rudy crew, the educator who ran new york city’s and once that miami’s public school systems other then was forced away from each positions amid political clashes, has also been named just like the new president of medgar evers college, a predominantly black college within the town university of recent york system.
cuny’s board of trustees approved the appointment unanimously on monday.
within the statement, benno schmidt, the board’s chairman, and matthew goldstein, cuny’s departing chancellor, praised dr. crew’s “exemplary record of tutorial, administrative and governmental accomplishment, combined with classroom experience and a powerful commitment to students. ” he is going to help the college “achieve new levels of excellence” and “strengthen its role in the community, ” these same.
dr. crew, 62, whose appointment takes effect on aug. a regular on a salary to remain determined, came to national prominence throughout four tumultuous years in new york town, leading the country’s largest public school system. he was credited with winning bigger management within the appointment of native superintendents, with ending tenure for principals, and with halting the follow of promoting failing students.
other then he was less able to raising the city’s standardized take a look at scores and in handling the political challenges of operating obtain a strong-willed mayor. he and rudolph w. giuliani usually clashed, most notably as regards to school vouchers, that the mayor advocated other then that dr. crew wouldn't support.
in 1999, the city’s board of education, within the shut vote along partisan lines, set to not renew his contract. william c. thompson jr., the board president with the time and now a candidate for mayor, popularly known as ouster “a recipe for disaster for that school system. ”
in miami, dr. crew seized management as out to the city’s most troubled schools and offered teachers money incentives to labor in them, winning a few victories, furthermore as a brand new contract but a raise.
other then amid state budget cuts the difficulties mounted. a series of racially charged episodes — one within which his staff members accused a state legislator of referring to dr. crew with racial epithets, another within which former staff members accused him of discrimination — overshadowed his successes. relations got therefore strained that dr. crew loudly accused one member as out to the miami-dade county school board of actually talking to him “like a dog. ”
dr. crew’s latest position was just like the first chief education officer of oregon. this month, when he emerged being a contender for our medgar evers job, he told a reporter for our oregonian that dr. goldstein had contacted him concerning the job.
medgar evers college, in crown heights, brooklyn, that was named after the slain civil rights leader and founded within the spirit of idealism, has faced varied challenges. its most recent president resigned in january, after protracted conflicts with students and faculty and 2 no-confidence votes against his administration. cuny has invested new resources within the college, that offers associate and baccalaureate degrees, as well as a $235 million tutorial building.
in november, the dead center states commission on higher education warned medgar evers to the point it was in danger of losing its accreditation.
by : ariel kaminer
Saturday 29 June 2013
U.S. Standards For School Snacks Move Beyond Cafeteria To Fight Obesity
the agriculture department on thursday effectively banned the sale of snack foods like candy, cookies and sugary drinks, together with sports drinks, in schools, creating it tougher for students to avoid the now-healthier school meals by eating snacks sold in vending machines.
“parents and schools work exhausting to provide our youngsters the opportunity to become old healthy and robust, and providing healthy choices through school cafeterias, vending machines and snack bars can support their nice efforts, ” tom vilsack, the agriculture secretary, same because we are part of a statement.
the new rules were needed under the healthy, hunger-free kids act, that was passed by congress in 2010 with broad bipartisan support. the law, supported by michelle obama and drafted with an unusual level of cooperation between nutrition advocates and of course the food business, needed the agriculture department to line nutritional standards for many foods sold in schools.
the department had previously set the standards for fats, sugars and sodium in meals ready in schools, and of course the new rules bring other foods under similar standards. when schools open in the autumn of 2014, vending machines can really need to be stocked with stuff like whole wheat crackers, granola bars and dried fruits, rather than m&ms, cheese nips and gummy bears.
“by teaching and modeling healthy eating habits to kids in school, these rules can encourage higher eating habits over a lifetime, ” same margo wootan, director of nutrition policy with the center for science within the whole public interest, that worked inside the legislation. “they mean we aren’t teaching nutrition within the whole classroom then undercutting what we’re teaching when kids eat within the whole cafeteria or obtain food direct from school vending machines. ”
health advocates are arranging the same approach to curb the consumption of fatty, sugary and salty foods that they actually did to scale back smoking : educating kids within the whole hopes that they'll become old healthier and probably pass along healthy eating behavior for their oldsters.
ms. wootan same she was pleased that the rules would forestall the sale of sugary sports drinks like gatorade in high schools. the drinks have already been withdrawn from elementary and middle schools, however ms. wootan same teenagers mistakenly assume such drinks are healthier than sodas. “all they actually are could be a sugary drink with added salt, ” she same.
a few republicans were essential as out to the new rules. representative lee terry, a republican from nebraska, tweeted his opposition making use of hashtag “nannystate” and writing “rip tater tots. ” schools might in all probability sell tater tots, a hash-brown potato nugget made by ore-ida, if they actually were baked rather than fried.
schools and big food and beverage corporations are hoping to improve the nutritional quality of food sold in educational establishments for a few time. the american beverage association, that lobbies on behalf as out to the beverage manufacturers, noted that its members had already reduced the calories in drinks who may be shipped to schools by ninety %.
the grocery manufacturers association, that represents big food corporations, applauded the new rules, though it same it'd always encourage the agriculture department to phase them in gradually.
by : stephanie strom
“parents and schools work exhausting to provide our youngsters the opportunity to become old healthy and robust, and providing healthy choices through school cafeterias, vending machines and snack bars can support their nice efforts, ” tom vilsack, the agriculture secretary, same because we are part of a statement.
the new rules were needed under the healthy, hunger-free kids act, that was passed by congress in 2010 with broad bipartisan support. the law, supported by michelle obama and drafted with an unusual level of cooperation between nutrition advocates and of course the food business, needed the agriculture department to line nutritional standards for many foods sold in schools.
the department had previously set the standards for fats, sugars and sodium in meals ready in schools, and of course the new rules bring other foods under similar standards. when schools open in the autumn of 2014, vending machines can really need to be stocked with stuff like whole wheat crackers, granola bars and dried fruits, rather than m&ms, cheese nips and gummy bears.
“by teaching and modeling healthy eating habits to kids in school, these rules can encourage higher eating habits over a lifetime, ” same margo wootan, director of nutrition policy with the center for science within the whole public interest, that worked inside the legislation. “they mean we aren’t teaching nutrition within the whole classroom then undercutting what we’re teaching when kids eat within the whole cafeteria or obtain food direct from school vending machines. ”
health advocates are arranging the same approach to curb the consumption of fatty, sugary and salty foods that they actually did to scale back smoking : educating kids within the whole hopes that they'll become old healthier and probably pass along healthy eating behavior for their oldsters.
ms. wootan same she was pleased that the rules would forestall the sale of sugary sports drinks like gatorade in high schools. the drinks have already been withdrawn from elementary and middle schools, however ms. wootan same teenagers mistakenly assume such drinks are healthier than sodas. “all they actually are could be a sugary drink with added salt, ” she same.
a few republicans were essential as out to the new rules. representative lee terry, a republican from nebraska, tweeted his opposition making use of hashtag “nannystate” and writing “rip tater tots. ” schools might in all probability sell tater tots, a hash-brown potato nugget made by ore-ida, if they actually were baked rather than fried.
schools and big food and beverage corporations are hoping to improve the nutritional quality of food sold in educational establishments for a few time. the american beverage association, that lobbies on behalf as out to the beverage manufacturers, noted that its members had already reduced the calories in drinks who may be shipped to schools by ninety %.
the grocery manufacturers association, that represents big food corporations, applauded the new rules, though it same it'd always encourage the agriculture department to phase them in gradually.
by : stephanie strom
Friday 28 June 2013
Inspired by Collins, a High School Coach Comes Out
When the soccer player Robbie Rogers and the N.B.A. center Jason Collins recently came out as gay professional athletes, it was hailed by many as a historic time. Barriers had been broken. Attitudes in pro sports locker rooms were being changed.
One of the less obvious ramifications of the revelations, though, was a trickle-down effect that Rogers’s and Collins’s decisions had on gay sports figures at the lower levels. In the latest example, Anthony Nicodemo, the boys’ basketball coach at Saunders High School in Yonkers, said Tuesday that Collins’s choice to come out as gay ultimately helped him decide to discuss his own sexuality with his players and their families in a meeting this week.
“What Jason Collins did was allow a conversation to be opened,” Nicodemo said in an interview. “That day, I went into study hall, and we had a 45-minute conversation about it. ‘How would you feel if one of your teammates came out?’ It was really important stuff, and I was blown away by how they reacted.”
He added: “It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them right then. I almost did. But it just didn’t feel right. I wanted to let them process.”
Instead, Nicodemo waited until Monday, and his decision was highlighted in a feature on Outsports, a Web site that covers the intersection of gays and sports. Cyd Zeigler, a founder of the site, wrote the article on Nicodemo and he said that Nicodemo’s experience was not unusual; one of the most important aspects of more pro athletes coming out, Zeigler said, is the effect it has on athletes and coaches who are far from the spotlight.
“Look, there are maybe 6,000 athletes playing in professional sports leagues,” Zeigler said. “There are 7.5 million athletes playing high school sports. What’s going on in high schools and elementary schools is far more important and impactful than the battle with homophobia in pro sports. Jason Collins and Robbie Rogers — this aspect of what they did is absolutely critical.”
Donna Nolan, whose elder son played for Nicodemo previously and whose younger son is currently on the team, said she had no inkling what Nicodemo was going to say when she walked into the meeting. She said reaction from parents at the meeting was overwhelmingly supportive — as was the response from school administrators — and added that there was an immediate discussion about how to handle the situation if an opposing player or parent makes insensitive comments to Nicodemo next season.
“You’re always going to have people out there who are bigots; it’s inevitable,” Nolan said. “We’re from Yonkers; whenever we go anywhere, people are already looking at us funny because we’re from Yonkers. So we know there will be comments. And we told the kids that as hard as it is going to be, we’re going to be the bigger people. It’s part of life.”
Nolan also said that although she understood parents who might prefer that adults in position of authority not speak to children about their sexuality at all — gay or straight — she did not believe Nicodemo had crossed any lines.
“I see that, but it’s not like he’s sitting with them and talking about what he does in his private life,” she said. “He’s not having a conversation with them about what he does on a Friday night. He’s just telling them, this is who I am. And for someone who preaches honesty, that’s important.”
Nicodemo, 35, said he was torn about coming out for years. He told members of his family at different points, but he did not tell his players or anyone else connected with basketball, which has always been his passion.
As a child, Nicodemo said, he was a typical athlete growing up in Brewster, N.Y. He loved sports and, even as he battled confusion and conflicting feelings about his sexuality, he did his best to try to be part of the gang.
“I was a part of the locker room stuff,” he said. “I definitely used words that I shouldn’t have, but when you’re growing up and you’re in denial, you’ll do anything to try and fit in. I just didn’t want to be seen as different.”
