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Archive for November, 2011

KABUL – Children in Afghanistan soon will be able to start their education the same way as millions of preschoolers elsewhere in the world: by watching the TV series “Sesame Street.”

Makers of the show worked with two Afghan television channels and the ministry of education to produce the Afghan series, which begins on Thursday and features footage of Afghan life and the Muppets from the original U.S. version.

The series aims to encourage a love of learning in Afghanistan’s youth. Around 45 percent of the population is under 15 and many will struggle to get an education, said Masood Sanjar, channel manager at TOLO TV, which will broadcast the show in Afghanistan’s Dari language.

“Less than two-thirds of children are enrolled in primary school,” he told reporters and children who had been invited to meet characters Grover and Ernie at a briefing in Kabul.

“‘Sesame Street’ is undoubtedly the most influential children’s television program in the world. It was the first show to effectively use television as education,” he said.

The series, funded by the U.S. embassy in Kabul and known in Afghanistan as ‘Baghch-e-Simsim’, will also be broadcast in the Pashto language on another channel, LEMAR TV.

“‘Sesame Street’ is not just for children,” said Ryan Crocker, the United States’ ambassador to Afghanistan.

“Teachers will discover that the characters in ‘Sesame Street’ can help children start school well prepared … Afghan children who watch ‘Sesame Street’ will be ready to start school knowing the alphabet and knowing their numbers.”

The Afghan education system, like many of its government functions, suffers from shortages of cash, and infrastructure shattered by years of war.

Earlier this year, a senior NATO commander said that only one in 10 Afghans who sign up for jobs in the army and police can read and write.

On Wednesday, Crocker said that when he first came to Afghanistan in 2001, only 900,000 children were in school, but that number has risen to more than 8 million.

A sample film displayed at the briefing on Wednesday showed a 6-year-old Afghan girl making friends on her first day at school, and red furry character Elmo searching in vain for someone who looked sad.

“Children will learn about the great diversity in this country,” said Charlotte Cole, vice president for international education at Sesame Workshop, a not-for-profit organization that originally devised the series, first broadcast in America in 1969 and now screened in more than 100 countries.

“It’s an opportunity to see a positive image of children like themselves on the screen.”

(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Paul Tait)

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GARDEN CITY, N.Y. – In a Nov. 28 story about an SAT cheating scandal in New York, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the College Board was based in Princeton, N.J. The College Board is based in New York. The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SATs on behalf of the College Board, is based in Princeton.

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WASHINGTON – Nearly half of all children in America live in school districts with high levels of poverty, according to U.S. Census data released on Tuesday that pointed to financial traps many public schools are caught in.

According to the Census, 45 percent of all 54 million children aged 5 to 17 resided in school districts with poverty rates greater than 20 percent in 2010. Another 34.3 percent live in districts where poverty rates are between 10 and 20 percent.

There are 13,604 school districts in the country.

At the same time, in one-third of counties, the rate of children living in poverty was “significantly above the national poverty rate of 19.8 percent” in 2010, the last year for which data is available. In 851 counties, the rate was “significantly below.”

States contribute 48 percent of funding for primary and secondary education, while the federal government pitches in about 8 percent. The U.S. government will use the Census data to distribute funds and manage programs.

Local governments such as counties, cities and school districts provide the rest of the money, primarily through property taxes. That means in districts where poverty runs high school funds are often low.

Almost all school districts are still struggling with the effects of economic recession. From October 2010 to last month, local governments have shed 118,400 education jobs.

Last school year, 41 percent of schools had funding decreases and 72 percent expect further drops this school year, according to an October report from the Government Accountability Office. Districts with high levels of poverty had the most cuts.

Higher poverty also means public schools may have to provide more services. For example, students living in poverty or just above qualify for subsidized meals.

The Census found that “school-age children, as well as school-age children in families in poverty, tend to be concentrated in school districts with a population of 20,000 or more.”

By region, the school-age median poverty rate was highest in the South, 26 percent.

Counties with poverty rates significantly above the national average for school-age children were found Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas.

The second highest rate was in the West, 19.2 percent, where Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon posted poverty rates higher than the national average.

Meanwhile, “large numbers of counties in the Northeast and Midwest regions, as well as counties in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming in the West had poverty rates for school-age children lower than the national average.”

