Prometheus 6

Despite Gains, Charter School Is Told to Close
By TRIP GABRIEL

ALBANY — Accountability is a mantra of the charter school movement. Students sign pledges at some schools to do their homework, and teachers owe their jobs to students’ gains on tests.

But as New York State moves to shut down an 11-year-old charter school in Albany, whose test scores it acknowledges beat the city’s public schools last year, it is apparent that holding schools themselves accountable is not always so easy, or bloodless, as numbers on a page.

The principal, teachers and families of the New Covenant school have mounted a furious defense, citing rising achievement as well as their fears for the loss of a safe harbor from chaotic homes and streets, where teachers deliver homework to parents who are in jail to keep them involved, and the dean of students chases gang members from a nearby park.

“We’re that turnaround school America has been waiting to see,” said Jamil Hood, the dean, who grew up in the Arbor Hill neighborhood where the school is located.

Nonetheless, a trustees’ committee of the State University of New York, which grants the school’s charter, voted last month to close it. The committee endorsed the findings of state evaluators who said that despite academic gains, New Covenant fell short of a key benchmark in English, suffered from high student and teacher turnover and was not fiscally sound. The full 17-member SUNY board will decide the school’s fate on Tuesday.

At issue is the routine use of suspensions not just for weapons or drugs but also for profanity, defiant behavior, pushing matches and other acts that used to be handled with a visit to the principal’s office or detention. Such lesser violations now account for most of the 3.3 million annual suspensions of public school students. That total includes a sharp racial imbalance: poor black students are suspended at three times the rate of whites, a disparity not fully explained by differences in income or behavior....

At issue is the routine use of suspensions not just for weapons or drugs but also for profanity, defiant behavior, pushing matches and other acts that used to be handled with a visit to the principal’s office or detention. Such lesser violations now account for most of the 3.3 million annual suspensions of public school students. That total includes a sharp racial imbalance: poor black students are suspended at three times the rate of whites, a disparity not fully explained by differences in income or behavior....

A growing body of research, scholars say, suggests that heavy use of suspensions does less to pacify schools than to push already troubled students toward academic failure and dropping out — and sometimes into what critics have called the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

School Suspensions Lead to Legal Challenge
By ERIK ECKHOLM

CHOCOWINITY, N.C. — As school let out one day in January 2008, students from rival towns faced off. Two girls flailed away for several seconds and clusters of boys pummeled each other until teachers pulled them apart.

The fistfights at Southside High School involved no weapons and no serious injuries, and in some ways seemed as old-fashioned as the country roads here in eastern North Carolina. But the punishment was strictly up-to-date: Sheriff’s deputies handcuffed and briefly arrested a dozen students. The school suspended seven of them for a short period and six others from the melee, including the two girls, for the entire semester.

As extra punishment, the girls were told they could not attend Beaufort County’s alternative school for troubled students and were denied aid to study at home.

Their punishment was typical of the get-tough, “zero tolerance” discipline policies that swept the nation over the last two decades, resulting in an increase in suspensions that are disproportionate among black students. School officials here say they acted to preserve a “safe and orderly environment.”

But whether banishing children from schools really makes them safer or serves the community well is increasingly questioned by social scientists and educators. And now the punishment is before the courts in what has become a stark legal test of the approach. Lawyers for the girls — who are black — say that denying them a semester’s schooling was an unjustified violation of their constitutional right to an education.

The case will be argued on Monday in the North Carolina Supreme Court and has drawn the attention of civil rights, legal aid and education groups around the country.

National School Standards, at Last

The countries that have left the United States behind in math and science education have one thing in common: They offer the same high education standards — often the same curriculum — from one end of the nation to the other. The United States relies on a generally mediocre patchwork of standards that vary, not just from state to state, but often from district to district. A child’s education depends primarily on ZIP code.

That could eventually change if the states adopt the new rigorous standards proposed last week by the National Governors Association and a group representing state school superintendents. The proposal lays out clear, ambitious goals for what children should learn year to year and could change curriculums, tests and teacher training.

The standards, based on intensive research, reflect what students must know to succeed at college and to find good jobs in the 21st century. They are internationally benchmarked, which means that they emulate the expectations of high-performing school systems abroad.

Texas Approves Curriculum Revised by Conservatives
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday voted to approve a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 11 to 4, with 10 Republicans and one Democrat voting for the curriculum, and four Democrats voting against.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has been diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

And what do you think will be the result of all this?