Nicodemo began coaching as a volunteer shortly after he graduated high school and has spent the past 16 years on various sidelines at a variety of levels, including a stint as an assistant at Plymouth State, an N.C.A.A. Division III program in New Hampshire.
He arrived at Saunders in 2009 and reinvigorated the program there while also working as a social studies teacher in a neighboring school district. In his first two seasons, the team was 9-29 (which actually represented considerable progress); in each of the past two years, Saunders has had a winning record and played host to a playoff game.
As a coach, Nicodemo was delighted; as a person, though, he was beginning to feel the strain of hiding a significant piece of his identity. He grew weary of worrying that he would be spotted a certain bar in New York or that someone would tag him in a picture on Facebook that would reveal he had lied about who he was spending his time with.
When friends would try to set him up on dates with women, Nicodemo constantly begged out, blaming his commitment to coaching. Each night, he said, he watches at least one game film before bed. He has always been that way.
“My line was always, ‘I’m married to basketball,’ ” he said. “And I guess that it’s partly true. But I wasn’t being honest.”
When Collins came out, writing a first-person article in Sports Illustrated that appeared on the magazine’s Web site April 29, Nicodemo saw an opening. He said he was pleased with how his players reacted during the study-hall discussion on the topic, reinforcing the idea in his mind that they would be able to handle it if he opened up.
Then, earlier this month, Nicodemo attended the Nike L.G.B.T. Sports Summit in Portland, Ore., where more than 100 people involved in sports came together to discuss relevant issues to sports and sexuality; Collins even made a surprise visit.
Feeling inspired (if a bit overwhelmed), Nicodemo said he spent most of his red-eye flight home looking out the window and trying to decide how to take his own next step. That ultimately led him to come out to some friends, administrators and former players before finally addressing his team Monday.
His players embraced him afterward, and Nolan said the most common reaction was, “O.K., so can we go practice now?” One player posted a message on Twitter later saying, in part, that “Saunders just became a stronger team.” Another posted that Saunders basketball “isn’t a team. It’s a family.”
The response, Nicodemo acknowledged, was a relief. But because of the conversation about Collins, it was also not a surprise.
“After that day, I came away feeling pretty good about how they would react,” he said. “Honestly, I didn’t even give them enough credit. It went about a thousand percent better than I could have imagined.”
One of the less obvious ramifications of the revelations, though, was a trickle-down effect that Rogers’s and Collins’s decisions had on gay sports figures at the lower levels. In the latest example, Anthony Nicodemo, the boys’ basketball coach at Saunders High School in Yonkers, said Tuesday that Collins’s choice to come out as gay ultimately helped him decide to discuss his own sexuality with his players and their families in a meeting this week.
“What Jason Collins did was allow a conversation to be opened,” Nicodemo said in an interview. “That day, I went into study hall, and we had a 45-minute conversation about it. ‘How would you feel if one of your teammates came out?’ It was really important stuff, and I was blown away by how they reacted.”
He added: “It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them right then. I almost did. But it just didn’t feel right. I wanted to let them process.”
Instead, Nicodemo waited until Monday, and his decision was highlighted in a feature on Outsports, a Web site that covers the intersection of gays and sports. Cyd Zeigler, a founder of the site, wrote the article on Nicodemo and he said that Nicodemo’s experience was not unusual; one of the most important aspects of more pro athletes coming out, Zeigler said, is the effect it has on athletes and coaches who are far from the spotlight.
“Look, there are maybe 6,000 athletes playing in professional sports leagues,” Zeigler said. “There are 7.5 million athletes playing high school sports. What’s going on in high schools and elementary schools is far more important and impactful than the battle with homophobia in pro sports. Jason Collins and Robbie Rogers — this aspect of what they did is absolutely critical.”
Donna Nolan, whose elder son played for Nicodemo previously and whose younger son is currently on the team, said she had no inkling what Nicodemo was going to say when she walked into the meeting. She said reaction from parents at the meeting was overwhelmingly supportive — as was the response from school administrators — and added that there was an immediate discussion about how to handle the situation if an opposing player or parent makes insensitive comments to Nicodemo next season.
“You’re always going to have people out there who are bigots; it’s inevitable,” Nolan said. “We’re from Yonkers; whenever we go anywhere, people are already looking at us funny because we’re from Yonkers. So we know there will be comments. And we told the kids that as hard as it is going to be, we’re going to be the bigger people. It’s part of life.”
Nolan also said that although she understood parents who might prefer that adults in position of authority not speak to children about their sexuality at all — gay or straight — she did not believe Nicodemo had crossed any lines.
“I see that, but it’s not like he’s sitting with them and talking about what he does in his private life,” she said. “He’s not having a conversation with them about what he does on a Friday night. He’s just telling them, this is who I am. And for someone who preaches honesty, that’s important.”
Nicodemo, 35, said he was torn about coming out for years. He told members of his family at different points, but he did not tell his players or anyone else connected with basketball, which has always been his passion.
As a child, Nicodemo said, he was a typical athlete growing up in Brewster, N.Y. He loved sports and, even as he battled confusion and conflicting feelings about his sexuality, he did his best to try to be part of the gang.
“I was a part of the locker room stuff,” he said. “I definitely used words that I shouldn’t have, but when you’re growing up and you’re in denial, you’ll do anything to try and fit in. I just didn’t want to be seen as different.”
Nicodemo began coaching as a volunteer shortly after he graduated high school and has spent the past 16 years on various sidelines at a variety of levels, including a stint as an assistant at Plymouth State, an N.C.A.A. Division III program in New Hampshire.
He arrived at Saunders in 2009 and reinvigorated the program there while also working as a social studies teacher in a neighboring school district. In his first two seasons, the team was 9-29 (which actually represented considerable progress); in each of the past two years, Saunders has had a winning record and played host to a playoff game.
As a coach, Nicodemo was delighted; as a person, though, he was beginning to feel the strain of hiding a significant piece of his identity. He grew weary of worrying that he would be spotted a certain bar in New York or that someone would tag him in a picture on Facebook that would reveal he had lied about who he was spending his time with.
When friends would try to set him up on dates with women, Nicodemo constantly begged out, blaming his commitment to coaching. Each night, he said, he watches at least one game film before bed. He has always been that way.
“My line was always, ‘I’m married to basketball,’ ” he said. “And I guess that it’s partly true. But I wasn’t being honest.”
When Collins came out, writing a first-person article in Sports Illustrated that appeared on the magazine’s Web site April 29, Nicodemo saw an opening. He said he was pleased with how his players reacted during the study-hall discussion on the topic, reinforcing the idea in his mind that they would be able to handle it if he opened up.
Then, earlier this month, Nicodemo attended the Nike L.G.B.T. Sports Summit in Portland, Ore., where more than 100 people involved in sports came together to discuss relevant issues to sports and sexuality; Collins even made a surprise visit.
Feeling inspired (if a bit overwhelmed), Nicodemo said he spent most of his red-eye flight home looking out the window and trying to decide how to take his own next step. That ultimately led him to come out to some friends, administrators and former players before finally addressing his team Monday.
His players embraced him afterward, and Nolan said the most common reaction was, “O.K., so can we go practice now?” One player posted a message on Twitter later saying, in part, that “Saunders just became a stronger team.” Another posted that Saunders basketball “isn’t a team. It’s a family.”
The response, Nicodemo acknowledged, was a relief. But because of the conversation about Collins, it was also not a surprise.
“After that day, I came away feeling pretty good about how they would react,” he said. “Honestly, I didn’t even give them enough credit. It went about a thousand percent better than I could have imagined.”
Thursday 27 June 2013
Deadline Near With No Deal on Loan Rates for Students
WASHINGTON — with solely 5 days before interest rates on student loans are scheduled to double, the senate majority leader rejected a proposed bipartisan answer having now scrambled alliances and muddied political attacks for each side.
Barring a last-minute breakthrough, 7.4 million university students will see rates on their federal Stafford loans jump to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent on July 1.
“I hope that people start looking at truly compromising and working on something that fixes it,” said Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, whose conciliatory proposal was shot down Wednesday by fellow Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid. “You’ve got rates going up to 6.8 percent. That’s unfathomable, and it doesn’t have to happen.”
For weeks, Congressional Democrats have been anticipating that the standoff over student loan interest rates would be a political boon. In college student newspaper advertisements, on social media platforms and in town hall meetings, Democratic lawmakers cast themselves as the saviors of low, subsidized lending rates, battling Republicans intent on subjecting college loans to the whims of the financial markets. They banked on Republicans caving and extending the fixed, 3.4 percent rate for at least a year, just as they did a year ago when a similar deadline loomed.
But instead House Republicans passed their own student loan bill in May, then went on the offense, saying the Democrats were the ones who have failed to act responsibly. President Obama complicated the politics with his own student loan proposal, which was somewhat similar to the Republican plan. The issue was buried beneath bigger news events: an immigration battle in the Senate, scandals swirling in the House, government eavesdropping revelations and a flurry of significant Supreme Court decisions.
Then with the deadline looming, Mr. Obama abandoned the bully pulpit and headed to Africa.
All that has left Democrats divided and Republicans crowing.
“We could and should get this done for the students of our country,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said Wednesday.
A glimmer of hope peeked through Washington’s cloudy skies Wednesday when five senators — three Republicans; one independent who leans Democratic, Angus King of Maine; and Mr. Manchin — unveiled what they billed as a breakthrough.
The proposal would fix all new student loans to the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond rate, plus 1.85 percentage points. Graduate student loans would be 3.4 percentage points above the 10-year rate.
But a conservative Democrat and a Maine independent proved to have no sway with most Democrats, who protested that the proposal lacked a hard cap on interest rates to protect against market fluctuations. They also objected to interest rates that would earn the government $1 billion over 10 years. A spokesman for Mr. Reid quickly shot down rumors that a deal was at hand.
“There’s not been a willingness by our Republican colleagues yet to focus on a real cap,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and one of the negotiators trying to reach a deal. “And over time what we’ve seen in the proposals actually goes higher than doubling the rates.”
Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, both Democrats, will rush new legislation to the Senate on Thursday to freeze the 3.4-percent rate for one year while lawmakers try to reach a long-term agreement in a broader higher education law. But even the bill’s authors acknowledge it almost certainly will not be able to get a vote before Congress leaves for a weeklong July Fourth break.
Instead, the legislation would make the fixed rate retroactive to July 1. Since most university students do not sign loan documents until early August, “we have a little wiggle room, but not a lot,” said a Senate Democratic aide involved in the drafting.
Democratic leaders, once convinced they could win a clear victory over Republicans, were reduced Wednesday to arguing that allowing interest rates to double would be better than fixing loans to fluctuating market rates.
“I don’t know,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said with a shrug. “Student groups said: ‘Let it double. We’d rather see it double to 6.8 than the alternatives we’ve heard.’ ”
Monday 24 June 2013
Out of Concrete and Drudgery Come Canoes That Float
it’s not straightforward creating the unsinkable out from the unthinkable.
