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Student Loan Problems
-there are loan services intentionally refusing to release information to investigative officials
-officials are investigating these services on their exploitation of consumers
-Secretary DeVos and her group are purposefully helping the bad loan services

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The Education Department is intervening on behalf of student loan servicers, some accused of illegally exploiting borrowers, by declining to turn over information to law enforcement agencies in multiple states investigating the businesses, some consumer advocates say.

The department's reluctance to share data from or about student loan servicers was revealed in documents and correspondence to the Senate education subcommittee recently obtained by NBC News.

"It's a brazen act of lawlessness," said Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and former enforcement lawyer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government's consumer watchdog.

"I think they are overinterpreting what their authority is to stop law enforcement," he added.

Diane Auer Jones, a top adviser to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, wrote to two Democratic members of Congress on June 24 that "we no longer grant such requests for nonconsensual disclosure of records from entities purporting to exercise regulatory or enforcement power," a policy the agency says stems from its interpretation of federal law.

The Education Department posted an announcement in March 2018 in the Federal Register arguing that its oversight pre-empts state regulations when it comes to policing the student loan industry, and its responsibility to oversee the nine servicers currently contracted to handle federal student loans is being undermined by state enforcement.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., one of the lawmakers who received the letter and a vocal critic of the department under DeVos, said the explanation from Jones gets at the heart of how she believes the department has put the interests of student loan servicers before student borrowers. Those borrowers have paid out billions of dollars in additional interest charges to student loan servicers, some of whom continue to reap big earnings, lawmakers and advocates say.

"After nearly a year of hiding the truth, Secretary DeVos' Department of Education finally admitted that it is interfering with law enforcement in order to protect predatory student loan servicers and debt collectors instead of making sure student loan borrowers get treated fairly," Murray said in a statement. "That's completely backwards and it tells you all you need to know about Secretary DeVos' priorities."

Jones was responding to a Feb. 19 letter from Murray and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who are on appropriations subcommittees that fund the Education Department, in which they told DeVos that her agency has "historically and appropriately" granted access to student loan-related records.

"However, recent steps by the Department suggest your agency's previous commitment to information-sharing with law enforcement may no longer be your policy or practice," the lawmakers said.

More than 20 Democratic state attorneys general, including of California, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, also echoed that concern in a joint letter to DeVos in April, writing that the department's "recent rejection of requests" is a "sharp departure from its longstanding practice," and that such information is pivotal in their law enforcement roles to litigate against large-scale fraud, particularly in higher education's for-profit and debt relief sectors.

Also in April, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which began during the Obama administration collecting tens of thousands of complaints on both private and federal education loan companies, suggested in a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. - who helped establish the consumer bureau almost a decade ago - that the agency has been stifled because "student loan servicers have declined to produce information."

The Education Department maintains that under the Privacy Act of 1974, it has the discretion of releasing student borrower data shared by its contractors, and that a third party that wants access to those records must go through the department.

In questions about Jones' letter, the Education Department denied Monday that there is a blanket policy of not sharing data with state law enforcement agencies. If information is being requested as part of an effort to regulate a student loan servicer, and the department believes that regulation is pre-empted by federal law, then the data won't be released, a spokesman said.

He added that requests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

In her letter, Jones said, the department determines whether to release records by seeking "to balance a borrower's interest in privacy with the need for the record. In addition, before disclosing a record, the Department must ensure that the legal requirements for disclosure have been met."

Jones also stressed in her letter that federal law can pre-empt state regulations. In recent months, several states, including California, Illinois, Maryland and New York, have adopted rules trying to force loan servicers to comply with state consumer protection or licensing laws.

Liz Hill, an Education Department spokeswoman, said in a previous statement that a "state-by-state approach to regulating federal assets causes confusion for borrowers and makes administration of the loan program more complicated and costly."

The Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group, has defended the department's interpretation as "not just good law, it is good policy."

But student borrower advocates and higher education analysts who spoke with NBC News say the department's guidance has no legal standing.

"There is no explicit pre-emption of state law with regards to servicer oversight in the Higher Education Act or any other federal law," said Whitney Barkley-Denney, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that studies student loan debt and predatory lending. She added that in the case of loan servicing, "the states have long been recognized as having the power to police corporations and industry on behalf of consumers."