Many Dallas-Fort Worth graduates struggle in college
BY HOLLY K. HACKER / The Dallas Morning News
hhacker@dallasnews.com

They passed their TAKS exit exams and collected their high school diplomas – yet a troubling number of Texas students struggle their first year in college.

At some North Texas high schools, half or more of graduates who go to college earn less than a C average their first year, based on a Dallas Morning News analysis of state data....At Dallas' School for the Talented & Gifted (TAG), ranked tops by Newsweek for students taking lots of Advanced Placement exams, five of 12 graduates made less than a C average at a four-year college.

The New York Times is running a blog called Guidance Office which is running a series on HBCUs his week. It ends tomorrow and is an interesting read in light of this.

Opportunity Adrift: Our Flagship Universities Are Straying From Their Public Mission*

Public flagship and research universities spend millions of dollars every year to aid wealthy students who don't need it, while providing inadequate support to low-income and minority students who do. Some flagships are stepping up to the challenge and focusing on access and success. An account of their performance and progress appears at the end of this report.

These and other experiences left her increasingly disaffected from the choice and accountability movements. Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself.

“Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools,” she writes. “The effort to upend American public education and replace it with something that was market-based began to feel too radical for me.”...

In her new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” she describes the bipartisan consensus that took root in the early 1990s, with her support, and has held sway since.

“The new thinking saw the public school system as obsolete, because it is controlled by the government,” she writes. “I argued that certain managerial and structural changes — that is, choice, charters, merit pay and accountability — would help to reform our schools.”

Scholar’s School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate
By SAM DILLON

Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.

Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.

“School reform today is like a freight train, and I’m out on the tracks saying, ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ ” Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.

Dr. Ravitch is one of the most influential education scholars of recent decades, and her turnaround has become the buzz of school policy circles.

“What’s Diane up to? That’s what people are asking.” said Grover J. Whitehurst, who was the director of the Department of Education’s research arm in the second Bush administration and is now Dr. Ravitch’s colleague at the Brookings Institution.

Among the topics on which Dr. Ravitch has reversed her views is the main federal law on public schools, No Child Left Behind, which is up for a rewrite in coming weeks in Congress. She once supported it, but now says its requirements for testing in math and reading have squeezed vital subjects like history and art out of classrooms.

Dr. Ravitch’s new posture has angered critics.

“She has done more than any one I can think of in America to drive home the message of accountability and charters and testing,” said Arthur E. Levine, a former president of Teachers College, where Dr. Ravitch got her doctorate and began her teaching career in the 1970s. “Now for her to suddenly conclude that she’s been all wrong is extraordinary — and not very helpful.”

Xerox’s New Chief Tries to Redefine Its Culture is about Ursula M. Burns, the C.E.O.of Xerox, the first Black woman C.E.O. of a major American corporation, and the first woman to succeed another woman in the top job at a company of that size. It's a puff piece, but there's a couple of things that caught my eye

In 1989, she was invited to a work-life discussion. Diversity initiatives came up, and somebody asked whether such initiatives lowered hiring standards. Wayland Hicks, a senior Xerox executive running the meeting, patiently explained that that was not true.

“I was stunned,” Ms. Burns recalls. “I actually told him, ‘I was surprised that you gave this assertion any credence.’ “ After the meeting, she revisited the issue with Mr. Hicks, and a few weeks later he asked her to meet with him in his office. She figured that she was about to be reprimanded or fired.

Instead, Mr. Hicks told her she had been right to be concerned but also wrong for handling it so forcefully. Then he told her he wanted to meet regularly with her.

...Mr. Allaire wanted to see her in his office. She figured that it was not good news. But Mr. Allaire wanted to poach her from Mr. Hicks, so she could be his executive assistant.

They, too, would talk about leadership during down time. He didn’t want to discourage her candor, but, like Mr. Hicks, he offered tips about how to be more effective — “like giving people credit for ideas that they didn’t have, but you sold to them, to give them ownership,” Mr. Allaire recalls advising her.

These were extraordinarily valuable lessons for someone in Corporate America...lessons most Black folk never get. I got them indirectly...when I was first promoted from lead clerk to supervisor, I worked for a company whose policy was to send such folks to management class. This gave me two understandings from which I extrapolated what Ms. Burns was explicitly told. First was the definition of management as getting people to voluntarily do what you want them to do. Second, and most critical, was the concept of managing upward, downward and horizontally.

Of course management isn't the same thing as leadership. Leadership (in corporate terms) is management in advance of need. If no one does that, leadership becomes extinguishing everyone's pants and getting things back to where you can lead and manage. That requires power, position and belief by the hierarchy...in the hierarchy if not in you.