But at the National Concrete Canoe Competition, civil engineering students use a material that is normally the stuff of dams and parking garages to build a 20-foot-long craft that will float even if completely swamped.
To do so, they replace the gravel and sand of conventional concrete with exotic materials like glass spheres. The result, to judge by the finals of this year’s competition, where 23 teams of 10 or more students gathered at the University of Illinois here, is a concrete that is exceedingly light and, with added fibers, strong as well.
But as the team from the University of Texas at Tyler found out, it is not always strong enough.
On Saturday, after two days of being judged on their engineering know-how and the quality of their final product, the students took to the waters of a nearby lake for races that would count for 25 percent of their overall score. Amid the excitement and noise — the Mississippi State team had brought along cowbells for the occasion — there was also heartbreak, when the Texas-Tyler canoe suffered what engineers soberly call catastrophic failure. That is to say, it cracked in half.
“We were just paddling along and suddenly I heard a pop” said Marco Weider, a captain of the team, who with his teammate was able to get the canoe to shore before it broke in two. With the help of students from other teams, they spliced it back together with large amounts of duct tape.
The annual competition has been run by the American Society of Civil Engineers for more than two decades, and is sponsored by companies and trade groups like the American Concrete Institute.
At a time when the nation’s approach to science and engineering education has come in for criticism, the contest is a supplement to conventional teaching, giving students a sense of what a civil engineer’s life is like after graduation.
“It’s an experience these students can get that they can’t get in a class,” said Corey L. Haeder, one of five judges for the competition and chief engineer of a concrete firm in Maple Grove, Minn. (The engineering society also runs a competition in which teams each design and build a small steel bridge.)
It also looks good on a student’s résumé. Sarah Smith, a captain of the Mississippi State team, who just graduated, said she was convinced a main reason she was hired by a civil engineering firm in Jackson, Miss., was because of her concrete canoe work. Her employers, she said, “knew what kind of time and dedication goes into this.”
The teams spend most of the academic year designing and building their canoes, treating the task like a real-world project. They start by picking a theme and a name, and then put leaders in charge of areas like structural design and analysis, concrete mix design (kitchen mixers come in handy for making test batches) and construction (the concrete is usually molded in a marathon session that can last the better part of a day). Most teams also put someone in charge of training the engineers to be effective paddlers.
According to Serji Amirkhanian, a judge and a former civil engineering professor atClemson University who is now a consultant, the best teams do not necessarily have better concrete or structural designs. “It’s not a mystery,” he said. “The concrete has to be lighter than water.”
Rather, the winning teams are usually the best organized. “It takes somebody within the team to take charge,” Mr. Amirkhanian said, and persuade others to do the more thankless tasks, especially sanding the surface of the canoe after the concrete has hardened.
“Nobody wants to sand,” said Mr. Amirkhanian, who while judging the canoes on Thursday ran his hand along each one to feel how smooth it was. “But you need somebody telling others you have to sand for hours and hours.”
Even on a team like that of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which won the title the previous three years and finished in the top five for four years before that, students will try to avoid that particular job. “You’ll see people taking out the trash, mopping the floor,” said Thomas Wong, a captain. “Anything but sanding.”
Still, San Luis Obispo does a lot of sanding — 350 hours, Mr. Wong estimated, out of a total of 6,000 spent on the project — and it shows. Their canoe, called Sentinel after the famous domed rock at Yosemite National Park, looked like it was made of porcelain rather than Portland cement.
It had plenty of other advanced features as well — including seven post-tensioned cables running the length of the hull, to give the concrete more strength. And in keeping with the canoe’s theme, the team had created bas-reliefs of the Yosemite landscape on the inside, and cast a pine cone and branch on one of the gunwales.
It was all very elegant, but in the end San Luis Obispo finished fourth. The title was taken by the only Canadian participant, École de Technologie Supérieure, an engineering school in Montreal, that produced a beautiful boat, Savannah with silhouettes of African wildlife on the side.
With its broken boat, Texas-Tyler finished well out of the top five. The team had selected a golf theme, and had cast golf-ball-like dimples on the side of the canoe, but Mr. Weider, the captain, did not think they were the cause of the problem. He said the team had displayed the canoe on Thursday atop a single golf-tee-shaped pedestal (made of concrete, of course) and that may have caused extra stress.
In fact, said César A. Constantino, another of the judges, on Thursday they had noticed that cracks were developing in the boat. “We saw it coming,” he said.
But Mr. Weider was almost fatalistic about the damage. “It’s concrete,” he said. “It’s going to crack.”
But at the National Concrete Canoe Competition, civil engineering students use a material that is normally the stuff of dams and parking garages to build a 20-foot-long craft that will float even if completely swamped.
To do so, they replace the gravel and sand of conventional concrete with exotic materials like glass spheres. The result, to judge by the finals of this year’s competition, where 23 teams of 10 or more students gathered at the University of Illinois here, is a concrete that is exceedingly light and, with added fibers, strong as well.
But as the team from the University of Texas at Tyler found out, it is not always strong enough.
On Saturday, after two days of being judged on their engineering know-how and the quality of their final product, the students took to the waters of a nearby lake for races that would count for 25 percent of their overall score. Amid the excitement and noise — the Mississippi State team had brought along cowbells for the occasion — there was also heartbreak, when the Texas-Tyler canoe suffered what engineers soberly call catastrophic failure. That is to say, it cracked in half.
“We were just paddling along and suddenly I heard a pop” said Marco Weider, a captain of the team, who with his teammate was able to get the canoe to shore before it broke in two. With the help of students from other teams, they spliced it back together with large amounts of duct tape.
The annual competition has been run by the American Society of Civil Engineers for more than two decades, and is sponsored by companies and trade groups like the American Concrete Institute.
At a time when the nation’s approach to science and engineering education has come in for criticism, the contest is a supplement to conventional teaching, giving students a sense of what a civil engineer’s life is like after graduation.
“It’s an experience these students can get that they can’t get in a class,” said Corey L. Haeder, one of five judges for the competition and chief engineer of a concrete firm in Maple Grove, Minn. (The engineering society also runs a competition in which teams each design and build a small steel bridge.)
It also looks good on a student’s résumé. Sarah Smith, a captain of the Mississippi State team, who just graduated, said she was convinced a main reason she was hired by a civil engineering firm in Jackson, Miss., was because of her concrete canoe work. Her employers, she said, “knew what kind of time and dedication goes into this.”
The teams spend most of the academic year designing and building their canoes, treating the task like a real-world project. They start by picking a theme and a name, and then put leaders in charge of areas like structural design and analysis, concrete mix design (kitchen mixers come in handy for making test batches) and construction (the concrete is usually molded in a marathon session that can last the better part of a day). Most teams also put someone in charge of training the engineers to be effective paddlers.
According to Serji Amirkhanian, a judge and a former civil engineering professor atClemson University who is now a consultant, the best teams do not necessarily have better concrete or structural designs. “It’s not a mystery,” he said. “The concrete has to be lighter than water.”
Rather, the winning teams are usually the best organized. “It takes somebody within the team to take charge,” Mr. Amirkhanian said, and persuade others to do the more thankless tasks, especially sanding the surface of the canoe after the concrete has hardened.
“Nobody wants to sand,” said Mr. Amirkhanian, who while judging the canoes on Thursday ran his hand along each one to feel how smooth it was. “But you need somebody telling others you have to sand for hours and hours.”
Even on a team like that of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which won the title the previous three years and finished in the top five for four years before that, students will try to avoid that particular job. “You’ll see people taking out the trash, mopping the floor,” said Thomas Wong, a captain. “Anything but sanding.”
Still, San Luis Obispo does a lot of sanding — 350 hours, Mr. Wong estimated, out of a total of 6,000 spent on the project — and it shows. Their canoe, called Sentinel after the famous domed rock at Yosemite National Park, looked like it was made of porcelain rather than Portland cement.
It had plenty of other advanced features as well — including seven post-tensioned cables running the length of the hull, to give the concrete more strength. And in keeping with the canoe’s theme, the team had created bas-reliefs of the Yosemite landscape on the inside, and cast a pine cone and branch on one of the gunwales.
It was all very elegant, but in the end San Luis Obispo finished fourth. The title was taken by the only Canadian participant, École de Technologie Supérieure, an engineering school in Montreal, that produced a beautiful boat, Savannah with silhouettes of African wildlife on the side.
With its broken boat, Texas-Tyler finished well out of the top five. The team had selected a golf theme, and had cast golf-ball-like dimples on the side of the canoe, but Mr. Weider, the captain, did not think they were the cause of the problem. He said the team had displayed the canoe on Thursday atop a single golf-tee-shaped pedestal (made of concrete, of course) and that may have caused extra stress.
In fact, said César A. Constantino, another of the judges, on Thursday they had noticed that cracks were developing in the boat. “We saw it coming,” he said.
But Mr. Weider was almost fatalistic about the damage. “It’s concrete,” he said. “It’s going to crack.”
Sunday 23 June 2013
Data Security Is a Classroom Worry, Too
like several privacy-minded oldsters of elementary students, tony porterfield tries to maintain shut tabs by the personal data collected about his 2 sons. thus when he heard that their school district in los altos, calif., had adopted edmodo, a web learning network connecting more often 20 million teachers and students all over the world, he made a decision to check out the program.
edmodo’s free software allows teachers to started virtual classrooms where these will post homework assignments, provide quizzes and create use of third-party apps to complement lessons. students will produce individual profiles, as well as their photograph and alternative details, at intervals their teacher’s class and post comments to the communal class feed.
mr. porterfield, an engineer at cisco systems, examined edmodo’s data security practices by registering himself by the web site just like a fictional home-school teacher. as he went about creating imaginary students — complete with cartoon avatars — as a result of his fictitious class, in spite of this, he noticed that edmodo didn't encrypt user sessions employing a commonplace encryption protocol known as secure sockets layer.
that cryptography system, known as ssl for short and used by several analysts on-line banking and e-commerce sites, protects people that log in to sites over an open wi-fi network — just like the kind offered by several analysts occasional outlets — from strangers who can be using snooping software by the same network. ( an “https” along at the starting the most url indicates ssl encryption. )
while not that encryption, mr. porterfield says, he worried relating out to the potential obtain a stranger to gain admission to student data, and therefore hypothetically be ready to establish or maybe contact students.
to check this hypothesis, he used a laptop on his home wi-fi network to log in as an imaginary student ; then, using another laptop, he installed free security auditing software, known as cookie cadger, to spy by the student’s on-line activities. though the risk of the happening with actual students appeared small — edmodo and alternative firms say they've no proof the fact that type of breach has occurred — he contacted his school district about his considerations.
