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Vocabulary > School, Education > USA

Clay Bennett

The Christian Science Monitor

Boston

Cagle

11.8.2005
http://www.claybennett.com/

Kirk Anderson

Cagle

25.2.2005
http://www.kirktoons.com/
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/anderson.asp

learning

online learning
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/technology/khan-academy-blends-its-youtube-approach-with-classrooms.html

American education
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/l14college.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/opinion/08levy.html

early childhood education
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.htm

Do We Spend Too Much on Education? 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/23/spending-too-much-time-and-money-on-education

U.S. Department of Education
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/education_department/index.html

United States Secretary of Education
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/arne_duncan/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02engel.html

online education
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/second-thoughts-on-online-education/

cartoons > Cagle > School budget cuts 2010
http://www.cagle.msnbc.com/news/SchoolBudgetCuts/main.asp

August Heffner

Test Prep for the Preschool Set

NYT

November 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/opinion/l30kindergarten.html

education > pre-school
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/education_preschool/index.html

prekindergarten and kindergarten classes
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/opinion/the-building-blocks-of-education.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/with-building-blocks-educators-going-back-to-basics.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/opinion/l30kindergarten.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/nyregion/21testprep.htm

prekindergartner
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/with-building-blocks-educators-going-back-to-basics.html

kindergartner
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/with-building-blocks-educators-going-back-to-basics.html

school

The US schools with their own police January 2011
More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors.
Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes
and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor.
Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools

Single-Sex Schools: Separate but Equal? October 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/17/single-sex-schools-separate-but-equal

Should the School Day Be Longer? September 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/26/should-the-school-day-be-longer

public schools
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/20/is-segregation-back-in-us-public-schools
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-25-split-schools_x.htm

charter schools
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/charter_schools/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/opinion/l10murray.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05murray.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/education/17educ.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/education/27charter.html

graduate schools and students
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/graduate_schools_and_students/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/education/26debt.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/education/22grad.html

Amish schools
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15664071.htm

cartoons > Cagle > Mom's excited for school 2010
http://www.cagle.com/news/SchoolMoms2010/main.asp

homework
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/homework/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/education/16homework.html

Daryl Cagle

12 April 2007

high school
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/education/01child.html

high school dropouts
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/education/01child.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/education/20graduation.html

SAT Reasoning Test
(formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test) SAT

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sat_college_admission_test/index.html

student

minority students
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/us/college-affirmative-action-policies-change-with-laws.html

needy students
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10reed.html

school librarians
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/06/26/are-school-librarians-expendable

higher education 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/l05college.html?hpw

higher education 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49T02E20081030
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKTRE49T02G20081030

math education
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/how-to-fix-our-math-education.html

elite colleges / top colleges
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/l26elite.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19steinberg.html

cartoons > Cagle > College costs 2011
http://www.cagle.com/news/CollegeCosts11/main.asp

highly selective colleges > admissions > family connections
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09legacies.html

donations to colleges in 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/education/02gifts.html

cartoons > Cagle > Welcome to college 2010
http://www.cagle.com/news/College2010/main.asp

college life
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/26/education/26_ss_Social_index.html

four-year college
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17brooks.html

community colleges
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/community_colleges/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17brooks.html

leaders of colleges > salaries and benefits
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/education/18college.html

colleges 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/education/08college.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49T02E20081030
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKTRE49T02G20081030

college dropouts
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html

colleges > cybersecurity
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/hacking/2006-08-01-college-hack_x.htm

public colleges / private colleges
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-26-college-enrollment_N.htm

Harvard University
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/harvard_university/index.html

Amherst College
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/amherst_college/index.html

the richest, most selective schools - Harvard, Yale and Princeton 2008
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-26-college-enrollment_N.htm

fees > tuition, room, board
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-26-college-enrollment_N.htm

college tuition fees
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/opinion/reining-in-college-tuition.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/education/obamas-plan-to-control-college-costs-gets-mixed-reviews.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/education/18college.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/education/03college.html

colleges > endowments
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49T02E20081030
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-24-endowments-college_N.htm

freshman
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/nyregion/02suicide.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/education/21college.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-26-college-enrollment_N.htm

textbook
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/finding-cheaper-textbooks-2nd-edition/

student loans

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/12/easing-the-pain-of-student-loans/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/12/easing-the-pain-of-student-loans/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/education/26debt.html

take out loans to go to college

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/12/easing-the-pain-of-student-loans/

Student debt: 'College education brings you the American hell' - video

In America, a good education costs money – but at what price?
In the first of our primary election video series Answer the Question,
Suzanne Goldenberg goes on the campaign trail in Iowa
to ask Republican presidential candidates how they plan on helping graduates
who are struggling to pay off cripplingly large student loans when there are no jobs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/jan/02/iowa-caucus-student-debt-video

"separate but equal" education > school segregation

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/20/is-segregation-back-in-us-public-schools
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1477351,00.html

Texas schools board
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/22/us/AP-US-Texas-Schools-Social-Studies.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/21/us/AP-US-Texas-Schools-Social-Studies.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history

textbook
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23texas.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/l16texas.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1346198,00.html

curriculum
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/21/us/AP-US-Texas-Schools-Social-Studies.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

textbook
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

creationists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1407422,00.html

evolution
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-01-kansas-evolution-vote_x.htm

by the end of his/her junior year

In December of his/her senior year

at Miami Killian High School

at the University of Texas

at Yale

Sewanee (pronounced suh-WAH-nee)
was founded by Episcopal bishops just before the Civil War
and began classes in 1868
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/education/30sewanee.html

his / her classroom performance

report card

receive three F's

undergraduate education
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25Trachtenberg.html

graduate

cartoons > Cagle > No jobs for grad 2011
http://www.cagle.com/news/GradJobs11/main.asp

graduate degree

graduation

degree
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/l30college.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25Trachtenberg.html

qualify for a scholarship

get into college

campus

a history professor

senior

junior

sophomore (second-year university students in North America)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-28-school-shooting_x.htm

freshman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10reed.html

hazing
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hazing/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/opinion/should-colleges-stop-fraternity-hazing.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/opinion/a-pledge-to-end-fraternity-hazing.html

ivy league education

Yale's secretive Skull and Bones society
sorority
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-03-28-sorority_N.htm

Fraternities and Sororities
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/fraternities_and_sororities/index.html

alumnus (sing) alumni (plur)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/education/02gifts.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/education/16college.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/opinion/30kahlenberg.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/business/economy/27leonhardt.html

valedictorians
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/nyregion/28valedictorians.html

dean
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/business/21burton.html

Cal Grondahl

Utah Standard Examiner

Cagle

15 November 2010

student cheating
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/education/06cheat.html

cheat
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/education/06cheat.html

trickery
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/education/06cheat.html

A seventh-grade class taught by Carolyn Leuner at KIPP Star College Prep,

a charter school in central Harlem where test scores are rising.

Librado Romero/The New York Times

June 2, 2006

Harlem, a Test Lab, Splits Over Charter Schools

NYT

2.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/nyregion/02harlem.html

elementary school children

students in middle and high school

student
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-25-cellphones_x.htm

kindergarten and first grade boys
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/nyregion/09school.html

first grader
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/education/11class.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-01-07-no-child_x.htm

fourth grader
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html

fifth grader

sixth grader
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/education/05tablets.html

seventh grader

eighth grader

High School students
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-29-principal-shot_x.htm

high school seniors

principal
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-29-principal-shot_x.htm

science
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-05-24-science-scores_x.htm

in science class

science and technology learning
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/science/24educ.html
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/a-push-for-science-and-technology-learning/

grades
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/l23grades.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html

letter grades
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/l23grades.html

grading
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html

graded papers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html

deserve an A

commencement ceremony
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-20-mccain-newschool_x.htm

No Child Left Behind Act 2001

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_left_behind_act/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/opinion/improving-no-child-left-behind.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/opinion/a-better-way-to-fix-no-child-left-behind.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/opinion/l11educ.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/opinion/05fri1.html
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/reports/no-child-left-behind.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/education/02child.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-01-07-no-child_x.htm

U.S. Department of Education
http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml

By David Barreda

Rocky Mountain News via AP

Platte River sophomores Taylor Fraser, 15, left, and Sophie Sasser, 15,
hug after being reunited at the Deer Creek Elementary School
near Bailey, Colo., Wednesday.
A student witness told the Today show that the gunman
"was just an old guy who came on a mission,
and I think he got what he wanted."

Colorado school shooter identified; no motive yet known

Updated 9/28/2006 1:21 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-28-school-shooting_x.htm

school safety
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/education/schoolsafety/

school shooting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/02/oakland-shootings-gunman-opened-fire-california
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/apr/03/gun-crime-california
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/apr/03/oakland-shootings-korean-university-pictures
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-14-shooting_N.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSKRA48086720080215
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/15shoot.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-10-school-shooting_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-02-school-shootings_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-29-principal-shot_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-28-school-shooting_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-29-principal-shot_x.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/national/22cnd-shoot.html
http://www.cagle.com/news/schoolshooting/

Oikos University shooting - Oakland, California March 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/apr/03/oakland-shootings-korean-university-pictures

Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel August 2007
http://www.governor.virginia.gov/TempContent/techPanelReport.cfm

The Washington Post > Virginia Tech shooting April 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/vatechshootings/?hpid=topnews

USA Today > Virginia Tech shooting April 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-17-cover-shooter-signs_N.htm

The Guardian > Special report > Virginia Tech shooting April 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/virginiashooting/

Columbine High School massacre 1999
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/20/newsid_2489000/2489639.stm

race-based school policy
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-05-court-schools_x.htm

classroom

digital classroom
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/technology/technology-in-schools-faces-questions-on-value.html

interactive whiteboard
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/technology/technology-in-schools-faces-questions-on-value.html

teach

teaching
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/opinion/blow-teaching-me-about-teaching.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/opinion/l30nocera.html

teacher evaluations
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/education/states-address-problems-with-teacher-evaluations.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/opinion/a-sound-deal-on-teacher-evaluations.html
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/02/16/as-deadline-nears-a-compromise-on-teacher-evaluations/

teacher tenure
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opinion/l07tenure.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01tenure.html

teachers and school employees
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/teachers_and_school_employees/index.html

Teach for America
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/teach_for_america/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/28/us/politics/AP-US-New-Teachers-Glance.html

American Federation of Teachers
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/american_federation_of_teachers/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17sun2.html

National Education Association
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17sun2.html

private teacher

home schooling
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/home_schooling/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/education/19graduation.html

be home-schooled
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/education/05homeschool.html

bully
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30bully.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/health/09klas.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html

bullies
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/b/bullies/index.html

schoolyard bullies
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07bully.html

bully
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html

bullying
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/why-cyberbullying-rhetoric-misses-the-mark.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/24/us/20080324LAND_SLIDESHOW_index.html

schoolyard harassment
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07bully.html

suspend
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14suspend.html

suspension
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14suspend.html

expel

This staff, photographed in its case,

is used in processions

at Sewanee: The University of the South.

Josh Anderson for The New York Times

In Desire to Grow, Colleges in South Battle With Roots

By ALAN FINDER NYT

November 30, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/education/30sewanee.html

A Korean War memorial stands atop a hill

on Sewanee's campus overlooking Ashland, Tenn.

Josh Anderson for The New York Times

In Desire to Grow, Colleges in South Battle With Roots

By ALAN FINDER

NYT

November 30, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/education/30sewanee.html

A front view of the chapel at Sewanee: The University of the South.

Josh Anderson for The New York Times

In Desire to Grow, Colleges in South Battle With Roots

By ALAN FINDER

NYT

November 30, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/education/30sewanee.html

Brian Fairrington

c. 2000
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/fairrington.asp

Kevin Siers

c. 2000
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/editorial/cartoons/

Mike Thompson

c. 2000
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/thompson.asp

Cameron Cardow

c. 2000
http://cagle.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/cam.asp

Uncle Sam

Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say

February 9, 2012
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

WASHINGTON — Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.

It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.

Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, “Whither Opportunity?” compiled by the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central theme this election season.

The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.

One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.

A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent.

“The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation,” said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from 1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.

James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.

“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” he said. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it’s a mistake.”

Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found.

Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute whose book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” was published Jan. 31, described income inequality as “more of a symptom than a cause.”

The growing gap between the better educated and the less educated, he argued, has formed a kind of cultural divide that has its roots in natural social forces, like the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people, as well as in the social policies of the 1960s, like welfare and other government programs, which he contended provided incentives for staying single.

“When the economy recovers, you’ll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture,” he said.

There are no easy answers, in part because the problem is so complex, said Douglas J. Besharov, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Blaming the problem on the richest of the rich ignores an equally important driver, he said: two-earner household wealth, which has lifted the upper middle class ever further from less educated Americans, who tend to be single parents.

The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.”

Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say, NYT, 9.2.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html

Occupy the Classroom

October 19, 2011
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Occupy Wall Street is shining a useful spotlight on one of America’s central challenges, the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.

Huh? That will seem naïve and bizarre to many who chafe at inequities and who think the first step is to throw a few bankers into prison. But although part of the problem is billionaires being taxed at lower rates than those with more modest incomes, a bigger source of structural inequity is that many young people never get the skills to compete. They’re just left behind.

“This is where inequality starts,” said Kathleen McCartney, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as she showed me a chart demonstrating that even before kindergarten there are significant performance gaps between rich and poor students. Those gaps then widen further in school.

“The reason early education is important is that you build a foundation for school success,” she added. “And success breeds success.”

One common thread, whether I’m reporting on poverty in New York City or in Sierra Leone, is that a good education tends to be the most reliable escalator out of poverty. Another common thread: whether in America or Africa, disadvantaged kids often don’t get a chance to board that escalator.

Maybe it seems absurd to propose expansion of early childhood education at a time when budgets are being slashed. Yet James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, has shown that investments in early childhood education pay for themselves. Indeed, he argues that they pay a return of 7 percent or more — better than many investments on Wall Street.

“Schooling after the second grade plays only a minor role in creating or reducing gaps,” Heckman argues in an important article this year in American Educator. “It is imperative to change the way we look at education. We should invest in the foundation of school readiness from birth to age 5.”

One of the most studied initiatives in this area was the Perry Preschool program, which worked with disadvantaged black children in Michigan in the 1960s. Compared with a control group, children who went through the Perry program were 22 percent more likely to finish high school and were arrested less than half as often for felonies. They were half as likely to receive public assistance and three times as likely to own their own homes.

We don’t want to get too excited with these statistics, or those of the equally studied Abecedarian Project in North Carolina. The program was tiny, and many antipoverty initiatives work wonderfully when they’re experiments but founder when scaled up. Still, new research suggests that early childhood education can work even in the real world at scale.

Take Head Start, which serves more than 900,000 low-income children a year. There are flaws in Head Start, and researchers have found that while it improved test results, those gains were fleeting. As a result, Head Start seemed to confer no lasting benefits, and it has been widely criticized as a failure.

Not so fast.

One of the Harvard scholars I interviewed, David Deming, compared the outcomes of children who were in Head Start with their siblings who did not participate. Professor Deming found that critics were right that the Head Start advantage in test scores faded quickly. But, in other areas, perhaps more important ones, he found that Head Start had a significant long-term impact: the former Head Start participants are significantly less likely than siblings to repeat grades, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty. Head Start alumni were more likely than their siblings to graduate from high school and attend college.

Professor Deming found that in these life outcomes, Head Start had about 80 percent of the impact of the Perry program — a stunning achievement.

Something similar seems to be true of the large-scale prekindergarten program in Boston. Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Christina Weiland, both of Harvard, found that it erased the Latino-white testing gap in kindergarten and sharply reduced the black-white gap.

President Obama often talked in his campaign about early childhood education, and he probably agrees with everything I’ve said. But the issue has slipped away and off the agenda.

That’s sad because the question isn’t whether we can afford early childhood education, but whether we can afford not to provide it. We can pay for prisons or we can pay, less, for early childhood education to help build a fairer and more equitable nation.

Occupy the Classroom, NYT, 19.10.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html

The University of Wherever

October 2, 2011
The New York Times
By BILL KELLER

FOR more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have envisioned a world of virtual campuses and “distributed” learning. They imagine a business model in which online courses are consumer-rated like products on Amazon, tuition is set by auction services like eBay, and students are judged not by grades but by skills they have mastered, like levels of a videogame. Presumably, for the Friday kegger you go to the Genius Bar.

It’s true that online education has proliferated, from community colleges to the free OpenCourseWare lecture videos offered by M.I.T. (The New York Times Company is in the game, too, with its Knowledge Network.) But the Internet has so far scarcely disturbed the traditional practice or the economics at the high end, the great schools that are one of the few remaining advantages America has in a competitive world. Our top-rated universities and colleges have no want of customers willing to pay handsomely for the kind of education their parents got; thus elite schools have little incentive to dilute the value of the credentials they award.

Two recent events at Stanford University suggest that the day is growing nearer when quality higher education confronts the technological disruptions that have already upended the music and book industries, humbled enterprises from Kodak to the Postal Service (not to mention the newspaper business), and helped destabilize despots across the Middle East.

One development is a competition among prestige universities to open a branch campus in applied sciences in New York City. This is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to create a locus of entrepreneurial education that would mate with venture capital to spawn new enterprises and enrich the city’s economy. Stanford, which has provided much of the info-tech Viagra for Silicon Valley, and Cornell, a biotechnology powerhouse, appear to be the main rivals.

But more interesting than the contest between Stanford and Cornell is the one between Stanford and Stanford.

The Stanford bid for a New York campus is a bet on the value of place. The premise is that Stanford can repeat the success it achieved by marrying itself to the Silicon Valley marketplace. The school’s proposal (unsubtly titled “Silicon Valley II”) envisions a bricks-and-mortar residential campus on an island in the East River, built around a community of 100 faculty members and 2,200 students and strategically situated to catalyze new businesses in the city.

Meanwhile, one of Stanford’s most inventive professors, Sebastian Thrun, is making an alternative claim on the future. Thrun, a German-born and largely self-taught expert in robotics, is famous for leading the team that built Google’s self-driving car. He is offering his “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online and free of charge. His remote students will get the same lectures as students paying $50,000 a year, the same assignments, the same exams and, if they pass, a “statement of accomplishment” (though not Stanford credit). When The Times wrote about this last month, 58,000 students had signed up for the course. After the article, enrollment leapt to 130,000, from across the globe.

Thrun’s ultimate mission is a virtual university in which the best professors broadcast their lectures to tens of thousands of students. Testing, peer interaction and grading would happen online; a cadre of teaching assistants would provide some human supervision; and the price would be within reach of almost anyone. “Literally, we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for about 1 to 2 percent of the cost,” Thrun told me.

The traditional university, in his view, serves a fortunate few, inefficiently, with a business model built on exclusivity. “I’m not at all against the on-campus experience,” he said. “I love it. It’s great. It has a lot of things which cannot be replaced by anything online. But it’s also insanely uneconomical.”

Thrun acknowledges that there are still serious quality-control problems to be licked. How do you keep an invisible student from cheating? How do you even know who is sitting at that remote keyboard? Will the education really be as compelling — and will it last? Thrun believes there are technological answers to all of these questions, some of them
being worked out already by other online frontiersmen.

“If we can solve this,” he said, “I think it will disrupt all of higher education.”

Disrupt is right. It would be an earthquake for the majority of colleges that depend on tuition income rather than big endowments and research grants. Many could go the way of local newspapers. There would be huge audiences and paychecks for superstar teachers, but dimmer prospects for those who are less charismatic.

It’s ironic — or maybe just fitting — that this is playing out at Stanford, which has served as midwife to many disruptive technologies. By forging a symbiotic relationship with venture capital and teaching students how to navigate markets, Stanford claims to have spawned an estimated 5,000 businesses. This is a campus where grad school applicants are routinely asked if they have done a startup, and some professors have gotten very, very rich.

John Hennessy, Stanford’s president, gave the university’s blessing to Thrun’s experiment, which he calls “an initial demonstration,” but he is cautious about the grander dream of a digitized university. He can imagine a virtual campus for some specialized programs and continuing education, and thinks the power of distributed learning can be incorporated in undergraduate education — for example, supplanting the large lecture that is often filled with students paying more attention to their laptops. He endorses online teaching as a way to educate students, in the developing world or our own, who cannot hope for the full campus experience.

But Hennessy is a passionate advocate for an actual campus, especially in undergraduate education. There is nothing quite like the give and take of a live community to hone critical thinking, writing and public speaking skills, he says. And it’s not at all clear that online students learn the most important lesson of all: how to keep learning.

