Clipmarks | dmegivern's 'education' clips

First Generation College Students

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:39:58 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

They're the first to go to college

About one fourth of the state's undergraduates are the first in their families to go to college, according to a 2004 survey of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.

All around him, he felt the pressure to put more emphasis on finding a job than focusing on school.

To stay in school, Meza surrounded himself with a group of supportive guidance counselors and teachers. He also joined Admission Possible, a college readiness program for low-income juniors and seniors.

"The biggest barrier to college education for first-generation students is sort of feeling of being a fraud," Olson said. "A lot of times, first generation college students feel like, 'I've made it this far, I'm kind of fooling people. They're going to find me out any day now, that I don't really belong here.' And they get those messages of not belonging in so many different, subtle ways."

Tags: radio, college, first-generation

Beware the Wiccans Bearing Lawsuits

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:50:41 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Representative votes against Head Start, because they would not let him put in a measure that would have allowed religious organizations to exclude candidates who were not of that religion.

Clip Source: www.dailykos.com

Republican Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan's 7th District, running a tight race against Democrat Mark Schauer, was the only member of the House Education Labor and Committee to vote against reauthorizing Head Start.

Considering there are 43 members of the committee, this is rather significant. So naturally, more than a few people were peeved:

[Video]

In other words, say a Baptist or a Catholic church wanted to continue to offer its Head Start program and a Muslim or "a Wiccan from a coven in Ann Arbor" wanted to apply for a job to teach there, now it couldn't discriminate based on religious grounds anymore, or vice versa.

He said he offered an amendment that would have made that change, but it didn't get any traction.

It would also open all of them to lawsuits, because the Wiccan, or the Catholic or the Muslim who wasn't hired, could say it was because of their religious beliefs, he said.

Tags: head start, religion

College Encourages Deviance?

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:55:45 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: well.blogs.nytimes.com

College Students Behaving Badly

Many people associate property crime and other delinquent behaviors with low social status and a lack of education. But new research has identified a surprising risk factor for bad behavior — college.

During adolescence, the prospect of attending college was positive. The researchers found that college-bound youth were less likely to be involved in criminal activity and substance use during adolescence than kids who weren’t headed for college.

But college attendance appears to trigger some surprising changes. When male students enrolled in four-year universities, levels of drinking, property theft and unstructured socializing with friends increased and surpassed rates for their less-educated male peers.

The reason appears to be that kids who don’t go to college simply have to grow up more quickly.

this research suggests that college may actually encourage, rather than deter, social deviance and risk-taking.'’

Tags: education, college

Class Desegregation

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:31:40 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Next Kind of Integration

The chief justice didn’t address the idea of class-based integration in his opinion. But Justice Anthony Kennedy did, in a separate concurrence. And because Kennedy cast the fifth vote for the majority, his view controls the law. Though he agreed with Roberts that public school districts should not make school assignments based on the race of individual students, he added that the court’s ruling “should not prevent school districts from continuing the important work of bringing together students of different racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks reanalyzed Coleman’s data in the 1970s and concluded that poor black sixth-graders in majority middle-class schools were 20 months ahead of poor black sixth-graders in majority low-income schools. The statistics for poor white students were similar.

poor kids have to be evenly distributed among classrooms

Tags: social_class, class, poverty, education

Social Workers Needed in Schools

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:20:52 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.socialworkers.org

Social Workers Trained to Spot Obstacles for Students

Poverty, behavioral problems and lack of safety contribute to dropping out of school.

Efforts to curb the high rate of high school dropouts in the U.S. have been discussed for decades. However, new rallying cries from national leaders and organizations to address the problem have been broadcast nationwide in recent months.

"It's increasingly apparent that the basic building blocks of a good life — a quality education, stable income and good health — are beyond the reach of too many individuals and families," Gallagher said. "As a nation, we can't accept these conditions. We need to challenge the system to ignite a new social movement and begin to develop new partnerships and strategies which will create opportunities for a better life for all people."

