[Guest post by DRJ]

The AP reports that college graduates are having a hard time finding work. Obviously tough economic times are hard on everyone, but they are especially hard on blue collar males and recent graduates like this:

“Josh D**, 23, who went on food stamps two weeks after leaving Oregon State University with an economics degree that he hoped to use for a job as a financial analyst. He’s living with his aunt and uncle in Grants Pass, Ore., and looking for even a menial job.

“It feels like really, really bad, terrible timing,” he says. “A degree in economics doesn’t really prepare you to understand the economy very well.”

Sadly, that quote doesn’t reflect well on higher education.

Like many graduates faced with a tough job market, Josh is thinking about graduate school, specifically law school. Graduate schools often see spikes in applications during economic downturns, such as in 2002 after 9/11 and in today’s market.

But more education isn’t always a good idea, especially when it’s accompanied by more debt. An increase in graduate school attendance means the pool of job applicants will be larger in 2-3 years, and not all employers are willing to pay the salaries employees with advanced degrees expect.

Unfortunately, tough times can make for tough decisions.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

“What’s wrong with being elitist? We’re Beverly Hills.”

– Beverly Hills public school trustee Brian Goldberg, explaining why he favors priority for out-of-district legacy admissions at Beverly Hills public schools.

The Beverly Hills and Santa Monica-Malibu public school districts have voted to grant an admissions preference to the children of alumni living outside their enrollment boundaries. Beverly Hills Unified School District has a history of special admissions, but this legacy policy has stirred up controversy:

“Districts have broad discretion to set enrollment policies, as long as they do not violate state or federal law. Constitutional scholar and UC Irvine law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said the legacy policies are not unconstitutional, although he said he found them troubling.

“They give benefits to those who often least need them and deny that benefit to those who often most need them,” he said.

Bill Koski, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in education policy, said the preferences could widen the gap between affluent and poor districts. “The adequacy of education funding in California is problematic when even our wealthiest school districts feel they must resort to this type of thing,” Koski said.

Others, including Beverly Hills trustee Myra Demeter, criticized the policies for perpetuating privilege. “It favors the children of a group of people — district alumni old enough to have children of school age — perceived by many to be white and wealthy,” she said.

Supporters point out that Beverly Hills Unified offers hundreds of permits to students who live outside its bounds. Some are intended to foster diversity at the high school; others are for children of city and district employees and the largest group is for students with “opportunity permits.” Anyone can apply for the latter, which are used to boost state funding, fill out classes and allow a richer array of courses and activities.

The board voted this year to give no new opportunity permits, to continue the other permit programs and to allow 11 more legacy slots next year.”

More at the link.

Incidentally, Trustee Goldberg voted against the recent admissions change because he felt legacies should be given even greater priority than the current policy provides.

– DRJ

[Guets post by DRJ]

Law professor and blogger Steve Diamond say Barack Obama has rejected Bill Ayers in his selection of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education:

“Bill Ayers and co. lost a big battle today with the announcement that Arne Duncan will be Obama’s Education Secretary. Duncan is one of the “Big 4,” as Ayers calls the four reform oriented school superintendents Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein and Paul Vallas.”

Diamond says Ayers lobbied against the “Big 4″ and favored another candidate, Linda Darling-Hammond.

There’s more at the link and here’s a brief biography of Arne Duncan. He’s a former Harvard basketball player and co-captain, and he played pro ball in Australia.

UPDATE 12/18/2008: Duncan wants to bring what he learned in Chicago to the rest of the country. I hope that doesn’t include his reading program. In 2007, only 17% of Chicago’s 8th graders read at or above grade level.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

San Antonio court authorities recently announced a 6-month pilot program covering approximately 50 high school students that will use GPS ankle bracelets to track truants:

“We are at a critical point in our time where we can either educate or incarcerate,” [Bexar County Justice of the Peace Linda] Penn said, linking truancy with juvenile delinquency and later criminal activity.