“there’s a number of contextual data you may use to gain trust, to facilitate make yourself seem acquainted in the child, ” he says. “as a parent, that’s the scariest issue. ”
in response to an inquiry from me last week, sara mandel, a spokeswoman for edmodo, aforesaid the service provided “a safe various to open, consumer social networking sites” as a result of students may participate just in teams created by their teachers and as a result of teachers determined whether or not students may send private messages to each other.
she added that “any school that chooses” had been ready to use a very encrypted version on your web site since 2011 which the corporate “is operating to ensure that of your users are using an ssl-encrypted version. ”
school administrators and teachers aforesaid these liked these on-line learning systems as a result of they might management the content that students may share.
“kids can’t seek advice from one another. these are only able to speak in the group, ” says heather peretz, a special-education teacher at nice neck south middle school in nice neck, n. y., who uses edmodo in her english class. “it helps them discover how to be sensible digital voters thus they're not creating inappropriate posts. ”
other then as school districts rush to adopt learning-management systems, a few privacy advocates warn that educators could be embracing the bells and whistles before mastering fundamentals like data security and privacy.
though a federal law protecting children’s on-line privacy needs on-line services to get reasonable measures to secure personal info — like names and e-mail addresses — collected from kids under 13, the law doesn’t specifically need ssl encryption. however school districts usually issue solely general notices about classroom technology, leaving several oldsters unaware of one's practices of one's on-line learning systems their kids use. moreover, schools usually need on-line participation thus students will gain admittance to course assignments or collaborate on comes.
“what we are finding with one of these database may be that oldsters are uninformed, ” says khaliah barnes, a lawyer with the electronic privacy info center. “most don’t perceive how the technology works. ”
on-line security specialists have long warned shoppers about unencrypted websites that collect personal details. that's as a result of on open wi-fi networks, hackers using simple software programs will see and copy the unique code, referred to as a session cookie, that servers issue to authenticate someone who has got logged inside web web site. by replicating that cookie, a hacker will acquire the exact privileges, just like the ability to edit a profile or grade a quiz, of one's authenticated user for that session.
to decision consideration to this risk, a software developer in 2010 released a free program referred to as firesheep or a very effective at hijacking unencrypted sessions of individuals using open wi-fi. early successive year, facebook began rolling out full encryption. other then, as a result of that a sort of cryptography needs additional computing power, it may slow down sites and boost prices. that's why several sites — even a few dating services that raise personal queries — stay largely unencrypted.
“it’s not sensible to trade performance for security when you're talking about people’s personal info, ” says michael clarkson, an assistant professor of laptop science at george washington university who teaches an annual course on software security. “i can’t assume associated with a sensible reason not to maintain the entire session encrypted. ”
last fall, mr. porterfield, who was coaching his younger son’s soccer team, was asked from the league to work with a free youth sports web site provided by shutterfly, a photo-sharing service, to post team rosters, player contact info, game locations and player photos. he discovered that the web site wasn't totally encrypted — a difficulty reported because we are part of a might article in mother jones. ( last friday, a spokeswoman for shutterfly told me that the corporate planned to introduce full ssl encryption on its youth sports and alternative sites from the finish of july. ) finally it was this that made mr. porterfield curious about data security practices of k-12 on-line learning services and led him to started imaginary categories on many sites.
one web site was schoology, a learning network used by a little over 2 million students and teachers worldwide. its privacy policy says it “uses business commonplace ssl ( secure socket layer ) encryption to transfer private, personal info. ”
mr. porterfield found that for our fictitious classroom he started in might using schoology’s free software, the login page did use ssl. other then the profile pages that included students’ e-mail addresses, birth dates, phone numbers and residential addresses were not protected.
to verify mr. porterfield’s issues, i asked ashkan soltani, an freelance security analyst, to appear at each edmodo and schoology. he found that every site’s login page was encrypted, however not student sessions themselves.
“anyone with a native cafe with wi-fi can have membership to the content that the student is viewing or transmitting, ” he told me. “i would take into account that potentially sensitive info direct from perspective of oldsters. ”
full-session encryption might not have appeared thus necessary many years ago, when students logged into your sites primarily on secure networks at school or at home. other then now that such a massive amount of students use mobile devices, learning networks say they're moving toward full encryption.
for individual teachers who needed to started on-line teams, for example, schoology till last week offered free software that encrypted login pages. for customers like school districts who purchased additional comprehensive packages, the web site offered that choice of full-session encryption. last monday, jeremy friedman, the c. e. o. of schoology, told me the corporate planned to switch to sitewide encryption by this fall. last thursday evening, he e-mailed with an update : the sitewide encryption had simply been completed.
“ultimately, we are all operating toward the exact issue — protecting student data and privacy, ” mr. friedman aforesaid.
schools are additionally developing strategies to shield student data. the palo alto unified school district in california uses schoology currently being a clearinghouse for course assignments in its secondary schools but a number of elementary schools. other then administrators forestall students from coming into personal data, like e-mail addresses, in his or her profiles. they actually encourage students to upload an avatar, not a photograph of themselves. and also the district doesn’t post grades upon the web site.
“we take security terribly seriously, ” says ann dunkin, the school district’s chief technology officer, “and one manner to get it seriously usually is to limit the quantity of info students will place into your system. ”
other then mr. porterfield says schools, despite their vigilance, ought to transparent with oldsters relating to firmly the potential risks of on-line learning networks.
“it’s not the school’s call in order to make, ” he aforesaid. “you should let the oldsters understand. ”
edmodo’s free software allows teachers to started virtual classrooms where these will post homework assignments, provide quizzes and create use of third-party apps to complement lessons. students will produce individual profiles, as well as their photograph and alternative details, at intervals their teacher’s class and post comments to the communal class feed.
mr. porterfield, an engineer at cisco systems, examined edmodo’s data security practices by registering himself by the web site just like a fictional home-school teacher. as he went about creating imaginary students — complete with cartoon avatars — as a result of his fictitious class, in spite of this, he noticed that edmodo didn't encrypt user sessions employing a commonplace encryption protocol known as secure sockets layer.
that cryptography system, known as ssl for short and used by several analysts on-line banking and e-commerce sites, protects people that log in to sites over an open wi-fi network — just like the kind offered by several analysts occasional outlets — from strangers who can be using snooping software by the same network. ( an “https” along at the starting the most url indicates ssl encryption. )
while not that encryption, mr. porterfield says, he worried relating out to the potential obtain a stranger to gain admission to student data, and therefore hypothetically be ready to establish or maybe contact students.
to check this hypothesis, he used a laptop on his home wi-fi network to log in as an imaginary student ; then, using another laptop, he installed free security auditing software, known as cookie cadger, to spy by the student’s on-line activities. though the risk of the happening with actual students appeared small — edmodo and alternative firms say they've no proof the fact that type of breach has occurred — he contacted his school district about his considerations.
“there’s a number of contextual data you may use to gain trust, to facilitate make yourself seem acquainted in the child, ” he says. “as a parent, that’s the scariest issue. ”
in response to an inquiry from me last week, sara mandel, a spokeswoman for edmodo, aforesaid the service provided “a safe various to open, consumer social networking sites” as a result of students may participate just in teams created by their teachers and as a result of teachers determined whether or not students may send private messages to each other.
she added that “any school that chooses” had been ready to use a very encrypted version on your web site since 2011 which the corporate “is operating to ensure that of your users are using an ssl-encrypted version. ”
school administrators and teachers aforesaid these liked these on-line learning systems as a result of they might management the content that students may share.
“kids can’t seek advice from one another. these are only able to speak in the group, ” says heather peretz, a special-education teacher at nice neck south middle school in nice neck, n. y., who uses edmodo in her english class. “it helps them discover how to be sensible digital voters thus they're not creating inappropriate posts. ”
other then as school districts rush to adopt learning-management systems, a few privacy advocates warn that educators could be embracing the bells and whistles before mastering fundamentals like data security and privacy.
though a federal law protecting children’s on-line privacy needs on-line services to get reasonable measures to secure personal info — like names and e-mail addresses — collected from kids under 13, the law doesn’t specifically need ssl encryption. however school districts usually issue solely general notices about classroom technology, leaving several oldsters unaware of one's practices of one's on-line learning systems their kids use. moreover, schools usually need on-line participation thus students will gain admittance to course assignments or collaborate on comes.
“what we are finding with one of these database may be that oldsters are uninformed, ” says khaliah barnes, a lawyer with the electronic privacy info center. “most don’t perceive how the technology works. ”
on-line security specialists have long warned shoppers about unencrypted websites that collect personal details. that's as a result of on open wi-fi networks, hackers using simple software programs will see and copy the unique code, referred to as a session cookie, that servers issue to authenticate someone who has got logged inside web web site. by replicating that cookie, a hacker will acquire the exact privileges, just like the ability to edit a profile or grade a quiz, of one's authenticated user for that session.
to decision consideration to this risk, a software developer in 2010 released a free program referred to as firesheep or a very effective at hijacking unencrypted sessions of individuals using open wi-fi. early successive year, facebook began rolling out full encryption. other then, as a result of that a sort of cryptography needs additional computing power, it may slow down sites and boost prices. that's why several sites — even a few dating services that raise personal queries — stay largely unencrypted.
“it’s not sensible to trade performance for security when you're talking about people’s personal info, ” says michael clarkson, an assistant professor of laptop science at george washington university who teaches an annual course on software security. “i can’t assume associated with a sensible reason not to maintain the entire session encrypted. ”
last fall, mr. porterfield, who was coaching his younger son’s soccer team, was asked from the league to work with a free youth sports web site provided by shutterfly, a photo-sharing service, to post team rosters, player contact info, game locations and player photos. he discovered that the web site wasn't totally encrypted — a difficulty reported because we are part of a might article in mother jones. ( last friday, a spokeswoman for shutterfly told me that the corporate planned to introduce full ssl encryption on its youth sports and alternative sites from the finish of july. ) finally it was this that made mr. porterfield curious about data security practices of k-12 on-line learning services and led him to started imaginary categories on many sites.
one web site was schoology, a learning network used by a little over 2 million students and teachers worldwide. its privacy policy says it “uses business commonplace ssl ( secure socket layer ) encryption to transfer private, personal info. ”
mr. porterfield found that for our fictitious classroom he started in might using schoology’s free software, the login page did use ssl. other then the profile pages that included students’ e-mail addresses, birth dates, phone numbers and residential addresses were not protected.
to verify mr. porterfield’s issues, i asked ashkan soltani, an freelance security analyst, to appear at each edmodo and schoology. he found that every site’s login page was encrypted, however not student sessions themselves.