In its 129-year history, Emerson has awarded tenure to only three Black professors, but two of them — professors Mike Brown and Claire Andrade-Watkins — had to sue the college, alleging racial discrimination.

Black Professor Denied Tenure at Emerson Vindicated by Report
by Arelis Hernandez, February 16, 2010

After six years of living and working in the greater Boston area, Pierre Desir’s transient life began to settle down just a few years ago. He moved into a sun-lit loft spacious enough for the artist to practice his hand at sculpting and woodwork, while developing the film curriculum at Emerson College.

Filled with optimism, Desir relished laying permanent roots at the communication arts school when he applied for tenure in the 2008 spring semester. Sure of his work, the 62-year-old Black man’s sanguine disposition soured after his application for tenure was rejected on the basis of what he determined to be racial discrimination.

The news began to spread of the tenure dismissal of Desir and a colleague, Roger House — both Black males — reaching the local NAACP chapter and resulting in an Emerson faculty committee calling for an independent review of Emerson’s tenure practices and policies. Earlier this month, the college released a report produced by an independent panel that found fault with Emerson’s tenure process.

“It is not intended, but it’s the result of patterns that perpetuate forms of discrimination,” Ted Landsmark, a civil rights activist and president of Boston Architectural College, who headed the panel, told The Boston Globe.

You show me  picture of the inside of my house that wasn't taken by a family member or guest, I'm beating you down before I find out anything else.

The suit also claims the district's use of the webcams amounted to an invasion of privacy and that any intercepted images could show "images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various states of undress."

Doug Young, spokesman for the Lower Merion School District, said all 2,290 high school students in the district had been issued Apple laptops.

Suit: School-issued laptops used to spy on kids on Main Line
By Sam Wood

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Lower Merion School District officials used school-issued laptop computers to illegally spy on students, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

The suit, filed Feb. 11, says unnamed school officials at Harriton High School in Rosemont remotely activated the webcam on a student's computer last year because the district believed he "was engaged in improper behavior in his home."

An assistant principal at Harriton confronted the student for "improper behavior" on Nov. 11 and cited a photograph taken by the webcam as evidence.

Michael E. and Holly S. Robbins, of Penn Valley, filed the suit on behalf of their son.

They are seeking class action status for the suit.

At Bronx Vocational School, Concern Over Plan for Charter
By SHARON OTTERMAN

Citing academic failures, the city has proposed closing the construction trade program at Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School, a 78-year-old vocational school in the South Bronx.

But the school the Department of Education plans to put in place of the program, the 18-month-old New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, has had its own issues. Its founder is facing federal charges that he embezzled from a nonprofit company. Thirty percent of the students left after the first year, as did most of the teachers. And despite its name, it has no experience running hands-on vocational programs.

Supporters of Smith, the Bronx’s only high school with state-approved construction trade programs, fear its technical shops will suffer under the charter school’s management and wonder why the city would eliminate an established school only to put an untested school in its place.

“What we offer disadvantaged students in the Bronx is a route to the middle class, to job security through a trade,” said René Cassanova, Smith’s principal. From a vocational standpoint, she said, the charter school “is a fake.”

Students who pass the CRCT only because of falsified scores miss extra tutoring available to those who fail. Perdue said systems that were flagged as suspicious will be expected to offer such services to children who should have received them.

The validity of the CRCT is crucial for one of the governor’s major initiatives this year: a plan to tie teachers’ pay to student performance, partly based on test scores.

Suspicious test scores widespread in state
Findings follow more than a year of AJC reporting about CRCT results
By Heather Vogell  and John Perry
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
4:37 a.m. Thursday, February 11, 2010

One in five Georgia public schools faces accusations of tampering with student answers on last spring’s state standardized tests, officials said Wednesday, throwing the state’s main academic measure into turmoil.

The Atlanta district is home to 58 of the 191 schools statewide that are likely to undergo investigations into potential cheating. Another 178 schools will probably see new test security mandates, such as stepped-up monitoring during testing.

The findings singled out 69 percent of Atlanta elementary and middle schools — far more than any other district — as needing formal probes into possible tampering.

Wednesday, Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall said the new findings do not prove scores were falsified. The district will investigate, she said.

“I’m concerned with the number of schools and convinced we should do a detailed analysis to get to the bottom of this,” said Hall.

After a more limited state testing probe that named an Atlanta school last year, Gov. Sonny Perdue said Hall ignored strong evidence of cheating.