As The Times’s Matt Richtel recently reported, there is remarkably little data showing that technology-centric schooling improves basic learning. It is quite possible that the infatuation with technology has diverted money from things known to work — training better teachers, giving kids more time in school.

THE Stanford president is hardly a technophobe. Hennessy came up through computer engineering, used his sabbatical to start a successful microprocessor company, and sits on the boards of Google and Cisco Systems.

“In the same way that a lot of things go into the cost of a newspaper that have nothing to do with the quality of the reporting — the cost of newsprint and delivery — we should ask the same thing about universities,” Hennessy told me. “When is the infrastructure of the university particularly valuable — as it is, I believe, for an undergraduate residential experience — and when is it secondary to the learning process?”

But, he notes, “One has to think about the sustainability of all these things. In the end, the content providers have to get paid.”

I see a larger point, familiar to all of us who have lived through digital-age disorder. There are disrupters, like Sebastian Thrun, or Napster, or the tweeting rebels in Tahrir Square. And there are adapters, like John Hennessy, or iTunes, or the novice statesmen trying to build a new Egypt. Progress depends on both.

Who could be against an experiment that promises the treasure of education to a vast, underserved world? But we should be careful, in our idealism, not to diminish something that is already a wonder of the world.

The University of Wherever, NYT, 2.10.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/opinion/the-university-of-wherever.html

Improving No Child Left Behind

September 30, 2011
The New York Times

The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act focused the country’s attention on school reform as never before, but the law is far from perfect. The Obama administration is wise to address its flaws, since Congress is four years overdue in updating the law.

The Department of Education’s plan gives states that agree to several reforms — including stringent teacher evaluation systems and new programs for overhauling the worst schools — an exemption from many of the law’s requirements. It would permit the states to change the way they evaluate most schools for the purpose of compliance, allowing indicators other than just reading and math scores to be considered. And it would lift the law’s provision that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014, which was never going to happen anyway because there were so many loopholes.

The administration, however, must not allow the new waiver system to become a way for states to elude the purpose of the act, which is to raise student achievement across the board.

The waiver plan will cure several obvious shortcomings of the original law. It would allow schools to be rated partly on achievement-growth measures — how much students improve on reading and math — instead of just on the percentage of students who reach “proficiency” on those tests. The current approach has led many schools to ignore both high-achieving and low-achieving children to focus on pushing up students who fall just short of the proficiency mark.

It would also put an end to the much despised pass-fail system under which otherwise high-performing schools are rated as “needing improvement” if one racial or economic subgroup falls short of yearly achievement targets. And it would allow districts more flexibility in the use of federal dollars.

To qualify for waivers, states will have to install new tests — and teacher evaluation systems that take those test results into account — by the 2014-15 school year. The 12 states that received federal grants in the Race to the Top program last year have a head start. They agreed to put in data-driven teacher evaluation systems as part of that competition. But even reform-minded states like Delaware, which was one of the first to win a grant, have been unable to get their systems up and running and have asked the government for more time.

Part of the problem is that in most states, yearly math and reading tests are given only in grades three through eight and once in high school and cover less than half of the teachers. This means that the system must devise other rigorous rating measures for the remaining staff. Another is that the systems must be designed not just to show how much children have improved, but also to provide guidance so that ineffective teachers get better.

It seems imprudent to rush the states into bringing these complex new evaluations systems and high-quality tests on line by 2014, given that they will also be expected to adopt new core curriculums.

The Obama administration must insist that states getting waivers demonstrate that they are making substantial progress, but it should allow flexibility on the timing. Having states rush to adopt inadequate evaluation systems would discredit the school reform movement.

Improving No Child Left Behind, NYT, 30.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/opinion/improving-no-child-left-behind.html

A Better Way to Fix No Child Left Behind

September 26, 2011
The New York Times
By LAMAR ALEXANDER

Washington

EVERYONE knows that today every American’s job is on the line, and that better schools mean better jobs. Schools and jobs are alike in this sense: Washington can’t create good jobs, and Washington can’t create good schools. What Washington can do, though, is shape an environment in which businesses and entrepreneurs can create jobs. It can do the same thing in education, by creating an environment in which teachers, parents and communities can build better schools. Last week President Obama, citing a failure by Congress to act, announced a procedure for handing out waivers for the federal mandates under the No Child Left Behind law. Unfortunately, these waivers come with a series of new federal rules, this time without congressional approval, and would make the secretary of education the equivalent of a national school board.

However, there is another way. Earlier this month, several senators and I introduced a set of five bills that would fix the problems with this important federal law.

No Child Left Behind, created through a bipartisan effort in 2001, set a goal that all 50 million students in our nearly 100,000 public schools would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. There would be state standards and tests, and requirements that our 3.2 million teachers be “highly qualified.” Schools failing to meet “adequate yearly progress” standards would receive federal sanctions. For parents, there would be more school choice, including new charter schools.

Almost a decade later, however, it is likely that nearly 80 percent of American schools will soon fail to meet the adequate yearly progress standards.

My colleagues and I agree with the Obama administration that after a decade of federal rules, more responsibility needs to go back to the states. No Child Left Behind has made one thing clear: when it comes to education reform, the states are both highly capable and highly motivated. Since 2002, 44 states and territories have adopted common core academic standards, two groups of states are developing common tests for those standards and 44 states are collaborating on common principles for holding schools accountable for student achievement.

Many states and school districts are also finding ways to reward outstanding teaching and to include student performance as a part of that evaluation. That may seem like common sense, but until Tennessee created its master-teacher program in 1984, not one state paid one teacher one penny more for teaching well.

Our legislation would scuttle entirely the Washington-imposed adequate-yearly-progress requirements set by No Child Left Behind, and would instead require states to set their own high standards to promote college- and career-readiness for all students. We agree that all states should aim to make their graduates capable of entering higher education or the workforce. But we also believe there are many ways to get there, and states should have the flexibility to find the ones that works best for them.

Our bill would change not only the way students are evaluated, but the way teachers are as well. The “highly qualified” requirement is usually met through graduate or professional training. But training doesn’t always translate into improved performance in the classroom. Instead, we would encourage states to develop teacher- and principal-evaluation systems related to student achievement.

At the same time, we would continue to require the reporting of student progress — not so Washington could decide whether to sanction a school, but so that parents, teachers and communities can know whether their students are succeeding. The data would also help with future reforms: thanks to No Child Left Behind, we have several years of school-by-school information about student progress in each school. We can see now what works, and where work needs to be done.

We would also make it easier for state governments and local school districts to expand the number of charter schools, which have been shown to improve student achievement in under-performing districts.

Finally, we would cut through the bureaucratic thicket of federal education assistance by consolidating programs and making it easier for the states to receive needed resources. And we would make sure that some of that money went specifically to help states turn around the bottom 5 percent of their schools.

While all the sponsors of this legislation are Republican senators, many of the ideas were either first advanced or have been worked on in concert with Mr. Obama; his excellent education secretary, Arne Duncan; and Democratic colleagues in both the House and the Senate.

We want to continue to work with our colleagues across the aisle and in the House. Our purpose in offering our ideas is to spur progress so we can enact a bill by the end of the year.

Mr. Duncan has warned us that under existing law, most schools will be labeled as failing schools within a few years, and he is proposing to use his waiver authority to avoid that. The best way for us to relieve Mr. Duncan of the need to consider waivers and to help American children learn what they need to know, and what they need to be able to do, is to fix No Child Left Behind.

Lamar Alexander, a Republican senator from Tennessee,

was the United States secretary of education from 1991 to 1993.

A Better Way to Fix No Child Left Behind, NYT, 26.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/opinion/a-better-way-to-fix-no-child-left-behind.html

Obama Turns Some Powers of Education Back to States

September 23, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DILLON

With his declaration on Friday that he would waive the most contentious provisions of a federal education law, President Obama effectively rerouted the nation’s education history after a turbulent decade of overwhelming federal influence.

Mr. Obama invited states to reclaim the power to design their own school accountability and improvement systems, upending the centerpiece of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, a requirement that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

“This does not mean that states will be able to lower their standards or escape accountability,” the president said. “If states want more flexibility, they’re going to have to set higher standards, more honest standards that prove they’re serious about meeting them.”

But experts said it was a measure of how profoundly the law had reshaped America’s public school culture that even in states that accept the administration’s offer to pursue a new agenda, the law’s legacy will live on in classrooms, where educators’ work will continue to emphasize its major themes, like narrowing student achievement gaps, and its tactics, like using standardized tests to measure educators’ performance.

In a White House speech, Mr. Obama said states that adopted new higher standards, pledged to overhaul their lowest-performing schools and revamped their teacher evaluation systems should apply for waivers of 10 central provisions of the No Child law, including its 2014 proficiency deadline. The administration was forced to act, Mr. Obama said, because partisan gridlock kept Congress from updating the law.

“Given that Congress cannot act, I am acting,” Mr. Obama said. “Starting today, we’ll be giving states more flexibility.”

But while the law itself clearly empowers Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to waive its provisions, the administration’s decision to make the waivers conditional on states’ pledges to pursue Mr. Obama’s broad school improvement agenda has angered Republicans gearing up for the 2012 elections.

On Friday Congressional leaders immediately began characterizing the waivers as a new administration power grab, in line with their portrayal of the health care overhaul, financial sector regulation and other administration initiatives.

“In my judgment, he is exercising an authority and power he doesn’t have,” said Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota and chairman of the House education committee. “We all know the law is broken and needs to be changed. But this is part and parcel with the whole picture with this administration: they cannot get their agenda through Congress, so they’re doing it with executive orders and rewriting rules. This is executive overreach.”

Mr. Obama made his statements to a bipartisan audience that included Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, a Republican, Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, an independent, and 24 state superintendents of education.

“I believe this will be a transformative movement in American public education,” Christopher Cerf, New Jersey’s education commissioner under Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, said after the speech.

The No Child law that President George W. Bush signed in 2002 was a bipartisan rewrite of the basic federal law on public schools, first passed in 1965 to help the nation’s neediest students. The 2002 law required all schools to administer reading and math tests every year, and to increase the proportion of students passing them until reaching 100 percent in 2014. Schools that failed to keep pace were to be labeled as failing, and eventually their principals fired and staffs dismantled. That system for holding schools accountable for test scores has encouraged states to lower standards, teachers to focus on test preparation, and math and reading to crowd out history, art and foreign languages.

Mr. Obama’s blueprint for rewriting the law, which Congress has never acted on, urged lawmakers to adopt an approach that would encourage states to raise standards, focus interventions only on the worst failing schools and use test scores and other measures to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness. In its current proposal, the administration requires states to adopt those elements of its blueprint in exchange for relief from the No Child law.

Mr. Duncan, speaking after Mr. Obama’s speech, said the waivers could bring significant change to states that apply. “For parents, it means their schools won’t be labeled failures,” Mr. Duncan said. “It should reduce the pressure to teach to the test.”

Critics were skeptical, saying that classroom teachers who complain about unrelenting pressure to prepare for standardized tests were unlikely to feel much relief.

“In the system that N.C.L.B. created, standardized tests are the measure of all that is good, and that has not changed,“ said Monty Neill, executive director of Fair Test, an antitesting advocacy group. “This policy encourages states to use test scores as a significant factor in evaluating teachers, and that will add to the pressure on teachers to teach to the test.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said her union favored evaluation systems that would help teachers improve their instruction, whereas the administration was focusing on accountability. “You’re seeing an extraordinary change of policy, from an accountability system focused on districts and schools, to accountability based on teacher and principal evaluations,” Ms. Weingarten said.

For most states, obtaining a waiver could be the easy part of accepting the administration’s invitation. Actually designing a new school accountability system, and obtaining statewide acceptance of it, represents a complex administrative and political challenge for governors and other state leaders, said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which the White House said played an important role in developing the waiver proposal.

Only about five states may be ready to apply immediately, and perhaps 20 others could follow by next spring, Mr. Wilhoit said. Developing new educator evaluation systems and other aspects of follow-through could take states three years or more, he said.

Officials in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and in at least eight other states — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Idaho, Minnesota, Virginia and Wisconsin — said Friday that they would probably seek the waivers.

Obama Turns Some Powers of Education Back to States, NYT, 23.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/education/24educ.html

Bullying as True Drama

September 22, 2011
The New York Times
By DANAH BOYD and ALICE MARWICK

THE suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, the 14-year-old boy from western New York who killed himself last Sunday after being tormented by his classmates for being gay, is appalling. His story is a classic case of bullying: he was aggressively and repeatedly victimized. Horrific episodes like this have sparked conversations about cyberbullying and created immense pressure on regulators and educators to do something, anything, to make it stop. Yet in the rush to find a solution, adults are failing to recognize how their conversations about bullying are often misaligned with youth narratives. Adults need to start paying attention to the language of youth if they want antibullying interventions to succeed.

Jamey recognized that he was being bullied and asked explicitly for help, but this is not always the case. Many teenagers who are bullied can’t emotionally afford to identify as victims, and young people who bully others rarely see themselves as perpetrators. For a teenager to recognize herself or himself in the adult language of bullying carries social and psychological costs. It requires acknowledging oneself as either powerless or abusive.

In our research over a number of years, we have interviewed and observed teenagers across the United States. Given the public interest in cyberbullying, we asked young people about it, only to be continually rebuffed. Teenagers repeatedly told us that bullying was something that happened only in elementary or middle school. “There’s no bullying at this school” was a regular refrain.

This didn’t mesh with our observations, so we struggled to understand the disconnect. While teenagers denounced bullying, they — especially girls — would describe a host of interpersonal conflicts playing out in their lives as “drama.”

At first, we thought drama was simply an umbrella term, referring to varying forms of bullying, joking around, minor skirmishes between friends, breakups and makeups, and gossip. We thought teenagers viewed bullying as a form of drama. But we realized the two are quite distinct. Drama was not a show for us, but rather a protective mechanism for them.

Teenagers say drama when they want to diminish the importance of something. Repeatedly, teenagers would refer to something as “just stupid drama,” “something girls do,” or “so high school.” We learned that drama can be fun and entertaining; it can be serious or totally ridiculous; it can be a way to get attention or feel validated. But mostly we learned that young people use the term drama because it is empowering.

Dismissing a conflict that’s really hurting their feelings as drama lets teenagers demonstrate that they don’t care about such petty concerns. They can save face while feeling superior to those tormenting them by dismissing them as desperate for attention. Or, if they’re the instigators, the word drama lets teenagers feel that they’re participating in something innocuous or even funny, rather than having to admit that they’ve hurt someone’s feelings. Drama allows them to distance themselves from painful situations.

Adults want to help teenagers recognize the hurt that is taking place, which often means owning up to victimhood. But this can have serious consequences. To recognize oneself as a victim — or perpetrator — requires serious emotional, psychological and social support, an infrastructure unavailable to many teenagers. And when teenagers like Jamey do ask for help, they’re often let down. Not only are many adults ill-equipped to help teenagers do the psychological work necessary, but teenagers’ social position often requires them to continue facing the same social scene day after day.

Like Jamey, there are young people who identify as victims of bullying. But many youths engaged in practices that adults label bullying do not name them as such. Teenagers want to see themselves as in control of their own lives; their reputations are important. Admitting that they’re being bullied, or worse, that they are bullies, slots them into a narrative that’s disempowering and makes them feel weak and childish.

Antibullying efforts cannot be successful if they make teenagers feel victimized without providing them the support to go from a position of victimization to one of empowerment. When teenagers acknowledge that they’re being bullied, adults need to provide programs similar to those that help victims of abuse. And they must recognize that emotional recovery is a long and difficult process.

But if the goal is to intervene at the moment of victimization, the focus should be to work within teenagers’ cultural frame, encourage empathy and help young people understand when and where drama has serious consequences. Interventions must focus on positive concepts like healthy relationships and digital citizenship rather than starting with the negative framing of bullying. The key is to help young people feel independently strong, confident and capable without first requiring them to see themselves as either an oppressed person or an oppressor.

Danah Boyd is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and a research assistant professor at New York University. Alice Marwick is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research and a research affiliate at Harvard University.

Bullying as True Drama, NYT, 22.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/why-cyberbullying-rhetoric-misses-the-mark.html

In Honor of Teachers

September 2, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLES M. BLOW

Since it’s back-to-school season across the country, I wanted to celebrate a group that is often maligned: teachers. Like so many others, it was a teacher who changed the direction of my life, and to whom I’m forever indebted.

A Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll released this week found that 76 percent of Americans believed that high-achieving high school students should later be recruited to become teachers, and 67 percent of respondents said that they would like to have a child of their own take up teaching in the public schools as a career.

But how do we expect to entice the best and brightest to become teachers when we keep tearing the profession down? We take the people who so desperately want to make a difference that they enter a field where they know that they’ll be overworked and underpaid, and we scapegoat them as the cause of a societywide failure.

A March report by the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that one of the differences between the United States and countries with high-performing school systems was: “The teaching profession in the U.S. does not have the same high status as it once did, nor does it compare with the status teachers enjoy in the world’s best-performing economies.”

The report highlights two examples of this diminished status:

• “According to a 2005 National Education Association report, nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years teaching; they cite poor working conditions and low pay as the chief reason.”

• “High school teachers in the U.S. work longer hours (approximately 50 hours, according to the N.E.A.), and yet the U.S. devotes a far lower proportion than the average O.E.C.D. country does to teacher salaries.”

Take Wisconsin, for instance, where a new law stripped teachers of collective bargaining rights and forced them to pay more for benefits. According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, “about twice as many public schoolteachers decided to hang it up in the first half of this year as in each of the past two full years.”

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t seek to reform our education system. We should, and we must. Nor am I saying that all teachers are great teachers. They aren’t. But let’s be honest: No profession is full of peak performers. At least this one is infused with nobility.

And we as parents, and as a society at large, must also acknowledge our shortcomings and the enormous hurdles that teachers must often clear to reach a child. Teachers may be the biggest in-school factor, but there are many out-of-school factors that weigh heavily on performance, like growing child poverty, hunger, homelessness, home and neighborhood instability, adult role-modeling and parental pressure and expectations.

The first teacher to clear those hurdles in my life was Mrs. Thomas.

From the first through third grades, I went to school in a neighboring town because it was the school where my mother got her first teaching job. I was not a great student. I was slipping in and out of depression from a tumultuous family life that included the recent divorce of my parents. I began to grow invisible. My teachers didn’t seem to see me nor I them. (To this day, I can’t remember any of their names.)

My work began to suffer so much that I was temporarily placed in the “slow” class. No one even talked to me about it. They just sent a note. I didn’t believe that I was slow, but I began to live down to their expectations.

When I entered the fourth grade, my mother got a teaching job in our hometown and I came back to my hometown school. I was placed in Mrs. Thomas’s class.

There I was, a little nothing of a boy, lost and slumped, flickering in and out of being.

She was a pint-sized firecracker of a woman, with short curly hair, big round glasses set wider than her face, and a thin slit of a mouth that she kept well-lined with red lipstick.

On the first day of class, she gave us a math quiz. Maybe it was the nervousness of being the “new kid,” but I quickly jotted down the answers and turned in the test — first.

“Whoa! That was quick. Blow, we’re going to call you Speedy Gonzales.” She said it with a broad approving smile, and the kind of eyes that warmed you on the inside.

She put her arm around me and pulled me close while she graded my paper with the other hand. I got a couple wrong, but most of them right.

I couldn’t remember a teacher ever smiling with approval, or putting their hand around me, or praising my performance in any way.

It was the first time that I felt a teacher cared about me, saw me or believed in me. It lit a fire in me. I never got a bad grade again. I figured that Mrs. Thomas would always be able to see me if I always shined. I always wanted to make her as proud of me as she seemed to be that day. And, she always was.

In high school, the district sent a man to test our I.Q.’s. Turns out that not only was I not slow, but mine and another boy’s I.Q. were high enough that they created a gifted-and-talented class just for the two of us with our own teacher who came to our school once a week. I went on to graduate as the valedictorian of my class.

And all of that was because of Mrs. Thomas, the firecracker of a teacher who first saw me and smiled with the smile that warmed me on the inside.

So to all of the Mrs. Thomases out there, all the teachers struggling to reach lost children like I was once, I just want to say thank you. You deserve our admiration, not our contempt.

In Honor of Teachers, NYT, 2.9.201,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinion/blow-an-ode-to-teachers.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

A Pledge to End Fraternity Hazing

August 23, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID J. SKORTON

Ithaca, N.Y.

IN February, a 19-year-old Cornell sophomore died in a fraternity house while participating in a hazing episode that included mock kidnapping, ritualized humiliation and coerced drinking. While the case is still in the courts, the fraternity chapter has been disbanded and those indicted in connection with the death are no longer enrolled here.