Social workers and school social workers point out that their roles are critical in any efforts to keep children from becoming dropout statistics.

Tags: high school, dropout, social_work

What's Possible for Our Children

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:55:58 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: He is plugging TRiO programs, which proves he is on the ball about "what works."

Clip Source: www.denverpost.com

Sen. Barack Obama's speech, "What's Possible for Our Children," was delivered at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton on Wednesday:

"And so while I know hopelessness, I also know hope. I know that if we bring early education programs to these communities, if we stop waiting until high-school to address the drop-out rate and start in earlier grades — as my Success in the Middle Act will do — if we bring in new, qualified teachers, if we expand college outreach programs like GEAR UP and TRIO and fight to expand summer learning opportunities for minority and disadvantaged students — like I've done in the Senate — or if we double funding for after-school programs to serve a million more children, as I've proposed to do as president, if we do all this, we can make a difference in the lives of our children and the life of this country. I know we can. I've seen it happen. And so have you.

Princeton University survey finds 'pain gap'

Fri, 02 May 2008 05:40:52 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.princeton.edu

Those with lower incomes and less education are in pain more often, researchers say

A novel study that attempts to paint the most accurate and detailed description yet of how Americans experience pain has found that a significant portion of the population -- 28 percent -- are in pain at any given moment and those with less education and lower income spend more of their time in pain. Those in pain are less likely to work or socialize with others and are more inclined to watch television than the pain-free.

The study, which appears in the May 3 issue of The Lancet, was prepared by Alan Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton University, and Arthur Stone, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stony Brook University. The work is the first of its type, according to the authors, to quantify a "pain gap" in American society, with the "have-nots" suffering a disproportionate amount in relation to the "haves."

Tags: pain, education, rich, poor

The Rich Man's Michael Moore

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:10:00 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Why an Heir Continues to Document -- and Anger -- the Wealthy

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, used to be an accepted member of the New York elite, with a trust fund, a top education and loads of old-money friends. Now, thanks to his film career, he's not as welcome.

I'll walk into a social event where there are a number of people who I grew up with and they'll treat me apprehensively," says Mr. Johnson, 28.

His relationship with his family, especially his father, has also cooled. "There was a sense that 'If you go too far with these [films], you won't be welcome in your own home,'" he says.

Mr. Johnson is getting used to being an outcast among the upper class. After the 2003 release of his first film, "Born Rich," which looked at the lives of the silver-spoon set, and now his second, "The One Percent," which focuses on the American wealth gap, Mr. Johnson has become the rich man's Michael Moore

Tags: wealth, documentary

Tearing Down the Gates: Higher Education and Social Class

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:59:56 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.petersacks.org

"Tearing Down the Gates" is about educational injustice. While we often hear about the economic divide between the rich and the poor in America, this book locates the fountainhead of these growing economic disparities in one of our most cherished democratic institutions: our education system.

The book tells the stories of several young people born into different sides of America’s class divide and how their educational opportunities are being shaped by their class status more than ever. The book shows how the actions of schools, colleges and universities, and even government agencies, exacerbate the widening opportunity gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged young people.

Educational opportunity is the key to a middle-class life in the United States, yet the widening class divide results in an untold loss of human talent. Over time, this emerging crisis will derail the American Dream -- not just for some, but for us all.

Tags: class

Finding "Fit" in Academe

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:57:53 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: chronicle.com

What Went Wrong

There is that magic word: fit.

We use it a lot in higher education, not only when we search for colleagues but also when we woo prospective students, who are themselves encouraged to look far and wide for that elusive match -- the perfect fit between student and college. The fact that about a third of all college students drop out or transfer after the first year suggests that we may be doing a better job at creating the illusion of the perfect fit than actually fulfilling it. Or maybe the students -- those overprotected, excessively nurtured, coddled millennials -- simply expect too much of our institutions, setting themselves up for disappointment and disillusion.