“anyone with a native cafe with wi-fi can have membership to the content that the student is viewing or transmitting, ” he told me. “i would take into account that potentially sensitive info direct from perspective of oldsters. ”
full-session encryption might not have appeared thus necessary many years ago, when students logged into your sites primarily on secure networks at school or at home. other then now that such a massive amount of students use mobile devices, learning networks say they're moving toward full encryption.
for individual teachers who needed to started on-line teams, for example, schoology till last week offered free software that encrypted login pages. for customers like school districts who purchased additional comprehensive packages, the web site offered that choice of full-session encryption. last monday, jeremy friedman, the c. e. o. of schoology, told me the corporate planned to switch to sitewide encryption by this fall. last thursday evening, he e-mailed with an update : the sitewide encryption had simply been completed.
“ultimately, we are all operating toward the exact issue — protecting student data and privacy, ” mr. friedman aforesaid.
schools are additionally developing strategies to shield student data. the palo alto unified school district in california uses schoology currently being a clearinghouse for course assignments in its secondary schools but a number of elementary schools. other then administrators forestall students from coming into personal data, like e-mail addresses, in his or her profiles. they actually encourage students to upload an avatar, not a photograph of themselves. and also the district doesn’t post grades upon the web site.
“we take security terribly seriously, ” says ann dunkin, the school district’s chief technology officer, “and one manner to get it seriously usually is to limit the quantity of info students will place into your system. ”
other then mr. porterfield says schools, despite their vigilance, ought to transparent with oldsters relating to firmly the potential risks of on-line learning networks.
“it’s not the school’s call in order to make, ” he aforesaid. “you should let the oldsters understand. ”
Friday 21 June 2013
In Dallas, 3-Year Highschool Diploma Would Expand Preschool
The senior year of high school, a time when students sometimes seem more focused on social pursuits than academics, may soon be a thing of the past for some Texas students.
Dallas Independent School District, the state’s second largest, is developing a voluntary three-year high school diploma plan that is likely to start in the 2014-15 school year and would funnel cost savings to finance prekindergarten.
A bill passed in the recently concluded legislative session, sponsored by two Dallas Democrats, Representative Eric Johnson and Senator Royce West, will allow the district to use savings that occur when students in the new plan graduate early. Under current Texas law, districts get state funding on a per-pupil basis, and the Dallas I.S.D. would have lost state aid for a senior year for students who graduated early.
“It’s a way to start thinking about the system differently,” said Mike Morath, the Dallas district trustee who promoted the three-year concept. “Do we view education as schools and buildings and first grade and second grade and third grade? Or do we view education as a way to enrich the lives of young people, and do we start taking these institutional blinders off and thinking about it more creatively?”
Advocates of early childhood learning say prekindergarten programs have long-term benefits, including making students less likely to drop out, repeat grades or need remedial course work. In his State of the Union address in February, President Obama set as a priority making “high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.”
The state now pays for half-day preschool programs for children who are learning English or are from homeless, low-income, foster or military families.
In 2011, the Legislature, facing a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, slashed more than $200 million in grant money that had helped districts extend pre-K programs to a full day. Since then, many districts have been seeking ways to keep full-day prekindergarten without state aid, including charging tuition and, in the case of San Antonio, imposing a city sales tax.
The new legislation authorizes the state to credit the Dallas district for students who graduate under the three-year plan, Mr. Morath said. The district would receive an additional year of state financing for students who finish after what would normally have been the 11th grade.
The plan will enable the district to finance full-day pre-K programs at a rate of two children for every three-year high school graduate, he said. It could also result in savings from what he called a “slightly reduced need” for high school staff members.
Because the program, which must still be approved by the state education commissioner, is in its initial stages, Ann Smisko, the Dallas school district’s chief academic officer, said the district could not predict what the demand might be.
Ms. Smisko said educators would work with middle school students to determine who would enter the new diploma plan. Under the legislation, the district is required to form partnerships with state community colleges and four-year universities to place students who graduate early in some form of postsecondary education. Parents must give their approval for students to participate.
The district is in the midst of developing curriculum requirements for the three-year diploma, which Ms. Smisko said would be geared to “college-ready” standards.
Mr. Morath said an alternative diploma plan would appeal to high-performing students as well as to those eager to start vocational training.
He said the district would determine within five years whether the program was successful. At that point, the Legislature could decide whether to expand it to other school districts in Texas.
The proposal is not intended to be a way to get rid of the senior year of high school, which for many students has value for both social and academic development, Mr. Morath said. “I don’t think anyone thinks the 12th grade is going away,” he said.
A Lifeline for Minorities, Catholic Schools Retrench
sonia sotomayor lives in washington, other then she may not forgotten her roots within the whole bronx. throughout the drizzly march afternoon, she returned to blessed sacrament school, where she began her celebrated, if improbable, journey from her south bronx childhood in the supreme court. other then in comparison to a joyous reunion, it was eventually even more of a valedictory for her and then the children — the school is closing for smart.
“i’m very upset, ” justice sotomayor told a fourth-grade class. “it’s more difficult to say goodbye. i won’t inform you it’s simple. i won’t lie for your requirements. ”
then the children drew shut and peppered her with queries : why will be the archdiocese closing the school ? doesn’t it apprehend their folks worked laborious ? why couldn’t it come back up when using the cash ? one girl, crying, got up and slumped into justice sotomayor’s embrace. the justice, her voice steady and reassuring, reminded then the children to cherish the smart times and move confidently ahead. other then later, she, too, revealed her pain.
“the worst issue is, these kids may lose their religion within the whole adults close to actually them, ” she aforesaid with in interview within her previous fifth-grade classroom. “children ought to feel secure. this can build it worse. these kids are traveling to carry this trauma with him or her regarding the rest of the lives. ”
justice sotomayor’s emotions are shared by a generation of achieved latino and black professionals and public servants who went from humble roots to successful careers because of catholic schools. other then they actually concern that a springboard having helped various poor and working-class minority students achieve rewarding lives is eroding as catholic schools shut their doors in the eye of extraordinary monetary challenges and demographic shifts.
since 2011, the archdiocese of latest york has closed 56 schools, the vast majority of those elementary schools, as well as 13 within the whole bronx. now 219 schools stay within the whole education system. blessed sacrament is one in every of 26 schools closing this year throughout the entire archdiocese, that covers the bronx, manhattan, staten island and seven counties north of latest york town.
in line with archdiocesan figures, enrollment in elementary and high schools shrank to 75, 875 this year from 95, 837 in 2006. whereas the latino proportion of total enrollment increased throughout that era, the proportion of black elementary school students dropped precipitously, to 17 % of enrollment from 31 %.
catholic high schools, that routinely boast of close to 100 % college admissions for the graduates, are worried they can face more durable times with fewer parochial schools to feed their ranks. and minority alumni are increasingly alarmed that new york will certainly be deprived associated with a future generation of professionals — like lawyers, doctors and executives — to contribute economic and cultural vitality.
“the catholic schools are a pipeline to opportunity for generations, ” aforesaid justice sotomayor, who was raised by her mother after her father, an alcoholic, died. “it gave folks like me the capability to be successful. it provided me and my brother with an out of this world environment of security. not each school provides that. ”
the story is much the very same in alternative massive cities, as well as boston, chicago and los angeles, where church officers have closed or consolidated schools.
besides justice sotomayor, the list of latest york catholic elementary school alumni includes cesar a. perales, the new york secretary of state ; fernando ferrer, a former bronx borough president ; bobby sanabria, a grammy-nominated musician and educator ; theodore m. shaw, a former head on your naacp legal defense and educational fund ; and julissa reynoso, the us ambassador to uruguay.
Like their Irish and Italian predecessors, their parents chose Catholic schools believing that they offered a better education than the local public schools and taught religious values that would help keep their children on the right path.
For its part, the archdiocese says it is not abandoning urban schools, even after several wrenching years of closings, shoring up finances and reassuring angry parents and fearful alumni.
Having moved away from the old parish-based elementary school model, Catholic school officials have created regional districts where resources and help are more efficiently shared. And for the schools that are vulnerable, especially those in places like the South Bronx, the officials have established a $20 million annual fund to provide scholarships and a $6 million fund for operating expenses.
“The inner city is where we do our best work,” said Timothy J. McNiff, the archdiocese’s superintendent of schools. “Why would we walk away from it?”
Accomplishing that mission was a lot easier during the school system’s golden era in the 1960s, when low-paid nuns taught classrooms bursting with youngsters in parishes where large congregations contributed enough to keep tuition low. Mr. Ferrer said his mother paid about $4 a month to send him and a sister to St. Anselm’s in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Today it would be $420 for two children.
The draw, Mr. Ferrer said, was not only that the parochial school system provided a better education than available in the public schools, but also that it was a Catholic education rooted in shared values.
“Puerto Ricans by and large are culturally conservative,” he said. “My mother was faithful to the traditions from Puerto Rico, which valued that. There was enormous trust of religion. To whom else would you entrust your children?”
That trust was strong enough to lead Nelly Maseda’s father to insist she be taken out of public school in Washington Heights and enrolled at Incarnation elementary school in the 1970s. He was dying of cancer, leaving her to be raised by a mentally ill mother, a drug-addicted brother and a brother with a violent temper.
It was at Aquinas High School in the Bronx that she discovered her talents, motivated by teachers with high expectations and a guidance counselor who encouraged her.
She once thought she would be a secretary. Instead, she became a pediatrician.
“I had no self-esteem,” Dr. Maseda said. “But Aquinas, without a doubt, made all the difference. It gave me a vision of what I could be.”
For some black students, Catholic schools were a place to compete and prove themselves. Mr. Shaw, now a professor at Columbia Law School, said his experience as one of the few blacks at Holy Family School in the Bronx taught him a valuable life lesson.
“I was near the top of the class,” Professor Shaw said. “That myth of racial inferiority and superiority was dispelled for me because I went to school with white students.”
A more formative experience awaited him in high school, when he was selected for one for the earliest classes of the Archbishop’s Leadership Project in the late 1960s, which took promising black teenagers and exposed them to black literature, history and culture.
“It was not a college-bound program, per se,” Professor Shaw said. “It was to train people to be leaders in their communities.”
He thinks the stakes are even higher now. He said the wave of parochial school closings could not come at a worse time. The Supreme Court, which includes his Cardinal Spellman High School classmate Justice Sotomayor, will soon rule on what is expected to be a landmark affirmative action case on college admissions.
“This could be an opportunity for the court to strike a fatal blow against affirmative action or diversity efforts,” he said. “At the same time that is happening, you’re seeing the closure of many of the Catholics schools in black and brown communities. That is a double blow, since the only way they had been in a position to compete for admission into elite institutions has been because of their Catholic school education.”
The system that educated tens of thousands of working-class and poor children has itself been substantially transformed. The Second Vatican Council prompted droves of nuns to leave teaching for other careers, and a steep, and continuing, drop in the vocations led the schools to rely on lay teachers who demanded fair wages and better working conditions.
While some local public schools in poor areas continue to perform below average on reading and math scores, the rise of charter schools and small theme-based academies has presented parents with alternatives that a previous generation did not have. Many of these newer schools try to replicate the discipline, core curriculum and even the uniforms of Catholic schools.
But Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University, said part of the reason for the success of parochial schools was the partnership forged with parents and the community, which is not always the case with charter schools.
“I think it is a mistake to say the charter schools will fill the void left by parochial schools,” said Dr. Noguera, whose research has focused on the achievement of black and Latino boys, adding, “It is a huge void that unfortunately the public schools cannot fill because they do not have the same values and culture.”
The close bond between parents and Catholic schools has been tested as the system has faced financial disaster. In 2008, Dr. McNiff, the schools superintendent, noted, there was a systemwide deficit of $23 million that had to be paid not by individual schools, but by the archdiocese.
The result was a series of closings that have left many bitter. But Dr. McNiff said closing half-empty schools that were in aging buildings provided significant savings. And the fact that about two-thirds of the students in closed schools transferred to other parochial schools helped strengthen the remaining schools.
He is now looking to next year, when he expects the State Legislature to consider tax incentives that could allow corporations to finance scholarships for parochial school students — something already happening in 17 states.
“We’re trying to hold the line,” he said. “It’s a false impression that we’re walking away from Catholic education. We closed a number of buildings, but there are still seats for all the children who want to go to our system.”
As the archdiocese goes forward with fewer schools, the task is to reassure parents.
At Blessed Sacrament, Justice Sotomayor’s old school, three quarters of the fourth-grade class is transferring to Santa Maria School, a few stops away on the No. 6 line. Liz Luciano, a single mother and surgical sales representative, had thought of sending her son Edward to a charter school, but decided against it in favor of Santa Maria.
She is still angry about how the archdiocese went about closing the school, after suggesting parents might be able to devise a plan to save it before the decision to close it was made. “I think they lied to us,” Ms. Luciano said. “We never had a chance.”
The transition for her is a bit easier, since she can drive her son to school as well as benefit from a scholarship that allows her to pay $200 a month, instead of the full $440 tuition.
“We have to go out of our way now to take our kids to a different school that we’re not sure is not going to close,” she said. “They say it’s not. But we know they’ve wanted to close these schools for a long time.”
“i’m very upset, ” justice sotomayor told a fourth-grade class. “it’s more difficult to say goodbye. i won’t inform you it’s simple. i won’t lie for your requirements. ”
then the children drew shut and peppered her with queries : why will be the archdiocese closing the school ? doesn’t it apprehend their folks worked laborious ? why couldn’t it come back up when using the cash ? one girl, crying, got up and slumped into justice sotomayor’s embrace. the justice, her voice steady and reassuring, reminded then the children to cherish the smart times and move confidently ahead. other then later, she, too, revealed her pain.
“the worst issue is, these kids may lose their religion within the whole adults close to actually them, ” she aforesaid with in interview within her previous fifth-grade classroom. “children ought to feel secure. this can build it worse. these kids are traveling to carry this trauma with him or her regarding the rest of the lives. ”
justice sotomayor’s emotions are shared by a generation of achieved latino and black professionals and public servants who went from humble roots to successful careers because of catholic schools. other then they actually concern that a springboard having helped various poor and working-class minority students achieve rewarding lives is eroding as catholic schools shut their doors in the eye of extraordinary monetary challenges and demographic shifts.
since 2011, the archdiocese of latest york has closed 56 schools, the vast majority of those elementary schools, as well as 13 within the whole bronx. now 219 schools stay within the whole education system. blessed sacrament is one in every of 26 schools closing this year throughout the entire archdiocese, that covers the bronx, manhattan, staten island and seven counties north of latest york town.
in line with archdiocesan figures, enrollment in elementary and high schools shrank to 75, 875 this year from 95, 837 in 2006. whereas the latino proportion of total enrollment increased throughout that era, the proportion of black elementary school students dropped precipitously, to 17 % of enrollment from 31 %.
catholic high schools, that routinely boast of close to 100 % college admissions for the graduates, are worried they can face more durable times with fewer parochial schools to feed their ranks. and minority alumni are increasingly alarmed that new york will certainly be deprived associated with a future generation of professionals — like lawyers, doctors and executives — to contribute economic and cultural vitality.
“the catholic schools are a pipeline to opportunity for generations, ” aforesaid justice sotomayor, who was raised by her mother after her father, an alcoholic, died. “it gave folks like me the capability to be successful. it provided me and my brother with an out of this world environment of security. not each school provides that. ”
the story is much the very same in alternative massive cities, as well as boston, chicago and los angeles, where church officers have closed or consolidated schools.
besides justice sotomayor, the list of latest york catholic elementary school alumni includes cesar a. perales, the new york secretary of state ; fernando ferrer, a former bronx borough president ; bobby sanabria, a grammy-nominated musician and educator ; theodore m. shaw, a former head on your naacp legal defense and educational fund ; and julissa reynoso, the us ambassador to uruguay.
Like their Irish and Italian predecessors, their parents chose Catholic schools believing that they offered a better education than the local public schools and taught religious values that would help keep their children on the right path.
For its part, the archdiocese says it is not abandoning urban schools, even after several wrenching years of closings, shoring up finances and reassuring angry parents and fearful alumni.
Having moved away from the old parish-based elementary school model, Catholic school officials have created regional districts where resources and help are more efficiently shared. And for the schools that are vulnerable, especially those in places like the South Bronx, the officials have established a $20 million annual fund to provide scholarships and a $6 million fund for operating expenses.
“The inner city is where we do our best work,” said Timothy J. McNiff, the archdiocese’s superintendent of schools. “Why would we walk away from it?”
Accomplishing that mission was a lot easier during the school system’s golden era in the 1960s, when low-paid nuns taught classrooms bursting with youngsters in parishes where large congregations contributed enough to keep tuition low. Mr. Ferrer said his mother paid about $4 a month to send him and a sister to St. Anselm’s in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Today it would be $420 for two children.
The draw, Mr. Ferrer said, was not only that the parochial school system provided a better education than available in the public schools, but also that it was a Catholic education rooted in shared values.
“Puerto Ricans by and large are culturally conservative,” he said. “My mother was faithful to the traditions from Puerto Rico, which valued that. There was enormous trust of religion. To whom else would you entrust your children?”
That trust was strong enough to lead Nelly Maseda’s father to insist she be taken out of public school in Washington Heights and enrolled at Incarnation elementary school in the 1970s. He was dying of cancer, leaving her to be raised by a mentally ill mother, a drug-addicted brother and a brother with a violent temper.
It was at Aquinas High School in the Bronx that she discovered her talents, motivated by teachers with high expectations and a guidance counselor who encouraged her.
She once thought she would be a secretary. Instead, she became a pediatrician.
“I had no self-esteem,” Dr. Maseda said. “But Aquinas, without a doubt, made all the difference. It gave me a vision of what I could be.”
For some black students, Catholic schools were a place to compete and prove themselves. Mr. Shaw, now a professor at Columbia Law School, said his experience as one of the few blacks at Holy Family School in the Bronx taught him a valuable life lesson.
“I was near the top of the class,” Professor Shaw said. “That myth of racial inferiority and superiority was dispelled for me because I went to school with white students.”
A more formative experience awaited him in high school, when he was selected for one for the earliest classes of the Archbishop’s Leadership Project in the late 1960s, which took promising black teenagers and exposed them to black literature, history and culture.
“It was not a college-bound program, per se,” Professor Shaw said. “It was to train people to be leaders in their communities.”
He thinks the stakes are even higher now. He said the wave of parochial school closings could not come at a worse time. The Supreme Court, which includes his Cardinal Spellman High School classmate Justice Sotomayor, will soon rule on what is expected to be a landmark affirmative action case on college admissions.
“This could be an opportunity for the court to strike a fatal blow against affirmative action or diversity efforts,” he said. “At the same time that is happening, you’re seeing the closure of many of the Catholics schools in black and brown communities. That is a double blow, since the only way they had been in a position to compete for admission into elite institutions has been because of their Catholic school education.”
The system that educated tens of thousands of working-class and poor children has itself been substantially transformed. The Second Vatican Council prompted droves of nuns to leave teaching for other careers, and a steep, and continuing, drop in the vocations led the schools to rely on lay teachers who demanded fair wages and better working conditions.
While some local public schools in poor areas continue to perform below average on reading and math scores, the rise of charter schools and small theme-based academies has presented parents with alternatives that a previous generation did not have. Many of these newer schools try to replicate the discipline, core curriculum and even the uniforms of Catholic schools.
But Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University, said part of the reason for the success of parochial schools was the partnership forged with parents and the community, which is not always the case with charter schools.
“I think it is a mistake to say the charter schools will fill the void left by parochial schools,” said Dr. Noguera, whose research has focused on the achievement of black and Latino boys, adding, “It is a huge void that unfortunately the public schools cannot fill because they do not have the same values and culture.”
The close bond between parents and Catholic schools has been tested as the system has faced financial disaster. In 2008, Dr. McNiff, the schools superintendent, noted, there was a systemwide deficit of $23 million that had to be paid not by individual schools, but by the archdiocese.
The result was a series of closings that have left many bitter. But Dr. McNiff said closing half-empty schools that were in aging buildings provided significant savings. And the fact that about two-thirds of the students in closed schools transferred to other parochial schools helped strengthen the remaining schools.
He is now looking to next year, when he expects the State Legislature to consider tax incentives that could allow corporations to finance scholarships for parochial school students — something already happening in 17 states.
“We’re trying to hold the line,” he said. “It’s a false impression that we’re walking away from Catholic education. We closed a number of buildings, but there are still seats for all the children who want to go to our system.”
As the archdiocese goes forward with fewer schools, the task is to reassure parents.
At Blessed Sacrament, Justice Sotomayor’s old school, three quarters of the fourth-grade class is transferring to Santa Maria School, a few stops away on the No. 6 line. Liz Luciano, a single mother and surgical sales representative, had thought of sending her son Edward to a charter school, but decided against it in favor of Santa Maria.
She is still angry about how the archdiocese went about closing the school, after suggesting parents might be able to devise a plan to save it before the decision to close it was made. “I think they lied to us,” Ms. Luciano said. “We never had a chance.”
The transition for her is a bit easier, since she can drive her son to school as well as benefit from a scholarship that allows her to pay $200 a month, instead of the full $440 tuition.
“We have to go out of our way now to take our kids to a different school that we’re not sure is not going to close,” she said. “They say it’s not. But we know they’ve wanted to close these schools for a long time.”
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Data Reveal a Rise in College Degrees Among Americans
The surge follows more than two decades of slow growth in college
completion, which caused the United States to fall behind other
countries and led politicians from both parties, including President
Obama, to raise alarms.
Last year, 33.5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 29 had at least a
bachelor’s degree, compared with 24.7 percent in 1995, according to the
National Center for Education Statistics. In 1975, the share was 21.9
percent. The number of two-year college degrees, master’s degrees and
doctorates has also risen recently.