Penn said students in the program will wear the ankle bracelets full-time and will not be able to remove them. They’ll be selected as they come through her court, and Penn will target truant students with gang affiliations, those with a history of running away and skipping school, and those who have been through her court multiple times.”

The Texas ACLU applauded efforts to keep kids in school but was concerned about privacy issues since students can be tracked full-time, including during after-school hours.

The article mentions that this program has already been used in other Texas communities, although I wasn’t aware of it. It’s an aggressive program and, in my opinion, a close call. There are legitimate privacy concerns but students who drop-out of school are the biggest losers. There may also be racial issues since drop-outs are often minorities, especially Hispanics, in many Texas communities.

It reminds me of that old saying: Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Foreclosing aggressive efforts to keep kids in school could preserve students’ privacy but sacrifice their futures.

UPDATE 8/25/2008: I didn’t realize it but this program started 10 years ago in West Texas where I live. This online article describes how successful it’s been and why it’s spreading to other cities in Texas, including San Antonio.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Amethyst Initiative was launched to rethink the drinking age. Its founder and supporters are all college chancellors and presidents:

“Launched in July 2008, the Amethyst Initiative is made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the United States. These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses.

The Amethyst Initiative supports informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.”

Amethyst Initiative supporters include over 100 chancellors and presidents, most of whom represent private liberal arts colleges. The list includes the Presidents of Duke, Dartmouth and the Ohio State University. The Initiative’s Statement of principles clearly shows the supporters believe the drinking age should be lowered.

However, there are a range of opinions on the legal drinking age:

“Raising the drinking age to 21 was passed with the very best of intentions, but it’s had the very worst of outcomes,” said David J. Hanson, an alcohol policy expert at the State University of New York-Potsdam. “Just like during national Prohibition, the law has pushed and forced underage drinking and youthful drinking underground, where we have no control over it.”

But Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, countered: “Why would we repeal or weaken laws that save lives? It doesn’t make sense.”

The response to the Amethyst Initiative has also been mixed.

Here’s an interesting bit of trivia from MSNBC – There is no federal law that sets a minimum age for drinking. Instead, laws are set by each state:

“As it happens, there is no such thing as a “federal legal drinking age.” Many states do not expressly prohibit minors from drinking alcohol, although most of those do set certain conditions, such as its use in a religious ceremony or in the presence of a parent or other guardian.

The phrase refers instead to a patchwork of state laws adopted in the mid-1980s under pressure from Congress, which threatened in 1984 to withhold 10 percent of federal highway funds from states that did not prohibit selling alcohol to those under the age of 21. By 1988, 49 states had complied; after years of court fights, Louisiana joined the crowd in 1995.”

The MSNBC link has more information on how the laws vary among the states.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Harrold school district, 150 miles NW of Fort Worth on the Texas-Oklahoma border, has decided to let teachers who hold concealed carry permits bring their weapons to class:

“Superintendent David Thweatt said a main concern was that the small community is a 30-minute drive from the sheriff’s office, leaving students and teachers without protection.

The district’s lone campus sits 500 feet from heavily trafficked U.S. 287, which could make it a target, Thweatt said.

Other security measures are in place, including one-way access to enter the school, state-of-the-art surveillance cameras and electric locks on doors. But after the Virginia Tech massacre and the Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania, Thweatt felt he had to take further action, he said.

“When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that’s when all of these shootings started,” Thweatt said. “Why would you put it out there that a group of people can’t defend themselves? That’s like saying ’sic ’em’ to a dog.”

In addition to a valid concealed carry permit, teachers must also have permission from the school district.

School starts August 25.

UPDATE 8/20/2008: The El Paso Times reports that Texas Governor Rick Perry thinks it’s fine for teachers to carry guns on campus if they are appropriately trained and licensed. It also had more information on Harrold ISD regulations:

The [Harrold] teachers must be licensed and take crisis management training and must use bullets designed to minimize ricocheting.”

