First Woman Elected President In Brazil : NPR

First Woman Elected President In Brazil : NPR: A former Marxist guerrilla who was tortured and imprisoned during Brazil's long dictatorship was elected Sunday as president of Latin America's biggest nation, a country in the midst of an economic and political rise.

A statement from the Supreme Electoral Court, which oversees elections, said governing party candidate Dilma Rousseff won the election. When she takes office Jan. 1, she will be Brazil's first female leader.

With nearly 95 percent of the ballots counted, Rousseff had 55.6 percent compared to 44.4 percent for her centrist rival, Jose Serra, the electoral court said.

Rousseff, the hand-chosen candidate of wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, won by cementing her image to Silva's, whose policies she promised to continue.

Retention Program Engages Latino Families in Helping Children Finish Community College

Retention Program Engages Latino Families in Helping Children Finish Community College: When Consuelo Arellano got a postcard from South Texas College this summer about freshman orientation week for her daughter, it wasn’t by accident. The notice advised Arellano, a mother of two adult children, that student attendance was mandatory and that parents should attend.

The unusual request for parental participation was part of a stepped-up effort by the predominantly Hispanic community college in McAllen to enhance the retention and graduation prospects for its first-generation college students by making the college experience more of a family affair from the beginning.

Such parent orientations are not unusual at four-year schools, but the strategy is fairly new for open-access institutions that serve such disparate constituents as first-time undergraduates and adult learners. Like their four-year counterparts, community colleges focus on college completion, experts say, and South Texas is among those colleges that discovered the importance of demystifying the higher education process for Latino parents who’ve never traveled that path.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. Latinos detect bias, poll finds

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. Latinos detect bias, poll finds: The poll also found that 70 percent of foreign-born Latinos think they are being held back by discrimination, and half of all Latinos think the United States has become less welcoming toward immigrants than it was just five years ago.

'More Latinos are seeing discrimination against Hispanics as a major problem,' said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the center, which released the findings Thursday.

The results of the survey - which was conducted in English and Spanish among 1,375 native- and foreign-born Latinos from Aug. 17 through Sept. 19.

Education Week: Pathways Seen for Acquiring Languages

Education Week: Pathways Seen for Acquiring Languages: New studies on how language learning occurs are beginning to chip away at some long-held notions about second-language acquisition and point to potential learning benefits for students who speak more than one language.

“We have this national psyche that we’re not good at languages,” said Marty Abbott, the director of education for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, in Alexandria, Va. “It’s still perceived as something only smart people can do, and it’s not true; we all learned our first language and we can learn a second one.”

New National Science Foundation-funded collaborations among educators, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and linguists have started to find the evidence to back up that assertion. For example, researchers long thought the window for learning a new language shrinks rapidly after age 7 and closes almost entirely after puberty. Yet interdisciplinary research conducted over the past five years at the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, and other colleges suggest that the time frame may be more flexible than first thought and that students who learn additional languages become more adaptable in other types of learning, too.

Education Week: Bullying May Violate Civil Rights, Duncan Warns Schools

Education Week: Bullying May Violate Civil Rights, Duncan Warns Schools: Certain types of harassment rooted in sex-role stereotyping or religious differences may be a federal civil rights violation, according to new guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s office of civil rights aimed at putting school districts on notice about their responsibilities to address bullying.

“Simply put, we think in this country bullying should not exist,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters Tuesday during a conference call to discuss the guidance, which was written as a 10-page letter to school officials. “Students simply cannot learn if they feel threatened, harassed, or in fear.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin; Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex; and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibit discrimination based on disability status.

2 schools' students 'integrated' after 50 years

2 schools' students 'integrated' after 50 years: It's been 50 years since Peggy Robinson Roberts and her classmates in Leesburg graduated from segregated high schools, in separate ceremonies. Back then, teens at all-black Douglass High knew little about their counterparts at all-white Loudoun County. They didn't sit in the same classes, play on the same football fields or sing in the same glee clubs.

Now, after almost a lifetime apart, their shared history of racial segregation has taken an unexpected turn. They have met, traded memories and struck up the kind of friendships they might've enjoyed five decades ago had America been a different place.

'It's never too late,' Roberts, 68, said the other day, showing a few of her new friends around Douglass, now an alternative school. 'People may ask, 'Why now?' But I don't care why now. The important thing is it's happened.'

A month earlier, white and black members of the Class of 1960 gathered in Purcellville for dinner - a get-acquainted evening for about 40 people born through an e-mail exchange between two white alumni.

The belated coming-together is a rare occurrence, say school experts, noting that many schools are becoming resegregated because of housing patterns and school district boundaries.