This tragedy convinced me that it was time — long past time — to remedy practices of the fraternity system that continue to foster hazing, which has persisted at Cornell, as on college campuses across the country, in violation of state law and university policy.

Yesterday, I directed student leaders of Cornell’s Greek chapters to develop a system of member recruitment and initiation that does not involve “pledging” — the performance of demeaning or dangerous acts as a condition of membership. While fraternity and sorority chapters will be invited to suggest alternatives for inducting new members, I will not approve proposals that directly or indirectly encourage hazing and other risky behavior. National fraternities and sororities should end pledging across all campuses; Cornell students can help lead the way.

Why not ban fraternities and sororities altogether, as some universities have done? Over a quarter of Cornell undergraduates (3,822 of 13,935 students) are involved in fraternities or sororities. The Greek system is part of our university’s history and culture, and we should maintain it because at its best, it can foster friendship, community service and leadership.

Hazing has been formally prohibited at Cornell since 1980 and a crime under New York State law since 1983. But it continues under the guise of pledging, often perpetuated through traditions handed down over generations. Although pledging is explained away as a period of time during which pre-initiates (“pledges”) devote themselves to learning the information necessary to become full members, in reality, it is often the vehicle for demeaning activities that cause psychological harm and physical danger.

About 2,000 alcohol-related deaths occur each year among American college students. Alcohol or drug abuse is a factor in more than a half-million injuries each year — and also in sexual and other assaults, unsafe sex, poor academic performance and many other problems.

At Cornell, high-risk drinking and drug use are two to three times more prevalent among fraternity and sorority members than elsewhere in the student population. During the last 10 years, nearly 60 percent of fraternity and sorority chapters on our campus have been found responsible for activities that are considered hazing under the Cornell code of conduct.

Why would bright young people subject themselves to dangerous humiliation? Multiple factors are at play: the need of emerging adults to separate from family, forge their own identities and be accepted in a group; obedience to authority (in this case, older students); the ineffectiveness of laws and other constraints on group behavior; and organizational traditions that perpetuate hazardous activities.

Alcohol makes it easier for members to subject recruits to physical and mental abuse without feeling remorse and to excuse bad behavior on the grounds of intoxication. It provides a social lubricant, but it impairs the judgment of those being hazed and lowers their ability to resist.

Even more distressing, although 55 percent of college students involved in clubs, teams and organizations experience hazing, the vast majority of them do not identify the events as hazing. Of those who do, 95 percent do not report the events to campus officials.

Doctors, nurses and other student-health professionals have tried to address high-risk drinking and hazing through individual counseling, a medical amnesty process that reduces barriers to calling for help in alcohol emergencies, and educational programs. But the problem has persisted.

There are signs of progress. Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth, has helped organize a multi-campus approach to identifying the most effective strategies against high-risk drinking. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has established a college presidents’ advisory group to develop and share approaches to this problem.

There is a pressing need for better ways to bring students together in socially productive, enjoyable and memorable ways. At Cornell, acceptable alternatives to the pledge process must be completely free of personal degradation, disrespect or harassment in any form. One example is Sigma Phi Epsilon’s “Balanced Man Program,” which replaces the traditional pledging period with a continuing emphasis on community service and personal development.

We need to face the facts about the role of fraternities and sororities in hazing and high-risk drinking. Pledging — and the humiliation and bullying that go with it — can no longer be the price of entry.

David J. Skorton, a cardiologist, is the president of Cornell University.

A Pledge to End Fraternity Hazing, NYT, 23.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/opinion/a-pledge-to-end-fraternity-hazing.html

Teacher Grades: Pass or Be Fired

June 27, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DILLON

WASHINGTON — Emily Strzelecki, a first-year science teacher here, was about as eager for a classroom visit by one of the city’s roving teacher evaluators as she would be to get a tooth drilled. “It really stressed me out because, oh my gosh, I could lose my job,” Ms. Strzelecki said.

Her fears were not unfounded: 165 Washington teachers were fired last year based on a pioneering evaluation system that places significant emphasis on classroom observations; next month, 200 to 600 of the city’s 4,200 educators are expected to get similar bad news, in the nation’s highest rate of dismissal for poor performance.

The evaluation system, known as Impact, is disliked by many unionized teachers but has become a model for many educators. Spurred by President Obama and his $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition, some 20 states, including New York, and thousands of school districts are overhauling the way they grade teachers, and many have sent people to study Impact.

Its admirers say the system, a centerpiece of the tempestuous three-year tenure of Washington’s former schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, has brought clear teaching standards to a district that lacked them and is setting a new standard by establishing dismissal as a consequence of ineffective teaching.

But some educators say it is better at sorting and firing teachers than at helping struggling ones; they note that the system does not consider socioeconomic factors in most cases and that last year 35 percent of the teachers in the city’s wealthiest area, Ward 3, were rated highly effective, compared with 5 percent in Ward 8, the poorest.

“Teachers have to be parents, priests, lawyers, clothes washers, babysitters and a bunch of other things” if they work with low-income children, said Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers Union. “Impact takes none of those roles into account, so it can penalize you just for teaching in a high-needs school.”

Jason Kamras, the architect of the system, said “it’s too early to answer” whether Impact makes it easier for teachers in well-off neighborhoods to do well, but pointed out that Washington’s compensation system offers bigger bonuses ($25,000 versus $12,500) and salary enhancements in high-poverty schools.

“We take very seriously the distribution of high-quality teachers across the system,” he said.

The evaluation system leans heavily on student test scores to judge about 500 math and reading teachers in grades four to eight. Ratings for the rest of the city’s 3,600 teachers are determined mostly by five classroom observations annually, three by their principal and two by so-called master educators, most recruited from outside Washington.

For classroom observations, nine criteria — “explain content clearly,” “maximize instructional time” and “check for student understanding,” for example — are used to rate the lesson as highly effective, effective, minimally effective or ineffective.

These five observations combine to form 75 percent of these teachers’ overall ratings; the rest is based on achievement data and the teachers’ commitment to their school communities. Ineffective teachers face dismissal. Minimally effective ones get a year to improve.

Impact costs the city $7 million a year, including pay for 41 master educators, who earn about $90,000 a year and conduct about 170 observations each. The program also asks more of principals. Carolyne Albert-Garvey, the principal of Maury Elementary School on Capitol Hill, has 22 teachers — she must conduct 66 observations, about one every three school days.

“I’ve really gotten to know my staff, and I’m giving teachers more specific feedback,” Ms. Albert-Garvey said. “It’s empowered me to have the difficult conversations, and that gives everyone the opportunity to improve.”

Several teachers, however, said they considered their ratings unfair.

A veteran teacher who said he did not want to criticize the school system openly, said that a month after he inherited a chaotic world history class from a long-term substitute, the visiting evaluator cut him no slack for taking on the assignment and penalized him because a student was texting during the lesson.

Another teacher who expects to lose her job next month because of low ratings said at a public hearing that evaluators picked apart her seventh-grade geography lessons, making criticisms she considered trivial. During the most recent observation, her evaluator subtracted points because she had failed to notice a girl eating during class, the teacher said.

“I’m 25 years in the system, and before, I always got outstanding ratings,” she said. “How can you go overnight from outstanding to minimally effective?”

A report issued by the Aspen Institute in March said one of Impact’s accomplishments was to align teacher performance with student performance, noting that previously 95 percent of Washington’s teachers were highly rated but fewer than half of its students were demonstrating proficiency on tests. Still, the report quoted teachers who complained of cold-eyed evaluators more interested in identifying losers than in developing winners.

“After my first conversation with my master educator, I felt it was going to be worthwhile — she offered me some good resources,” the report quoted one teacher. “My second master educator was kind of a robot, not generous in offering assistance, a much tougher grader.”

This month, Mary Gloster, who taught science in three states before she was recruited to Impact in 2009, was at Ballou High, one of the city’s lowest-performing schools, to share the results of some classroom visits.

She met with Mahmood Dorosti, a physics teacher who won a $5,000 award this spring. “Don’t even think about it — you’re highly effective,” she told him.

Next was Ms. Strzelecki, 23, who came to Ballou through Teach for America. The two sat at adjoining desks, with Ms. Strzelecki looking a bit like a doe in the headlights.

But Ms. Gloster, who had watched her teach a ninth-grade biology lesson the week before, offered compliments, along with suggestions about how Ms. Strzelecki might provide differentiated teaching for advanced and struggling students.

“You did a really good job, kiddo,” the evaluator ruled, grading her as effective, the equivalent of a B (the same rating she got on previous observations).

“What I liked about Mary was that I felt she was on my side,” Ms. Strzelecki said later. “Some teachers feel the master educators are out to get them.”

That is a common perception, said Mark Simon, an education analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, which receives teachers’ union financing. Ms. Rhee developed the system, he noted, during tough contract negotiations and did not consult with the teachers’ union in its design.

“That was a missed opportunity,” Mr. Simon said, “and it’s created a lot of resentment.”

Teacher Grades: Pass or Be Fired, NYT, 27.6.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/education/28evals.html

Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite

May 24, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID LEONHARDT

The last four presidents of the United States each attended a highly selective college. All nine Supreme Court justices did, too, as did the chief executives of General Electric (Dartmouth), Goldman Sachs (Harvard), Wal-Mart (Georgia Tech), Exxon Mobil (Texas) and Google (Michigan).

Like it or not, these colleges have outsize influence on American society. So their admissions policies don’t matter just to high school seniors; they’re a matter of national interest.

More than seven years ago, a 44-year-old political scientist named Anthony Marx became the president of Amherst College, in western Massachusetts, and set out to change its admissions policies. Mr. Marx argued that elite colleges were neither as good nor as meritocratic as they could be, because they mostly overlooked lower-income students.

For all of the other ways that top colleges had become diverse, their student bodies remained shockingly affluent. At the University of Michigan, more entering freshmen in 2003 came from families earning at least $200,000 a year than came from the entire bottom half of the income distribution. At some private colleges, the numbers were even more extreme.

In his 2003 inaugural address, Mr. Marx — quoting from a speech President John F. Kennedy had given at Amherst — asked, “What good is a private college unless it is serving a great national purpose?”

On Sunday, Mr. Marx presided over his final Amherst graduation. This summer, he will become head of the New York Public Library. And he can point to some impressive successes at Amherst.

More than 22 percent of students now receive federal Pell Grants (a rough approximation of how many are in the bottom half of the nation’s income distribution). In 2005, only 13 percent did. Over the same period, other elite colleges have also been doing more to recruit low- and middle-income students, and they have made some progress.

It is tempting, then, to point to all these changes and proclaim that elite higher education is at long last a meritocracy. But Mr. Marx doesn’t buy it. If anything, he worries, the progress has the potential to distract people from how troubling the situation remains.

When we spoke recently, he mentioned a Georgetown University study of the class of 2010 at the country’s 193 most selective colleges. As entering freshmen, only 15 percent of students came from the bottom half of the income distribution. Sixty-seven percent came from the highest-earning fourth of the distribution. These statistics mean that on many campuses affluent students outnumber middle-class students.

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”

I think Amherst has created a model for attracting talented low- and middle-income students that other colleges can copy. It borrows, in part, from the University of California, which is by far the most economically diverse top university system in the country. But before we get to the details, I want to address a question that often comes up in this discussion:

Does more economic diversity necessarily mean lower admissions standards?

No, it does not.

The truth is that many of the most capable low- and middle-income students attend community colleges or less selective four-year colleges close to their home. Doing so makes them less likely to graduate from college at all, research has shown. Incredibly, only 44 percent of low-income high school seniors with high standardized test scores enroll in a four-year college, according to a Century Foundation report — compared with about 50 percent of high-income seniors who have average test scores.

“The extent of wasted human capital,” wrote the report’s authors, Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “is phenomenal.”

This comparison understates the problem, too, because SAT scores are hardly a pure measure of merit. Well-off students often receive SAT coaching and take the test more than once, Mr. Marx notes, and top colleges reward them for doing both. Colleges also reward students for overseas travel and elaborate community service projects. “Colleges don’t recognize, in the same way, if you work at the neighborhood 7-Eleven to support your family,” he adds.

Several years ago, William Bowen, a former president of Princeton, and two other researchers found that top colleges gave no admissions advantage to low-income students, despite claims to the contrary. Children of alumni received an advantage. Minorities (except Asians) and athletes received an even bigger advantage. But all else equal, a low-income applicant was no more likely to get in than a high-income applicant with the same SAT score. It’s pretty hard to call that meritocracy.

•

Amherst has shown that building a better meritocracy is possible, by doing, as Mr. Marx says, “everything we can think of.”

The effort starts with financial aid. The college has devoted more of its resources to aid, even if the dining halls don’t end up being as fancy as those at rival colleges. Outright grants have replaced most loans, not just for poor students but for middle-class ones. The college has started a scholarship for low-income foreign students, who don’t qualify for Pell Grants. And Amherst officials visit high schools they had never visited before to spread the word.

The college has also started using its transfer program mostly to admit community college students. This step may be the single easiest way for a college to become more meritocratic. It’s one reason the University of California campuses in Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego are so much more diverse than other top colleges.

Many community colleges have horrifically high dropout rates, but the students who succeed there are often inspiring. They include war veterans, single parents and immigrants who have managed to overcome the odds. At Amherst this year, 62 percent of transfer students came from a community college.

Finally, Mr. Marx says Amherst does put a thumb on the scale to give poor students more credit for a given SAT score. Not everyone will love that policy. “Spots at these places are precious,” he notes. But I find it tough to argue that a 1,300 score for most graduates of Phillips Exeter Academy — or most children of Amherst alumni — is as impressive as a 1,250 for someone from McDowell County, W.Va., or the South Bronx.

The result of these changes is that Amherst has a much higher share of low-income students than almost any other elite college. By itself, of course, Amherst is not big enough to influence the American economy. But its policies could affect the economy if more colleges adopted them.

The United States no longer leads the world in educational attainment, partly because so few low-income students — and surprisingly few middle-income students — graduate from four-year colleges. Getting more of these students into the best colleges would make a difference. Many higher-income students would still graduate from college, even if they went to a less elite one. A more educated population, in turn, would probably lift economic growth.

The Amherst model does cost money. And it would be difficult to maintain if Congress cuts the Pell budget, as some members have proposed. But when you add everything up, I think the model isn’t only the fairest one and the right one for the economy. It’s also the best one for the colleges themselves. Attracting the best of the best — not just the best of the affluent — and letting them learn from one another is the whole point of a place like Amherst.

“We did this for educational reasons,” Mr. Marx says. “We aim to be the most diverse college in the country — and the most selective.”

Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite, NYT, 24.6.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html

Your So-Called Education

May 14, 2011
The New York Times
By RICHARD ARUM and JOSIPA ROKSA

COMMENCEMENT is a special time on college campuses: an occasion for students, families, faculty and administrators to come together to celebrate a job well done. And perhaps there is reason to be pleased. In recent surveys of college seniors, more than 90 percent report gaining subject-specific knowledge and developing the ability to think critically and analytically. Almost 9 out of 10 report that overall, they were satisfied with their collegiate experiences.

We would be happy to join in the celebrations if it weren’t for our recent research, which raises doubts about the quality of undergraduate learning in the United States. Over four years, we followed the progress of several thousand students in more than two dozen diverse four-year colleges and universities. We found that large numbers of the students were making their way through college with minimal exposure to rigorous coursework, only a modest investment of effort and little or no meaningful improvement in skills like writing and reasoning.

In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester. The average student spent only about 12 to 13 hours per week studying — about half the time a full-time college student in 1960 spent studying, according to the labor economists Philip S. Babcock and Mindy S. Marks.

Not surprisingly, a large number of the students showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing that were administered when they began college and then again at the ends of their sophomore and senior years. If the test that we used, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, were scaled on a traditional 0-to-100 point range, 45 percent of the students would not have demonstrated gains of even one point over the first two years of college, and 36 percent would not have shown such gains over four years of college.

Why is the overall quality of undergraduate learning so poor?

While some colleges are starved for resources, for many others it’s not for lack of money. Even at those colleges where for the past several decades tuition has far outpaced the rate of inflation, students are taught by fewer full-time tenured faculty members while being looked after by a greatly expanded number of counselors who serve an array of social and personal needs. At the same time, many schools are investing in deluxe dormitory rooms, elaborate student centers and expensive gyms. Simply put: academic investments are a lower priority.

The situation reflects a larger cultural change in the relationship between students and colleges. The authority of educators has diminished, and students are increasingly thought of, by themselves and their colleges, as “clients” or “consumers.” When 18-year-olds are emboldened to see themselves in this manner, many look for ways to attain an educational credential effortlessly and comfortably. And they are catered to accordingly. The customer is always right.

Federal legislation has facilitated this shift. The funds from Pell Grants and subsidized loans, by being assigned to students to spend on academic institutions they have chosen rather than being packaged as institutional grants for colleges to dispense, have empowered students — for good but also for ill. And expanded privacy protections have created obstacles for colleges in providing information on student performance to parents, undercutting a traditional check on student lassitude.

Fortunately, there are some relatively simple, practical steps that colleges and universities could take to address the problem. Too many institutions, for instance, rely primarily on student course evaluations to assess teaching. This creates perverse incentives for professors to demand little and give out good grades. (Indeed, the 36 percent of students in our study who reported spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone still had an average G.P.A. of 3.16.) On those commendable occasions when professors and academic departments do maintain rigor, they risk declines in student enrollments. And since resources are typically distributed based on enrollments, rigorous classes are likely to be canceled and rigorous programs shrunk. Distributing resources and rewards based on student learning instead of student satisfaction would help stop this race to the bottom.

Others involved in education can help, too. College trustees, instead of worrying primarily about institutional rankings and fiscal concerns, could hold administrators accountable for assessing and improving learning. Alumni as well as parents and students on college tours could ignore institutional facades and focus on educational substance. And the Department of Education could make available nationally representative longitudinal data on undergraduate learning outcomes for research purposes, as it has been doing for decades for primary and secondary education.

Most of all, we hope that during this commencement season, our faculty colleagues will pause to consider the state of undergraduate learning and our collective responsibility to increase academic rigor on our campuses.

Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University, and Josipa Roksa, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, are the authors of “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.”

Your So-Called Education, NYT, 14.5.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15arum.html

Can Teaching Overcome Poverty’s Ills?

April 29, 2011
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “The Limits of School Reform” (column, April 26):

Hats off to Joe Nocera for saying what has been obvious to teachers and principals for years. By the time a child starts public school, at age 5 or 6, he or she has been in an environment since birth that has largely shaped the outcome of his or her school experience.

There’s no question that can be modified for the good by dedicated teachers working in well-run schools. But there is serious doubt that school reform alone will accomplish that.

Children bring all the baggage of their home experiences with them when they come to school. Couple that with the dismal condition of many of the nation’s public schools, crumbling neighborhoods and parents who have little to no contact with the schools, and you have a recipe for failing schools.

Requiring school uniforms, adding hours to the schoolday, providing more rigorous courses — all may be helpful, but no combination of efforts confined solely to the schools will provide the magic answer.

Many of America’s schools are failing because for many Americans our society is failing. Pushing for more charter schools and standardized tests or excoriating teachers’ unions are only diversions if we fail to broaden our efforts beyond the schoolhouse door.

CHARLES MURPHY
Durham, N.C., April 26, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Joe Nocera’s point that good teaching alone cannot overcome the obstacles posed by poverty is a common counterpoint to the education reform movement. I, like Joel I. Klein, former New York City schools chancellor, reject this premise because it takes the entire problem of failing schools out of one’s control.

Of course poverty is a factor. So is how many parents the students live with. So is school funding. So is out-of-control school bureaucracy.

But, so what? The entire point of the teacher focus is that it’s the only thing the school systems really have control over. In the absence of an immediate plan to fix poverty, family structure and school funding, the only place where we can influence the fate of these students is in the classroom. That’s where the focus should be.

NEAL SUIDAN
Memphis, April 26, 2011

The writer is a high school teacher.

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To the Editor:

Thank you, Joe Nocera. I teach 11th-grade English and this term I have 60 low-performing students. I vowed to myself that not one would fail my class. I have worked harder than ever before to make relevant lesson plans, teach basic grammar and talk one on one with failing students.

And yet, what am I to do with the one who spent two weeks in a mental hospital, the two who have run away, the one with no ride to school, the three who have been suspended for drugs and the countless others who attend class only one or two days a week?

Short of adopting these teenagers myself (something that movies about inspiring teachers seem to suggest is a viable option), my impact on their lives seems limited.