The tussle between the federal government and states comes as part of a wider shift during the Trump administration to move away from clamping down on student loan servicers and for-profit colleges accused of preying on students. The nation's student debt crisis has only grown as 45 million student borrowers have seen their collective debt balloon to roughly $1.5 trillion.

Navient Corp., one of the nation's largest student-loan servicing companies with 12 million customers, is facing at least six lawsuits - from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state attorneys general in California, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Washington - accusing the loan giant of steering struggling borrowers into higher-cost payment plans or overusing forbearance, which allows students to temporarily postpone repayment while still being charged interest. Navient says the allegations in the lawsuits "are false and we are vigorously contesting them in court," and that it has "helped millions of borrowers" enroll in income-driven repayment plans.

With lawsuits winding through the courts involving student loan servicers, there has been disagreement about whether federal law supplants state and local laws as suggested by the Education Department. Judges reviewing cases in Pennsylvania and Illinois, however, have lent credence to the right for states to hold student loan servicers accountable when it comes to consumer protection.

"So far, courts have given almost no legal weight to the DeVos memo," Barkley-Denney said.

Meanwhile, the Education Department has received at least 40 law enforcement data requests during this fiscal year, Jones said, and many have been fulfilled. Most requests were related to local agencies investigating individual borrowers rather than broader probes, and some involved the use of subpoenas.

But according to the letter, as of June, still pending were requests for information from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which first contacted the Education Department in January, and the North Carolina Attorney General's Office, which was initially denied its request last October related to the department's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, even though the office made a point to ask for aggregate data and not borrowers' private information.

The office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who has been among the most aggressive state law enforcement officials in going after predatory student loans, said the data it has sought also refrains from compromising the privacy of borrowers - a concern raised by student loan companies for why records should remain under wraps. The data has included internal documents, policies and procedures, and nationwide loan files.

"We aren't asking for disclosure of sensitive information, and without this data we are asking for, we cannot fully address ongoing problems with the system as it stands now," Jacklin Rhoads, Shapiro's spokeswoman, said.

Seth Frotman, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a consumer advocacy group, said Jones' response to lawmakers this summer underscores how "the department is engaged in a calculated, unprecedented effort to obstruct law enforcement officials working to protect borrowers."

Frotman formed the nonprofit center after abruptly resigning last summer as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's student loan ombudsman in protest of what he believes are harmful policies promoted under the current White House. Under Frotman, the consumer bureau in 2017 filed its lawsuit against Navient, a case that remains held up in red tape.

Frotman's post had been vacant until last month, when Robert Cameron, previously the top compliance official at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, was named to the position. The decision has generated criticism: Cameron's former employer is one of the loan servicers contracted by the federal government, and its FedLoan unit works exclusively with borrowers in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which a federal watchdog agency reported last week had a staggering 99 percent rejection rate for public servants requesting student loan forgiveness from May 2018 to May 2019.

Education Department spokeswoman Angela Morabito said in a statement about the revamped loan forgiveness program that "some of the very lawmakers decrying [its] high denial rate are the same ones who created a program that is difficult to qualify for" and the department has worked to create online tools to help borrowers gain approval.

In response to questions about Cameron and whether the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau is concerned about the Education Department's blocking of information, a consumer bureau spokesperson said the agency's director, Kathy Kraninger, had informed Congress earlier this year that she was in the process of finding a new ombudsman.

"With that position now filled, the Bureau looks forward to a productive relationship with the Department of Education," the spokesperson said.

Peterson, the former lawyer at the consumer bureau, said that while it's unclear why the department has appeared to curb efforts by enforcement agencies that want to ensure student loan companies are best serving borrowers, the basic reason for student loans has gotten lost in the bureaucracy.

"We should be helping people get educated - that's the mission," he said. "It's not to help quasi-banks make profits."

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Inside the Education Department's effort to 'obstruct' student borrower investigations

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The Education Department is intervening on behalf of student loan servicers, some accused of illegally exploiting borrowers, by declining to turn over information to law enforcement agencies in multiple states investigating the businesses, some consumer advocates say.