College Completion Movement Helps Spur Academic Intervention Program Innovations

College Completion Movement Helps Spur Academic Intervention Program Innovations: ...While Coppin State has offered summer bridge programs for years as an optional tool for students seeking a leg up, this year was the first time the administration mandated attendance for remedial students. Coppin State’s new initiative, an effort to improve its 20 percent graduation rate, contributes to a growing national trend among colleges to boost their retention and graduation efforts. They are acting on research that shows students have a greater likelihood of staying in school and graduating if deficiencies—academic and financial—are addressed early and vigorously. The efforts are at various schools but especially at those with low graduation rates and those that have traditionally focused on low-income, first-time college students with academic achievement deficiencies dating to high school or earlier.

Capitol Hill Club, GOP's Hangout Spot, Sued For Racial Discrimination

Capitol Hill Club, GOP's Hangout Spot, Sued For Racial Discrimination: The Capitol Hill Club, a top hangout spot and frequent official business locale for elected Republicans and their campaign committees, is being sued for racial discrimination.

A former employee for the club filed a suit this week after having been fired in late July. The plaintiff, Kim Crawford, claims that she was passed over for raises for more than eight years. In her suit, she seeks $3 million in compensatory and punitive damages -- a fairly large sum though not an unprecedented total.

The club, known formally as the 'National Republican Club of Capitol Hill,' is a separate organization from the Republican National Committee. But it is the committee's next-door neighbor. And having it find its way to the center of a racial controversy is, undoubtedly, an unwanted (even if minor) headache in the election's closing week.

Ayers Funding To Drop Off in 2012

Ayers Funding To Drop Off in 2012: JACKSON, Miss.— Mississippi's three historically Black universities will begin receiving less money from the settlement of the decades-old desegregation lawsuit in 2012.

Officials tell The Clarion-Ledger that the state is unlikely to have the funds to make up the difference.

Settlement of the lawsuit, named after the late Jake Ayers Sr. who filed it in 1975, provided $503.2 million for the benefit of Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley, including new programs and infrastructure.

It also provided that the funding would be trailing off on July 1, 2012.

Higher Education Commissioner Hank Bounds has asked the three colleges for business plans that would examine the viability of the programs and look for ways to substitute the settlement funds.

Miss. University Conference Focuses on Civil Rights History

Miss. University Conference Focuses on Civil Rights History: HATTIESBURG, Miss. – From a Ku Klux Klan firebomb attack on a Black storeowner to frequent marches on Main Street by Blacks pushing for voting rights, the city of Hattiesburg was a pivotal scene of racial unrest in the 1950s and 1960s.

A University of Southern Mississippi conference late last week highlighted the role of key activists and local foot soldiers who helped change the racial landscape of the South during the civil rights movement.

The academic conference, which began Thursday and concluded Saturday, included panel discussions by many veteran activists, including Lawrence Guyot, Marilyn Lowen, and Martha Noonan, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Scholar Captures Stories of Undocumented Students

Scholar Captures Stories of Undocumented Students: With the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act sitting on Congress’ to-do list, Dr. William Perez, assistant professor of education at Claremont University, hopes that legislative body pays close attention to the experiences of undocumented students struggling to get a higher learning.

In his book, We ARE Americans: Undocumented Students Pursuing the American Dream, Perez tells the tale of illegal immigration through firsthand accounts of undocumented high school and college students. Their perseverance, achievement and social consciousness, despite the negativity they face, may impress the reader. They certainly surprised the author.

College Inc. - Study: Racial harmony begins in the dorm room

College Inc. - Study: Racial harmony begins in the dorm room: A new study finds that randomly assigned roommates are equally likely to become friends regardless of their race.

Researchers studying roommate assignments at Berea College in Kentucky found that roommates of different races were just as likely to become friends as roommates of the same race. The finding, published in the October issue of Journal of Labor Economics, suggests that racial harmony on campus might begin with innovative dorm assignments.

The study also found that white students assigned black roommates tended to befriend more black students in college than white students assigned white roommates.

'We find that, while much sorting exists at all stages of college, black and white students are, in reality, very compatible as friends,' write the authors, Braz Camargo of Sao Paulo School of Economics and the University of Western Ontario, Ralph Stinebrickner of Berea College and Todd Stinebrickner of the University of Western Ontario.

'The Forgotten Hero' Of The Civil Rights Movement : NPR

'The Forgotten Hero' Of The Civil Rights Movement : NPR: A century before the civil rights protests in Selma and Birmingham, a 27-year-old African-American named Octavius Catto led the fight to desegregate Philadelphia's horse-drawn streetcars.

He did it in 1866 with the help of other prominent activists, including Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass. Catto raised all-black regiments to fight in the Civil War; he pushed for black voting rights; and he started an all-black baseball team — all before the age of 32.

And if you visit Octavius Catto's grave at Eden Cemetery, just outside Philadelphia, his epitaph reads: 'The Forgotten Hero'

It was that forgotten history that prompted two reporters, Dan Biddle and Murray Dubin, to dig deeper. They talked to NPR's Guy Raz about their new book, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America.

11 Tucson teachers sue Arizona over new 'anti-Hispanic' schools law - CNN.com

11 Tucson teachers sue Arizona over new 'anti-Hispanic' schools law - CNN.com: Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- Eleven Tucson, Arizona, educators sued the state board of education and superintendent this week for what the teachers consider an 'anti-Hispanic' ban looming on Mexican-American studies.