The increases appear to be driven both by a sharp rise in college
enrollment and by an improvement among colleges in graduating students.
The trends could bring good news in future years, economists say, as
more Americans become qualified for higher-paying jobs as the economy
recovers.
College attendance has increased in the past decade partly because of
the new types of jobs that have been created in the digital age, which
have increased the wage gap between degree holders and everyone else.
The recent recession, which pushed more workers of all ages to take
shelter on college campuses while the job market was poor, has also
played a role.
“Basically, I was just barely getting by, and I didn’t like my job, and I
wanted to do something that wasn’t living dollar to dollar,” said Sarah
O’Doherty, 24, a former nail salon receptionist who will graduate next
month from the County College of Morris in New Jersey with a degree in
respiratory therapy. “After I had my son, I wanted to do something I
felt passionate about, to have a career.”
The attainment of bachelor’s degrees has risen much faster for young
women in the past decade than for young men. It has also risen among
young whites, blacks and Hispanics, though relatively little among
Asians, who already had the highest rate of college completion. The
share of people with a college degree also varies tremendously by state,
with 48.1 percent of people ages 25 to 34 in Massachusetts holding a
bachelor’s degree, but just 20.4 percent in Nevada, according to the
National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a research and
development center founded to improve management at colleges.
Despite the recent improvement, higher education experts emphasized that
college completion rates were still distressingly low, with only about
half of first-time college freshmen who enrolled in 2006 having
graduated by 2012, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
“There are worrisome signs that the demand for high-skilled talent is
increasing more rapidly than we’re actually educating people,” said
Jamie P. Merisotis, the chief executive of the Lumina Foundation, an
Indianapolis group that focuses on higher education, which is releasing a
report on Thursday analyzing the federal data. “We can’t expect our
citizens to meet the demands of the 21st-century economy and society
without a 21st-century education.”
The recent jump in college graduation mirrors similar increases in
educational attainment during previous severe downturns, economists
said.
“It was sort of one of these ironic good things about the Great Depression,
that it got all these kids to graduate from high school, which turned
out to be really good for workers later on,” said Claudia Goldin, an
economics professor at Harvard.
The G.I. Bill then created a second surge in educational investment
after World War II, which also helped fuel the postwar economic boom. Of
course, in those cases, Professor Goldin said, education was free or
very cheap; college today is not.
Cost may be one reason that college completion has not risen nearly as
much for low-income students, many of whom take on large amounts of debt
and often do not graduate. The share of 24-year-olds from low-income
families who hold college degrees has remained relatively flat over the
last several decades, according to Tom Mortenson, a higher education
policy analyst with Postsecondary Education Opportunity, a newsletter.
Some of the recent increase in college completion has come among students who enroll in college, or return to it, at older ages, and experts say any future increases will probably need to come among this group as well, given its growth potential.
For-profit colleges — despite being more expensive and having lower completion rates than other colleges — are taking in many of these older and lower-income students. Professor Goldin estimates that for-profit colleges account for about one-fifth of the increase in bachelor’s degrees over the last decade.
“Community colleges just don’t have the money to expand,” she said. “At the for-profits, every person who comes there they’re making money on, so boy, are they expanding.”
The increase in college degrees is likely to fuel a debate about the wisdom of having so many people flock to college, given high debt levels and stories of unemployed graduates who are stuck on their parents’ couches.
Many economists point out that college graduates have fared much better than their less-educated peers and argue that rising educational levels will help the economy in the long run. Since the recession began in December 2007, the number of Americans with bachelor’s degrees who have jobs has risen by 9 percent, while employment has fallen for everyone else.
The unemployment rate for graduates of four-year colleges between the ages of 25 and 34 was 3.3 percent in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For high school graduates in the same age group who had not attended college, it was 11.8 percent.
Today’s premium for college degrees is caused partly by increasing selectiveness among employers about whom they hire and screening based on education even for positions that do not require higher skills. But jobs themselves have changed, too.
“Think about jobs 15 years ago that didn’t need any college education,” said Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education. Many of them now do, she added.
“Maybe you don’t need a bachelor’s to change bedpans,” Ms. Baum said, “but today if you’re an auto mechanic, you really have to understand computers and other technical things.”
Board to Vote on Condoms in Boston Schools
The Boston School Committee is set to vote Wednesday night on a new health policy that would make condoms available in the district’s high schools, bringing this city in line with New York and Los Angeles.
It was more than 20 years ago that those cities, along with many others, made the controversial decision to distribute condoms in schools, in part to counteract the spread of H.I.V./AIDS. But since then, widespread distribution of condoms in schools has made halting progress — a 2006 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that condoms were provided in just 5 percent of the nation’s high schools, although that number may have risen since then.
Some schools have taken piecemeal approaches: in Chicago, condom availability is decided by a school’s principal, while Philadelphia has added condom dispensers in some of its schools.
“Most would agree that the absolute number of schools offering such services has increased over the past 10 years or so,” said Bill Albert, the chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Boston first began distributing condoms in some high schools through school health centers in the mid-1990s. Officials said they initially thought those centers, working in tandem with community health centers that provided condoms, were a major step toward providing students with adequate sexual health resources. About three years ago, a coalition of community groups and a new city councilor at large, Ayanna Pressley, began calling for broader access and a more comprehensive policy to counteract the unevenness of sexual health education and resources that persisted from school to school.
“I think over time we’ve come to realize we’re not doing as good a job as we need to,” said Barbara Ferrer, the city’s public health commissioner, adding, “Your ability to be healthy shouldn’t depend on which high school you go to in the city of Boston.”
Genesis Bautista, 18, who just graduated from Fenway High School and has supported the new policy, said she received sexual education but decided to become a peer educator to work with students who were not getting such teaching.
“It’s shocking how much they don’t know,” Ms. Bautista said. “All the information comes from the media, it comes from porn, it comes from word of mouth.”
A 2011 survey by the Boston Public Health Commission, citing data from the C.D.C., found that 54 percent of Boston’s high school students had had sexual intercourse — slightly higher than the national rate for that year, 47 percent. Of the sexually active respondents, nationally, 60 percent said they had used a condom the last time they had sex.
The new proposal calls for counseling with the condoms, both to be provided to students by community health partners, the city health commission or trained staff members at each high school — with an opt-out option for parents.
It also requires that students receive sexuality education — something that is currently available in roughly 60 percent of the district’s 35 or so high schools, according to Jill Carter, the executive director of the schools’ health and wellness department.
“Students will get sexual health education in a class. Then, if they wanted access to the condoms, they would actually have one-on-one counseling with someone that’s trained,” Ms. Carter said. “We recognize that if we want them to make these healthy choices,” she added, “we need to make sure that it’s not a barrier for them to actually get the condoms.”
The change was presented this month at a hearing. No one testified against it, and school committee members did not raise criticisms of it.
The Archdiocese of Boston, however, said in a statement that it is “very concerned” about the new proposal. “Young people deserve far better from their educators and their community leaders than a misguided and unfortunate proposal to make condoms readily available,” it read.
Private Preschools See A Lot Of Public Funds As Categories Grow
The preschoolers who arrived at school early for free breakfast on a recent morning quietly ate granola bars and yogurt as middle school students recited part of the rosary over the public address system.
Almost none of the 4- and 5-year-olds attending the Academy of St. Benedict the African, a parochial school here in the poverty-stricken Englewood neighborhood, are Catholic. But virtually all of them pay little or no tuition, which is subsidized by public funds.
Starting this fall, under an expansion led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the number of Catholic schools in the city receiving taxpayer money for preschool will nearly double. Across the country, states and districts are increasingly funneling public funds to religious schools, private nursery schools and a variety of community-based nonprofit organizations that conduct preschool classes.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, about one-third of students enrolled in state-financed preschool programs attend classes conducted outside the public schools. In some states, the proportion is much higher: in New Jersey, close to 60 percent of students in publicly financed preschool are enrolled in private, nonprofit or Head Start centers, and in Florida, about 84 percent of 4-year-olds in state-financed prekindergarten attend classes run by private, faith-based or family centers.
Now, as President Obama pushes a proposal to provide public preschool for all 4-year-olds from families with low or moderate incomes, his administration acknowledges that many children will attend classes outside the public schools.
Advocates say that with standards for the educational credentials of the teachers, class sizes and the quality of curriculum, such arrangements can work.
“High-quality pre-K can happen in church basements, community centers or within the Y.M.C.A., as long as the standards are there,” said Lisa Guernsey, the director of early education at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit policy institute.
At a time when more lawmakers and activist groups are pushing to direct public money to parents through vouchers or tax-credit scholarships, some say the preschool financing structure could set a precedent for the rest of formal public schooling.
“K-12 is heading to where early childhood has always been,” said Harriet Dichter, the executive director of the Delaware Office of Early Learning who helped set up Pennsylvania’s public preschool program when she was an education official there. “It’s always been in this market kind of thing.”
Last fall, Mr. Emanuel invited traditional public schools, charter schools, religious schools, community-based groups and Head Start centers to bid — and in some cases rebid — for public financing for preschool.
In all, more than half of the publicly financed classes in Chicago, serving about 44,600 children, will be run by organizations that are not part of the public school district. Just over one in 10 students will attend preschools operated by faith-based groups.
“I wanted to use competitiveness to reward the best in the class,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview, “and not just say because you’re a Head Start or a public school, you win by default.”
The patchwork nature of preschool across the country has evolved, driven by private initiatives and a welter of federal, state and local child care financing streams, including Head Start.
Frequently overcrowded public schools do not always have the space to add preschool classrooms. And many preschool classes — particularly those that serve low-income working families — are embedded in broader day care centers that operate longer days than a typical public school.
Experts in early education say that states and school districts need to supervise private preschools regularly. Across the country, practices vary: only four states received top marks from the National Institute for Early Education Research for the quality standards they set for preschools.
Almost none of the 4- and 5-year-olds attending the Academy of St. Benedict the African, a parochial school here in the poverty-stricken Englewood neighborhood, are Catholic. But virtually all of them pay little or no tuition, which is subsidized by public funds.
Starting this fall, under an expansion led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the number of Catholic schools in the city receiving taxpayer money for preschool will nearly double. Across the country, states and districts are increasingly funneling public funds to religious schools, private nursery schools and a variety of community-based nonprofit organizations that conduct preschool classes.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, about one-third of students enrolled in state-financed preschool programs attend classes conducted outside the public schools. In some states, the proportion is much higher: in New Jersey, close to 60 percent of students in publicly financed preschool are enrolled in private, nonprofit or Head Start centers, and in Florida, about 84 percent of 4-year-olds in state-financed prekindergarten attend classes run by private, faith-based or family centers.
Now, as President Obama pushes a proposal to provide public preschool for all 4-year-olds from families with low or moderate incomes, his administration acknowledges that many children will attend classes outside the public schools.
Advocates say that with standards for the educational credentials of the teachers, class sizes and the quality of curriculum, such arrangements can work.
