Free Republic

Speaking to the NAACP convention in Kansas City on Monday (July 12), Michelle Obama said that because of "stubborn inequalities" that "still persist --- in education and health, in income and wealth --- "the NAACP's founders "would urge us to increase our intensity." The White House, for some reason, appears to have heard her call, for on Tuesday, reported the Chronicle of Higher Education, "White House Official Says Civil-Rights Office Will Enforce Fair State Spending for Black Colleges." John S. Wilson Jr., executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, said on Tuesday that the...

The incoming head of the National Governors Association said Sunday he will make increasing the number of students who complete college his focus during his scheduled yearlong tenure. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, assumed the chairmanship of the NGA on Sunday from Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, replaced Manchin as vice chairman. Manchin said he will work to unite governors, higher education officials, campus leaders and corporate chief executives behind the college initiative he calls "Complete to Compete." "If we don't improve college completion rates in this country, our children will...

Coalition to Overcome Racism After the coverage we received in the Sentinel article of Wednesday, June 30, 2010, titled "Coalition earns grant to study institutionalized racism," we'd like to offer the following additional information about the Santa Cruz County Community Coalition to Overcome Racism. As the steering committee of SCCCCOR, we are excited about helping bring to Santa Cruz County a new approach to addressing institutional racism, and we are seeking to use all avenues at our disposal -- including this op-ed article -- to generate interest, support and participation in our activities. The premise behind SCCCCOR's work is that...

At City College of San Francisco, one of the country’s largest public universities, thousands of struggling students pour into remedial English and math classes — and then the vast majority disappear, never to receive a college degree. When Steve Ngo, a 33-year-old college trustee, learned that many minority students, among others, faced two-and-a-half years, or five semesters, of remedial English classes and a year and a half of math at the two-year college, he was shocked into action. His campaign for a one-year sequence of remedial courses ignited a campus furor, with students and a few trustees on one side...

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The city will search for a new admissions test for its gifted and talented public school programs, a Department of Education official said on Monday, in part to address concerns that some families were “gaming” the test through extensive preparation. The official, Marc Sternberg, the new deputy chancellor for portfolio planning, said the change could occur for the 2012-13 year. The city has one more year in its current testing contract. Mr. Sternberg announced the move at a City Council hearing on education, after extensive questioning from council members about why the city’s gifted programs were not as racially and...

"Comprehensive immigration reform" is a euphemism for amnesty. As such, reform will impose significant costs on the country. The primary effect of immigration amnesties in both the U.S. and Europe has been to attract more illegal immigration. An amnesty signals to potential border-crossers that if they can just get into the country illegally, they will eventually be given legal status. Illegal entries in the U.S. rose after the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986 went into effect and have increased fivefold from the 1980s to today. The vast majority of illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. since 1986...

Immigrants are making Germany 'dumber', according to a board member of the country's central bank. Thilo Sarrazin claimed the 'limited education' of immigrants - coupled with their high birth rate - meant Germans 'are becoming dumber in a simple way'. He said: 'There's a difference in the reproduction of population groups with varying intelligence.' It is not the first time the 65-year-old member of the Bundesbank has caused controversy since he joined last year. In October he described Muslim children as 'underclass' citizens. 'I don't have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject, doesn't properly take care...

In 1970, nine percent of California's population was comprised of immigrants; by 2008 it was 27 percent. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that as a result of immigration, California now has the least-educated labor force of any state. Historically, California was not a state with a disproportionately large unskilled population, like Appalachia or parts of the South. However, immigration has transformed the state. Absent a change in immigration policy, other parts of the country may be transformed in a similar fashion. The report, "A State Transformed: Immigration and the New California," can be found...

The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850. But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering. The district said...

Front-page headline in my New York Post this morning: 2 + 2 = 5 NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests The accompanying story describes a further dumbing-down of state math tests for kids in grades 3 to 8. Half marks are given for fragments of work; also for wrong answers arrived at via correct methods: “A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12 . . . ” For us New York parents the only surprise here is that any...