Not all counties along the Atlantic coast fared well. Among the 25 largest counties, school-age poverty rates ranged from 7.3 percent in Suffolk County, New York, to 36.4 percent in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.”

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert)

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Atlantic Wire – Today in academia: a student debt conundrum, a homecoming for detained U.S. students in Cairo, the latest adderall on-campus fretting, and Harvard’s early application vortex.

WASHINGTON – Investigators from the Department of Education arrived at Penn State University on Monday to review how it handled sex abuse charges against a former football coach, the school said.

Department representatives will see if Penn State met federal crime-reporting requirements over allegations that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky molested eight boys over a 15-year period.

“We are making every effort to provide the review team with immediate access to all requested records and information sources pertaining to all aspects of Clery Act compliance,” Penn State President Rodney Erickson said in a Saturday statement.

Under the Clery Act, colleges and universities that take part in federal aid programs must keep and disclose information about crimes that take place on campus.

Sandusky, 67, is the focus of a wide-ranging investigation of alleged child sex abuse outlined in a 23-page grand jury report this month.

The report includes a charge that Sandusky attacked a boy in a football locker room on campus in 2002. Sandusky, who retired in 1999, has denied any wrongdoing.

Revered football coach Joe Paterno and President Graham Spanier were fired by trustees in the wake of the grand jury report. The former athletic director and an ex-finance official face perjury charges.

Penn State also faces a raft of other investigations, including by its trustees and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Pennsylvania’s attorney general has said her probe is still open.

The Department of Education had told Penn State on November 9 that it would investigate its compliance with the Clery Act.

The department can impose civil penalties for infractions of the act and can suspend schools from taking part in federal student financial aid programs.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Greg McCune)

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LONG BEACH, Calif. – Jesse Yeh uses the University of California-Berkeley library instead of buying textbooks. He scrounges for free food at campus events and occasionally skips meals. He’s stopped exercising and sleeps five to six hours per night so he can take 21 credits — a course load so heavy he had to get special permission from a dean.

The only thing he won’t do: take out a student loan.

“I see a lot of my friends who took out student loans, then they graduated and because of the economy right now they still couldn’t find a job,” said the third-year student, whose parents both lost their jobs in 2009 and who grew up in the boom-and-bust town of Victorville, Calif., on a block with several houses in foreclosure. “The debt burden is really heavy on them.”

Even as college prices and average student loan debt rise, educators in some sectors of higher education report they’re also seeing plenty of students like Yeh. After watching debt cause widespread damage in their families and communities, they’re determined to avoid loans no matter what.

What’s surprising is this: Educators aren’t sure that’s always such a good thing.

Students who go take extreme steps to avoid debt at all costs, they say, may get stuck with something much more financially damaging than moderate student loan debt. They may not wind up with a college degree.

To pay for college and minimize borrowing, students are working longer hours at jobs and taking fewer credits. They’re less likely to enroll full-time. They’re living at home. They’re “trading down” to less selective institutions with lower prices, and heading first to cheaper community colleges with plans to transfer later to four-year schools.

Those may sound like money-savers, but in fact each is a well-documented risk factor that makes students less likely to graduate.

“There’s been such attention on student debt being unmanageable that current students have internalized that,” said Deborah Santiago, co-founder and vice president for policy research at the group Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. In fact, “If you can take out a little bit of loan you’re more likely to complete. If you can go to a more selective institution that gives you more resources and support, you’re more likely to complete.”

To be sure, educators can’t help but admire the determination of students like Yeh; if that kind of responsibility was more common, the financial crisis might never have happened. And nobody blames students for being afraid amid a flurry of news about debt, like a recent analysis estimating the average debt burden for 2010 college graduates who borrowed was over $ 25,000, up 5 percent from the year before.

But getting almost no notice in recent reports was another stat: New borrowing nearly flattened out last year, according to the College Board, and actually declined on a per-student basis after accounting for inflation. Private borrowing (generally more dangerous to students) has dropped from about $ 24 billion in 2007-2008 to about $ 8 billion last year. A major factor is likely increased federal grant aid. But another may be students making more sacrifices to avoid loans.

What’s the upside of borrowing? Federal data analyzed by Santiago’s group and The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) in 2008 shows roughly 86 percent of students who borrow for college are able to attend full-time, compared to 70 percent of students who don’t borrow. That matters because roughly 60 percent of full-time students receive a bachelor’s degree within eight years, compared to 25 percent of part-time students.

