is critical to the success of South Africa's young democracy. The country's school system, however, seems to be getting a failing grade.

A visit to a rural primary school in Orkney, a gold-mining town southwest of Johannesburg, says much about why the system is in trouble.

On a recent day, some 1,600 students were enjoying a rich stew of beans and rice. But because of budgetary constraints, Reahola Primary School is able to feed its students only four days a week, says Principal Nachemane Majola.

'The fifth day they stay without food, and that makes them also not want to come to school, because what drives them to come to school is when they eat,' he says, 'because there is nothing at home.'

Little Improvement Seen

Most of the families in the area are black and poor. The government is trying to make improvements at the school, according to Majola, but the budget allocations are still too small. There is not enough money to renovate the 25-year-old building and its collapsing ceilings. Many of the school's students are HIV-positive orphans who are suffering from illness and hunger. The lack of funding hobbles the ability to meet these students' needs.

Canada To Apologize For Past Abuses of Native Children

Canada To Apologize For Past Abuses of Native Children: Canada will apologize for a policy that forced native children into boarding schools in an effort over a century ago to “civilize” and assimilate the nation’s indigenous population into mainstream culture and religion, the Los Angeles Times recently reported.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will offer an expiation on behalf of the schools and will ask more than 150,000 students and their descendants to consider forgiving the country.

Sixty-year old Thomas Louttit was forced to attend one of the dozens of residential schools for eight years. He told the Times that children were assigned numbers for an identity, sexually abused and terrorized, thus leaving many scarred as adults. Many of Louttit’s friends committed suicide or battled alcohol abuse.

Best & Brightest: Fourteen-year-old Whiz Kid Picks HBCU Over Harvard

BATON ROUGE, LA. — A 14-year-old whiz kid who scored a composite 30 on the ACT, Polite Stewart Jr., was recruited by Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford universities, but decided to attend historically Black Southern University at Baton Rouge.

“They are all very good schools, don’t get me wrong. But one of the ‘cons’ is that you’re just one in a number. Many of the classes are so big that you probably won’t even get to know your teacher,” the gifted youngster says.

“Here at Southern, it’s one on one,” he says.

The son of two school teachers, Stewart was home-schooled at his Baton Rouge home until the age of 10, when he began attending academic programs at Southern University. Stewart started with the Garrett A. Morgan/Ford PAS Summer Business Institute, a program designed to teach the fine points of operating a business, including finance. He went on to enroll in Timbuktu Academy, a national model program at Southern University that mentors pre-college, undergraduate and graduate students in math, science, and engineering. He says Timbuktu Academy did more than give him individual attention and teach him the skills to succeed on the college level.

Study Shows Colorado Has Largest Rise in Child Poverty - NYTimes.com

Study Shows Colorado Has Largest Rise in Child Poverty - NYTimes.com: DENVER — Colorado experienced the nation’s largest rate of growth in impoverished children from 2000 to 2006, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study, by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a nonprofit group that focuses on child welfare, said that the most recent census data show that 180,000 children — 15.7 percent of the state total — were living in poverty in Colorado in 2006, a 73 percent increase since 2000.

New Hampshire and Delaware experienced the second- and third-largest rates of increase in child poverty, about 47 percent and 45 percent respectively.

No single factor can explain the increase in Colorado, the study said, but a growing number of single parent households, a shortage of jobs for lower wage workers and a low rate of high school graduation contributed.

Shifting demographics also played a role, with an increase in the number of Hispanic children, who are more likely to live in poverty or drop out of high school, the study said.

“What the data is telling us is that we’re headed in the wrong direction in terms of taking care of our lower-income population,” the president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Megan Ferland, said.

Ms. Ferland cited another contributing variable, which she called the “Colorado paradox”: well-educated transplants drawn to a state that also has many poorly educated residents.

“We have too many of our working class families who are actually slipping into low-income brackets and becoming families who are living in extreme poverty,” Ms. Ferland said.

The most pronounced rates of child poverty were found in urban centers like Denver and in southern rural areas like Alamosa and Costilla Counties.

Minority children were particularly affected. The number of the state’s American Indian children living in poverty increased by 473 percent, the report said, and the number of impoverished black children grew by 116 percent. In contrast, the number of impoverished white children grew by 57 percent, and for Asian children, it declined by 10 percent.