The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry’s Law. The official title of this legislation is “Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering,” but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard. This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the White House science adviser to oversee regular “workshops to enhance gender equity.” At the workshops, to be attended by researchers who receive federal money and by the heads of science and engineering departments...

The Pew Hispanic Center released a sobering report this week reminding us about the bleak education outlook for the nation's largest minority group. The most worrisome stat? More than half of all foreign-born Latino adults in the U.S. are high school drop-outs. That's compared with 25 percent of native-born Hispanics. The implications of this trend are huge for a host of socio-economic reasons. But one of the most significant? It could lead to a more illiterate and ill-equipped workforce that's precisely what an information and technologically driven economy doesn't need.

Even as more local schools are reaching state targets on benchmark tests, nearly three-quarters of Los Angeles Unified schools fall among the state's lowest performing campuses, according to data released today by the California Department of Education. Today's release of the state's base Academic Performance Index, or API, ranks schools based on their statewide test scores and how they perform compared to schools with similar demographics. API scores range from 200 to 1,000 points with the target being 800 points. In the last year, 158 Los Angeles Unified schools reached or exceeded the state's target API score of 800, up...

As California's public schools have increasingly poured attention and resources into the state's struggling students, high academic learners - the so-called gifted students - have been getting the short shrift, a policy decision that some worry could leave the United States at a competitive disadvantage. Critics see courses tailored for exceptional students as elitist and not much of an issue when compared with the vast number of students who are lagging grades behind their peers or dropping out of school. But a growing chorus of parents and advocates is asking the contentious question: What about the smart kids? "We have...

Concerned that its top academic schools are not racially and economically diverse enough, Philadelphia Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman is proposing major changes in how students are admitted to them. The plan would take admissions decisions away from principals and their committees, and select students for magnet and citywide-admissions schools centrally, using a computerized system, according to a "draft" obtained by The Inquirer. District officials suggested a 1,000-point system, 600 points of which would be based on test scores and grades, according to the draft that was distributed to high school principals. Other factors would include behavior and attendance, and, for...

The percentage of Hispanic students who graduate from college in six years or less continues to lag behind that of white students, according to a new study of graduation figures at more than 600 colleges. In the study, the American Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit research organization, examined graduation rates for students who entered college in 1999, 2000 and 2001, and found that 51 percent of those identified as Hispanic earned bachelor’s degrees in six years or less, compared with 59 percent of white students. The researchers also found that Hispanic students trailed their white peers no matter how selective the...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last week that the Obama Administration will ramp up investigations of civil rights infractions in school districts, which might sound well and good. What it means in practice, however, is that his Office of Civil Rights (OCR) will revert to the Clinton Administration policy of equating statistical disparity with discrimination, which is troubling. OCR oversees Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by race, color or national origin in public schools and colleges that receive federal funding. In a speech last week, Mr. Duncan said that "in the last decade"—that's short...

The federal government has singled out the Los Angeles Unified School District for its first major investigation under a reinvigorated Office for Civil Rights, officials said Tuesday. The focus of the probe, by an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, will be whether the nation's second-largest district provides adequate services to students learning English. Officials turned their attention to L.A. Unified because so many English learners fare poorly and because they make up about a third of district enrollment, more than 220,000 students. "This is about helping kids receive a good education, the education they deserve," said Russlynn Ali,...

On a late June day two years ago, two DeKalb County school administrators panicked. A few dozen of their elementary school students had just finished high-stakes summer retests — exams first taken in spring but not passed. With just a glance at the answer sheets, Atherton Elementary School Principal James Berry and Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander saw they were in trouble. “We cannot not make AYP,” Alexander said. Not making AYP, or adequate yearly progress, meant not meeting a required federal benchmark. These students, all fifth-graders, also faced being held back if they did not pass. “OK,” Berry answered. He...