Other research, meanwhile, shows just 26 percent of students who enroll in a community college hoping eventually to earn a four-year bachelor’s degree succeed within nine years. That compares to 50 percent starting at non-selective four-year colleges and 73 percent at selective schools.

The more selective school may have a higher price tag, and you may expect it will be harder. But in fact, even comparably qualified students are more likely to graduate from the more selective school, probably because such schools generally offer more financial aid and academic help.

Student debt aversion is most pronounced among Hispanics and Asians, who borrow at lower rates than whites despite having higher financial need. And it appears to have the greatest consequences for Hispanics and blacks.

Fifty-one percent of blacks who had financial need but decided not to borrow had left school within three years without a degree, compared to 39 percent of those who borrowed, the study by Excelencia and IHEP found. For Hispanics, 41 percent of non-borrowers had left, compared to 32 percent who borrowed.

In Hispanic immigrant populations, “aversion to borrowing stems from a lack of a banking relationship of any sort,” said Santiago, who has studied debt aversion in the states along the Mexican border. “They tend to live in a cash economy, and (have) a very stringent determination to live within your means.”

For Hispanics, she says, the issue isn’t new. But more broadly, a new generation is arriving on campus whose financial education was forged almost entirely during the financial crisis and the wretched economy of the last four years.

“I think the foreclosure (crisis) is definitely something that is on my mind,” said Yeh. He says he would borrow if it became absolutely necessary. He’s doing OK academically, but acknowledges he used to have a few weeks to work on a paper; since upping his course load he typically bangs it out the day before. He’s so busy he doesn’t have time to cook and eats out regularly, even though that’s more expensive.

At California community colleges, students don’t usually need to borrow to pay tuition. But the decision affects how much they work outside class — and that affects their path through college.

Isaac Romero, 22, a third-year student at Long Beach City College, works a nearly 40-hour-per-week job with a workforce staffing company that has him on assignment at City Hall. He goes straight from there to class from roughly 4 until 9:40. Two bus rides later he gets home, often around midnight. Weekends are for homework.

He hopes to transfer next year, earn a bachelor’s degree and then attend graduate school. Someday he wants to teach at LBCC. He figures he’ll eventually have to borrow but wants to keep his debt as low as possible. So he ignores the loan solicitations that flood his mailbox.

“Life would be a little more comfortable if I did take some loans,” admits Romero. “I might have a car. I wouldn’t have to take the bus for two hours.” But, he remembers his father — both parents are now deceased — agonizing over bills. Several friends have had cars repossessed.

“I just don’t want to go through that,” he said.

Eloy Oakley, the president of LBCC, says he understands the source of debt aversion.

“The predatory lending we’ve had from private lenders, credit card companies, has scared students,” Oakley said. “I think they have a conception that all debt is bad. They’re concerned about that and rightfully so.”

But it’s so important to move students through community college expeditiously, he says, that he’s concluded debt aversion is a more dangerous problem overall than student debt.

“The longer they’re in school, the more opportunity they have to be distracted by life events, jobs, families, situations that change in their own families,” says Oakley, whose student body is 41 percent Hispanic and 16 percent Asian. “If we can minimize those exit points and shorten their time to degree, that’s much more advantageous to them.”

The solution is helping students better understand the complexities of financial aid: the difference between government and private loans, how much debt is manageable, the likely returns on various degrees and majors.

“It’s hard to get a nuanced message to students so they can act prudently and get their education,” Santiago said. “We have to show there’s a level of financial aid and loan amount that’s reasonable.”

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Online: http://bit.ly/u70NzV

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Justin Pope covers higher education for The Associated Press. You can reach him at twitter.com/jnn_pope97

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JOPLIN, Mo. – Two Joplin parents whose son was headed home from his high school graduation when he was sucked away by a deadly tornado are beginning to heal as they head into the first holiday season without him.

The Joplin Globe reported that (http://bit.ly/sF8llw) Mark and Trish Norton are trying not to think of their loss. Instead, they say, they are focused on how their community rallied together, the strength of their faith, the support of friends and family, and the kindness of strangers touched by their son’s story.