KATHLEEN MILLS
Bloomington, Ind., April 26, 2011

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To the Editor:

Joe Nocera is right: To deal with the impact of poverty on students’ success in school, we must both improve schools that serve low-income children and provide the additional resources, services and supports children need to succeed. If we concentrate on only one of these efforts, we will continue to fail these children.

Most American children thrive academically because they enjoy the benefits of preschool, quality K-12 schooling, complementary learning opportunities out of school, health care and family support. For children from poverty, many of these vital educational resources are unavailable or inadequate. The result is dramatic gaps in academic achievement.

Research clearly shows that for disadvantaged children to obtain a meaningful educational opportunity, they need both important school-based resources like quality teaching, and critical out-of-school resources like quality early learning experiences, physical and mental health care, after-school and summer programs, and family engagement — what we call “comprehensive educational opportunity.”

In spite of all the new money promoting a more simplistic approach, this “both/and” approach continues to gain strength among researchers, practitioners, advocates and the courts.

JESSICA R. WOLFF
New York, April 27, 2011

The writer is director of the Comprehensive Educational Opportunity Project of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Can Teaching Overcome Poverty’s Ills?, NYT, 29.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/opinion/l30nocera.html

Slight Rise in Donations to Colleges Seen in 2010

February 2, 2011
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN

The nation’s colleges and universities received charitable contributions of $28 billion in 2010, an increase of 0.5 percent from the previous year, according to the annual survey by the Council for Aid to Education.

Support for higher education, measured in total dollars, is at the same level now as it was in 2006, the council said. But adjusted for inflation, it was 8 percent lower last year than in 2006.

“We’re still not out of the woods,” said Ann E. Kaplan, director of the council’s Voluntary Support of Education survey. “Charitable contributions to education are recovering very slowly.”

Stanford raised $599 million from private donors last year, more than any other university. It was followed by Harvard, which raised $597 million, and Johns Hopkins University, which raised $428 million. But all three raised less in 2010 than in 2009, the survey found, as did most of the top 20 institutions.

While the survey included 996 institutions, the top 20 colleges and universities accounted for a quarter of all gifts to higher education last year.

Four of the top 20 universities — the University of Southern California, Duke University, Indiana University and the University of California, Berkeley — received charitable contributions in 2010 that were more than 10 percent greater than the previous year.

Over all, alumni giving and participation declined last year, while donations from companies and foundations increased modestly.

The share of alumni who contribute to their college has been declining for years, even when the economy was strong. According to the survey, alumni participation averaged 9.8 percent last year, compared with 11.9 percent in 2006 — and the average gift was $1,080 last year, compared with $1,195 four years earlier.

Slight Rise in Donations to Colleges Seen in 2010, NYT, 2.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/education/02gifts.html

Florida Has Classes Without Teachers

January 17, 2011
The New York Times
By LAURA HERRERA

MIAMI — On the first day of her senior year at North Miami Beach Senior High School, Naomi Baptiste expected to be greeted by a teacher when she walked into her precalculus class.

“All there were were computers in the class,” said Naomi, who walked into a room of confused students. “We found out that over the summer they signed us up for these courses.”

Naomi is one of over 7,000 students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools enrolled in a program in which core subjects are taken using computers in a classroom with no teacher. A “facilitator” is in the room to make sure students progress. That person also deals with any technical problems.

These virtual classrooms, called e-learning labs, were put in place last August as a result of Florida’s Class Size Reduction Amendment, passed in 2002. The amendment limits the number of students allowed in classrooms, but not in virtual labs.

While most schools held an orientation about the program, some students and parents said they were not informed of the new class structure. Others said they were not given the option to choose whether they wanted this type of instruction, and they voiced concern over the program’s effectiveness.

The online courses are provided by Florida Virtual School, which has been an option in the state’s public schools. The virtual school has provided online classes for home-schooled and traditional students who want to take extra courses. Students log on to a Web site to gain access to lessons, which consist mostly of text with some graphics, and they can call, e-mail or text online instructors for help.

The 54 participating schools in the Miami-Dade County system’s e-learning lab program integrate the online classes differently. A representative from the district said in an e-mail that the system “provided lab facilitators, training for those facilitators and coordination” between the district schools and the virtual school.

Theresa Sutter, a member of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Miami Beach Senior High School, said she thought her daughter, Kelly, was done with virtual classes after she finished Spanish the previous year at home.

When Kelly said that she had been placed in a virtual lab, Ms. Sutter recalled her “jaws dropped.” Neither of them had been told that Kelly would be in one.

“It’s totally different from what classroom teaching is like, so it’s a completely different animal,” Ms. Sutter said.

Under the state’s class-reduction amendment, high school classrooms cannot surpass a 25-student limit in core subjects, like English or math. Fourth- through eighth-grade classrooms can have no more than 22 students, and prekindergarten through third grade can have no more than 18.

Alix Braun, 15, a sophomore at Miami Beach High, takes Advanced Placement macroeconomics in an e-learning lab with 35 to 40 other students. There are 445 students enrolled in the online courses at her school, and while Alix chose to be placed in the lab, she said most of her lab mates did not.

“None of them want to be there,” Alix said, “and for virtual education you have to be really self-motivated. This was not something they chose to do, and it’s a really bad situation to be put in because it is not your choice.”

School administrators said that they had to find a way to meet class-size limits. Jodi Robins, the assistant principal of curriculum at Miami Beach High, said that even if students struggled in certain subjects, the virtual labs were necessary because “there’s no way to beat the class-size mandate without it.”

In response to parental confusion about virtual classes, the Miami Beach High parent-teacher association created a committee on virtual labs. The panel works with the school toward “getting issues on the table and working proactively,” said Patricia Kaine, the association’s president.

Some teachers are skeptical of how well the program can help students learn.

“The way our state is dealing with class size is nearly criminal,” said Chris Kirchner, an English teacher at Coral Reef Senior High School in Miami. “They’re standardizing in the worst possible way, which is evident in virtual classes.”

While Ms. Kirchner questions the instructional effectiveness of online courses, she said there was a place for them at some level.

“I think there should be learning on the computer,” Ms. Kirchner said. “That part is from 2:30 p.m. on. The first part of the day should be for learning with people.”

But Michael G. Moore, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, said programs that combine virtual education and face-to-face instruction could be effective. This is called the “blended learning concept.”

“There is no doubt that blended learning can be as effective and often more effective than a classroom,” said Mr. Moore, who is also editor of The American Journal of Distance Education. He said, however, that research and his experiences had shown that proper design and teacher instruction within the classroom were necessary. A facilitator who only monitors student progress and technical issues within virtual labs would not be categorized as part of a blended-learning model, he said. Other variables include “the maturity and sophistication of the student,” he said.

Despite some complaints about the virtual teaching method, administrators said e-learning labs were here to stay. And nationally, blending learning has already caught on in some areas.

In Chicago Public Schools, high schools have “credit recovery” programs that let students take online classes they previously failed so they can graduate. Omaha Public Schools also have similar programs that require physical attendance at certain locations.

Julie Durrand, manager of the e-learning lab program, said the virtual school planned to work more closely with district schools to ensure success. She said virtual school officials wanted orientations to be mandatory in schools with labs. Ms. Durrand also predicted that labs would expand to middle schools and would include more grade levels in schools that currently limited the labs to juniors and seniors.

There are six middle and K-8 schools using virtual labs in Miami, including Cutler Ridge Middle School and Frank C. Martin K-8 Center.

“I truly believe this will be an option for many districts across the state,” Ms. Durrand said. “I think we just hit the tip of the iceberg.”

Florida Has Classes Without Teachers, NYT, 17.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/education/18classrooms.html

Study Finds Family Connections Give Big Advantage in College Admissions

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN

A new study of admissions at 30 highly selective colleges found that legacy applicants get a big advantage over those with no family connections to the institution — but the benefit is far greater for those with a parent who earned an undergraduate degree at the college than for those with other family connections.

According to the study, by Michael Hurwitz, a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, applicants to a parent’s alma mater had, on average, seven times the odds of admission of nonlegacy applicants. Those whose parents did graduate work there or who had a grandparent, sibling, uncle or aunt who attended the college were, by comparison, only twice as likely to be admitted.

Legacy admissions have become an increasingly touchy issue for colleges. Admissions officers mostly play down the impact of legacy status. But a growing body of research shows that family connections count for a lot — and Mr. Hurwitz’s study found a larger impact than previous studies.

And at a time when admission to elite colleges has become increasingly competitive, critics say the legacy admissions advantage stands as an undemocratic obstacle to social mobility.

“It’s fundamentally unfair because it’s a preference that advantages the already advantaged,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a nonprofit research organization. “It has nothing to do with the individual merit of the applicant.”

Mr. Kahlenberg, the author of “Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions,” said a legal challenge to legacy preferences is becoming likely. Public university preferences could be attacked as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection, he said, while private universities might be vulnerable under an 1866 civil rights statute prohibiting discrimination based on “ancestry.”

Mr. Hurwitz’s study, published in “Economics of Education Review,” looked at data from 133,236 applicants for 2007 college admission, and analyzed the outcomes of the 61,962 who applied to more than one of the elite colleges. That allowed him to compare how much more likely they were to be offered admission where they had family connections.

“I was able to take into account all the applicant’s characteristics,” Mr. Hurwitz said, “because they were the same at every school they applied to. About the only thing that would be different was their legacy status.”

Family donations were not included in the data.

On average, Mr. Hurwitz’s study found, legacy applicants had slightly higher SAT scores than others. Education researchers point out that students whose parents attended elite colleges are also more likely to have advantages like family wealth and private school education.

Thomas P. Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist who has studied legacy admissions, said Mr. Hurwitz’s study was the first to compare the advantage to students applying to a parent’s alma mater with that of students with other family ties.

Mr. Espenshade pointed out that legacy status is just one of many possible advantages.

“We did a paper that found that if you are an athlete, you have 4.2 times the likelihood of admission as a nonathlete,” he said. “The advantages for underrepresented minorities are pretty big, too.”

Mr. Hurwitz said applicants with the highest SATs got the biggest legacy benefits.

Among the 30 colleges, the legacy advantage varied enormously: one college was more than 15 times as likely to accept legacy applicants, while at another, the effect was insignificant.

As a condition of access to the data, Mr. Hurwitz said, he agreed not to identify the colleges.

Given a table showing characteristics like high endowments and SAT scores and low acceptance rates, it seemed apparent that they are the members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, a group made up of the Ivy Leagues and two dozen other private research universities and liberal arts colleges.

Study Finds Family Connections Give Big Advantage in College Admissions, NYT, 8.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09legacies.html

Is Going to an Elite College Worth the Cost?

December 17, 2010
The New York Times
By JACQUES STEINBERG

AS hundreds of thousands of students rush to fill out college applications to meet end-of-the-year deadlines, it might be worth asking them: Is where you spend the next four years of your life that important?

The sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Do their graduates make more money? Get into better professional programs? Make better connections? And are they more satisfied with their lives, or at least with their work?

Many college guidance counselors will say, find your own rainbow. But that can sound like pablum to even the most laid-back parent and student.

Answers to such questions cannot be found, typically, in the sort of data churned out annually in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, which tend to focus on inputs like average SAT scores or college rejection rates. Handicappers shy away from collating such information partly because it can be hard to measure something like alumni satisfaction 5 to 10 years out. Moreover, in taking a yardstick to someone’s success, or quality of life, how much can be attributed to one’s alma mater, versus someone’s aptitude, intelligence and doggedness?

But economists and sociologists have tried to tackle these questions. Their research, however hedged, does suggest that elite schools can make a difference in income and graduate school placement. But happiness in life? That’s a question for another day.

Among the most cited research on the subject — a paper by economists from the RAND Corporation and Brigham Young and Cornell Universities — found that “strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution, and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time.”

Grouping colleges by the same tiers of selectivity used in a popular college guidebook, Barron’s, the researchers found that alumni of the most selective colleges earned, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from high school.

Those same researchers found in a separate paper that “attendance at an elite private college significantly increases the probability of attending graduate school, and more specifically graduate school at a major research university.”

One major caveat: these studies, which tracked more than 5,000 college graduates, some for more than a decade, are themselves now more than a decade old. Over that period, of course, the full sticker price for elite private colleges has far outstripped the pace of inflation, to say nothing of the cost of many of their public school peers (even accounting for the soaring prices of some public universities, especially in California, suffering under state budget crises).

For example, full tuition and fees at Princeton this year is more than $50,000, while Rutgers, the state university just up the New Jersey Turnpike, costs state residents less than half that. The figures are similar for the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University. (For the sake of this exercise, set aside those students at elite colleges whose financial aid packages cover most, if not all, of their education.)

Despite the lingering gap in pricing between public and private schools, Eric R. Eide, one of the authors of that paper on the earnings of blue-chip college graduates, said he had seen no evidence that would persuade him to revise, in 2010, the conclusion he reached in 1998.

“Education is a long-run investment,” said Professor Eide, chairman of the economics department at Brigham Young, “It may be more painful to finance right now. People may be more hesitant to go into debt because of the recession. In my opinion, they should be looking over the long run of their child’s life.”

He added, “I don’t think the costs of college are going up faster than the returns on graduating from an elite private college.”

Still, one flaw in such research has always been that it can be hard to disentangle the impact of the institution from the inherent abilities and personal qualities of the individual graduate. In other words, if someone had been accepted at an elite college, but chose to go to a more pedestrian one, would his earnings over the long term be the same?

In 1999, economists from Princeton and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation looked at some of the same data Professor Eide and his colleagues had used, but crunched them in a different way: they compared students at more selective colleges to others of “seemingly comparable ability,” based on their SAT scores and class rank, who had attended less selective schools, either by choice or because a top college rejected them.

The earnings of graduates in the two groups were about the same — perhaps shifting the ledger in favor of the less expensive, less prestigious route. (The one exception was that children from “disadvantaged family backgrounds” appeared to earn more over time if they attended more selective colleges. The authors, Stacy Berg Dale and Alan B. Krueger, do not speculate why, but conclude, “These students appear to benefit most from attending a more elite college.”)

Earnings, of course, and even graduate school attendance, are but two of many measurements of graduates’ success post-college.

Earlier this year, two labor and education professors from Penn State, along with a sociologist from Claremont Graduate University in California, sought to examine whether graduates from elite colleges were, in general, more satisfied in their work than those who attended less prestigious institutions.

Writing in April in the Journal of Labor Research, the three researchers argued that “an exclusive focus on the economic outcomes of college graduation, and from prestigious colleges in particular, neglects a host of other employment features.”

Mining a sample of nearly 5,000 recipients of bachelor’s degrees in 1992 and 1993, who were then tracked for nearly a decade, the authors concluded that “job satisfaction decreases slightly as college selectivity moves up.” One hypothesis by the authors was that the expectations of elite college graduates — especially when it came to earnings — might have been higher, and thus more subject to disappointment, than the expectations of those who graduated from less competitive colleges.

Still, one of those authors, Scott L. Thomas, a sociologist who is a professor of educational studies at Claremont, said high school students and their parents should take any attempt to apply broad generalizations to such personal choices with a grain of salt.

“Prestige does pay,” Mr. Thomas said in an interview. “But prestige costs, too. The question is, is the cost less than the added return?”

His answer was one he said he knew families would find maddening: “It depends.”

For example, someone who knew he needed to earn a reliable salary immediately after graduation, and as a result chose to study something practical like business or engineering, might find the cost-benefit analysis tilted in favor of a state school, he said.

“Students from less affluent backgrounds are going to find themselves in situations where college is less about ‘finding themselves,’ and more about skills acquisition and making contacts that will lead straight into the labor market,” Mr. Thomas said. For such a student, he said, a state university, particularly a big one, may also have a large, passionate alumni body. It, in turn, may play a disproportionate role in deciding who gets which jobs in a state in a variety of fields — an old-boy (and increasingly old-girl) network that may be less impressed with a job applicant’s Ivy league pedigree.

“If you’ve attended a big state school with a tremendous football program,” Mr. Thomas said, “there’s tremendous affinity and good will — whether or not you had anything to do with the football program.”

In the end, some researchers echo that tried-and-perhaps-even-true wisdom of guidance counselors: the extent to which one takes advantage of the educational offerings of an institution may be more important, in the long run, than how prominently and proudly that institution’s name is being displayed on the back windows of cars in the nation’s wealthiest enclaves.

In this analysis, one’s major — and how it aligns with the departmental strengths of a university — may be more significant than the place in the academic pecking order awarded to that college by the statisticians at U.S. News.

“Everything we know from studying college student experiences and outcomes tells us that there is more variability within schools than between them,” said Alexander C. McCormick, a former admissions officer at his alma mater, Dartmouth College, and now an associate professor of education at Indiana University at Bloomington.

“This is the irony, given the dominance of the rankings mentality of who’s No. 5 or No. 50,” Professor McCormick added. “The quality of that biology major offered at School No. 50? It may exceed that at School No. 5.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 17, 2010

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the RAND organization as a foundation.

Is Going to an Elite College Worth the Cost?, NYT, 17.12.22010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19steinberg.html

College, Jobs and Inequality

December 13, 2010
The New York Times

Searching for solace in bleak unemployment numbers, policy makers and commentators often cite the relatively low joblessness among college graduates, which is currently 5.1 percent compared with 10 percent for high school graduates and an overall jobless rate of 9.8 percent. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, cited the data recently on “60 Minutes” to make the point that “educational differences” are a root cause of income inequality.

A college education is better than no college education and correlates with higher pay. But as a cure for unemployment or as a way to narrow the chasm between the rich and everyone else, “more college” is a too-easy answer. Over the past year, for example, the unemployment rate for college grads under age 25 has averaged 9.2 percent, up from 8.8 percent a year earlier and 5.8 percent in the first year of the recession that began in December 2007. That means recent grads have about the same level of unemployment as the general population. It also suggests that many employed recent grads may be doing work that doesn’t require a college degree.

Even more disturbing, there is no guarantee that unemployed or underemployed college grads will move into much better jobs as conditions improve. Early bouts of joblessness, or starting in a lower-level job with lower pay, can mean lower levels of career attainment and earnings over a lifetime.Graduates who have been out of work or underemployed in the downturn may also find themselves at a competitive disadvantage with freshly minted college graduates as the economy improves.

When it comes to income inequality, college-educated workers make more than noncollege-educated ones. But higher pay for college grads cannot explain the profound inequality in the United States. The latest installment of the groundbreaking work on income inequality by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez shows that the richest 1 percent of American households — those making more than $370,000 a year — received 21 percent of total income in 2008. That was slightly below the highs of the bubble years but still among the highest percentages since the Roaring Twenties.

The top 10 percent — those making more than $110,000 — received 48 percent of total income, leaving 52 percent for the bottom 90 percent. Where are college-educated workers? Their median pay has basically stagnated for the past 10 years, at roughly $72,000 a year for men and $52,000 a year for women.

A big reason for the huge gains at the top is the outsize pay of executives, bankers and traders. Lower on the income ladder, workers have not fared well, in part because health care has consumed an ever-larger share of compensation and bargaining power has diminished with the decline in labor unions.

College is still the path to higher-paying professions. But without a concerted effort to develop new industries, the weakened economy will be hard pressed to create enough better-paid positions to absorb all graduates.

And to combat inequality, the drive for more college and more jobs must coincide with efforts to preserve and improve the policies, programs and institutions that have fostered shared prosperity and broad opportunity — Social Security, Medicare, public schools, progressive taxation, unions, affirmative action, regulation of financial markets and enforcement of labor laws.

College is not a cure-all, but it will certainly take the best and brightest minds to confront those challenges.

College, Jobs and Inequality, NYT, 13.15.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/opinion/14tue1.html

To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery

July 5, 2010
The New York Times
By TRIP GABRIEL

ORLANDO, Fla. — The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida.

No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.

The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.

Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.

When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.

Taylor Ellis, the associate dean who runs the testing center within the business school at Central Florida, the nation’s third-largest campus by enrollment, said that cheating had dropped significantly, to 14 suspected incidents out of 64,000 exams administered during the spring semester.

“I will never stop it completely, but I’ll find out about it,” Mr. Ellis said.

As the eternal temptation of students to cheat has gone high-tech — not just on exams, but also by cutting and pasting from the Internet and sharing of homework online like music files — educators have responded with their own efforts to crack down.

This summer, as incoming freshmen fill out forms to select roommates and courses, some colleges — Duke and Bowdoin among them — are also requiring them to complete online tutorials about plagiarism before they can enroll.