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Back in my college days, the biggest problems we had were hazing, hippies, protests, and pot. Greek life was especially tame, although it certainly had its share of hazing and alcohol. At today’s colleges, however, a few students have chosen more lucrative enterprises:

“The undercover officers started to appear at San Diego State fraternity parties about six months ago. They dressed like students, complained about their parents and professors, and talked freely and knowingly of things of great interest on campus: music, sex and drugs.

Soon they were accepted, with no questions asked. They were spotted at student hangouts on and off campus. They swapped cellphone numbers with other partygoers. They text-messaged their newfound friends.

The real students appeared to accept the pretend ones — most but not all of whom were men. On a campus of 34,000 students, blending into the crowd was not difficult. Neither was collecting evidence of drug dealing and drug use.

On Tuesday, authorities announced that 96 young men — including 75 students — had been arrested on a variety of drug charges as a result of Operation Sudden Fall, which infiltrated seven fraternities on Fraternity Row and Fraternity Circle. Officials said the name of the operation referred to the prospect of sudden death from drug usage.

The investigation involved marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy.”

One student asked officers if his arrest would hurt his chances to become a law enforcement officer some day.

The operation was planned following the drug overdose deaths of two students. Drug legalization groups objected to the use of DEA and police officers to target college students instead of large-scale drug traffickers, but the University’s President expressed no regret for letting undercover agents on campus.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

InsideHigherEd discusses a new way to tax the rich that has caused a rift among Massachusetts’ Democrats:

“With college endowments a favorite target for politicians in Washington, and many states struggling to find enough tax revenue to make ends meet, it’s almost a surprise that it took state legislators this long to start casting their eyes on colleges’ funds. But it’s perhaps not a shock that if the issue were to emerge anywhere, it would be in Massachusetts, home to the university (Harvard) whose nearly $34.6 billion endowment has become the poster child for higher education wealth.”

The sponsor of the proposal, Democratic Rep. Paul Kujawski, is concerned that private colleges accumulate wealth and contribute little to the local economy because of their tax-exempt status. Defenders point out that Massachusetts does not have to spend as much money on higher education as other states because of the presence of so many private colleges. They also object to treating entities differently based on their wealth.

[Note to Self: Remember this when liberals argue that the rich should pay more taxes.]

The measure failed but it would have affected 9 Massachusetts colleges: Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Williams, Boston, Amherst and Wellesley Colleges, Tufts University, Smith College and Boston University. During the debate, Democratic lawmakers asked some revealing questions:

“Why do we want to tax the poor all the time, but we let off the hook the richest of the rich?” said State Rep. Angelo Scaccia, a Democrat, said during the course of Monday’s debate, according to the Metrowest Daily News. “We’re not going to break them,” he added of colleges’ endowment funds. “We just want a little.”

The next time Democrats talk about taxing the rich, they should start with these 9 colleges in Massachusetts.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Yale Art major Aliza Shvarts will do anything for her art:

“Art major Aliza Shvarts ‘08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

The “fabricators,” or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.”

Reaction to her project has been mixed.

UPDATE - The Yale Office of Public Affairs has posted this statement at its website:

“Statement by Helaine S. Klasky — Yale University, Spokesperson
New Haven, Conn. — April 17, 2008

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.”

I may be wrong, but I picture Aliza as the poster child for precocious, creative, free-spirited children of parents who never said “No.”

H/T Anonymous Yale Student.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

From Fox News:

“A student and his family have filed a federal lawsuit demanding that a popular European history teacher at California’s Capistrano Valley High School be fired for what they say were anti-Christian remarks he made in the classroom.

Chad Farnan, a 16-year-old sophomore, says the teacher, James Corbett, told his students that “Jesus glasses” obscure the truth and suggested that Christians are more likely than other people to commit rape and murder.

Farnan recorded his teacher telling students in class: “What country has the highest murder rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rate of church attendance? The South!” Farnan said he took the tape recorder to class to supplement his class notes.

“It was very hard for me because it’s like basically telling me all this stuff that I’ve believed my whole entire life — it’s just basically trying to throw it out the window,” Farnan told FOX News.