Will Norton’s body wasn’t found until five days after the May 22 tornado hit. The EF5 twister packed 200 mph winds and killed 161 people. During the search, the horrific story captivated the nation. The storm pulled Will Norton out of the family’s sport utility vehicle as his father tried to hold onto him.

“How could you be at graduation, one of the happiest days of your life, and then have a cloud come down out of nowhere and suck you up out of a car?” asks Trish Norton, Will’s mother, with a rueful shake of her head. “He wasn’t driving drunk. He wasn’t doing anything he wasn’t supposed to. … He was just coming home from graduation. Unfair.”

But six months later, Trish Norton said she has reached a turning point. She still grieves, but she wants to start greeting each day with the same attitude exhibited by her son.

“I’m a positive person, an outgoing person, and I don’t want to be sad any longer,” she says. “Will was very positive and did really awesome things for people. I’m trying to continue that tradition.”

Will Norton had a wide following on YouTube, racking up millions of hits on videos ranging from an informational piece about pet sugar gliders to chronicles of his travels. He had been accepted into the prestigious film program at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

The final post on his Twitter account came at 11 a.m. on the morning of May 22: “I’m graduating today!”

Will Norton rode home from graduation with his father, while his mother and sister, Sara, left a little earlier in a different vehicle so they could get ready for a reception planned at the family’s home.

His mom and sister had barely reached the family’s home when the electricity went off. Trish Norton recalled that her daughter was on the phone with her husband.

“He told her to hit the garage door because they would be coming in really quick,” Trish Norton said.

They never made it. More than 150 volunteers were involved in the search, and thousands of people followed the “Help Find Will Norton” Facebook page.

Mark Norton still walks with a limp, though it’s a miracle that he’s walking at all.

He had 17 broken bones, and rescue workers had to use the Jaws of Life to remove him from the wreckage of his battered vehicle.

Trish said her husband has thrown himself into his work. The manager of Great Southern Travel, he also owns Mark Norton Properties and is building an apartment complex on North Main Street.

“Most of our construction is high-end homes, but we’re building a 60-unit apartment complex,” he says. “We had the property out there near Airport Drive and felt like it was something we could do. There are so many people who need a place to live now. We’re getting ready to start leasing the first units.”

Trish and Mark Norton, who have lived in Joplin their entire lives, say watching the community rally after the tragedy has been heartening.

“You see what the people in this area are made of,” Mark Norton said. “The true spirit of Joplin comes out. We should all be proud of our community, the citizens, our leaders. Really remarkable things have happened.”

The kindness shown by friends and total strangers also has been a blessing to the family, Trish said. The first flowers the family members received in sympathy for their loss came from an Australian fan of Will’s YouTube videos.

“(Will’s) story went out everywhere,” she says. “I still get cards from people.”

More than 50,000 people still follow Will’s Facebook page, which Sara Norton continues to update with news from the family.

His memory also lives through a presidential scholarship created in his memory at Chapman University.

Plus, there’s a project under way to build a baseball field that will bear Will’s name for children with disabilities. Donations made through Rotary International are paying for the project; Mark is a Joplin Rotary member.

“Will always cared for people so much, and he would be happy that there was good coming out of this,” says Mark. “He would be proud that he left a legacy that will do so much good for other people. It’s a good feeling.”

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ADRIAN, Mo – A small public school district in Missouri said on Wednesday it will stop offering voluntary single-gender classes after it came under pressure from a civil liberties group that opposes them.

The Adrian R-III District became the latest school system to bow to pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, which claims that boy- and girl-only classes are unconstitutional unless they meet certain strict standards.

The ACLU had threatened legal action unless the classes were discontinued.

In a statement Wednesday, Steven Book, an attorney for the Adrian school system, said that while the district “does not necessarily agree with ACLU’s legal analysis or conclusions regarding research on this topic” it will accede to the group’s request.

On Tuesday, Book sent a letter to the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, promising to end most single-sex classes in January at the start of the next semester.

Adrian created some single-sex classes this year, mostly in grades 6 through 8 but also in higher grades, said Kirk Eidson, district superintendent. Eidson said administrators thought it would be in the best interest of the students’ education.

“There were some behavioral issues that impacted learning,” Eidson said. Indications are that the single-gender classes have created fewer distractions and that students are doing better, Eidson said.

The classes were initially set up without consulting parents. But parents were later allowed to move their children out of the single-sex classes — though only four did, Eidson said.