It’s About the Schools

An Emerging Consensus on the Black-White Achievement Gap

It’s about schools.

For most children in this country, achievement in school, and therefore the quality and the sheer length of life that they and their children will have, can be predicted from their race, language spoken at home, and family income. Almost everywhere, this means that African-American children—those who are or are perceived to be the descendants of American slaves—will not be taught as much or as well as white, non-Hispanic children. In a few areas, this unenviable distinction is held by Hispanic children who speak Spanish at home. In two or three places, this lowest rung of the educational and economic ladder is occupied by American Indians. But in most places, when we look at “the achievement gap,” we are looking at the gap between African-American children, particularly African-American males, and children who are non-Hispanic whites or Asian-Americans. And in most of those places, it remains stubbornly large.

And yet, interest in the failure of educational institutions to meet their responsibilities, particularly in regard to black students, seems to be ebbing. The hatred that dare not speak its name—racism—is advancing under the guise of—of all things—equity. The perverse twisting of the intent of civil rights law in regard to college and law school admissions, now extending to any program that might alleviate the disadvantages of African-Americans, has had a chilling effect on schools, postsecondary education, government, and foundations. And so we hear less about the failure of the schools in regard to black students, and more about “disadvantaged groups,” “people of color,” and so forth: all expressions that take the focus away from those who have, for 400 years, been specifically selected for disadvantage.

Feds Fund Three Types of MSIs

Feds Fund Three Types of MSIs: "
Colleges that do not qualify as historically Black colleges or tribal colleges but who still serve a significant number of African-Americans or American Indians have until late June to make their case for $20 million in new federal funds for such institutions.

Funds are available under two new U.S. Department of Education programs approved by Congress: $15 million in grants for predominantly Black institutions (PBIs) and $5 million for non-tribal colleges, mostly in the western United States, that serve American Indian students.

To qualify as a non-tribal, American Indian-serving institution, a college need only have an undergraduate enrollment that is 10 percent American Indian, the regulations state. The criteria for a predominantly Black institution are more detailed, although a core requirement is that a college or university must have “at least 40 percent Black American students,” the Department of Education says.

“It’s not quite what we had envisioned,” says Dr. Edison Jackson, president of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, N.Y. Jackson tells Diverse that he had hoped that a college would need an enrollment that is 50 percent Black to qualify for the new program.

2008 Enrollment In U.S. Expected To Set Record - washingtonpost.com

2008 Enrollment In U.S. Expected To Set Record - washingtonpost.com: Public school enrollment across the country will hit a record high this year with just under 50 million students, and the student population is becoming more diverse in large part because of growth in the Latino population, according to a new federal report.

Nationwide, about 20 percent of students were Hispanic in 2006, the latest year for which figures were available for ethnic groups, up from 11 percent in the late 1980s. That trend is reflected in many Washington area schools. In Fairfax County, about 17 percent of students are Hispanic, jumping from about 4 percent two decades ago.

Overall, about 43 percent of the nation's students are minorities, according to the Condition of Education, a congressionally mandated annual look at enrollment and performance trends in schools and colleges.

Educators and activists, pointing to the shifting demographics, say it is becoming urgent to find ways to boost achievement of minority and low-income students, who often lag behind white and middle- to upper-income peers.

"Latino students have long underperformed versus Anglo students . . . and they are continuing to underperform," said Peter Zamora, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "When Latino students were a small percentage of the population, this maybe didn't need to be a significant concern of policymakers. But when one out of five students is Hispanic, this isn't a Latino issue, this is an American issue."

According to the report, which drew on data from local school systems, colleges and national and international exams, dropout rates among whites, blacks and Hispanics are lower than in 1972. But Hispanic and black students are still more likely than white students to fail to complete high school.

Ideas on Creative and Practical IQ Underlie New Tests of Giftedness

Robert J. Sternberg often writes about a lecture-style psychology course he took as a college freshman in which he got a C. “There is a famous Sternberg in psychology,” the professor told him at the time, “and it looks like there won’t be another.”

To Mr. Sternberg, the vignette illustrates that conventional assessments don’t measure all the abilities students need to succeed in life.

A nationally known psychologist, he has spent much of his career designing new measures that might more accurately capture the full range of students’ intellectual potential at the university level.