Anti-plagiarism services requiring students to submit papers to be vetted for copying is a booming business. Fifty-five percent of colleges and universities now use such a service, according to the Campus Computing Survey.

The best-known service, Turnitin.com, is engaged in an endless cat-and-mouse game with technologically savvy students who try to outsmart it. “The Turnitin algorithms are updated on an on-going basis,” the company warned last month in a blog post titled “Can Students ‘Trick’ Turnitin?”

The extent of student cheating, difficult to measure precisely, appears widespread at colleges. In surveys of 14,000 undergraduates over the last four years, an average of 61 percent admitted to cheating on assignments and exams.

The figure declined somewhat from 65 percent earlier in the decade, but the researcher who conducted the surveys, Donald L. McCabe, a business professor at Rutgers, doubts there is less of it. Instead, he suspects students no longer regard certain acts as cheating at all, for instance, cutting and pasting a few sentences at a time from the Internet.

Andrew Daines, who graduated in May from Cornell, where he served on a board in the College of Arts and Sciences that hears cheating cases, said Internet plagiarism was so common that professors told him they had replaced written assignments with tests and in-class writing.

Mr. Daines, a philosophy major, contributed to pages that Cornell added last month to its student Web site to bring attention to academic integrity. They include a link to a voluntary tutorial on avoiding plagiarism and a strongly worded admonition that “other generations may not have had as many temptations to cheat or plagiarize as yours,” and urging students to view this as a character test.

Mr. Daines said he was especially disturbed by an epidemic of students’ copying homework. “The term ‘collaborative work’ has been taken to this unbelievable extreme where it means, because of the ease of e-mailing, one person looking at someone else who’s done the assignment,” he said.

At M.I.T., David E. Pritchard, a physics professor, was able to accurately measure homework copying with software he had developed for another purpose — to allow students to complete sets of physics problems online. Some answered the questions so fast, “at first I thought we had some geniuses here at M.I.T.,” Dr. Pritchard said. Then he realized they were completing problems in less time than it took to read them and were copying the answers — mostly, it turned out, from e-mail from friends who had already done the assignment.

About 20 percent copied one-third or more of their homework, according to a study Dr. Pritchard and colleagues published this year. Students who copy homework find answers at sites like Course Hero, which is a kind of Napster of homework sharing, where students from more than 3,500 institutions upload papers, class notes and past exams.

Another site, Cramster, specializes in solutions to textbook questions in science and engineering. It boasts answers from 77 physics textbooks — but not Dr. Pritchard’s popular “Mastering Physics,” an online tutorial, because his publisher, Pearson, searches the Web for solutions and requests they be taken down to protect its copyright.

“You can use technology as well for detecting as for committing” cheating, Dr. Pritchard said.

The most popular anti-cheating technology, Turnitin.com, says it is now used by 9,500 high schools and colleges. Students submit written assignments to be compared with billions of archived Web pages and millions of other student papers, before they are sent to instructors. The company says that schools using the service for several years experience a decline in plagiarism.

Cheaters trying to outfox Turnitin have tried many tricks, some described in blogs and videos. One is to replace every “e” in plagiarized text with a foreign letter that looks like it, such as a Cyrillic “e,” meant to fool Turnitin’s scanners. Another is to use the Macros tool in Microsoft Word to hide copied text. Turnitin says neither scheme works.

Some educators have rejected the service and other anti-cheating technologies on the grounds that they presume students are guilty, undermining the trust that instructors seek with students.

Washington & Lee University, for example, concluded several years ago that Turnitin was inconsistent with the school’s honor code, “which starts from a basis of trusting our students,” said Dawn Watkins, vice president for student affairs. “Services like Turnitin.com give the implication that we are anticipating our students will cheat.”

For the similar reasons, some students at the University of Central Florida objected to the business school’s testing center with its eye-in-the-sky video in its early days, Dr. Ellis said.

But last week during final exams after a summer semester, almost no students voiced such concerns. Rose Calixte, a senior, was told during an exam to turn her cap backward, a rule meant to prevent students from writing notes under the brim. Ms. Calixte disapproved of the fashion statement but didn’t knock the reason: “This is college. There is the possibility for people to cheat.”

A first-year M.B.A. student, Ashley Haumann, said that when she was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, “everyone cheated” in her accounting class of 300 by comparing answers during quizzes. She preferred the highly monitored testing center because it “encourages you to be ready for the test because you can’t turn and ask, ‘What’d you get?’ ”

For educators uncomfortable in the role of anti-cheating enforcer, an online tutorial in plagiarism may prove an elegantly simple technological fix.

That was the finding of a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in January. Students at an unnamed selective college who completed a Web tutorial were shown to plagiarize two-thirds less than students who did not. (The study also found that plagiarism was concentrated among students with lower SAT scores.)

The tutorial “had an outsize impact,” said Thomas S. Dee, a co-author, who is now an economist at the University of Virginia.

“Many instructors don’t want to create this kind of adversarial environment with their students where there is a presumption of guilt,” Mr. Dee said. “Our results suggest a tutorial worked by educating students rather than by frightening them.”

Only a handful of colleges currently require students to complete such a tutorial, which typically illustrates how to cite a source or even someone else’s ideas, followed by a quiz.

The tutorial that Bowdoin uses was developed with its neighbor colleges Bates and Colby several years ago. Part of the reason it is required for enrollment, said Suzanne B. Lovett, a Bowdoin psychology professor whose specialty is cognitive development, is that Internet-age students see so many examples of text, music and images copied online without credit that they may not fully understand the idea of plagiarism.

As for Central Florida’s testing center, one of its most recent cheating cases had nothing to do with the Internet, cellphones or anything tech. A heavily tattooed student was found with notes written on his arm. He had blended them into his body art.

To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery, NYT, 5.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/education/06cheat.html

9 Teenagers Are Charged After Classmate’s Suicide

March 29, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM and KATIE ZEZIMA

It is not clear what some students at South Hadley High School expected to achieve by subjecting a freshman to the relentless taunting described by a prosecutor and classmates.

Certainly not her suicide. And certainly not the multiple felony indictments announced on Monday against several students at the Massachusetts school.

The prosecutor brought charges Monday against nine teenagers, saying their taunting and physical threats were beyond the pale and led the freshman, Phoebe Prince, to hang herself from a stairwell in January.

The charges were an unusually sharp legal response to the problem of adolescent bullying, which is increasingly conducted in cyberspace as well as in the schoolyard and has drawn growing concern from parents, educators and lawmakers.

In the uproar around the suicides of Ms. Prince, 15, and an 11-year-old boy subjected to harassment in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of bullying. Forty-one other states have anti-bullying laws of varying strength.

In the Prince case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court, Elizabeth D. Scheibel, the Northwestern district attorney, said at a news conference in Northampton, Mass.

Appearing with state and local police officials on Monday, Ms. Scheibel said that Ms. Prince’s suicide came after nearly three months of severe taunting and physical threats by a cluster of fellow students.

“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” Ms. Scheibel said. The conduct of those charged, she said, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.”

It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers, administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the harassment but did not stop it. “The actions or inactions of some adults at the school were troublesome,” Ms. Scheibel said, but did not violate any laws.

Christine Swelko, assistant superintendent for South Hadley Public Schools, said school officials planned to meet with the district attorney this week or next. “We will then review this evidence and particularly the new information which the district attorney’s office has but did not come to light within the investigation conducted by the school,” Ms. Swelko said in a statement.

Ms. Prince’s family had recently moved to the United States from a small town in Ireland, and she entered South Hadley last fall. The taunting started when she had a brief relationship with a popular senior boy; some students reportedly called her an “Irish slut,” knocked books out of her hands and sent her threatening text messages, day after day.

At South Hadley High School, which has about 700 students, most students and teachers refused on Monday to talk about the case. Students waited for parents in the pouring rain and a sports team ran by, with one student telling reporters, “Go away.”

Ashlee Dunn, a 16-year-old sophomore, said she had not known Ms. Prince personally but had heard stories spread about her in the hallways.

“She was new and she was from a different country, and she didn’t really know the school very well,” Ms. Dunn said. “I think that’s probably one reason why they chose Phoebe.”

On Jan. 14, the investigation found, students abused her in the school library, the lunchroom and the hallways and threw a canned drink at her as she walked home. Her sister found her hanging from a stairwell at home, still in her school clothes, at 4:30 p.m.

Some of the students plotted against Ms. Prince on the Internet, using social networking sites, but the main abuse was at school, the prosecutor said.

“The actions of these students were primarily conducted on school grounds during school hours and while school was in session,” Ms. Scheibel said.

Ms. Scheibel declined to provide details about the charges of statutory rape against two boys, but experts said those charges could mean that the boys had sex with Ms. Prince when she was under age.

Legal experts said they were not aware of other cases in which students faced serious criminal charges for harassing a fellow student, but added that the circumstances in this case appeared to be extreme and that juvenile charges were usually kept private.

The Massachusetts House and Senate have passed versions of an anti-bullying law, but disagreement remains on whether all schools will be required to conduct staff training about bullying — a provision in about half the states with such laws and one that is vital, said Robert O. Trestan, Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel of the Anti-Defamation League, which has led the effort for legislation in Massachusetts.

The prospective law, Mr. Trestan said, is aimed at changing school cultures and preventing bullying, but would not label bullying a crime because it is a vague concept. “These indictments tell us that middle school and high school kids are not immune from criminal laws,” he said. “If they violate them in the course of bullying someone, they’ll be held accountable. We don’t need to create a new crime.”

A South Hadley parent, Mitch Brouillard, who said his daughter Rebecca had been bullied by one of the girls charged in Ms. Prince’s death, said he was pleased that charges were brought. One of the students was charged separately in a case involving his daughter.

“My daughter was bullied for three years, and we continually went to the administration and we really got no satisfaction,” Mr. Brouillard said, adding, “I was offered an apology a few weeks ago that they should have handled it differently.”

The school has convened an anti-bullying task force, which met Monday, to help determine how to deal with bullying. “That’s the really clear message we’re trying to send — if you see anything at all, online, through friends, you have to tell us,” said Bill Evans, an administrator leading a group subcommittee.

The task force must also consider whether state law affects existing procedures. “The big question out there is what the legislature will impose on school districts,” Mr. Evans said.

Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer in Cambridge, Mass., who has argued that proposed cyberbullying laws are too vague and a threat to free speech, said that he thought the charges announced Monday would pass legal muster. The sorts of acts of harassment and stalking claimed in the charges were wrong under state law, Mr. Silverglate said, but a question would be whether they were serious enough to constitute criminal violations, as opposed to civil ones.

“There is a higher threshold of proof of outrageous conduct needed to reach the level of a criminal cause of action, in comparison to the lower level of outrageousness needed to prove a civil violation,” he said.

A lawsuit involving another case of high school bullying, in upstate New York, was settled on Monday. A gay teenager had sued the Mohawk Central School District, saying school officials had not protected him.

In the settlement, the district said it would increase staff training to prevent harassment, pay $50,000 to the boy’s family and reimburse the family for counseling, The Associated Press reported. The boy has moved to a different district.

Erik Eckholm reported from New York, and Katie Zezima from South Hadley, Mass.

9 Teenagers Are Charged After Classmate’s Suicide, NYT, 30.3.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30bully.html

Op-Ed Contributor

Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools

June 8, 2009
The New York Times
By HAROLD O. LEVY

AMERICAN education was once the best in the world. But today, our private and public universities are losing their competitive edge to foreign institutions, they are losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges and they are losing control over their own admissions because of an ill-conceived ranking system. With the recession causing big state budget cuts, the situation in higher education has turned critical. Here are a few radical ideas to improve matters:

•

Raise the age of compulsory education. Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19. Simply completing high school no longer provides students with an education sufficient for them to compete in the 21st-century economy. So every child should receive a year of post-secondary education.

The benefits of an extra year of schooling are beyond question: high school graduates can earn more than dropouts, have better health, more stable lives and a longer life expectancy. College graduates do even better. Just as we are moving toward a longer school day (where is it written that learning should end at 3 p.m.?) and a longer school year (does anyone really believe pupils need a three-month summer vacation?), so we should move to a longer school career.

President Obama recently embraced the possibility of extending public education for a year after high school: “I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training.” He suggested that this compulsory post-secondary education could be in a “community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship.” (I helped start an accredited online school of education, and firmly believe that the coursework could also be delivered to students online.)

If the federal government ultimately pays for the extra year, it would be a turning point at least as important as the passage of the 1862 Morrill Act that gave rise to the state universities or the 1944 G.I. Bill that made college affordable to our returning service personnel after World War II. Every college trustee should be insisting that we make the president’s dream a reality.

And for those who graduate from high school early: they would receive, each year until they turn 19, a scholarship equal to their state’s per pupil spending. In New York, that could be nearly $15,000 per year. This proposal — which already has been tried in a few states — has the neat side effect of encouraging quick learners to graduate early and free up seats in our overcrowded high schools.

•

Use high-pressure sales tactics to curb truancy. Casual truancy is epidemic; in many cities, including New York, roughly 30 percent of public school students are absent a total of a month each year. Not surprisingly, truants become dropouts.

But truant officers can borrow a page from salesmen, who have developed high-pressure tactics so effective they can overwhelm the consumer’s will. Making repeated home visits and early morning phone calls, securing written commitments and eliciting oral commitments in front of witnesses might be egregious tactics when used by, say, a credit card company. But these could be valuable ways to compel parents to ensure that their children go to school every day.

•

Advertise creatively and aggressively to encourage college enrollment. The University of Phoenix, a private, for-profit institution, spent $278 million on advertising, most of it online, in 2007. It was one of the principal sponsors of Super Bowl XLII, which was held at University of Phoenix Stadium (not bad for an institution that doesn’t even have a football team). The University of Phoenix’s enrollment has clearly benefited from its advertising budget: with more than 350,000 students, its enrollment is surpassed by only a few state universities.

The University of Phoenix and other for profits have also established a crucial niche recruiting and serving older students. Traditional colleges need to do far better, using advertising to attract paying older students and to recruit the more than 70 percent of the population who lack a post-secondary degree. They have a built-in advantage, since attending a for-profit college instead of a more prestigious, less expensive public college makes no more sense than buying bottled water when the tap water tastes just as good.

•

Unseal college accreditation reports so that the Department of Education can take over the business of ranking colleges and universities. Accreditation reports — rigorous evaluations, prepared by representatives of peer institutions — include everything students need to know when making decisions about schools, yet the specifics of most reports remain secret.

Instead, students and their parents rely on U.S. News & World Report rankings that are skewed by colleges, which contort their marketing efforts to maximize the number of applicants whom they already know they will never accept, just to improve their selectivity rankings. Meanwhile, private counselors charge thousands of dollars claiming to know the “secret” of admissions. Aspiring entrants submit far too many applications in the hope of beating the odds. Everyone loses. Opening the accreditation reports to the public would provide a better way.

•

The biggest improvement we can make in higher education is to produce more qualified applicants. Half of the freshmen at community colleges and a third of freshmen at four-year colleges matriculate with academic skills in at least one subject too weak to allow them to do college work. Unsurprisingly, the average college graduation rates even at four-year institutions are less than 60 percent.

The story at the graduate level is entirely predictable: in 2007, more than a third of all research doctorates were awarded to foreigners, and the proportion is far higher in the hard sciences. The problem goes well beyond the fact that both our public schools and undergraduate institutions need to do a better job preparing their students: too many parents are failing to insure that their children are educated.

President Obama has again led the way: “As fathers and parents, we’ve got to spend more time with them, and help them with their homework, and replace the video game or the remote control with a book once in a while.” Better teachers, smaller classes and more modern schools are all part of the solution. But improving parenting skills and providing struggling parents with assistance are part of the solution too.

At a time when it seems we have ever fewer globally competitive industries, American higher education is a brand worth preserving.

Harold O. Levy, the New York City schools chancellor from 2000 to 2002,

has been a trustee of several colleges.

Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools, NYT, 8.6.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/opinion/08levy.html

18 and Under

At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers)

June 9, 2009
The New York Times
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

Back in the 1990s, I did a physical on a boy in fifth or sixth grade at a Boston public school. I asked him his favorite subject: definitely science; he had won a prize in a science fair, and was to go on and compete in a multischool fair.

The problem was, there were some kids at school who were picking on him every day about winning the science fair; he was getting teased and jostled and even, occasionally, beaten up. His mother shook her head and wondered aloud whether life would be easier if he just let the science fair thing drop.

Bullying elicits strong and highly personal reactions; I remember my own sense of outrage and identification. Here was a highly intelligent child, a lover of science, possibly a future (fill in your favorite genius), tormented by brutes. Here’s what I did for my patient: I advised his mother to call the teacher and complain, and I encouraged him to pursue his love of science.

And here are three things I now know I should have done: I didn’t tell the mother that bullying can be prevented, and that it’s up to the school. I didn’t call the principal or suggest that the mother do so. And I didn’t give even a moment’s thought to the bullies, and what their lifetime prognosis might be.

In recent years, pediatricians and researchers in this country have been giving bullies and their victims the attention they have long deserved — and have long received in Europe. We’ve gotten past the “kids will be kids” notion that bullying is a normal part of childhood or the prelude to a successful life strategy. Research has described long-term risks — not just to victims, who may be more likely than their peers to experience depression and suicidal thoughts, but to the bullies themselves, who are less likely to finish school or hold down a job.

Next month, the American Academy of Pediatrics will publish the new version of an official policy statement on the pediatrician’s role in preventing youth violence. For the first time, it will have a section on bullying — including a recommendation that schools adopt a prevention model developed by Dan Olweus, a research professor of psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway, who first began studying the phenomenon of school bullying in Scandinavia in the 1970s. The programs, he said, “work at the school level and the classroom level and at the individual level; they combine preventive programs and directly addressing children who are involved or identified as bullies or victims or both.”

Dr. Robert Sege, chief of ambulatory pediatrics at Boston Medical Center and a lead author of the new policy statement, says the Olweus approach focuses attention on the largest group of children, the bystanders. “Olweus’s genius,” he said, “is that he manages to turn the school situation around so the other kids realize that the bully is someone who has a problem managing his or her behavior, and the victim is someone they can protect.”

The other lead author, Dr. Joseph Wright, senior vice president at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington and the chairman of the pediatrics academy’s committee on violence prevention, notes that a quarter of all children report that they have been involved in bullying, either as bullies or as victims. Protecting children from intentional injury is a central task of pediatricians, he said, and “bullying prevention is a subset of that activity.”

By definition, bullying involves repetition; a child is repeatedly the target of taunts or physical attacks — or, in the case of so-called indirect bullying (more common among girls), rumors and social exclusion. For a successful anti-bullying program, the school needs to survey the children and find out the details — where it happens, when it happens.

Structural changes can address those vulnerable places — the out-of-sight corner of the playground, the entrance hallway at dismissal time.

Then, Dr. Sege said, “activating the bystanders” means changing the culture of the school; through class discussions, parent meetings and consistent responses to every incident, the school must put out the message that bullying will not be tolerated.

So what should I ask at a checkup? How’s school, who are your friends, what do you usually do at recess? It’s important to open the door, especially with children in the most likely age groups, so that victims and bystanders won’t be afraid to speak up. Parents of these children need to be encouraged to demand that schools take action, and pediatricians probably need to be ready to talk to the principal. And we need to follow up with the children to make sure the situation gets better, and to check in on their emotional health and get them help if they need it.

How about helping the bullies, who are, after all, also pediatric patients? Some experts worry that schools simply suspend or expel the offenders without paying attention to helping them and their families learn to function in a different way.

“Zero-tolerance policies that school districts have are basically pushing the debt forward,” Dr. Sege said. “We need to be more sophisticated.”

The way we understand bullying has changed, and it’s probably going to change even more. (I haven’t even talked about cyberbullying, for example.) But anyone working with children needs to start from the idea that bullying has long-term consequences and that it is preventable.

I would still feel that same anger on my science-fair-winning patient’s behalf, but I would now see his problem as a pediatric issue — and I hope I would be able to offer a little more help, and a little more follow-up, appropriately based in scientific research.

At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers), 9.6.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/health/09klas.html

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.

December 3, 2008
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN

The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”

Although college enrollment has continued to rise in recent years, Mr. Callan said, it is not clear how long that can continue.

“The middle class has been financing it through debt,” he said. “The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever if takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.”

But low-income students, he said, will be less able to afford college. Already, he said, the strains are clear.

The report, “Measuring Up 2008,” is one of the few to compare net college costs — that is, a year’s tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid — against median family income. Those findings are stark. Last year, the net cost at a four-year public university amounted to 28 percent of the median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of the median family income.