Lobbyists and Student

The private lending companies that earn billions of dollars in undeserved profits from the federal student loan program are working overtime to kill a bill that would stop their gravy train once and for all — and should have been enacted long ago. The House stood up to the powerful lending lobby last fall and passed a student loan reform bill. The White House has been pushing the Senate, but it is having trouble finding its spine and has yet to introduce a bill.

The House version phases out the wasteful part of the federal college lending program that pays private lenders a rich subsidy to make risk-free loans that are guaranteed by the government. The bill also expands another, more reliable and less expensive federal loan program that permits students to borrow directly from the government through their colleges.

The arguments for moving in this direction are irrefutable. The subsidized program, for example, was supposed to keep loans flowing during recessions. But the loans dried up in the last credit crunch, forcing the government to rescue the program. The direct program, by contrast, suffered no such disruption. In addition to being more reliable, the direct program costs less. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the country could save about $80 billion over the next decade by ending the private system and moving to the direct one.

“Last year, half our early-college high schools had zero dropouts, and that’s just unprecedented for North Carolina, where only 62 percent of our high school students graduate after four years,” said Tony Habit, president of the North Carolina New Schools Project, the nonprofit group spearheading the state’s high school reform.

In addition, North Carolina’s early-college high school students are getting slightly better grades in their college courses than their older classmates.

For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw
By TAMAR LEWIN

RAEFORD, N.C. — Precious Holt, a 12th grader with dangly earrings and a SpongeBob pillow, climbs on the yellow school bus and promptly falls asleep for the hour-plus ride to Sandhills Community College.

When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home.

There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years — completely free.

Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students — a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.

Here, and at North Carolina’s other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.

“We don’t want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu,” said Lakisha Rice, the principal. “We want the ones who need our kind of small setting.”

The undergraduate student body president, Connor Diemand-Yauman, a senior from Chesterland, Ohio, said: “I had complaints from students who said that their professors handed back exams and told them, ‘I wanted to give 10 of you A’s, but because of the policy, I could only give five A’s.’ When students hear that, an alarm goes off.”

It should...because you're dealing with professors that are either afraid of, or tired of, having confrontations with students and parents.

Type-A-Plus Students Chafe at Grade Deflation
By LISA W. FODERARO

When Princeton University set out six years ago to corral galloping grade inflation by putting a lid on A’s, many in academia lauded it for taking a stand on a national problem and predicted that others would follow.

But the idea never took hold beyond Princeton’s walls, and so its bold vision is now running into fierce resistance from the school’s Type-A-plus student body.

With the job market not what it once was, even for Ivy Leaguers, Princetonians are complaining that the campaign against bulked-up G.P.A.’s may be coming at their expense.

“The nightmare scenario, if you will, is that you apply with a 3.5 from Princeton and someone just as smart as you applies with a 3.8 from Yale,” said Daniel E. Rauch, a senior from Millburn, N.J. [P6: Dude, you're ging to have that scenario if the Yale grad had the same G.P.A. as you. Remember your place in the hierarchy.]

Multiculturalism and Diversity
A Social Psychological Perspective
Bernice Lott

This is an undergraduate level textbook. As such it does a good job introducing the concepts of multiculturalism and diversity as studied by academia to those who need such an introduction...a large enough group that one could become disheartened considering it. It's a fairly short book, 127 pages plus 36 pages of references, but a fairly dense book as well. Being a book of psychology it gives the sociological ground it covers a slightly different flavor than I am accustomed to, and I had to search out the reason for that difference because it's not in the data Prof. Lott presents.

Except maybe that while California was done in by citizens initiatives, New York fell at the hands of professionals. All that money generated by Wall Street and due to corporate welfare and such, we still are broke. One cannot help but speculate on criminality.

But New York is avoiding harsher medicine. Mr. Paterson has made no significant cuts to the state’s workforce and even made assurances to union leaders that he would not seek layoffs this year, a risky move as the state faces huge deficits in the coming years.

Paterson Budget Seeks $1 Billion More in Taxes and Fees
By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson proposed on Tuesday what would be the largest cut to school aid in more than two decades and nearly $1 billion in new or increased taxes and fees as he unveiled his budget, a plan that is sure to touch off fierce opposition in the Legislature.

Scouring for new sources of tax revenue amid a fiscal crisis, the governor is also proposing to legalize ultimate fighting, allow the sale of wine in grocery stores, tax cigarette sales on Indian reservations and deploy speed-enforcement cameras in highway work zones. He even proposes to begin charging fees to many families that enroll in an early intervention program for children with autism, attention deficit disorder and other special needs, and to delay one of his own signature achievements — a plan to increase monthly welfare allowances.

