Just the Stats: Capitalizing Higher Education in the Global Market

Although U.S. graduate schools admitted eight percent more international students this fall, that growth rate is considerably lower than 2006’s 12 percent increase, according to a new report from the Council of Graduates Schools.

The results in the report, “2007 International Graduate Admissions Survey, Phase II: Final Applications and Initial Offers of Admissions,” are based on a three-part annual survey of international graduate student admissions among American CGS member institutions. Out of the 473 institutions, 160 responded, which is a 34 percent response rate. Despite the response rate, 84 percent of the largest 25 schools responded. This is the second year in a row that American schools as a whole experienced an increase in applications from international students, although about 78 percent of respondents reported receiving fewer international applicants this year than in 2003.

The report also found that American universities are facing increasing competition for students from other countries that are actively recruiting and responding to the global marketplace. Nearly 30 percent of all graduate schools in the U.S. have formed alliances with international universities creating dual- or joint-degree programs. An additional 24 percent of U.S. graduate schools reported their intent to form international collaborations within the next two years.

“U.S. graduate education has long been recognized as the best in the world, but other countries are actively recruiting talented domestic and international students,” said Debra W. Stewart, CGS president “This report highlights how U.S. graduate schools are establishing collaborative degree programs with institutions overseas as one response to increasing global competition.”

Morehouse President to Freshmen: ‘Look the part. Act the part. Talk the talk and walk the walk’

Morehouse President to Freshmen: ‘Look the part. Act the part. Talk the talk and walk the walk’: Morehouse could soon join a growing number of university campuses that have instituted dress codes. A handful of public and private campuses, where students once exercised the freedom to dress as they please, have adopted stricter codes of conduct that prohibit sagging jeans, flip-flops and even the wearing of baseball caps inside buildings. While other college campuses such as Paul Quinn College in Dallas and the business school at Illinois State University recently began regulating student attire this fall, Elise Durham, media relations manager at Morehouse College, points out that the school hasn’t officially changed its policy, but has set forth a set of expectations for students. Still, candidates running for Morehouse student government positions are debating the issue, and the school’s new president is also talking about it. Morehouse’s new president, Dr. Robert Michael Franklin Jr., wants to make being smart cool again and put morality at the forefront of the college’s mission. The jackets are the first step in that direction, according to officials. It’s also part of the school’s new, stricter dress and conduct expectations.

Women feed the jump in college enrollment - USATODAY.com

Women feed the jump in college enrollment - USATODAY.com: Colleges and universities these days are seeing a surge in enrollment — and it's increasingly driven by young women, according to U.S. Census data out today. The numbers confirm years of enrollment data showing that women have not only closed the college enrollment gap — they have far surpassed men on campuses. For every four men enrolled in graduate school in 2006, there were nearly six women.

While the number of both male and female students rose between 2000 and 2006, the survey found, women outpaced men in both undergraduate and graduate programs. In that period, the nation's undergraduate enrollment swelled by nearly 2.7 million students, 18.7%, but the percentage who were male fell 1.2 points, to 44%.

Women in 2006 made up 56% of undergrads, up from 54.8% in 2000.

University of Maryland Investigates Possible Hate Crime After Noose Discovered Hanging in Tree

COLLEGE PARK, Md.
University of Maryland police on Monday were investigating as a possible hate crime what appeared to be a noose hanging in a tree near a building that houses several black campus groups.

The noose, a throw-back to the days of lynching of blacks in the U.S. South, was found between the student union and the Nyumburu Cultural Center, where organizations that include the Black Faculty and Staff Association and the Black Explosion newspaper are based.

“We are starting out with the assumption that it was a hate crime,” campus police spokesman Paul Dillon said Monday.

Witnesses reported seeing the 3-foot-long (1 meter) rope Thursday. The rope had a 3-inch-diameter (7.6-centimeter) noose tied at one end and was reportedly 10 to 12 feet (3.7 meters) up in the tree, Dillon said.

The rope was destroyed by campus maintenance workers before police had a chance to see it, Dillon said. But the department has photos and several witness accounts.

The rope may have been in the tree for as long as two weeks, he said.

University President C.D. Mote Jr. said in a statement over the weekend that the discovery was “of great concern.”

“The possibility that this act appears intended to bring to mind the horrific crime of lynching, which is such a terrible and tragic part of our nation’s past, is particularly abhorrent,” Mote said.

Area Schools' Success Obscures Lingering Racial SAT Gap - washingtonpost.com

Area Schools' Success Obscures Lingering Racial SAT Gap - washingtonpost.com: SAT scores at the Washington region's top high schools show an achievement gap between blacks and the rest of the student population -- a gap that is often masked by the overall performance of the schools. White students in the spring graduating class of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda -- the top performer in Montgomery County -- averaged 1893 out of a possible 2400 points on the SAT. The 13 black students tested averaged 1578, more than 300 points lower.