The suit comes in a state already roiled by a controversial immigration law that is being challenged in court.

On Tuesday, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne defended the new law, which will go into effect December 31. The law authorizes the superintendent to stop any ethnic studies classes that 'promote the overthrow of the United States government ... promote resentment toward a race or class of people ... (or) advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.'

Horne said he would seek the first-ever ban in Tucson for its 'raza studies' program, now called Mexican-American studies. Raza means 'the race' in Spanish.

Opinion: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Students In U.S. Higher Education

Opinion: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Students In U.S. Higher Education: It was every administrator’s dream: two conferences in one week. One focused on measuring student-learning outcomes, the other on effective leadership in community colleges. In both meetings, the question of who can, does and should have access to higher education arose. Many assume the answer is that all students deserve a college education. This is a fraught assumption. Higher education in the United States was transported from Europe and was a system that served to control which social classes had access to knowledge and the opportunity to contribute to the generation of knowledge.

Scholar Documents Purported Tale of a 19th Century Body Snatcher

Scholar Documents Purported Tale of a 19th Century Body Snatcher: Amid the stacks of books, exams to grade, lecture notes and meeting agendas in the office of Dr. Shawn Utsey, chairman of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of African American Studies, is a box of bones that are more than 100 years old. The bones, he believes, are part of a dark history few know.

After completing his award-winning documentary “Meet Me In The Bottom,” chronicling the effort to identify and memorialize a slave burial ground in Richmond, Va., Utsey began investigating claims that the slave burial site had been looted for corpses for medical training purposes.

Raul Grijalva's Office On Lockdown After Swastika-Covered Suspicious Package Arrives

Raul Grijalva's Office On Lockdown After Swastika-Covered Suspicious Package Arrives: The office of Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has been locked down due to the presence of a suspicious package covered with swastikas, according to reports. KVOA reports that an 'envelope containing white powder' was mailed to Grijalva's Tuscon office. Bomb technicians are reportedly on hand.

Grijalva told KVOA that the substance is toxic and Keith Olbermann tweeted that the Congressman would confirm that durring an appearance on 'Countdown.'

According to the Arizona Daily Star, the envelope was decorated with multiple swastikas and included a 'white powdery substance' inside. No one at the office has been injured, Politico reports, which also claims that the FBI is now involved in the investigation.

Fewer black males are dropping out of school in Baltimore - baltimoresun.com

Fewer black males are dropping out of school in Baltimore - baltimoresun.com: Black male students in Baltimore are staying in school and receiving their diplomas in higher numbers, school officials said on Wednesday, raising hope that future generations of city youths will gain skills needed for success in life.

District officials said that the performance of black male students over the past three years has been the driving force behind the improved statistics for Baltimore schools. In 2007, for every black male student who graduated from high school, one dropped out. Now, three are graduating for every one who leaves school.

'This is a major accomplishment that deserves the attention of all of the city,' said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. 'Baltimore schools continue to improve because we set higher expectations.'

While the graduation rate is still considered far too low, the data offer a remarkable portrait of a population long considered vulnerable. Education leaders have worried about how to rescue African-American male students in urban school districts, and have said that their lack of success leads to joblessness, crime and poverty.

United Nations Report Focuses on Global Lot of Women - NYTimes.com

United Nations Report Focuses on Global Lot of Women - NYTimes.com: UNITED NATIONS — American men who maintain they are doing more housework have a second source to back their claim — a United Nations report released Wednesday — although it would be premature to argue that the sexes had reached parity on domestic chores or nearly any other issue.

Housework statistics are perhaps the lightest slice from a welter of numbers in the report, which focused on the global lot of women. The latest in a series of compilations published every five years, the World’s Women 2010 was released to mark World Statistics Day. (When the United Nations wants to draw attention to an issue, it usually gets a day. For a particularly intractable problem, it often gets a year.)

Statistics Day is being honored in 100 countries to underscore the need for data as a development tool. (The list of events started with Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai was to participate in a statistical celebration that was presumably not the disqualification of a quarter of the votes from the recent polls.)

Education Week: White House Renews Attention to Hispanic Education

Education Week: White House Renews Attention to Hispanic Education: The Obama administration has renewed its commitment to key priorities in the education of Hispanic students, including reduction of the dropout rate, improved connections between pre-K-12 and postsecondary education, and passage of the “DREAM Act,” which would provide a path to legalization for some undocumented students.

All of those topics were touched on at the Oct. 18 White House summit on Hispanic education, hosted by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. The event was the culmination of a listening tour by White House officials over the last 18 months to more than 90 communities that focused on how to improve the education and lives of Latinos.

Today, President Obama signed an executive order to renew the initiative, which was started by an executive order signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. President Obama’s order calls for the establishment of a presidential advisory commission on Hispanic education and a federal interagency working group on how to improve the education and lives of Latinos.