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-officials are investigating these services on their exploitation of consumers

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~African American girls are now being targeted in school systems
~In Washington D.c, studies have showed that more than half of the harshest dress code schools have a majority black student population
~The schools banned head wraps and other head coverings and said that the hairstyles must be "neat"

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Black girls in the US are are being disproportionately targeted by stringent school dress codes and subjected to victim blaming by teachers, a new report has found.

Researchers at the National Women's Law Centre (NWLC) found around half of secondary schools banned hair wraps or other head coverings, 59 per cent regulated the length of skirts and shorts, and 55 per cent regulated tightness and fit of clothing.

The study, which surveyed schools in Washington DC, found almost a quarter banned tights or leggings. And it found more than half of the schools with the harshest dress codes have a majority black student population.

Jasmine Tucker, the NWLC's director of research, said many schools' dress code policies target clothing most often worn by girls such as regulating tank top strap width.

She argued that black girls face assumptions about "who they are and what they are like" built on stereotypes - adding that many traditionally black hairstyles and head coverings, which often have specific cultural or religious meaning, are sometimes seen to be "unprofessional".

"Many schools ban head wraps or other head coverings and specify that hair must be 'neat', which is another way of banning certain hairstyles," she told The Independent.

"NWLC spoke with many DC students who reported that black girls in their schools are being disproportionately targeted for violating dress code policies. This is unacceptable. Black girls deserve to bring their authentic selves to school and should not face unnecessary barriers to participating in the classroom."

"Many dress codes specify disciplinary action that will be taken if a student is violating dress code, and includes barring students from class and even in or out of school suspension. They are disproportionately punishing students by standing in the way of learning for what are minor infractions."

Ms Anderson noted high schools that are majority black tend to have more "stringent and harsher" student codes of conduct overall.

"Often times it is black administrators carrying out harsh discipline policies because they believe it's necessary to prepare black students for a world that already views them as less innocent and more adult," she said.

"But in actuality, restrictive dress codes and discipline policies reinforce anti-black stereotypes by telling black girls that their authentic selves are incompatible with academic success. Black girls deserve teachers and school leaders that are willing to challenge systemic racism and misogyny that have created barriers for too many students for too long."

Ms Anderson added: "Any adult sexualising girls' bodies by policing their clothing is problematic for students and results in negative academic, social and emotional effects on students. Too often girls recounted stories about administrators implying that girls are inviting sexual harassment because of what they are wearing.

"Not only is this blaming the victim, it also communicates to boys or other harassers that they are not responsible for their own behaviour."

This "boys will be boys attitude" prioritises the "desires of harassers over the bodily autonomy" of survivors, she added.

The campaigner called for schools to teach boys to respect their peers irrespective of what they choose to wear - arguing this issue would not arise when students get to university and then go into the world of work if it is addressed early in primary and secondary school.

NWLC carried out interviews with students, parents, and school administrators and looked at the dress code policies of 29 public and charter schools.

Chloe Pine, a student at School Without Walls High School, said: "If you go to school every single day and a male teacher tells you that you are showing too much skin or that you look inappropriate, or that you are distracting other boys, you are again embedding in their head that they have to live up to some certain standard that a male made. And that is just not the way that society should be."

The report comes a year after the NWLC's initial study on racist and sexist enforcement of dress codes sparked far-reaching campaigning and activism from students and parents across the US. The DC council passed the Student Fair Access to Schools Act of 2018 - a bill that would ban out-of-school suspensions for minor infractions including dress code violations.

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Black girls in US pushed out of school over racist and sexist school dress codes, report finds

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Black girls in the US are are being disproportionately targeted by stringent school dress codes and subjected to victim blaming by teachers, a new report has found.

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- Boston gives kindergartners $50 dollars each to promote saving for college or career training
-The program is called Boston Saves
-This program will help kids get into college or even consider going

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Reading at home and school attendance shot up with this cheap easy nudge
Any parent can sign up for this brain building app to help kids 5 and under
most affordable way to help low in come kids stay on track
www.usatoday.com
( i couldnt put the link because it wont let me on my chrome book so i did it on my phone )

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Why college ranks mean nothing and everything
College tells the public which school is worth going too while academics think it's worthless
Peoples obsession over picking the best school informs the longevity of U.S. news college rankings

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College rankings purport to tell the public which schools are worthwhile, even though many academics view the rankings as worthless.