At Yorktown, Arlington County's leader, white students averaged 1804 on the SAT; black students averaged 1470. Black students at Severna Park High, the top performer in Anne Arundel County, averaged 1336, while white students' average was 1646.

Despite the gap, black students in the Class of 2007 scored well at some of the region's most prestigious high schools; at a few, black students topped the overall national average, 1511, on the best-known college entrance test. Solid scores on the SAT or the rival ACT are all but essential to students aspiring to competitive universities.

Why Male Teacher Ranks Are at 40-Year Low - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com

Why Male Teacher Ranks Are at 40-Year Low - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com: According to the National Education Association, the number of male schoolteachers is hovering at a 40-year low. Only one quarter of our 3 million teachers are men. In elementary schools, the problem is more acute—just 9 percent are men, down from 18 percent in 1981. 'If kids do not see males in the classroom, they begin to believe teaching is only for females,' says Reg Weaver, president of the NEA. Unless more men become teachers, says Weaver, the shortage will continue to be a self-perpetuating problem.

Although the feminization of the teaching profession has been underway since the 1890s, school administrators say it's becoming a more salient issue as boys fall behind girls in graduation rates and demonstrate more difficulties with reading and writing. There are several reasons many men find it difficult to enter, and stay in, the teaching profession: the starting salary for teachers is about $30,000, and less in early education.

Racial differences in kidney cancer care, outcome

Racial differences in kidney cancer care, outcome: NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There are disparities in the treatment and outcome between older black and white patients who have renal cell cancer, with blacks having significantly lower survival rates, according to a new study. However, the lower rates of nephrectomy (surgical removal of the kidney) and the higher rates of comorbid illnesses in black patients largely explain the survival difference, the study found. In recent years, 5-year survival rates for renal cell cancer have improved among whites, the authors explain in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, but there has been little change in survival rates among blacks.

Poll: Young, white Americans are happier - Kids & Parenting - MSNBC.com

Poll: Young, white Americans are happier - Kids & Parenting - MSNBC.com: From their relationships to their jobs to their money — even from they time they first roll out of bed — young white Americans are happier with life than their minority counterparts. According to an extensive survey of 1,280 people ages 13-24 by The Associated Press and MTV, 72 percent of whites say they are happy with life in general, compared with 51 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of blacks. “It doesn’t surprise me,” said Martin Carpenter, 21, a black New Jersey resident. “There’s a lot of issues out there for African-American young adults. You can still go to certain places and feel uncomfortable, like you don’t belong there.”

Seeking Out Success

Seeking Out Success: University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Shaun Harper expects his extensive research will create a new paradigm of how Black males adapt and succeed in college. It was in his high school years that Raymond Roy seriously thought about going to college. Raised largely by his grandmother in a tough, low-income neighborhood in north Philadelphia, Roy found encouragement from family members and a few college-bound friends.
“I had good grades, but I didn’t think college was something I could do until I saw some of my friends going for it,” he says. Roy’s college pursuit took him to Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania where he made the Dean’s List his freshman year.
Identified in the spring of his freshman year by campus administrators as a motivated high achiever, Roy took part in the National Black Male College Achievement Study, the largest-ever empirical study of Black male undergraduates.

Study Finds Why Breast Cancer Is More Deadly in Black Women

Study Finds Why Breast Cancer Is More Deadly in Black Women: A new study gives a possible explanation for why breast cancer is more deadly in Black women: they are more likely to have tumors that do not respond to the hormone-based treatments that help many others with the disease. The study is the largest yet to link a biological factor to the racial disparity, which also has been blamed on Black women getting fewer mammograms and less aggressive treatment. “This puts biology more to the forefront,” said Dr. Julie Gralow, a cancer specialist at the University of Washington School of Medicine familiar with the work. “It’s not just access to care, access to treatment and other factors that have been implicated in the past.” The study was led by Dr. M. Catherine Lee of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and will be presented starting Sept. 7 in San Francisco at a conference, which was organized by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and other cancer groups. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women. An estimated 178,480 new cases and 40,460 deaths are expected from it in the United States this year. Blacks are less likely than Whites to develop breast cancer but are more likely to die from it, doctors have long known. Blacks also are diagnosed at younger ages and at later stages of disease.

La. beating case stirs racial anger - USATODAY.com

La. beating case stirs racial anger - USATODAY.com: "A grass-roots movement is spreading across black America in support of six black high school students charged with attempted murder for beating a white classmate in the small Louisiana town of Jena. On black radio, black college campuses and websites from YouTube to Facebook, the young men known as the Jena 6 are being held up as symbols of unequal and unfair treatment of blacks in a case that evokes the Deep South's Jim Crow era, complete with nooses hanging from a tree. 'People are fed up,' says Esther Iverem, 47, a Washington, D.C., writer who runs a website called Seeingblack.com, which has featured articles about the Jena 6. 'It's another case of young black men railroaded unjustly. We do not want to see this happen to young boys who got involved in a school fight.' Tenisha Wilkerson, 20, of Chicago, posted a page on Facebook supporting the Jena 6. It has attracted 35,000 members. 'Why is this kind of thing still going on?' she asks."