No doubt, the college also fell for a fantasy version of me -- and particularly for a certain academic pedigree

which the president and others in the administration delighted in trotting out when it suited them.

Social Status Linked to Weight Gain in Girls

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:52:15 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Girls with Low Self-Esteem More Likely to Gain Weight

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Teenage girls who place themselves low on their school social ladder were 69% more likely 2 years later to gain significant weight compared to their peers, according to a new study.

The study is apparently the first to ask questions about social status before weight change, making a stronger case for linking the two. Previous research has largely only looked at only one issue at a given time.

An accompanying editorial suggests that “subjective social status as well as the traditional objective measures of status — education and income — predict greater morbidity. A greater understanding of how peers influence health behaviors will help guide interventions in the future.”

The study appears in the current issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Tags: obesity, weight, gender, status

Educational Data onn Parents in Poverty

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:33:58 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.ns.umich.edu

Families in higher poverty schools strongly value student achievement and appear indifferent to the principal's report of a teacher's ability to promote student satisfaction. The results are reversed for families in wealthier schools.

The findings appear in the new issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

"The value of this study is that it helps education practitioners and policymakers better understand how factors such as family poverty can influence what parents are looking for in a school," Jacob said. "While all parents presumably want what is best for their children, this can mean very different things depending on the school and neighborhood context."

The study is the first known review of its kind to examine parents' preferences using information on parent requests for specific teachers within a school.

Tags: social class

Low-Income Students Succeed in Nourishing Environments

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:31:03 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Poor people can impress you if the environment nurtures them

Clip Source: www.coenet.us

At some universities, graduation rates for poor and minority students lag 20 percentage points behind the student population as a whole. But that's not the case at the University of California, Riverside, where 64% of the poor students graduate within six years, about the same as the overall graduation rate.

The knee-jerk explanation — that Riverside must succeed by limiting the number of poor and minority students admitted — is wrong. Riverside is very diverse, especially with Latino students, and 45% of its students receive federal Pell grants for poor students.

The real answer emerges from a study recently released by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education: Riverside treats students differently.

innovative educators have decided to defy the maxim that demography is destiny. They create protective bubbles around at-risk students. They don't "lose" students in the system. They plan on success begetting success. It's being done.

Tags: education, college, poverty, retention, graduation

Bush Vetoes College Funding, Override of Veto Fails

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:25:18 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.politico.com

Bush vetoes college funding

In his budget, President Bush proposed to eliminate various higher education programs that offer tuition assistance to lower-income students such as the Perkins Loan program and the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant (SEOG).

But Congress passed an appropriations bill with large margins in both Houses that would have supported those programs at their current level.

They would also increase funds for Pell Grants and programs such as TRIO that provide support services for first-generation college students.

“I wouldn’t have been in college if it hadn’t been for TRIO.”

Democratic congressional leaders were also critical of the veto, saying it would hinder their attempts to improve college access for disadvantaged students.

Tags: trio, college, education, affordibility

Class Divides Developing among African Americans

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:08:00 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.npr.org

Poll: Education, Income Segregates Blacks

by Steve Inskeep and Juan Williams

Morning Edition, November 14, 2007 · A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows many African-Americans say they can no longer be seen as a single race. Work ethic and education are creating a class divide. Nearly 40 percent of low-income blacks say they have nothing in common with middle-income and poor blacks.

Forty-four percent of those young black people say there is no one black race anymore, as compared to 35 percent of the 30- to 49-year-old black population, and 34 percent of the black people over age 65.

In response to the question, "Have the values of middle-class and poor blacks become more similar or more different?" 61 percent of black Americans said "more different."

But even with that hard-edged view of how often they have to deal with discrimination, a majority of black people say that regardless of the race of an individual, a black person can make it in America.

Tags: classism, racism, meritocracy, myth