Farnan’s family has filed a federal lawsuit against the Capistrano Unified School District, claiming Corbett’s remarks violated the First Amendment, which prohibits laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” They are demanding that Corbett be fired.”

It sounds a little anti-Southern, too, but the teacher asserts he was only challenging his students to think:

“Corbett’s attorney, Dan Spradlin, says his client has been teaching at Capistrano Valley High for 15 years and is in no way anti-Christian. According to Spradlin, Corbett was not trying to offend anyone but to inspire his students to think.

“The purpose is not to indoctrinate, but simply to provide a basic starting point to provoke discussion,” Spradlin said.”

I wonder if this teacher also starts discussions by commenting on the connection between Islam and terrorists?

UPDATE 4/2/2008: Too bad these students couldn’t have a teacher like Kenton Stufflebeam’s Mr. Chapman, who would never give students bad information.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Recent Supreme Court opinions have made it clear that public schools shouldn’t consider race and yet, in an ironic twist, many school districts still struggle under decades-old federal desegregation orders that require just that:

“Officials in Shelby County, Tenn., complain they’ll have to spend millions to satisfy a federal judge’s “arbitrary” desegregation order. It’ll mean busing minority students up to an hour away and replacing hundreds of white teachers with black ones, they say.

In Huntsville, Ala., under a similar court order, students can transfer from a school where they’re in the racial majority, but not the other way around.

And in the Tucson, Ariz., Unified School District, students could move from one school to another only if the change improved “the ethnic balance of the receiving school and (did) not further imbalance the ethnic makeup of the home school.”

But wait: Hasn’t the U.S. Supreme Court consistently moved away from using race as a factor in deciding where kids should go to school? Didn’t the high court recently put an exclamation point on that trend, ruling that two districts’ heavy reliance on race in student assignment policies violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection?

Yes, and yes. But there are still hundreds of districts across the country, from the Northeast to the Southwest, that operate under federal court desegregation orders—some more than four decades old.”

Not only does Ruth Bader Ginsburg realize there are inconsistencies in the Supreme Court’s recent opinions on race and its prior desegregation rulings, but (perhaps for the first and only time) I agree with her conclusion:

“The question of these districts came up this past year as the Supreme Court heard arguments involving voluntary diversity plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. In June, the court ruled that student assignment policies in those two districts relied too heavily on individual students’ races and, so, were unconstitutional. But in those two districts there were no orders to remedy past state-sponsored segregation.

On the other hand, districts operating under integration orders may set policies that explicitly consider race. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged the “anomaly” of demanding that such districts work diligently toward racial integration, but once it’s achieved mandating that race be ignored.

“What’s constitutionally required one day gets constitutionally prohibited the next day,” she said. “That’s very odd.”

My town’s schools were put under a desegregation plan over 40 years ago and it was just released from that order in recent years. We successfully desegregated in one generation and that’s a good thing, but courts shouldn’t be in the business of running school districts for decades.

At this point, if desegregation hasn’t worked in some communities then it’s time to try something else.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Superintendent of Galveston (Texas) ISD released a statement late Friday recommending that the district cease legal action against the blogging Mom:

“It appeared late Friday that the district was backing down from its threat to sue a parent for defamation. In a statement issued late Friday afternoon, Superintendent Lynne Cleveland recommended that the district drop all legal action against a Web site it has accused of defamation.

Cleveland said she’s recommending backing off the legal action because she did not want to pull the focus away from the education of children any longer.

“I think I’ve made it very, very clear the reason I’m here is for the students,” she said. “The students have already suffered enough because of other issues out there that don’t pertain to their education, and I’m not going to let that happen to them anymore.”
***
Cleveland said Buzbee’s letter did not bring about her decision to drop legal action. She said she drafted her statement on Wednesday but waited two days to release it.”

Apparently the Superintendent’s statement was issued independent of the School board:

“Board President David O’Neal said he was not aware of Cleveland’s recommendation late Friday. He said the board would make the final decision.”

An earlier post on this topic is here.

– DRJ