SAT Minorities Scholastic Aptitude Test and Black Hispanic Students

SAT Minorities Scholastic Aptitude Test and Black Hispanic Students: The most diverse group of test-takers in the history of the exam sat for the SAT in 2007, with 39 percent, or four out of 10 test-takers, classified as minority. Blacks represented the majority of minority test-takers at 12 percent, closely followed by Hispanics at 11 percent. In addition, approximately 24 percent of test-takers’ first language was not exclusively English, compared to 17 percent in 1997 and 13 percent in 1987. Compared to last year’s scores, 2007 showed little statistical significance; nevertheless, average scores declined one point in reading and three points in the math and writing sections. “The record number of students, coupled with the diversity of SAT takers in the class of 2007, means that an increasing number of students in this country are recognizing the importance of a college education and are taking the steps necessary to get there,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, at Tuesday’s press conference.

UC-Berkeley Study: Half of Black Employees in Low-Wage Jobs

UC-Berkeley Study: Half of Black Employees in Low-Wage Jobs: The unemployment crisis in the Black community has been well documented. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in July that the Black unemployment rate was 8 percent, nearly twice the rate for Whites. The crisis though, is much larger than unemployment, a new study finds. More than half of Blacks that have jobs are paid a low salary with no retirement and health benefits, according to a report by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education released just before Labor Day. “Typically when people examine the African-American jobs issue, people focus on the question of unemployment,” said Steven Pitts, a labor policy specialist at the center and author of the report. “While we recognize that serious problem, we found there is a secondary important problem that involves low-wage work. There are a lot of Black folk who do have jobs, and there are very high levels of them, who work with very low wages. This is a very serious problem. The study, “Job Quality and Black Workers: An Examination of the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York,” used data from the 2000 U.S. Census to analyze low-paying jobs among Blacks. Even though it used seven-year- old statistics, Pitts contends that the reports findings are still applicable to 2007.

Picture boards help bridge language gap in health emergencies - USATODAY.com

Picture boards help bridge language gap in health emergencies - USATODAY.com: TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — With more ill and injured people unable to speak English, hospitals, clinics and rescue squads are turning to picture boards to bridge the communication gap with easily understood images. The large, double-sided panels let patients point to icons showing their problem — such as pain, a burn, breathing trouble or a fall — as well as the part of the body that is affected. They also can point to their native language in a list so an appropriate interpreter can be located. 'They ought to be in every ambulance, in every hospital, in every clinic,' said Dr. Fred M. Jacobs, head of New Jersey's health department. 'Communication barriers lead to adverse impacts on (care) quality, misunderstandings and even medical errors.' His department is partnering with the state's hospital association to distribute thousands of the boards to all New Jersey hospitals, rescue squads and public health clinics. Use of the panels is likely to spread under a new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services program aimed at helping hospitals to determine their patients' communication needs and to find tools to meet those needs. At least nine state hospital associations have signed on: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding Their Voices - washingtonpost.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Tolerance.org: Teaching Tolerance: The Question of Class

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

Just the Stats: The Top Hispanic-serving Degree Producers

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

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

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

Study: Overweight Kids Being Teased Out of an Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hispanic Outreach By Non-HSIs Lacking, Study Indicates

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

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

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


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

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

Jazz Musician Max Roach Dies at 83 - washingtonpost.com

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

Professor dies from malaria in Egypt | ajc.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NPR : Counties See Minorities Become the New Majority

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

NPR : Schools Worry About Fate of Desegregation Efforts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black History AP Course Faces Obstacles by College Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expect More Challenges to Diversity Programs, Says Spelman President

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

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

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

Closing learning gaps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

English Instruction Touted for Immigrants - washingtonpost.com

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

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

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

Gender Public Advocacy Coalition : About GenderPAC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harvard Study Examines Hidden Biases Among ER Physicians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multicultural Dorm Project Rewarded For Retention Results

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

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

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

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

English Instruction Touted for Immigrants - washingtonpost.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Myth About Boys - TIME

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

KIDS COUNT State-Level Data Online

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

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

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

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

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

Rising Voices of America - washingtonpost.com

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

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

Washington makes them mad. And it inspires them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

House Approves Major Funding Increase For HBCUs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Former World Leaders Unite to Confront Issues - washingtonpost.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Few Minorities Use Hospice Care Services - washingtonpost.com

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

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

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

Schools Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some - New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

Top 100 Popular Graduate Disciplines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AP: Nutrition education ineffective - USATODAY.com

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

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

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

The results have been disappointing, to say the least:

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

Bettering the Odds for Young Black Men - washingtonpost.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asian Americans value racially diverse public schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hispanic Magazine.com

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

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

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

Hispanic Magazine.com

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

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

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

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

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

CALIFORNIA / Nonwhite parents' high hopes

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

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

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

Making It Happen

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

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

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