The share of income required to pay for college, even with financial aid, has been growing especially fast for lower-income families, the report found.

Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, long seen as a safety net, that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families’ median income last year, up from 40 percent in 1999-2000.

The likelihood of large tuition increases next year is especially worrying, Mr. Callan said. “Most governors’ budgets don’t come out until January, but what we’re seeing so far is Florida talking about a 15 percent increase, Washington State talking about a 20 percent increase, and California with a mixture of budget cuts and enrollment cuts,” he said.

In a separate report released this week by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the public universities acknowledged the looming crisis, but painted a different picture.

That report emphasized that families have many higher-education choices, from community colleges, where tuition and fees averaged about $3,200, to private research universities, where they cost more than $33,000.

“We think public higher education is affordable right now, but we’re concerned that it won’t be, if the changes we’re seeing continue, and family income doesn’t go up,” said David Shulenburger, the group’s vice president for academic affairs and co-author of the report. “The public conversation is very often in terms of a $35,000 price tag, but what you get at major public research university is, for the most part, still affordable at 6,000 bucks a year.”

While tuition has risen at public universities, his report said, that has largely been to make up for declining state appropriations. The report offered its own cost projections, not including room and board.

“Projecting out to 2036, tuition would go from 11 percent of the family budget to 24 percent of the family budget, and that’s pretty huge,” Mr. Shulenburger said. “We only looked at tuition and fees because those are the only things we can control.”

Looking at total costs, as families must, he said, his group shared Mr. Callan’s concerns.

Mr. Shulenburger’s report suggested that public universities explore a variety of approaches to lower costs — distance learning, better use of senior year in high school, perhaps even shortening college from four years.

“There’s an awful lot of experimentation going on right now, and that needs to go on,” he said. “If you teach a course by distance with 1,000 students, does that affect learning? Till we know the answer, it’s difficult to control costs in ways that don’t affect quality.”

Mr. Callan, for his part, urged a reversal in states’ approach to higher-education financing.

“When the economy is good, and state universities are somewhat better funded, we raise tuition as little as possible,” he said. “When the economy is bad, we raise tuition and sock it to families, when people can least afford it. That’s exactly the opposite of what we need.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2008
Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about the increasing cost of higher education gave an incorrect context for two figures: the 439 percent increase in college tuition and fees and the 147 percent increase in median family income since 1982. Those figures were not adjusted for inflation. The error was repeated for the data in an accompanying chart. A corrected chart appears at nytimes.com/national.

The article also described incorrectly the report for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education that cited the figures. It is produced every other year, not annually.

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S., NYT, 3.12.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/education/03college.html?em

Tough Times Strain Colleges Rich and Poor

November 8, 2008
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN

Arizona State University, anticipating at least $25 million in budget cuts this fiscal year — on top of the $30 million already cut — is ending its contracts with as many as 200 adjunct instructors.

Boston University, Cornell and Brown have announced selective hiring freezes.

And Tufts University, which for the last two years has, proudly, been one of the few colleges in the nation that could afford to be need-blind — that is, to admit the best-qualified applicants and meet their full financial need — may not be able to maintain that generosity for next year’s incoming class. This fall, Tufts suspended new capital projects and budgeted more for financial aid. But with the market downturn, and the likelihood that more applicants will need bigger aid packages, need-blind admissions may go by the wayside.

“The target of being need-blind is our highest priority,” said Lawrence S. Bacow, president of Tufts. “But with what’s happening in the larger economy, we expect that the incoming class is going to be needier. That’s the real uncertainty.”

Tough economic times have come to public and private universities alike, and rich or poor, they are figuring out how to respond. Many are announcing hiring freezes, postponing construction projects or putting off planned capital campaigns.

With endowment values and charitable gifts likely to decline, the process of setting next year’s tuition low enough to keep students coming, but high enough to support operations, is trickier than ever.

Dozens of college presidents, especially at wealthy institutions, have sent letters and e-mail to students and their families describing their financial situation and belt-tightening plans.

At Williams College, for example, President Morton Owen Schapiro wrote that with last year’s negative return on the endowment and the worsening situation since June, some renovation and facilities spending would be reduced and nonessential openings left unfilled.

Many students, increasingly conscious of costs, are flocking to their state universities; at Binghamton University, part of the New York State university system, applications were up 50 percent this fall. But with this year’s state budget problems, tuition increases at public universities may be especially steep. Some public universities have already announced midyear tuition increases.

With endowment values shrinking, variable-rate debt costs rising and states cutting their financing, colleges face challenges on multiple fronts, said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education.

“There’s no evidence of a complete meltdown,” Ms. Broad said, “but the problems are serious enough that higher education is going to need help from the government.”

And as in other sectors, she said, some financially shaky institutions will most likely be seeking mergers.

Nationwide, retrenchment announcements are coming fast and furious, as state after state reduces education financing.

The University of Florida, which eliminated 430 faculty and staff positions this year, was told recently to cut next year’s budget by 10 percent, probably requiring more layoffs. Financing for the University of Massachusetts system was cut $24.6 million for the current fiscal year.

On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed a midyear budget cut of $65.5 million for the University of California system — on top of the $48 million reduction already in the budget.

“Budget cuts mean that campuses won’t be able to fill faculty vacancies, that the student-faculty ratio rises, that students have lecturers instead of tenured professors,” said Mark G. Yudof, president of the California system. “Higher education is very labor intensive. We may be getting to the point where there will have to be some basic change in the model.”

Private colleges, too, are tightening their belts — turning down thermostats, scrapping plans for new gardens or quads, reducing faculty raises.

But many are also increasing their pool of financial aid.

Vassar College will give out $1 million more in financial aid this year than originally budgeted, even though the endowment, which provides a third of its operating budget, dropped to $765 million at the end of September, down $80 million from late June. President Catharine Bond Hill of Vassar said the college would reduce its operating costs, but remain need-blind.

Many institutions with small endowments, however, will probably become more need-sensitive than usual this year, quietly offering places to fewer students who need large aid packages.

At Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, Robert J. Massa, the vice president for enrollment and student life, said that about 200 applicants last year might have been accepted if they had not needed so much financial help, but that that number might rise to 250 this year.

Dickinson’s endowment was $280 million in mid-October, Mr. Massa said, down from $350 million in June. And while more than three quarters of the college’s operating budget comes from student fees, some endowment revenue will have to be replaced.

“Here’s the rub,” Mr. Massa said. “I really don’t think that colleges can afford to increase their tuition price at higher than inflation this year. I don’t think the public will stand for it. What we’ve done in higher education is let our dreams and aspirations dictate our cost structure.”

Most colleges will have a better sense next month of how many students are struggling, when second-semester tuition bills come due.

Paola Aguilar, a sophomore at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., is worrying about whether she can afford to return next year.

“My mom became a Realtor last year to try to earn more money, but that didn’t help,” Ms. Aguilar said. “I’ve talked to the people here, and they’ve helped me out a little more for next semester, but as of right now, if I don’t get more help, I’ll have to leave next year and go somewhere cheaper, near home.”

Tracy Fitzsimmons, Shenandoah’s president, said she began hearing about students’ financial anxieties in mid-September.

“They’d tell me they were thinking they might have to move off campus next semester and stay three to a bedroom, or give up the meal plan and just eat one meal a day,” Ms. Fitzsimmons said.

Shenandoah has started an emergency grant fund for students, increased its loan program and prepared to stretch out spring tuition payments for hard-pressed families.

Economic uncertainty touches every facet of higher education.

“We are planning to begin a capital campaign of $150-185 million,” said Karen R. Lawrence, president of Sarah Lawrence College. “We will still do that. We’re not compromising our ambitions, but the timing will be a little bit deferred.”

At the wealthiest institutions, endowment revenue usually covers about a third of operating costs, and most colleges and universities spend a percentage of their endowment, based on its average value over the previous three years, helping to smooth out economic ups and downs.

In recent years, with tuition rising faster than inflation, college affordability has become a significant issue. And with the sharp growth of endowments in recent years — Harvard’s hit $36.9 billion this summer — some politicians, notably Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have pushed for a requirement that colleges spend 5 percent of their endowments. Many of the wealthiest institutions responded by expanding financial aid last year, with dozens of them replacing loans with grants.

This fall, more universities are taking steps to increase affordability. Benedictine University, a Roman Catholic institution in Illinois, is freezing tuition; Vanderbilt University will replace loans with grants; Boston University has expanded scholarships for students who graduated from Boston public schools; and the University of Toledo announced free tuition for needy, high-performing graduates of Ohio’s six largest public school systems.

Presidents of many expensive private colleges are wondering how much more tuition pressure families can bear.

“I wouldn’t deny that a tuition freeze has occurred to me, but we can’t afford heroic gestures,” said Sandy Ungar, president of Goucher College in Baltimore.

Given the current climate, some say, colleges need to re-examine all of their economic assumptions.

“Several years ago, we started thinking about sustainability in environmental terms,” said Dick Celeste, the president of Colorado College. “Now we need to be thinking about sustainability in economic terms.”

Tough Times Strain Colleges Rich and Poor, NYT, 8.11.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/education/08college.html?hp

U.S. colleges punished by financial crisis

Thu Oct 30, 2008
9:20am EDT
Reuters
By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Higher education has been a growth industry in the United States, evidenced by swelling enrollments, expanding campuses and growing endowments. But the global economic crisis has caught colleges and universities in a vice.

With their endowments shrinking along with stock markets, some schools may raise tuition more than usual, even as students complain it is already too expensive and struggle to get loans.

"This will definitely test many schools," said Ronald Watts, the finance chief of Oberlin College, an elite private school in Ohio whose endowment of nearly $750 million has shrunk by about 15 percent in the past four months.

To be sure, schools have proven resilient in past recessions, helped by rising student enrollment as people seek a leg-up in a bleak job market.

"It's not going to be as drastic as what corporations are doing," Watts said. "You don't just eliminate people and lay off faculty and expect not to destroy your academic program."

Nevertheless, a few schools have already announced fresh tuition hikes, and school officials said they were keeping a close eye on their finances. And, with schools under financial pressure, local economies all over the country are likely to suffer.

Tuition increases have outpaced inflation for years. Tuition and fees at public universities have risen 175 percent since 1992, while the consumer price index rose 48 percent.

At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the school's $1.8 billion endowment has shrunk by 18 percent since the start of the year, Sandy Wilcox of the University of Wisconsin Foundation said. Dipping into the endowment to make a promised contribution to the school's budget only shrinks it further.

Wisconsin, like many schools with substantial endowments -- 400 have endowments over $100 million and 76 above $1 billion -- use a three-year averaging system to smooth out how much they pay out from earnings.

RAINY DAY FUND

The wealthiest schools have come to rely on endowments and there has been growing pressure from Congress to boost payouts, threatening to take away their nonprofit, tax-free status if they don't comply.

For most other schools, small endowments serve as a "rainy day fund" that can disappear quickly in tough times, said John Griswold of Commonfund, which manages money for nonprofits.

"Schools we're most concerned about are smaller, less well-endowed private colleges," said Roger Goodman, vice president at Moody's Investors Service, which assigns credit ratings to 500 schools. He said endowment balances have likely plummeted by 30 percent or more.

"You still need a college degree to be a full participant in the work force," he said. "What we may see is a shifting (of applicants) from the higher-priced, small, private colleges, to a lower-priced four-year university, and from the four-year universities to community colleges for a couple of years."

A survey of 2,500 prospective students by MeritAid.com found 57 percent were now considering less-expensive colleges due to the economic downturn.

Many prospective students encounter sticker shock when confronted by the $50,000 price tag at schools like Oberlin, Boston University and Bennington College in Vermont.

But financial aid and federal loans remain available, and families whose assets have declined qualify for more aid.

Boosting access to college is one plank of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's platform. This may add pressure on publicly-funded universities to boost enrollment, which has already climbed 10 percent since 2002.

Sticker prices at private colleges are usually much higher than pubic schools, but students rarely pay full price.

"Sometimes a small, liberal arts college will actually be better for a student and more affordable than in-state (public schools)," said Ken Himmelman, Bennington's dean of admissions.

Public universities, which educate roughly 75 percent of the 17.5 million U.S. students, are anticipating cuts in state appropriations, which cover a substantial chunk of their costs.

State tax receipts have declined due to the economic slowdown and the bursting of the housing bubble.

"They'll look to the university to cut. They don't want to cut prisons, or roads," Wisconsin's Wilcox said.

MAKING CUTS

Massachusetts' public universities have cut budgets by 5 percent as their part in covering a state-wide shortfall.

Some public and private schools have declared hiring freezes and made efforts to reduce expenses because of shrunken endowments, and actual or expected declines in gifts and government support.

The state of Arizona cut its contribution to the state university system by 4 percent this year and 5 percent next year -- with another mid-year cut possible, Its more than 118,000 university students may have to absorb a tuition hike next year of 10 percent or more.

Hawaii lowered its contribution 2 percent, though enrollment rose 6 percent. Pennsylvania's public universities will raise tuition 4 percent next year ahead of state cuts.

California sliced 1 percent off its $3 billion contribution to universities but more cuts are expected as tax revenues lag projections. This spring, New York reduced its contribution and warned another 30 percent cut may be in the offing.

The bursting of the housing bubble has dried up home equity loans many families have used to pay tuition. And the stock market drop has shrunk some families' savings for education.

Often, much of the media's focus is on wealthy private schools with multibillion-dollar endowments like Harvard and Yale, which have promised to cover costs for many of those fortunate enough to gain admission.

But at less well-heeled private schools, which make up most of the United States' unrivaled roster of 4,300 nonprofit institutions of higher learning, significant tuition increases may be unavoidable.

"If history repeats itself, you're going to have falling state support on a per-student basis, rising enrollments, and probably rises in tuition," said Paul Lingenfelter, president of State Higher Education Executive Officers.

Some schools may try to wring more out of their campuses. Professors may have to teach more courses, schools may rent out underutilized campus buildings, or even sell dormitories to hoteliers and lease them back, suggested Richard Vedder, who heads the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

"Schools normally rely on tuition increases" to offset falls in government and donor support, Vedder said. "But as economic conditions worsen, students are going to be resistant, plus there is political pressure not to raise tuition. In dollar terms, budgets may be equal to last year, and some may be forced into some sort of austerity mode."

U.S. colleges punished by financial crisis, R, 30.10.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49T02E20081030

FACTBOX: How is U.S. higher education faring?

Thu Oct 30, 2008
9:20am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Higher education in the United States has been viewed as recession-proof, but the global financial crisis is already having an impact.

Here are some facts about enrollment, endowments, and finances at the nation's colleges universities.

- An October 16 report from Moody's Investors Service estimated endowment losses at 5 percent to 7 percent in the year to June 30. Since then, spending and endowment losses sliced another 30 percent off schools' cash and investments.

- For the nation's public universities, which educate three out of four students, state subsidies covered a little over half of their budget costs last year, down from two-thirds in 1998. Tuition has grown to cover more than a third of their budgets, up from one-fifth 15 years ago.

- Endowments supported around 10 percent of the average school's budget. At Harvard (endowment $34.6 billion as of June 30), Yale ($22.5 billion), and other wealthy institutions, earnings from the endowment covered roughly 40 percent of costs. The average expenditure out of wealthy schools' endowments was 4.4 percent of assets.

- A total of 76 colleges and universities had more than $1 billion in their endowments as of June 30. The wealthiest 400 schools had more than $400 billion in assets in 2007. But fewer than 400 schools had at least $100 million in their endowments, with most having less than $10 million.

- Tuition, room and board at private four-year schools in 2007-2008 averaged $31,019, up 7 percent from two years ago after adjusting for inflation. The cost of public schools was $16,758 for in-state students, $24,955 for out-of-state students, up 5 percent in the last two years after inflation.

- Federal loan aid for higher education increased 60 percent between 1996 and 2005. Students borrowed $77 billion last year to pay expenses to attend colleges and universities. Two out of three students received grants -- discounts on tuition -- averaging $9,300 at private schools and $3,600 at public schools.

- College seniors who graduated in 2007 carried 6 percent more student loan debt that the class of 2006. Starting salaries for graduates rose 3 percent in the same period.

- An online survey found 16 percent of prospective students put college searches on hold because they couldn't afford it.

Sources: State Higher Education Executive Officers; The Project on Student Debt; Center for College Affordability and Productivity; Commonfund; Moody's Investors Service; MeritAid.com

(Reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago; editing by Michael Conlon and Eddie Evans)

FACTBOX: How is U.S. higher education faring?, R, 30.10.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKTRE49T02G20081030

Op-Ed Columnist

The Biggest Issue

July 29, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS

Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.

Between 1870 and 1950, the average American’s level of education rose by 0.8 years per decade. In 1890, the average adult had completed about 8 years of schooling. By 1900, the average American had 8.8 years. By 1910, it was 9.6 years, and by 1960, it was nearly 14 years.

As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.

America’s edge boosted productivity and growth. But the happy era ended around 1970 when America’s educational progress slowed to a crawl. Between 1975 and 1990, educational attainments stagnated completely. Since then, progress has been modest. America’s lead over its economic rivals has been entirely forfeited, with many nations surging ahead in school attainment.

This threatens the country’s long-term prospects. It also widens the gap between rich and poor. Goldin and Katz describe a race between technology and education. The pace of technological change has been surprisingly steady. In periods when educational progress outpaces this change, inequality narrows. The market is flooded with skilled workers, so their wages rise modestly. In periods, like the current one, when educational progress lags behind technological change, inequality widens. The relatively few skilled workers command higher prices, while the many unskilled ones have little bargaining power.

The meticulous research of Goldin and Katz is complemented by a report from James Heckman of the University of Chicago. Using his own research, Heckman also concludes that high school graduation rates peaked in the U.S. in the late 1960s, at about 80 percent. Since then they have declined.

In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the sources of that decline. It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years.

Heckman points out that big gaps in educational attainment are present at age 5. Some children are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes human capital development and, increasingly, more are not. By 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t.

I.Q. matters, but Heckman points to equally important traits that start and then build from those early years: motivation levels, emotional stability, self-control and sociability. He uses common sense to intuit what these traits are, but on this subject economists have a lot to learn from developmental psychologists.

I point to these two research projects because the skills slowdown is the biggest issue facing the country. Rising gas prices are bound to dominate the election because voters are slapped in the face with them every time they visit the pump. But this slow-moving problem, more than any other, will shape the destiny of the nation.

Second, there is a big debate under way over the sources of middle-class economic anxiety. Some populists emphasize the destructive forces of globalization, outsourcing and predatory capitalism. These people say we need radical labor market reforms to give the working class a chance. But the populists are going to have to grapple with the Goldin, Katz and Heckman research, which powerfully buttresses the arguments of those who emphasize human capital policies. It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy.

Third, it’s worth noting that both sides of this debate exist within the Democratic Party. The G.O.P. is largely irrelevant. If you look at Barack Obama’s education proposals — especially his emphasis on early childhood — you see that they flow naturally and persuasively from this research. (It probably helps that Obama and Heckman are nearly neighbors in Chicago). McCain’s policies seem largely oblivious to these findings. There’s some vague talk about school choice, but Republicans are inept when talking about human capital policies.

America rose because it got more out of its own people than other nations. That stopped in 1970. Now, other issues grab headlines and campaign attention. But this tectonic plate is still relentlessly and menacingly shifting beneath our feet.

The Biggest Issue, NYT, 29.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/opinion/29brooks.html?ref=opinion

This Land

A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly

March 24, 2008
The New York Times
By DAN BARRY

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.

All lank and bone, the boy stands at the corner with his younger sister, waiting for the yellow bus that takes them to their respective schools. He is Billy Wolfe, high school sophomore, struggling.

Moments earlier he left the sanctuary that is his home, passing those framed photographs of himself as a carefree child, back when he was 5. And now he is at the bus stop, wearing a baseball cap, vulnerable at 15.

A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.

The aggressor heads to school, to show friends the video of his Billy moment, while Billy heads home, again. It’s not yet 8 in the morning.

Bullying is everywhere, including here in Fayetteville, a city of 60,000 with one of the country’s better school systems. A decade ago a Fayetteville student was mercilessly harassed and beaten for being gay. After a complaint was filed with the Office of Civil Rights, the district adopted procedures to promote tolerance and respect — none of which seems to have been of much comfort to Billy Wolfe.

It remains unclear why Billy became a target at age 12; schoolyard anthropology can be so nuanced. Maybe because he was so tall, or wore glasses then, or has a learning disability that affects his reading comprehension. Or maybe some kids were just bored. Or angry.