Now, a team of Yale University researchers is using the same ideas to rethink the tests that schools use to identify pupils for gifted and talented programs in elementary schools.

The team’s Aurora Battery, named for the colorful spectrums created by the northern and southern lights, is being translated and tested with tens of thousands of 9- to 12-year-olds, not only in the United States, but also in England, India, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and other countries.

If the preliminary results from those tests are borne out, its developers say, the new assessment could yield a very different pool of gifted students—one that includes a higher proportion of students from traditionally underrepresented minority groups than is often the case now.

“This test has the potential to capture a more diverse population of students with a more varied and better-qualified array of skills,” said Elena L. Grigorenko, a psychology professor and the leader of the Yale study team in New Haven, Conn.

Hispanics dying on job at higher rates than others - USATODAY.com

Hispanics dying on job at higher rates than others - USATODAY.com: ATLANTA — Hispanic workers die at higher rates than other laborers, with 1 in 3 of these deaths occurring in the construction industry, a government study reported Thursday. South Carolina had the highest death rate in the nation.

Hispanics tend to hold more high-risk jobs than those in other racial groups, but language and literacy barriers and poor training and supervision may also be factors, researchers said. The leading causes of death in recent years have been falls and highway-related accidents.

'Many of the Hispanic workers in construction are undocumented, and many of those who are recently arrived do face a language barrier,' said Rakesh Kochhar, associated director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center.

'A language barrier hinders understanding of a job, or the risks associated with it, or safety precautions,' said Kochhar, who was not part of the new study.

The study was done by health researchers in Massachusetts, Michigan and New Jersey and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's being published this week in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Many Blacks Find Joy in Unexpected Breakthrough - NYTimes.com

Many Blacks Find Joy in Unexpected Breakthrough - NYTimes.com: Kwabena Sam-Brew, a 38-year-old immigrant from Ghana, doubted that Nana, his 5-year-old American-born daughter, would remember the rally that effectively crowned Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee Tuesday night.

But Mr. Sam-Brew said he would describe it to her: “I will tell her, ‘Tonight is the night that all Americans became one.’ ”

Mr. Sam-Brew, a bus driver living in Cottage Grove, Minn., said Mr. Obama’s achievement would change the nation’s image around the world, and change the mind-set of Americans, too.

“We as black people now have hope that we have never, ever had,” Mr. Sam-Brew said. “I have new goals for my little girl. She can’t give me any excuses because she’s black.

In his remarks Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not mention becoming the first American of color with a real chance at being president of the United States, and, of course, most of the Democrats who had voted for him were white. But for that very reason, many African-Americans exulted Wednesday in a political triumph that they believed they would never live to see. Many expressed hope that their children would draw strength from the moment.

“Not that we’re so distraught, but our children need to be able to see a black adult as a leader for the country, so they can know we can reach for those same goals,” said Wilhelmina Brown, 54, an account representative for U.S. Bank in St. Paul. “We don’t need to give up at a certain level.”

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.

Closing the Culture Gap Can Help Latino Students Learn, Professor Says

With the increase in the nation’s Hispanic population, policymakers must address the “opportunity gap” as an education challenge, says Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University.

“The opportunity gap [is] the gap in the opportunity to attend well-funded schools that can offer a good education,” he said in a recent radio interview on National Public Radio. “Latino students in this country are more segregated now than any other group and are more likely to go to schools that have very few resources, and not surprisingly have some of the highest dropout rates in the country.”

Recent data from the U.S. Census reported that the Hispanic population increased by 3.3 percent from July 1, 2006, to July, 1, 2007, and it also reported that nearly a quarter of the children younger than five in the U.S. are Latino. Statistics based on national standardized tests have shown that Latino students, like African Americans, lag behind their peers in reading and math scores, a problem educators have dubbed “the achievement gap.” Latino students also have higher dropout rates and are less likely to attend college, according to recent statistics gathered from the U.S. Department of Education."

Course Watch: University of Akron Offers Class on Black Male Issues

Course Watch: University of Akron Offers Class on Black Male Issues: The first course on Black men’s history and studies in the nation will be taught this summer as a special topics course at the University of Akron (Ohio) by Dr. Zachery Williams, assistant professor of African-American history and interim director of Pan African studies at the university.