The boy’s parents, Delton Pugh and Elizabeth Taylor, have argued that it is unfair to punish Taylor for his longish locks; it suggests, they say, that the district cares more about appearances than education.

They ARE educating the child, teaching him an important lesson which is who, exactly, is in charge 'round these here parts. Plus I suspect they think he's causing gender confusion in the other kids.

Boy, 4, Chooses Long Locks and Is Suspended From Class
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

HOUSTON — A suburban Dallas school district has suspended a 4-year-old from his prekindergarten class because he wears his hair too long and does not want his parents to cut it.

The boy, Taylor Pugh, says he likes his hair long and curly. But on Monday night, the school board in Mesquite voted unanimously to enforce its ban on Beatles haircuts, much less anything approaching coiffures of bands like Led Zeppelin. School officials say the district’s dress code serves to limit distractions in the classroom.

No exception could be made for the pint-size rebel, who sat through the hearing with his hair in a ponytail, manifestly bored.

“It’s a trade-off,” said one board member, Gary Bingham, an insurance agent, in an interview. “Do the parents value his education more than they value a 4-year-old’s decision to make his own grooming choices?”

To Lead Schools, Christie Picks Voucher Advocate
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

TRENTON — The man once described by teachers’ union leaders as “the antithesis of everything we hold sacred about public education” was chosen to serve as state education commissioner by Governor-elect Christopher J. Christie on Wednesday.

The nomination of Bret D. Schundler to the post underscored the governor’s determination to press ahead with his push for school vouchers, more charter schools and merit pay for teachers.

Beverly Hills Blocks Outside Students
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — In a contentious meeting ringed by police officers, the Beverly Hills school board voted Tuesday night to dismiss roughly 470 students enrolled in its schools on out-of-district permits.

The school system there has long opened its doors to students who live outside the district — currently about one in seven of its roughly 4,800 students — in large part because they brought a financial windfall. But now, because cash-poor California has reduced local support to schools, including the reimbursements for out-of-district students, the so-called permit students are more of a burden to the schools than a boon.

Beverly Hills will soon use property tax dollars to finance its schools to replace money lost from the state. So the board voted to notify most of the out-of-district students that they must go.

Public flagship and research universities spend millions of dollars every year to aid wealthy students who don’t need it, while providing inadequate support to low-income and minority students who do. Some flagships are stepping up to the challenge and focusing on access and success. An account of their performance and progress appears at the end of this report.

Download: Opportunity Adrift().pdf

Download: Opportunity Adrift Technical Appendix.pdf

America’s Most Prestigious Public Universities Are Decreasing Representation of Low-Income Students and Spending More Institutional Aid on Students From Wealthier Families

As more low-income and minority students turn to college, many of our nation’s top public universities are turning away from them

WASHINGTON (January 13, 2010) – Right now, Congress is working to pass legislation that would increase the amount of federal financial aid awarded to low-income students to help them attend college. But efforts on Capitol Hill to make college more affordable are being undermined by a very different set of priorities at some of our nation’s most prestigious public universities.

According to “Opportunity Adrift,” published today by The Education Trust, public research-extensive universities distribute hundreds of millions of their own precious financial aid dollars to affluent students who have no financial need whatsoever, while providing inadequate support to needy students who depend on it. As college costs skyrocket and a degree becomes more essential to compete in the job market, the total amount of institutional grant aid spent on students whose parents earn at least $115,000 per year grew from $282.5 million in 2003 to $361.4 million in 2007, an increase of 28 percent.

Such an increase might not be so troubling if the needs of lower income students were fully met first. But the typical low-income student at these institutions is left with an “unmet” financial need equivalent to about 70 percent of his or her family’s annual income. It’s no surprise, then, that students in both the entering and graduating classes at our leading public universities are looking less and less like the state populations these institutions were founded to serve.

"Too many flagship institutions are literally turning their backs on academically qualified low-income and minority students in favor of the children of the elite," said Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust. "In some states, the top-ranked private university is now more diverse than the public flagship. It’s almost as if some of America’s best public colleges have forgotten that they are, in fact, public."

States Lower Test Standards for a High School Diploma
By IAN URBINA

A law adopting statewide high school exams for graduation took effect in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with the goal of ensuring that students leaving high school are prepared for college and the workplace. But critics say the requirement has been so watered down that it is unlikely to have major impact.