Whatever the reason, addressing the bullying of Billy has become a second job for his parents: Curt, a senior data analyst, and Penney, the owner of an office-supply company. They have binders of school records and police reports, along with photos documenting the bruises and black eyes. They are well known to school officials, perhaps even too well known, but they make no apologies for being vigilant. They also reject any suggestion that they should move out of the district because of this.

The many incidents seem to blur together into one protracted assault. When Billy attaches a bully’s name to one beating, his mother corrects him. “That was Benny, sweetie,” she says. “That was in the eighth grade.”

It began years ago when a boy called the house and asked Billy if he wanted to buy a certain sex toy, heh-heh. Billy told his mother, who informed the boy’s mother. The next day the boy showed Billy a list with the names of 20 boys who wanted to beat Billy up.

Ms. Wolfe says she and her husband knew it was coming. She says they tried to warn school officials — and then bam: the prank caller beat up Billy in the bathroom of McNair Middle School.

Not long after, a boy on the school bus pummeled Billy, but somehow Billy was the one suspended, despite his pleas that the bus’s security camera would prove his innocence. Days later, Ms. Wolfe recalls, the principal summoned her, presented a box of tissues, and played the bus video that clearly showed Billy was telling the truth.

Things got worse. At Woodland Junior High School, some boys in a wood shop class goaded a bigger boy into believing that Billy had been talking trash about his mother. Billy, busy building a miniature house, didn’t see it coming: the boy hit him so hard in the left cheek that he briefly lost consciousness.

Ms. Wolfe remembers the family dentist sewing up the inside of Billy’s cheek, and a school official refusing to call the police, saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved. Most of all, she remembers the sight of her son.

“He kept spitting blood out,” she says, the memory strong enough still to break her voice.

By now Billy feared school. Sometimes he was doubled over with stress, asking his parents why. But it kept on coming.

In ninth grade, a couple of the same boys started a Facebook page called “Every One That Hates Billy Wolfe.” It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

Heh-heh.

According to Alan Wilbourn, a spokesman for the school district, the principal notified the parents of the students involved after Ms. Wolfe complained, and the parents — whom he described as “horrified” — took steps to have the page taken down.

Not long afterward, a student in Spanish class punched Billy so hard that when he came to, his braces were caught on the inside of his cheek.

So who is Billy Wolfe? Now 16, he likes the outdoors, racquetball and girls. For whatever reason — bullying, learning disabilities or lack of interest — his grades are poor. Some teachers think he’s a sweet kid; others think he is easily distracted, occasionally disruptive, even disrespectful. He has received a few suspensions for misbehavior, though none for bullying.

Judging by school records, at least one official seems to think Billy contributes to the trouble that swirls around him. For example, Billy and the boy who punched him at the bus stop had exchanged words and shoves a few days earlier.

But Ms. Wolfe scoffs at the notion that her son causes or deserves the beatings he receives. She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up, and why school officials are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police.

Mr. Wilbourn said federal law protected the privacy of students, so parents of a bullied child should not assume that disciplinary action had not been taken. He also said it was left to the discretion of staff members to determine if an incident required police notification.

The Wolfes are not satisfied. This month they sued one of the bullies “and other John Does,” and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District. Their lawyer, D. Westbrook Doss Jr., said there was neither glee nor much monetary reward in suing teenagers, but a point had to be made: schoolchildren deserve to feel safe.

Billy Wolfe, for example, deserves to open his American history textbook and not find anti-Billy sentiments scrawled across the pages. But there they were, words so hurtful and foul.

The boy did what he could. “I’d put white-out on them,” he says. “And if the page didn’t have stuff to learn, I’d rip it out.”

Online: A slide show of Billy Wolfe at nytimes.com/danbarry.

A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly, NYT, 24.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?ref=opinion

TIMELINE: Major shootings at schools and universities

Fri Feb 15, 2008
4:29pm EST
Reuters

(Reuters) - Five people were killed when a man opened fire in a classroom at Northern Illinois University near Chicago on Thursday, including the gunman who killed himself, CNN reported.

Here are some major shootings inside schools and universities around the world in recent years:

March 1996 - BRITAIN - A gunman bursts into a primary school in Dunblane in Scotland and shoots dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.

March 1997 - YEMEN - A man with an assault rifle attacks hundreds of pupils at two schools in Sanaa, killing six children and two others. He is sentenced to death the next day.

March 1998 - USA - At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and kill four students and a teacher as they leave the school.

May 1998 - USA - In Springfield, Oregon, a student opens fire in Thurston High School, killing two students and injuring 22. The boy's parents are later found slain in their home.

April 1999 - USA - Two student gunmen kill 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

January 2002 - USA - A student who had been dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, kills the dean, a professor and a student, and wounds three others.

February 2002 - GERMANY - In Freising, Bavaria, a former student thrown out of trade school shoots three people before killing himself. Another teacher is injured.

April 26, 2002 - GERMANY - In Erfurt, eastern Germany, a gunman opens fire after he said he was not going to take a mathematics test. A total of 18 people die, including the assailant.

September 1, 2004 - RUSSIA - 333 hostages - at least 186 of them children - die in a chaotic storming of School No. 1 in Beslan, after it is seized by rebels demanding Chechen independence.

March 21, 2005 - USA - A 16-year-old high school student shoots dead five students, a teacher and a security guard at a school at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation. He also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.

September 13, 2006 - CANADA - Kimveer Gill opens fire on the street and inside the college in Montreal's Dawson College, killing one student and injuring 19 others. Gill kills himself after a battle with police.

October 2, 2006 - USA - Charles Carl Roberts, a dairy truck driver with a grudge, attacks a one-room Amish school in rural Pennsylvania, He shoots 10 girls, killing five of them, before killing himself.

November 20, 2006 - GERMANY - An 18-year-old former pupil opens fire after storming the Scholl school in the town of Emsdetten. Eleven people are wounded before he commits suicide.

April 16, 2007 - USA - A gunmen kills 32 people and himself and wounds 15 others at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history.

November 7, 2007 - FINLAND - Seven children and a head teacher are killed when a student opens fire at a school in southern Finland. The 18-year-old dies later in hospital after shooting himself in the head.

February 14, 2008 - USA - Five people are killed when a man opens fire in a classroom at Northern Illinois University near Chicago, including the gunman who killed himself, CNN reports.

(Writing by Nagesh Narayana and Paul Grant)

TIMELINE: Major shootings at schools and universities, R, 15.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1449879120080215?virtualBrandChannel=10010

Global Classrooms

Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad

February 10, 2008
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN

When John Sexton, the president of New York University, first met Omar Saif Ghobash, an investor trying to entice him to open a branch campus in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Sexton was not sure what to make of the proposal — so he asked for a $50 million gift.

“It’s like earnest money: if you’re a $50 million donor, I’ll take you seriously,” Mr. Sexton said. “It’s a way to test their bona fides.” In the end, the money materialized from the government of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates.

Mr. Sexton has long been committed to building N.Y.U.’s international presence, increasing study-abroad sites, opening programs in Singapore, and exploring new partnerships in France. But the plans for a comprehensive liberal-arts branch campus in the Persian Gulf, set to open in 2010, are in a class by themselves, and Mr. Sexton is already talking about the flow of professors and students he envisions between New York and Abu Dhabi.

The American system of higher education, long the envy of the world, is becoming an important export as more universities take their programs overseas.

In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.

And many are now considering full-fledged foreign branch campuses, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East. Already, students in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar can attend an American university without the expense, culture shock or post-9/11 visa problems of traveling to America.

At Education City in Doha, Qatar’s capital, they can study medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, international affairs at Georgetown, computer science and business at Carnegie Mellon, fine arts at Virginia Commonwealth, engineering at Texas A&M, and soon, journalism at Northwestern.

In Dubai, another emirate, Michigan State University and Rochester Institute of Technology will offer classes this fall.

“Where universities are heading now is toward becoming global universities,” said Howard Rollins, the former director of international programs at Georgia Tech, which has degree programs in France, Singapore, Italy, South Africa and China, and plans for India. “We’ll have more and more universities competing internationally for resources, faculty and the best students.”

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, internationalization has moved high on the agenda at most universities, to prepare students for a globalized world, and to help faculty members stay up-to-date in their disciplines.

Overseas programs can help American universities raise their profile, build international relationships, attract top research talent who, in turn, may attract grants and produce patents, and gain access to a new pool of tuition-paying students, just as the number of college-age Americans is about to decline.

Even public universities, whose primary mission is to educate in-state students, are trying to establish a global brand in an era of limited state financing.

Partly, it is about prestige. American universities have long worried about their ratings in U.S. News and World Report. These days, they are also mindful of the international rankings published in Britain, by the Times Higher Education Supplement, and in China, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The demand from overseas is huge. At the University of Washington, the administrator in charge of overseas programs said she received about a proposal a week. “It’s almost like spam,” said the official, Susan Jeffords, whose position as vice provost for global affairs was created just two years ago.

Traditionally, top universities built their international presence through study-abroad sites, research partnerships, faculty exchanges and joint degree programs offered with foreign universities. Yale has dozens of research collaborations with Chinese universities. Overseas branches, with the same requirements and degrees as the home campuses, are a newer — and riskier — phenomenon.

“I still think the downside is lower than the upside is high,” said Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania. “The risk is that we couldn’t deliver the same quality education that we do here, and that it would mean diluting our faculty strength at home.”

While universities with overseas branches insist that the education equals what is offered in the United States, much of the faculty is hired locally, on a short-term basis. And certainly overseas branches raise fundamental questions:

Will the programs reflect American values and culture, or the host country’s? Will American taxpayers end up footing part of the bill for overseas students? What happens if relations between the United States and the host country deteriorate? And will foreign branches that spread American know-how hurt American competitiveness?

“A lot of these educators are trying to present themselves as benevolent and altruistic, when in reality, their programs are aimed at making money,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who has criticized the rush overseas.

David J. Skorton, the president of Cornell, on the other hand, said the global drive benefited the United States. “Higher education is the most important diplomatic asset we have,” he said. “I believe these programs can actually reduce friction between countries and cultures.”

Tempering Expectations

While the Persian Gulf campus of N.Y.U. is on the horizon, George Mason University is up and running — though not at full speed — in Ras al Khaymah, another one of the emirates.

George Mason, a public university in Fairfax, Va., arrived in the gulf in 2005 with a tiny language program intended to help students achieve college-level English skills and meet the university’s admission standards for the degree programs that were beginning the next year.

George Mason expected to have 200 undergraduates in 2006, and grow from there. But it enrolled nowhere near that many, then or now. It had just 57 degree students — 3 in biology, 27 in business and 27 in engineering — at the start of this academic year, joined by a few more students and programs this semester.

The project, an hour north of Dubai’s skyscrapers and 7,000 miles from Virginia, is still finding its way. “I will freely confess that it’s all been more complicated than I expected,” said Peter Stearns, George Mason’s provost.

The Ras al Khaymah campus has had a succession of deans. Simple tasks like ordering books take months, in part because of government censors. Local licensing, still not complete, has been far more rigorous than expected. And it has not been easy to find interested students with the SAT scores and English skills that George Mason requires for admissions.

“I’m optimistic, but if you look at it as a business, you can only take losses for so long,” said Dr. Abul R. Hasan, the academic dean, who is from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. “Our goal is to have 2,000 students five years from now. What makes it difficult is that if you’re giving the George Mason degree, you cannot lower your standards.”

Aisha Ravindran, a professor from India with no previous connection to George Mason, teaches students the same communications class required for business majors at the Virginia campus — but in the Arabian desert, it lands differently.

Dr. Ravindran uses the same slides, showing emoticons and lists of nonverbal taboos to spread the American business ideal of diversity and inclusiveness. She emphasizes the need to use language that includes all listeners.

And suddenly, there is an odd mismatch between the American curriculum and the local culture. In a country where homosexual acts are illegal, Dr. Ravindran’s slide show suggests using “partner” or “life partner,” since “husband” or “wife” might exclude some listeners. And in a country where mosques are ubiquitous, the slides counsel students to avoid the word “church” and substitute “place of worship.”

The Ras al Khaymah students include Bangladeshis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Indians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians and more, most from families that can afford the $5,400-a-semester tuition. But George Mason has attracted few citizens of the emirates.

The students say they love the small classes, diversity and camaraderie. Their dorm feels much like an American fraternity house, without the haze of alcohol. Some praise George Mason’s pedagogy, which they say differs substantially from the rote learning of their high schools.

“At my local school in Abu Dhabi, it was all what the teachers told you, what was in the book,” said Mona Bar Houm, a Palestinian student who grew up in Abu Dhabi. “Here you’re asked to come up with your personal ideas.”

But what matters most, they say, is getting an American degree. “It means something if I go home to Bangladesh with an American degree,” said Abdul Mukit, a business student. “It doesn’t need to be Harvard. It’s good enough to be just an American degree.”

Whether that degree really reflects George Mason is open to question. None of the faculty members came from George Mason, although that is likely to change next year. The money is not from George Mason, either: Ras al Khaymah bears all the costs.

Nonetheless, Sharon Siverts, the vice president in charge of the campus, said: “What’s George Mason is everything we do. The admissions are done at George Mason, by George Mason standards. The degree programs are Mason programs.”

Seeking a Partnership

Three years ago, Mr. Ghobash, the Oxford-educated investor from the United Arab Emirates, heard a presentation by a private company, American Higher Education Inc., trying to broker a partnership between Kuwait and an American university.

Mr. Ghobash, wanting to bring liberal arts to his country, hired the company to submit a proposal for a gulf campus run by a well-regarded American university. American Higher Education officials said they introduced him to N.Y.U. Mr. Ghobash spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the company’s fees, talked with many N.Y.U. officials and paid for a delegation to visit the emirates before meeting Mr. Sexton, the university president, in June 2005.

Mr. Sexton said he solicited the $50 million gift to emphasize that he was not interested in a business-model deal and that academic excellence was expensive. Mr. Ghobash declined to be interviewed. But according to American Higher Education officials, $50 million was more than Mr. Ghobash could handle.

So when the agreement for the Abu Dhabi campus New York University was signed last fall, Mr. Ghobash and the company were out of the picture, and the government of Abu Dhabi — the richest of the emirates — was the partner to build and operate the N.Y.U. campus. The Executive Affairs Authority of Abu Dhabi made the gift in November 2007.

“The crown prince shares our vision of Abu Dhabi becoming an idea capital for the whole region,” Mr. Sexton said. “We’re going to be a global network university. This is central to what N.Y.U. is going to be in the future. There’s a commitment, on both sides, to have both campuses grow together, so that by 2020, both N.Y.U. and N.Y.U.-Abu Dhabi will in the world’s top 10 universities.”

Neither side will put a price tag on the plan. But both emphasize their shared ambition to create an entity central to the intellectual life not just of the Persian Gulf but also of South Asia and the Middle East.

“We totally buy into John’s view of idea capitals,” said Khaldoon al-Mubarak, chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority. “This is not a commercially driven relationship. It’s a commitment to generations to come, to research. We see eye to eye. We see this as a Catholic marriage. It’s forever.”

It is also, for New York University, a chance to grow, given Abu Dhabi’s promise to replace whatever the New York campus loses to the gulf.

“If, say, 10 percent of the physics department goes there, they will pay to expand the physics department here by 10 percent,” Mr. Sexton said. “That’s a wonderful opportunity, and we think our faculty will see it that way and step up.”

Mr. Sexton is leading the way: next fall, even before the campus is built, he plans to teach a course in Abu Dhabi, leaving New York every other Friday evening, getting to Abu Dhabi on Saturday, teaching Sunday and returning to his New York office Monday morning.

“The crown prince loved the idea and said he wanted to take the class,” Mr. Sexton said. “But I said, ‘No, think how that would be for the other students.’ ”

Uncharted Territory

While the gulf’s wealth has drawn many American universities, others dream of China’s enormous population.

In October, the New York Institute of Technology, a private university offering career-oriented training, opened a Nanjing campus in collaboration with Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and dozens of American universities offer joint or dual degrees through Chinese universities.

Kean University, a public university in New Jersey, had hoped mightily to be the first with a freestanding undergraduate campus in China. Two years ago, Kean announced its agreement to open a branch of the university in Wenzhou in September 2007. Whether the campus will materialize remains to be seen. Kean is still awaiting final approval from China, which prefers programs run through local universities.

“I’m optimistic,” said Dawood Farahi, Kean’s president. “I’m Lewis and Clark, looking for the Northwest Passage.”

In fact, his negotiations have been much like uncharted exploration. “It’s very cumbersome negotiating with the Chinese,” he said. “The deal you struck yesterday is not necessarily good today. The Chinese sign an agreement, and then the next day, you get a fax saying they want an amendment.” Still, he persists, noting, “One out of every five humans on the planet is Chinese.”

Beyond the geopolitical, there are other reasons, pedagogic and economic.

“A lot of our students are internationally illiterate,” Dr. Farahi said. “It would be very good for them to have professors who’ve taught in China, to be able to study in China, and to have more awareness of the rest of the world. And I think I can make a few bucks there.” Under the accord, he said, up to 8 percent of the Wenzhou revenues could be used to support New Jersey.

With state support for public universities a constant challenge, new financing sources are vital, especially for lesser-known universities. “It’s precisely because we’re third tier that I have to find things that jettison us out of our orbit and into something spectacular,” Dr. Farahi said.

Possibilities and Alarms

Most overseas campuses offer only a narrow slice of American higher education, most often programs in business, science, engineering and computers.

Schools of technology have the most cachet. So although the New York Institute of Technology may not be one of America’s leading universities, it is a leading globalizer, with programs in Bahrain, Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Canada, Brazil and China.

“We’re leveraging what we’ve got, which is the New York in our first name and the Technology in our last name,” said Edward Guiliano, the institute’s president. “I believe that in the 21st century, there will be a new class of truly global universities. There isn’t one yet, but we’re as close as anybody.”

Some huge universities get a toehold in the gulf with tiny programs. At a villa in Abu Dhabi, the University of Washington, a research colossus, offers short courses to citizens of the emirates, mostly women, in a government job-training program.

“We’re very eager to have a presence here,” said Marisa Nickle, who runs the program. “In the gulf, it’s not what’s here now, it’s what’s coming. Everybody’s on the way.”

Some lawmakers are wondering how that rush overseas will affect the United States. In July, the House Science and Technology subcommittee on research and science education held a hearing on university globalization.

Mr. Rohrabacher, the California lawmaker, raises alarms. “I’m someone who believes that Americans should watch out for Americans first,” he said. “It’s one thing for universities here to send professors overseas and do exchange programs, which do make sense, but it’s another thing to have us running educational programs overseas.”

The subcommittee chairman, Representative Brian Baird, a Washington Democrat, disagrees. “If the U.S. universities aren’t doing this, someone else likely will,” he said. “I think it’s better that we be invited in than that we be left out.”

Still, he said he worried that the foreign branches could undermine an important American asset — the number of world leaders who were students in the United States.

“I do wonder,” he said, “if we establish many of these campuses overseas, do we lose some of that cross-pollination”

Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad, NYT, 10.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/education/10global.html?hp

Op-Ed Contributor

Ivy-League Letdown

January 22, 2008
The New York Times
By ROGER LEHECKA and ANDREW DELBANCO

LAST month, Harvard reached into its deep pockets — its endowment is $35 billion — and changed the way it calculates student financial aid. The aim, its press release says, is “to make Harvard College more affordable for families across the income spectrum.” Last week, Yale, whose $22.5 billion endowment is growing even faster than Harvard’s, followed suit. Yale’s president, Richard Levin, said he didn’t want students to have to choose “between Yale and Harvard based on cost.”

Who will benefit? Mostly the people Harvard calls “middle- and upper-middle income families,” by which it means those earning $120,000 to $180,000 each year. Yale stretches its new plan to include families earning $200,000. (The median family income in the United States is around $50,000.)

Next year, each of these institutions will add more than $20 million to what they now spend on financial aid, reducing the cost of a college year for families earning $180,000 to $18,000, from $30,000. That’s good news for students at Harvard or Yale. But it’s bad news for many hoping to attend other private four-year colleges — and for the nation in general.

The problem is that most colleges will feel compelled to follow Harvard and Yale’s lead in price-discounting. Yet few have enough money to give more aid to relatively wealthy students without taking it away from relatively poor ones.

Most colleges already tend to favor the affluent because their budgets require it. More than 90 percent of America’s private colleges have endowments less than 1 percent the size of Harvard’s. Giving an upper-middle-class applicant even a generous partial scholarship puts less strain on their budgets than giving a full scholarship to a student whose family can afford to pay nothing.