“‘African American Men’s History and Studies’ represents an innovative course that seeks to intentionally, holistically and critically examine the history and current socio-cultural realities of Black men, while interrogating the implications of that complicated history/gendered reality for public policy development, implementation and evaluation,” Williams says.

Report: More Than 1 Million High School Students Will Fail to Graduate in 2008, Minorities Most at Risk

Report: More Than 1 Million High School Students Will Fail to Graduate in 2008, Minorities Most at Risk: Of the 1.23 million high school students who will fail to graduate this year, minority students are the most at risk, according to new data recently released by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (EPE).


While nationally, 71 percent of ninth-graders make it to graduation four years later, the figure drops for Hispanic, Black and Native American students — 58, 55, and 51 percent respectively.


The new data highlighted in 'Diplomas Count 2008: School to College: Can State P-16 Councils Ease the Transition?' details graduation information for every U.S. district and state, along with other new information, including the estimated number of students in the 2008 class who dropped out before graduating.


EPE, which publishes pre-collegiate education newspaper Education Week, aims to help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education.


Its new study found the new data using enrollment and graduation rates as opposed to drop-out rates from various U.S. states. The information was based upon 2005 numbers because those numbers were the most up-to-date information available.

Study: More blacks than whites must lose a leg to diabetes - USATODAY.com

Study: More blacks than whites must lose a leg to diabetes - USATODAY.com: Blacks undergo leg amputations as a complication of diabetes at a far higher rate than whites, according to a study out today that also found blacks lag behind whites in breast cancer screening and diabetic tests.

'There are remarkable disparities between blacks and whites and between communities,' says Dartmouth Medical School professor and study lead author Elliott Fisher, who says health systems, economics, lifestyle, education and community resources all play a role in the differences.

The study, paid for by the non-profit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, used data from Medicare to look at amputations, screening rates and other measures of quality care among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The foundation is one of the nation's largest philanthropies and backs efforts to change the health care system.

Researchers studied amputation because it can indicate that diabetes patients have received inadequate preventive care. The study found:

• Across the USA, the rate of leg amputation is four times greater among black Medicare recipients than white.

• Black residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina had 6 amputations per 1,000 Medicare enrollees, while black residents of Colorado and Nevada had fewer than 2 per 1,000.

• Overall amputation rates for both blacks and whites vary among states. Utah has the lowest rate at .5 amputations per 1,000 Medicare members, and Louisiana has the highest at 1.7 amputations per 1,000.

Survey: Risky acts more likely for Hispanic teens

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Hispanic high school students use drugs and attempt suicide at higher rates than their black or white classmates, according to a new federal survey that shows a continuation of a disturbing trend.

The study is the latest in a series of surveys of U.S. high school students every two years. The new report noted that black and white students are reporting less sexual activity than in years past, but there was no decline among Hispanics.

In addition, Hispanic students were more likely than either blacks or whites to attempt suicide, ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, or use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy.

Hispanics also most often drank alcohol on school property, were offered or sold illegal drugs, and occasionally skipped school because they feared for their safety, according to the 2007 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Experts were unable to come up with an explanation for why Hispanic behavior trends differed. However, they speculated that school environments many Hispanics face may differ considerably from what adolescents of other races encounter. Earlier research found that Hispanics and blacks more commonly attend highly segregated schools than whites or Asians.

"There's tremendous segregation in our schools," said Howell Wechsler, director of adolescent and school health for the CDC. He said he was very troubled Hispanic teens had not improved in certain risk areas at the same rate as blacks and whites.

The finding comes from a survey of about 14,000 U.S. high school students that has been conducted every other year since 1991.

With Losses in Construction, Hispanic Unemployment Soars - washingtonpost.com

With Losses in Construction, Hispanic Unemployment Soars - washingtonpost.com: The unemployment rate among Latinos is rising faster than the rate for all other workers in the United States, as the steep decline in the construction industry eliminates hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to a national study released today.

Latino workers have lost nearly 250,000 jobs in the construction industry during the past year, with Hispanic immigrants getting hit hardest, the report by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center said.

Joblessness among Latino immigrants rose to 7.5 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2008, compared to 6.5 percent for all Latinos and 4.7 percent for all other workers in the U.S. The rise in unemployment for Hispanic immigrants also marked the first time since 2003 that foreign-born Latinos had a higher unemployment rate than that of native-born Latinos, the report said.