The situation in Pennsylvania mirrors what has happened in many of the 26 states that have adopted high school exit exams. As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma.

People who have studied the exams, which affect two-thirds of the nation’s public school students, say they often fall short of officials’ ambitious goals.

Promises and Facts on Charter Schools

Proponents initially argued that charter schools could provide a better education because they were allowed to operate independently. But the research has turned up mixed results. To ensure that this new money goes only to operators with proven records of success, Mr. Duncan will need to be guided by well-designed studies like the one being carried out by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

The center startled many education specialists last summer with a report that showed that a large number of charter schools are failing to deliver on their promises. It compared the performance of charter schools and traditional schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia and found that only about 17 percent of charters offered students a better education than traditional schools — and that 37 percent were worse.

A new study from the center has turned up a brighter picture in New York City, where students at more than half of the charter schools are showing more academic improvement in math than their traditional-school counterparts. The reading numbers were not as strong, but still nearly 30 percent of charters outperformed traditional schools....

The success of high-quality charter schools in places like New York supports Mr. Duncan’s view that charters can play an important role in efforts to reform the country’s flawed education system — but only if they are closely monitored and held to high standards.

Isn't that monitoring exactly what charter schools were created to escape from? And what if you had monitored and held public schools to the same high standards?

This is privatization of the school systems, and the results will be just as bad as when we privatized utilities, communications, airlines and such.

Southern Schools Mark Two Majorities
By SHAILA DEWAN

ATLANTA — The South has become the first region in the country where more than half of public school students are poor and more than half are members of minorities, according to a new report.

The shift was fueled not by white flight from public schools, which spiked during desegregation but has not had much effect on school demographics since the early 1980s. Rather, an influx of Latinos and other ethnic groups, the return of blacks to the South and higher birth rates among black and Latino families have contributed to the change.

The new numbers, from the 2008-9 school year, are a milestone for the South, “the only section of the United States where racial slavery, white supremacy and racial segregation of schools were enforced through law and social custom,” said the report, to be released on Thursday by the Southern Education Foundation, a nonprofit group based here that supports education improvement in the region. [P6: Every other region in the country merely approved of racial slavery, while white supremacy and racial segregation of schools were enforced through law and custom. The South was just ahead of the curve.] But the numbers also herald the future of the country as a whole, as minority students are expected to exceed 50 percent of public school enrollment by 2020 and the share of students poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches is on the rise in every state.

“Freedom Summer is the odd civic experience, and hardly representative of what happens when young people do service,” he said. “A lot of the impact of any experience is where it’s historically situated.”

“Back in the ’60s, if you signed up for Freedom Summer, it was perceived to be countercultural,” said Professor Reich, who taught sixth grade in Houston as a member of the Teach for America corps. “But unlike doing Freedom Summer, joining Teach for America is part of climbing up the elite ladder — it’s part of joining the system, the meritocracy.”

Gauging the Dedication of Teacher Corps Grads
By AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS

Teach for America, a corps of recent college graduates who sign up to teach in some of the nation’s most troubled schools, has become a campus phenomenon, drawing huge numbers of applicants willing to commit two years of their lives.

But a new study has found that their dedication to improving society at large does not necessarily extend beyond their Teach for America service.

In areas like voting, charitable giving and civic engagement, graduates of the program lag behind those who were accepted but declined and those who dropped out before completing their two years, according to Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford University, who conducted the study with a colleague, Cynthia Brandt.

Making College ‘Relevant’
By KATE ZERNIKE

THOMAS COLLEGE, a liberal arts school in Maine, advertises itself as Home of the Guaranteed Job! Students who can’t find work in their fields within six months of graduation can come back to take classes free, or have the college pay their student loans for a year.

The University of Louisiana, Lafayette, is eliminating its philosophy major, while Michigan State University is doing away with American studies and classics, after years of declining enrollments in those majors.

And in a class called “The English Major in the Workplace,” at the University of Texas, Austin, students read “Death of a Salesman” but also learn to network, write a résumé and come off well in an interview.

Even before they arrive on campus, students — and their parents — are increasingly focused on what comes after college. What’s the return on investment, especially as the cost of that investment keeps rising? How will that major translate into a job?

The pressure on institutions to answer those questions is prompting changes from the admissions office to the career center. But even as they rush to prove their relevance, colleges and universities worry that students are specializing too early, that they are so focused on picking the perfect major that they don’t allow time for self-discovery, much less late blooming.