Schools across the country adopted single-sex classes in recent years after the U.S. Department of Education — spurred by research suggesting boys and girls sometimes learn better when taught separately — issued regulations allowing them.

But the ACLU and some researchers have challenged the scientific evidence behind the push and school systems in Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Wisconsin have recently set aside single-sex education plans at the ACLU’s urging.

Doug Bonney, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, welcomed Adrian’s decision to back down without a fight.

“The is just no scientific support for single-sex education,” Bonney said Wednesday. “It’s based on sex stereotypes that are ridiculous.”

The ACLU has pointed to a recent study in the journal Science which calls single-sex education “deeply misguided.” The article describes as “pseudoscience” studies used to support single-sex education.

Federal Title IX regulations require that single-sex classes “be based on specific identifiable objectives, must be completely voluntary and must ensure that a substantially equal co-educational option is available,” the ACLU stated in a letter it sent to the Adrian district on November 18.

In an interview, Bonney said private schools can continue to have single-sex classes without risking an ACLU challenge provided they do not receive federal funds for the courses.

(Editing by James B. Kelleher and Greg McCune)

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CHAPTICO, Md. – Authorities say 20 people have been treated at the hospital for injuries after a three-vehicle accident in southern Maryland involving a school bus full of students, a car and a truck whose driver has been charged with driving under the influence.

Maryland State Police say the accident happened Tuesday night when the bus carrying students from Great Mills High School, was returning from a girls’ basketball game in Colonial Beach, Va.

Seventeen occupants of the bus — the driver, another adult and 15 students — were taken by ambulance to the hospital. All were released. Two occupants of the car, including a 13-year-old girl, were also hospitalized.

The truck driver, John Patrick Kravats, 45, of Mechanicsville, was treated for minor injuries and arrested on a DUI charge.

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ORLANDO/TALLAHASSEE, Fla – Hazing may have been a factor in the death of a Florida college drum major following a popular football and marching band competition between two of the state’s historically black universities, authorities said on Tuesday.

Drum major Robert Champion, 26, died Saturday night after helping conduct the world-famous Florida A&M University’s Marching “100″ band during its halftime performance at the Florida Classic in Orlando. The school competes every year before a typically sold-out crowd against Bethune-Cookman University of Daytona Beach.

Witnesses said Champion, a music major from Atlanta who served as one of six drum majors for the 375-member Marching “100″ band, vomited and complained that he could not breathe in a band bus in the parking lot of an Orlando hotel after the game. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

“The investigation indicates that ‘hazing’ was involved in the events that occurred prior to the 911 call for assistance,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said in a statement.

Earlier on Tuesday, FAMU President James Ammons said in Tallahassee that the school would indefinitely suspend all activities of the marching band and would appoint a task force “to determine if there are any unauthorized and questionable activities associated with the culture of the Marching ’100.’”

“We don’t have all the facts at this time, but we are going to get them,” Ammons said. “Our first priority at Florida A&M University is to protect the safety, health and well being of our students, faculty and staff members.”

The Marching “100″ is renowned for its high-stepping, high-energy dance routines. The band was invited to perform at both of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s inaugural parades, and in Paris in 1989 at France’s Bastille Day Parade to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution.

Both the prestigious band and the university have faced hazing allegations in the past.

In 2001, a former FAMU marching band member won a $ 1.8 million verdict in a civil battery suit against five band members for a hazing incident in which he was beaten so badly his kidneys shut down. The student also settled out of court with FAMU for an undisclosed sum.

In 2005, Florida lawmakers bolstered penalties for hazing that resulted in great bodily injury or death. A year later, five Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity members at FAMU were charged under the new law for a hazing incident that left the victim needing surgery after being caned more than 90 times.

Two of the fraternity members were convicted and sentenced to two-year prison terms.

In the latest case involving the drum major, Orange County Sheriff’s Captain Angelo Nieves said further tests will be needed after the medical examiner’s autopsy of Champion on Monday was inconclusive as to the exact cause of death.

Nieves said the sheriff’s office was investigating both the death and hazing, and was conducting interviews at the FAMU campus in Tallahassee.

“In the next few days or weeks, it will become clearer as to whether any criminal charges will be forthcoming,” Sheriff Demings said. “Our goal is to ensure that a complete investigation is done and that justice will prevail.”

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Greg McCune)

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