In 2004, Lawrence Summers, then Harvard’s president, pointed out that three-fourths of the students at selective colleges come from the top income quartile and only 9 percent from the bottom two quartiles combined. And as Donald Heller, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, has shown in a number of studies, colleges are increasingly awarding grant money in the form of so-called merit scholarships not based on financial need. More of this assistance is going to students in the top income quartile than to any other income group.

It is understandable that Harvard and Yale want to make themselves more affordable. But the way they’re going about it sets an example that is likely to make it even harder for low-income students to attend the best college for which they are qualified. Harvard’s stated motive is to stop prospective students from “voting with their feet” by choosing public universities or other private colleges. But surely this is not a very serious problem for a university that each year turns away hundreds of high school valedictorians and whose yield (the percentage of admitted applicants who enroll) is around 80 percent.

At Yale, Mr. Levin has acknowledged that another motive for the new policy is to blunt the growing pressure on wealthy universities to spend more income from their endowments. But is supporting upper-middle-class students the wisest way to dispense the additional money?

In fact, the new policy represents a step backward from the leadership that some elite colleges previously exerted. During the Summers presidency, Harvard focused on the problems of needy students by combining increased financial aid and recruitment in low-income areas, raising its percentage of students eligible for federal Pell grants to 11.9 percent in 2006, from 9.4 percent in 2004. Harvard demonstrated to other colleges that there is undiscovered talent in the two bottom income quartiles.

In a society that claims to believe in equal opportunity, our top universities should lead by example. The scandalous fact is that between 2004 and 2006 — an era of enormous private wealth accumulation — 27 of the 30 top-ranked American universities and 26 of the top 30 liberal arts colleges saw a decline in the percentage of low-income (Pell-grant-eligible) students. The problem Mr. Summers described is only growing worse. While some upper-middle-class families have to sacrifice in order to pay for college and may deserve more financial help, most of their children find a way to attend college. Low-income students earn bachelor’s degrees at less than one-third the rate of high-income students.

Only a few colleges can afford to make tuition affordable for both the poor and the affluent. For every college to become accessible to talented students regardless of income, the federal government must create enhanced grant programs, progressive tax incentives and programs that reduce the debt of graduates who spend time in public service. Otherwise, America will be the loser, no matter who wins the Harvard-Yale game.

Roger Lehecka, a former dean of students at Columbia, consults for scholarship programs for needy students. Andrew Delbanco is the director of American studies at Columbia.

Ivy-League Letdown, NYT, 22.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22lehecka.html

Supreme Court Limits Schools on Race

June 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected school assignment plans that take account of students' race in two major public school districts. The decisions could imperil similar plans nationwide. The Court also blocked the execution of a Texas killer whose lawyers argued that he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.

Today is probably the Court's last session until October.

The school rulings in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle leave public school systems with a limited arsenal to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's other three liberals.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

He agreed with Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle went too far. He said, however, that to the extent that Roberts' opinion could be interpreted as foreclosing the use of race in any circumstance, ''I disagree with that reasoning.''

The two school systems in Thursday's decisions employ slightly different methods of taking students' race into account when determining which school they would attend.

In the case involving the mentally ill killer in Texas, the court ruled 5-4 in the case of Scott Louis Panetti, who shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.

The convicted murderer says that he suffers from a severe documented illness that is the source of gross delusions. ''This argument, we hold, should have been considered,'' said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.

Panetti's lawyers wanted the court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars ''the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing,'' they said in court papers.

In a third case, the Court abandoned a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said that agreements on minimum prices are legal if they promote competition.

The ruling means that accusations of minimum pricing pacts will be evaluated case by case.

The Supreme Court declared in 1911 that minimum pricing agreements violate federal antitrust law.

Supreme Court Limits Schools on Race, NYT, 28.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Rdp.html

Schools Review Safety After Va. Massacre

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:19 a.m. ET
The New York Times

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- Cell phone text messages. Loudspeakers on towers. Cameras that detect suspicious activity. Colleges and universities are considering these and other measures in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, seeking to improve how they get the word out about emergencies to thousands of students across sprawling campuses.

The University of Washington in Seattle is weighing whether to use warning sirens. Clemson University in South Carolina recently installed a similar system for weather-related emergencies and now may expand its use.

''You're going to see a nationwide re-evaluation of how to respond to incidents like this,'' said Jeff Newton, police chief at the University of Toledo.

Chuck Green, director of public safety at the University of Iowa, said school officials were discussing a new outdoor warning system just a day before the Blacksburg shootings. The technology would allow for live voice as well as prerecorded messaging.

''We'd like the option to hit one button to reach large numbers of people at one time,'' he said.

Virginia Tech officials did not send an e-mail warning about a gunman on campus until two hours after the first slayings, drawing criticism that they waited too long and relied on e-mail accounts that students often ignore.

''Would a blast e-mail have been the most effective tool in notifying people of Monday's events?'' asked John Holden, a spokesman for DePaul University in Chicago. ''Some of the coverage I'm seeing suggests that old-fashioned emergency alarms or broadcast announcements would probably have been more effective.''

At many schools, officials want to send text messages to cell phones and digital devices as a faster, more reliable alternative to e-mail.

''We have to find a way to get to students,'' said Terry Robb, who is overseeing security changes at the University of Missouri.

The University of Memphis plans to build a system that will act as a schoolwide intercom. Scheduled to be in place by this fall, the system will consist of speakers mounted on three or four tall poles.

At Johns Hopkins University, officials installed more than 100 ''smart'' cameras after two off-campus slayings. The cameras are linked to computers that detect suspicious situations, such as someone climbing a fence or falling down, and alert not only campus security but also Baltimore city police.

Using text messages would require students to provide personal cell phone numbers -- an intrusion that many colleges and universities have until now been reluctant to pursue, said Howard Udell, chief executive officer of Saf-T-Net AlertNow, a Raleigh, N.C., company that specializes in campus security.

Cell phone numbers ''have to be as vital as your Social Security number,'' he said. ''I don't think it's been a priority.''

The Virginia Tech massacre could bring about widespread safety reforms at colleges and universities, much as the Columbine shootings in Colorado led to security improvements at primary and secondary schools, Udell said.

''We're going to use lessons learned from Virginia Tech's tragedy as much as we can,'' said Auburn University spokeswoman Deedie Dowdle.

Text-message alert systems are already in place at some schools, including Penn State University, which started its program in the fall. The system has transmitted 20 emergency messages since its start, ranging from traffic closures to weather-related cancellations or delays.

At the University of Minnesota, 101 of the university's 270 buildings have electronic access devices. A control center can selectively lock and unlock doors, send emergency e-mail and phone messages, and trigger audio tones and messages. Video cameras monitor 871 locations around the university and radio networks link the university with police.

Despite the widespread safety reviews, nothing short of a total lockdown would ensure the safety of campus communities, said Maj. Frank Knight, assistant chief of police at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.

''Stopping an individual with a weapon from getting on campus is nearly impossible,'' he said. ''We can't ever guarantee the security of the campus 100 percent.''

At Birmingham-Southern, a small private school in Alabama, campus police also use less sophisticated methods: cars equipped with public-address systems and even runners carrying messages.

Campus Police Chief Randy Youngblood said officers used car-mounted loudspeakers during storms in recent years, and the system has been effective on the small campus.

Associated Press writers Doug Whiteman in Columbus, Ohio; Ben Greene in Baltimore; Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C.; Michael Tarm in Chicago; and Nafeesa Syeed in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Schools Review Safety After Va. Massacre, NYT, 19.4.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Virginia-Tech-Campus-Alerts.html

‘Horror and Disbelief’ at Virginia Tech

April 17, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16 — Thirty-two people were killed, along with a gunman, and at least 15 injured in two shooting attacks at Virginia Polytechnic Institute on Monday during three hours of horror and chaos on this sprawling campus.

The police and witnesses said some victims were executed with handguns while other students were hurt jumping from upper-story windows of the classroom building where most of the killings occurred. After the second round of killings, the gunman killed himself, the police said.

It was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history and came nearly eight years to the day after 13 people died at Columbine High School in Colorado at the hands of two disaffected students who then killed themselves.

As of Monday evening, only one of the Virginia Tech victims had been officially identified. Police officials said they were not yet ready to identify the gunman or even say whether one person was behind both attacks, which wreaked devastation on this campus of 36,000 students, faculty members and staff.

Federal law enforcement officials in Washington said the gunman might have been a young Asian man who recently arrived in the United States. A university spokeswoman, Jenn Lazenby, could not confirm that report but said the university was looking into whether two bomb threats at the campus, — one last Friday, the other earlier this month — might be related to the shootings.

The university’s president, Charles W. Steger, expressed his “horror and disbelief and sorrow” at what he described as a tragedy of monumental proportions. But questions were immediately raised about whether university officials had responded adequately to the shootings.

There was a two-hour gap between the first shootings, when two people were killed, and the second, when a gunman stalked through the halls of an engineering building across campus, shooting at professors and students in classrooms and hallways, firing dozens of rounds and killing 30. Officials said he then shot himself so badly in the face that he could not be identified.

The university did not send a campuswide alert until the second attack had begun, even though the gunman in the first had not been apprehended.

Mr. Steger defended the decision not to shut down or evacuate the campus after the first shootings, saying officials had believed the first attack was a self-contained event, which the campus police believed was a “domestic” dispute.

“We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,” he said.

President Bush sent his condolences to the families of the victims and the university community. “Schools should be places of sanctuary and safety and learning,” Mr. Bush said. “When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.”

The Virginia Tech attacks started early in the morning, with a call to the police at 7:15 from West Ambler Johnston Hall, a 900-student freshman dormitory, as students were getting ready for classes or were on their way there.

Students said a gunman had gone room to room looking for his ex-girlfriend. He killed two people, a senior identified as Ryan Clark, from Augusta, Ga., and a freshman identified by other students on her floor as Emily Hilscher.

The shootings at the engineering building, Norris Hall, began about 9:45.

[Prof. Liviu Librescu and Prof. Kevin Granata were among the victims there, Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.]

One student described barricading himself in a classroom there with other students and hearing dozens of gunshots nearby. Someone tried to force his way into the classroom and fired two shots through the door that did not hit anyone, the student said.

Scott L. Hendricks, an associate professor of engineering, was in his office on the third floor when he heard 40 to 50 shots from what sounded like the second floor. Mr. Hendricks said he had called 911, but the police were already on the way.

The police surrounded the building and he barricaded the door to his office. After about an hour, the police broke down his door and ordered him to flee.

“When I left, I was one of the last to leave,” Mr. Hendricks said. “I had no idea of the magnitude of the event.”

According to the college newspaper, The Collegiate Times, many of the deaths took place in a German class in Norris Hall.

“He was just a normal looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout type outfit,” one student in the class, Erin Sheehan, told the newspaper. “He wore a tan button-up vest and this black vest — maybe it was for ammo or something.”

Ms. Sheehan added: “I saw bullets hit people’s bodies. There was blood everywhere. People in the class were passed out, I don’t know maybe from shock from the pain. But I was one of only four that made it out of that classroom. The rest were dead or injured.”

Heavily armed local and state police officers swarmed onto campus. Video clips shown on local stations showed them with rifles at the ready as students ran or sought cover and a freakish snow swirled in heavy winds. The police evacuated students and faculty members, taking many of them to local hotels. A Montgomery County school official said all schools throughout the county were being shut down.

Many parents and students questioned the university’s response to the two fatal shootings in Ambler Johnston Hall, suggesting that more aggressive action could have prevented the later and deadlier attack.

“As a parent, I am totally outraged,” said Fran Bernhards of Sterling, Va., whose daughter Kirsten attends Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, as it is formally known. “I would like to know why the university did not immediately shut down.”

Kirsten Bernhards, 18, said she and countless other students had no idea that a shooting had occurred when she left her dorm room in O’Shaughnessy Hall shortly before 10 a.m., more than two hours after the first shootings.

“I was leaving for my 10:10 film class,” she said. “I had just locked the door and my neighbor said, ‘Did you check your e-mail?’ ”

The university had, a few minutes earlier, sent out a bulletin warning students about an apparent gunman. But few students seemed to have any sense of urgency.

The university’s first bulletin warned students to be “cautious.” Then, 20 minutes later, at 9:50, a second e-mail warning was sent, saying a gunman was “loose on campus” and telling students to stay in buildings and away from windows. At 10:16, a final message said classes were canceled and advised everyone on campus to stay where they were and lock their doors.

Ms. Bernhards recalled walking toward her class, preoccupied with an upcoming exam and listening to music on her iPod. On the way, she said, she heard loud cracks, and only later concluded that they had been gunshots from the second round of shootings. But even at that point, many students were walking around the campus with little sense of alarm.

It was only when Ms. Bernhards got close to Norris Hall, the second of two buildings where the shootings took place, that she realized something was wrong.

“I looked up and I saw at least 10 guards with assault rifles aiming at the main entrance of Norris,” she recalled.

The Virginia Tech police chief, Wendell Flinchum, defended the university’s decision to keep the campus open after the first shootings, saying the information at the time indicated that it was an isolated event and that the attacker had left campus.

At an evening news conference, Chief Flinchum would not say that the same gunman was responsible for the shootings in the dormitory and the classrooms. He said he was awaiting ballistics tests and other laboratory results until declaring that the same person carried out both attacks.

He said accounts from students at the dorm had led the police to a “person of interest” who knew one or both of the victims there. The police were interviewing him off campus at the time of the shootings at Norris Hall. Chief Flinchum said officers had not arrested the man.

“You can second-guess all day,” he said. “We acted on the best information we had. We can’t have an armed guard in front of every classroom every day of the year.”

Classroom buildings are not locked and dormitories are open throughout the day but require a key card for entry at night, university officials said.

Chief Flinchum confirmed that police found some of the Norris Hall classroom doors chained shut from the inside, which is not a normal practice. Some of the people hurt there were injured leaping from windows to escape.

Virginia imposes few restrictions on the purchase of handguns and no requirement for any kind of licensing or training. The state does limit handgun purchases to one per month to discourage bulk buying and resale, state officials said.

Once a person had passed the required background check, state law requires that law enforcement officers issue a concealed carry permit to anyone who applies. However, no regulations and no background checks are required for purchase of weapons at a Virginia gun show.

“Virginia’s gun laws are some of the weakest state laws in the country,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “And where there have been attempts to make some changes, a backdoor always opens to get around the changes, like the easy access at gun shows.”

Students are not allowed to have guns on the campus.

At Ambler Johnston Hall, where the first shootings took place, many if not most students had left and those who remained stayed close to their rooms by late afternoon.

Mr. Clark, the senior who was shot in the dorm, was a resident adviser who went by the nickname Stack on Facebook.com, was well liked and was a member of the university’s marching band, the Marching Virginians, students said. “He was a cool guy,” said one fourth-floor resident.

The shootings unfolded in an age of instant messaging, cellphone cameras, blogs and social networking sites like Facebook. As the hours passed, students who were locked in their classrooms and dormitories passed on news and rumors.

In one cellphone video shown repeatedly on television networks, the sound of dozens of shots can be heard and students can be seen running from Norris Hall.

The student who made the video, Jamal Albarghouti, a graduate student, said he was already on edge because of two bomb threats on campus last week. “I knew this was something way more serious,” he told CNN.

The shooting was the second in the past year that forced officials to issue an alert to the campus.

In August of 2006, an escaped jail inmate shot and killed a deputy sheriff and an unarmed security guard at a nearby hospital before the police caught him in the woods near the university. The capture ended a manhunt that led to the cancellation of the first day of classes at Virginia Tech and shut down most businesses and municipal buildings in Blacksburg. The defendant, William Morva, is facing capital murder charges.

The atmosphere on campus was desolate and preternaturally quiet by Monday afternoon. Students gathered in small groups, some crying, some talking quietly and others consoling each other.

Up until today, the deadliest campus shooting in United States history was in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire, killing 16 people before he was shot and killed by the police. In the Columbine High attack in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves.

The single deadliest shooting in the United States came in October 1991, when George Jo Hennard crashed his pickup truck through the window of a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., then shot 22 people dead and wounded at least 20 others. He shot himself in the head.

Reporting was contributed by Sarah Abruzzese, Edmund L. Andrews, Neela Banerjee, Micah Cohen, Shaila Dewan, Cate Doty, Manny Fernandez, Brenda Goodman, David Johnston, Michael Mather, Marc Santora, Amy Schoenfeld, Archie Tse and Matthew L. Wald.

‘Horror and Disbelief’ at Virginia Tech, NYT, 17.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html

Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias

February 25, 2007
The New York Times
By SAM DILLON

GREENCASTLE, Ind. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

“I sensed the disrespect with which this was to be carried out and got fed up,” Ms. Holloway added. “I didn’t have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren’t needed.”

Ms. Holloway is not the only angry one. The reorganization has left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears on this rural campus of 2,400 students, 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.

DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, issued a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority. In an interview in his office, Dr. Bottoms said he had been stunned by the sorority’s insensitivity.

“I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he said. “It’s been very upsetting.”

The president of Delta Zeta, which has its headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, and its other national officers declined to be interviewed. Responding by e-mail to questions, Cynthia Winslow Menges, the executive director, said the sorority had not evicted the 23 women, even though the national officers sent those women form letters that said: “The membership review team has recommended you for alumna status. Chapter members receiving alumnae status should plan to relocate from the chapter house no later than Jan. 29, 2007.”

Ms. Menges asserted that the women themselves had, in effect, made their own decisions to leave by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meet recruitment goals. The sorority paid each woman who left $300 to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.

The sorority “is saddened that the isolated incident at DePauw has been mischaracterized,” Ms. Menges wrote. Asked for clarification, the sorority’s public relations representative e-mailed a statement saying its actions were aimed at the “enrichment of student life at DePauw.”

This is not the first time that the DePauw chapter of Delta Zeta has stirred controversy. In 1982, it attracted national attention when a black student was not allowed to join, provoking accusations of racial discrimination.

Earlier this month, an Alabama lawyer and several other DePauw alumni who graduated in 1970 described in a letter to The DePauw, the student newspaper, how Delta Zeta’s national leadership had tried unsuccessfully to block a young woman with a black father and a white mother from joining its DePauw chapter in 1967.

Despite those incidents, the chapter appears to have been home to a diverse community over the years, partly because it has attracted brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as talented disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal, former sorority members said.

“I had a sister I could go to a bar with if I had boy problems,” said Erin Swisshelm, a junior biochemistry major who withdrew from the sorority in October. “I had a sister I could talk about religion with. I had a sister I could be nerdy about science with. That’s why I liked Delta Zeta, because I had all these amazing women around me.”

But over the years DePauw students had attached a negative stereotype to the chapter, as evidenced by the survey that Pam Propsom, a psychology professor, conducts each year in her class. That image had hurt recruitment, and the national officers had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, the chapter could close.

At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter’s founding. In September, Ms. Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.

The tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.

Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.

A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.

“They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs,” she said. “It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, ‘This calls for a little joke.’ ”

Ms. Holloway put on a wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door and skipped around singing, “Ooooh! Delta Zeta!” and other chants.

The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, “was like I’d run over her puppy with my car.”

The national representatives announced their decisions in the form letters, delivered on Dec. 2, which said that Delta Zeta intended to increase membership to 95 by the 2009 anniversary, and that it would recruit using a “core group of women.”

Elizabeth Haneline, a senior computer science major who was among those evicted, returned to the house that afternoon and found some women in tears. Even the chapter’s president had been kicked out, Ms. Haneline said, while “other women who had done almost nothing for the chapter were asked to stay.”

Six of the 12 women who were asked to stay left the sorority, including Joanna Kieschnick, a sophomore majoring in English literature. “They said, ‘You’re not good enough’ to so many people who have put their heart and soul into this chapter that I can’t stay,” she said.

In the months since, Cynthia Babington, DePauw’s dean of students, has fielded angry calls from parents, she said. Robert Hershberger, chairman of the modern languages department, circulated the faculty petition; 55 professors signed it.

“We were especially troubled that the women they expelled were less about image and more about academic achievement and social service,” Dr. Hershberger said.

During rush activities this month, 11 first-year students accepted invitations to join Delta Zeta, but only three have sought membership.

On Feb. 2, Rachel Pappas, a junior who is the chapter’s former secretary, printed 200 posters calling on students to gather that afternoon at the student union. About 50 students showed up and heard Ms. Pappas say the sorority’s national leaders had misrepresented the truth when they asserted they had evicted women for lack of commitment.

“The injustice of the lies,” she said, “is contemptible.”

Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias, NYT, 25.2.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/education/25sorority.html

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