Minority Students' Dropout Rates at Crisis Levels

Minority Students' Dropout Rates at Crisis Levels: High school educators have been told in Seattle that dropout rates for minority students, especially Native-Americans, are at crisis levels in six Northwestern states.

``Our success rate with Native children starts in kindergarten, or in preschool,'' said Sally Brownfield, the facilitator for the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning in Washington.

The high school educators from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Wyoming met at the University of Washington on Friday for a one-day conference.

A panel of experts told the educators after years of talking about how students need to be properly prepared for school, it's time for schools to start preparing for students.

Brownfield said that's when Native-American children first come in contact with ``foreign'' cultures.

The panelists, made up in part of representatives of the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, advocated resources be redirected to help troubled students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The ``Civil Rights Project'' conference, a national effort by UCLA, catered to educators serving Native-American and Alaskan-Native students in the six states.

Last Brown v. Board Plaintiff Dies - TIME

Last Brown v. Board Plaintiff Dies - TIME: TOPEKA, Kan. — The last surviving plaintiff in Topeka's Brown v. Board of Education case, which led to the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in public schools, has died at 88.

Zelma Henderson died Tuesday in Topeka, six weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Her son, Donald, said she wasn't physically imposing, but when she was passionate about something, "She was just fire."

In 1950, Henderson signed onto the litigation on behalf of her children challenging Topeka's segregated schools. In all, 13 black parents in Topeka, including the Rev. Oliver Brown, took part in the federal case.

The plaintiffs lost in U.S. District Court, but the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and consolidated with similar cases from Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware.

The high court's unanimous ruling overturning school segregation came on May 17, 1954.

As a child in the 1920s and '30s, Henderson had attended desegregated schools in the western Kansas town of Oakley. She was disgusted when she learned her own children would be required to attend segregated schools in Topeka.

'$100 laptop' non-profit teams with Microsoft - USATODAY.com

'$100 laptop' non-profit teams with Microsoft - USATODAY.com: BOSTON — The One Laptop Per Child project is about to find out whether Microsoft, a rival the non-profit group once derided, is the solution to its problems in spreading inexpensive portable computers to schoolchildren.

Microsoft (MSFT) and the laptop organization announced Thursday that the non-profit's green-and-white 'XO' computers now can run Windows in addition to their homegrown interface, which is built on the open Linux operating system. That had been anticipated for months, but it amounts to a major shift.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the laptop project — which aims to produce $100 computers but now sells them at $188 — acknowledged that having Windows as an option could reassure education ministers who have hesitated to buy XOs with its new interface, called Sugar. Negroponte had hoped to sell several million laptops by now; instead he has gotten about 600,000 orders.

A Different State of Race Relations - washingtonpost.com

A Different State of Race Relations - washingtonpost.com: SALT LAKE CITY -- Earlier this year, a state senator stood on the statehouse floor here and spoke disparagingly of a pending bill. 'This baby is black,' said Sen. Chris Buttars, a Republican, adding, 'It's a dark, ugly thing.'

Weary of talking about race? Come to the Beehive State, where race relations is a topic of bracing freshness.

Here, basic issues of sensitivity -- what is spoken of aloud and what is best left unsaid, assumptions good and bad, all the delicate matters that in so many parts of the country have been burnished to exquisite subtleties by worry and constant attention -- are still very basic indeed.

Take what happened to Tamu Smith.

Smith was in cosmetology class when she felt a hand on her head. A classmate was handling her hair.

"And I said, 'Don't ever touch my hair without asking me,' " Smith said. "And she was like, 'Well, I can touch your hair.' And I was like, 'What?' And she was like, 'I can touch your hair because I've never touched black people's hair before.' "

It was after a supervisor was summoned that, as Smith recalls, the classmate whined a question that, a decade later, still strikes at the poignant and suddenly timely essence of being black in Utah: "If I don't get to touch Tamu's hair, then what black person's hair am I ever going to touch?"

While Buttars's cutting remark about an offending piece of legislation was, the Rev. France A. Davis said, "the kind of thing you'd see when I was growing up in Georgia," the controversy was finally put to rest when the senator apologized before Davis's mostly black congregation at Calvary Baptist Church, which knew a teaching moment when it saw one.

"There is kind of a time warp," said Darius Gray, an African American and producer of the documentary "Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons." "We are a bit slow on the uptake here."