“High-quality pre-K can happen in church basements, community centers or within the Y.M.C.A., as long as the standards are there,” said Lisa Guernsey, the director of early education at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit policy institute.
At a time when more lawmakers and activist groups are pushing to direct public money to parents through vouchers or tax-credit scholarships, some say the preschool financing structure could set a precedent for the rest of formal public schooling.
“K-12 is heading to where early childhood has always been,” said Harriet Dichter, the executive director of the Delaware Office of Early Learning who helped set up Pennsylvania’s public preschool program when she was an education official there. “It’s always been in this market kind of thing.”
Last fall, Mr. Emanuel invited traditional public schools, charter schools, religious schools, community-based groups and Head Start centers to bid — and in some cases rebid — for public financing for preschool.
In all, more than half of the publicly financed classes in Chicago, serving about 44,600 children, will be run by organizations that are not part of the public school district. Just over one in 10 students will attend preschools operated by faith-based groups.
“I wanted to use competitiveness to reward the best in the class,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview, “and not just say because you’re a Head Start or a public school, you win by default.”
The patchwork nature of preschool across the country has evolved, driven by private initiatives and a welter of federal, state and local child care financing streams, including Head Start.
Frequently overcrowded public schools do not always have the space to add preschool classrooms. And many preschool classes — particularly those that serve low-income working families — are embedded in broader day care centers that operate longer days than a typical public school.
Experts in early education say that states and school districts need to supervise private preschools regularly. Across the country, practices vary: only four states received top marks from the National Institute for Early Education Research for the quality standards they set for preschools.
Faltering Economy In China Hazy Job Prospects For Graduates
A record seven million students will graduate from universities and colleges across China in the coming weeks, but their job prospects appear bleak — the latest sign of a troubled Chinese economy.
Businesses say they are swamped with job applications but have few positions to offer as economic growth has begun to falter. Twitter-like microblogging sites in China are full of laments from graduates with dim prospects.
The Chinese government is worried, saying that the problem could affect social stability, and it has ordered schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates at least temporarily to help relieve joblessness. “The only thing that worries them more than an unemployed low-skilled person is an unemployed educated person,” said Shang-Jin Wei, a Columbia Business School economist.
Lu Mai, the secretary general of the elite, government-backed China Development Research Foundation, acknowledged in a speech this month that less than half of this year’s graduates had found jobs so far.
Graduating seniors at all but a few of China’s top universities say that very few people they know are finding jobs — and that those who did receive offers over the winter were seeing them rescinded as the economy has weakened in recent weeks.
“Many companies are not expanding at all, while some of my classmates have been hired and fired in the same month when the companies realized that they could not afford the salaries after all,” said Yan Shuang, a graduating senior in labor and human resources at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
Ms. Yan said she had been promised a job at a sports clothing company over the winter. But the company canceled all hiring plans in March as the economy weakened.
China quadrupled the number of students enrolled in universities and colleges over the last decade. But its economy is still driven by manufacturing, with a preponderance of blue-collar jobs. Prime Minister Li Keqiang personally led the cabinet meeting, on May 16, that produced the directive for schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates, a strategy that has been used with increasing frequency in recent years to absorb jobless but educated youths.
“Any country with an expanding middle class and a rising number of unemployed graduates is in for trouble,” said Gerard A. Postiglione, the director of the Wah Ching Center of Research on Education in China at Hong Kong University.
A national survey released last winter found that in the age bracket of 21- to 25-year-olds, 16 percent of the men and women with college degrees were unemployed.
But only 4 percent of those with an elementary school education were unemployed, a sign of voracious corporate demand persisting for blue-collar workers. Wages for workers who have come in from rural areas to urban factories have surged 70 percent in the last four years; wages for young people in white-collar sectors have barely stayed steady or have even declined.
Economists have long estimated that the Chinese economy needs to grow 7 or 8 percent annually to avoid large-scale unemployment. But that rule of thumb has become less reliable in recent years as the labor market has split.
Relatively slow growth is still creating enough jobs to provide full employment for the country’s blue-collar workers. But much faster growth may be needed to create white-collar jobs for the graduates pouring out of universities.
The International Monetary Fund predicts the Chinese economy will grow 7.75 percent this year — slower than the growth of 10 to 14 percent before 2008, but still a much faster pace than in the West. The main problem for China lies in the sheer growth in graduates; the United States produces three million graduates a year, while China has increased its annual number of graduates by more than five million in a single decade.
One response, endorsed by the State Council, is to urge more graduates to take jobs at small, private companies. But a generation of people who grew up under the government’s “one child” policy has proved risk-averse and slow to join or set up new companies.
“I would not work for private companies, that is not secure — only state-owned ones,” Ms. Yan said.
Many graduating seniors, seeing limited job opportunities, are applying to the country’s fast-expanding graduate schools. Yang Yi, a senior majoring in applied economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said that after applying unsuccessfully for jobs through the winter, he was prepared to seek a master’s degree.
“Hopefully the economy will have recovered when I graduate in two years,” he said. “Getting a master’s degree is always better than working in small companies that might not even last long.”
Chinese students have been gravitating toward majors that are perceived as academically less demanding but likely to lead to careers in banking. Business administration and economics majors have proliferated, partly because the country’s many new private universities find them inexpensive subjects to teach. Programs in engineering and other sciences, with their requirements for costly labs, have grown more slowly.
As in the West in recent years, financial services is an extremely popular field among college graduates, who besiege banks, brokerage firms and other businesses in the sector with job applications. Ministry of Human Resources statistics show that average pay for banking sector employees, at $14,500 a year, is twice the level of pay in sectors like health care and education.
Graduates from the best universities still have a strong chance of finding a job, particularly if they do not set their sights too high. Lin Yinbi, a senior graduating in trade and economics from the prestigious Renmin University in Beijing, said that he had job offers from a heating company and a supermarket chain, but was still applying for a well-paid bank job.
“The question is, What kind of job is it?” he said. “Does it align with our major? Does it pay enough? Do we have room to grow?”
Wang Zhian, a prominent Chinese broadcaster whose microblog has more than 200,000 followers, created a stir this spring by recommending that college graduates take jobs packing and unpacking homes for moving companies.
“The most important thing for graduating seniors is to figure out a way to survive, and if that means you have to become a moving company worker, then so be it,” he said. “You can’t live off your parents forever.”
Businesses say they are swamped with job applications but have few positions to offer as economic growth has begun to falter. Twitter-like microblogging sites in China are full of laments from graduates with dim prospects.
The Chinese government is worried, saying that the problem could affect social stability, and it has ordered schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates at least temporarily to help relieve joblessness. “The only thing that worries them more than an unemployed low-skilled person is an unemployed educated person,” said Shang-Jin Wei, a Columbia Business School economist.
Lu Mai, the secretary general of the elite, government-backed China Development Research Foundation, acknowledged in a speech this month that less than half of this year’s graduates had found jobs so far.
Graduating seniors at all but a few of China’s top universities say that very few people they know are finding jobs — and that those who did receive offers over the winter were seeing them rescinded as the economy has weakened in recent weeks.
“Many companies are not expanding at all, while some of my classmates have been hired and fired in the same month when the companies realized that they could not afford the salaries after all,” said Yan Shuang, a graduating senior in labor and human resources at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
Ms. Yan said she had been promised a job at a sports clothing company over the winter. But the company canceled all hiring plans in March as the economy weakened.
China quadrupled the number of students enrolled in universities and colleges over the last decade. But its economy is still driven by manufacturing, with a preponderance of blue-collar jobs. Prime Minister Li Keqiang personally led the cabinet meeting, on May 16, that produced the directive for schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates, a strategy that has been used with increasing frequency in recent years to absorb jobless but educated youths.
“Any country with an expanding middle class and a rising number of unemployed graduates is in for trouble,” said Gerard A. Postiglione, the director of the Wah Ching Center of Research on Education in China at Hong Kong University.
A national survey released last winter found that in the age bracket of 21- to 25-year-olds, 16 percent of the men and women with college degrees were unemployed.
But only 4 percent of those with an elementary school education were unemployed, a sign of voracious corporate demand persisting for blue-collar workers. Wages for workers who have come in from rural areas to urban factories have surged 70 percent in the last four years; wages for young people in white-collar sectors have barely stayed steady or have even declined.
Economists have long estimated that the Chinese economy needs to grow 7 or 8 percent annually to avoid large-scale unemployment. But that rule of thumb has become less reliable in recent years as the labor market has split.
Relatively slow growth is still creating enough jobs to provide full employment for the country’s blue-collar workers. But much faster growth may be needed to create white-collar jobs for the graduates pouring out of universities.
The International Monetary Fund predicts the Chinese economy will grow 7.75 percent this year — slower than the growth of 10 to 14 percent before 2008, but still a much faster pace than in the West. The main problem for China lies in the sheer growth in graduates; the United States produces three million graduates a year, while China has increased its annual number of graduates by more than five million in a single decade.
One response, endorsed by the State Council, is to urge more graduates to take jobs at small, private companies. But a generation of people who grew up under the government’s “one child” policy has proved risk-averse and slow to join or set up new companies.
“I would not work for private companies, that is not secure — only state-owned ones,” Ms. Yan said.
Many graduating seniors, seeing limited job opportunities, are applying to the country’s fast-expanding graduate schools. Yang Yi, a senior majoring in applied economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said that after applying unsuccessfully for jobs through the winter, he was prepared to seek a master’s degree.
“Hopefully the economy will have recovered when I graduate in two years,” he said. “Getting a master’s degree is always better than working in small companies that might not even last long.”
Chinese students have been gravitating toward majors that are perceived as academically less demanding but likely to lead to careers in banking. Business administration and economics majors have proliferated, partly because the country’s many new private universities find them inexpensive subjects to teach. Programs in engineering and other sciences, with their requirements for costly labs, have grown more slowly.
As in the West in recent years, financial services is an extremely popular field among college graduates, who besiege banks, brokerage firms and other businesses in the sector with job applications. Ministry of Human Resources statistics show that average pay for banking sector employees, at $14,500 a year, is twice the level of pay in sectors like health care and education.
Graduates from the best universities still have a strong chance of finding a job, particularly if they do not set their sights too high. Lin Yinbi, a senior graduating in trade and economics from the prestigious Renmin University in Beijing, said that he had job offers from a heating company and a supermarket chain, but was still applying for a well-paid bank job.
“The question is, What kind of job is it?” he said. “Does it align with our major? Does it pay enough? Do we have room to grow?”
Wang Zhian, a prominent Chinese broadcaster whose microblog has more than 200,000 followers, created a stir this spring by recommending that college graduates take jobs packing and unpacking homes for moving companies.
“The most important thing for graduating seniors is to figure out a way to survive, and if that means you have to become a moving company worker, then so be it,” he said. “You can’t live off your parents forever.”
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