The latest salvo in the battle between the ranked and the rankers comes out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. A statistics professor and a group of students say, based on an statistical analysis, Reed College appears to be under-ranked compared to other schools on the U.S. News & World Report's ranking of "best colleges." The publication denies that claim and questions the accuracy of the group's work.

Though the two parties may not come to an agreement, the debate speaks to a broader conversation about the value of quantifying the college experience. Mainly, is there any?

"They don't know what's going on. They're just reacting to prestige, and prestige is the illusion of quality. It may get at something, but it isn't getting at something real or trustworthy."
Douglas C. Bennett, former president, Earlham College, on U.S. News & World Report college rankings
In America, the U.S. News & World Report rankings are regarded as the gold standard. The publication's methodology usually changes annually, but it includes student retention and graduation rates, resources available to faculty, and the opinions of fellow college leaders and high school counselors. It also create snapshots of colleges that include cost, application deadlines and a school's history.

"Taken together, the rankings and profiles - combined with college visits, interviews and your own intuition - can be a powerful tool in your quest for the right college," the company's website reads.

Americans' obsession with choosing the best product also informs the longevity of U.S. News college rankings, which began in 1983. They persist because choosing where to start a higher education career is confusing and there are hundreds of colleges, each promising a quality education. But when students can't figure out who is telling them the truth, a list of winners and losers can seem like a clarion through the noise.

Reed College rankings: 38th or 90th?

As a statistician, professor Kelly McConville is well aware of the value of numbers, but she too had questions about U.S. News' ranking system.

So, McConville and students Bailee Cruger, Huaying Qiu and Wenxin Du set about creating a model to test it following a suggestion by the college's institutional research office. Using federally available government data from t he Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and their model, they said they were able to recreate the U.S. News ranking with 94% accuracy.

In their model, Reed ranks 38th for liberal arts colleges nationally, but U.S. News' model put the college at 90th. McConville said there is "variability in the accuracy of the prediction," but it does provide evidence Reed is under-ranked.

Reed College in Portland, Oregon. (Photo: User:Cacophony / Wikimedia Commons)

"We were really surprised," she said. "It seemed like their models implied that Reed should be ranked higher."

The point, McConville said, wasn't to fight over which equation was best, but to show the limitations of a one-size-fits-all model, and to demystify the process of rankings.

Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, challenged the Reed College findings on two grounds. First, he argued, it was "not possible" to reverse-engineer the college rankings based only on IPEDS data.

Secondly, Morse said the publication doesn't penalize schools that don't participate in the surveys. He added that the magazine relies on IPEDS data when colleges decline to take part in the survey.

Christopher R. Marsicano, a professor at Davidson College who studies higher education, said it appears the students were able to predict the U.S. News rankings with a high degree of accuracy. But, he cautioned, it would be impossible to replicate the scores exactly without the publication's precise formula.

He couldn't perfectly replicate the students' work, but Marsicano looked at publicly available data for colleges in U.S. News rankings in the high 30s and the low 90s.

He said Reed appeared to share many traits with the high-30s groups, including graduation and retention rates, money spent on students and SAT scores. He did say it's possible Reed, however, got a bump for having a higher graduation rate than what U.S. News had predicted. Its prediction, Marsicano said, was 5 points below Reed's lowest graduation rate in nearly the past decade.

"It seems that U.S. News just doesn't have a good handle on Reed in general," he said. "And to be fair, Reed doesn't send in the survey - so how could U.S. News adequately have a handle on Reed?"

'Nobody should fill those forms out'

Rancor over the rankings has long been brewing.

Douglas C. Bennett is one of those longtime critics of the rankings. While president of Earlham College in Indiana, he did not participate in the system and, in 2007, he signed a letter encouraging other leaders in higher education to do the same.

Little has changed, he said, since his 2011 retirement. Among his complaints, Bennett said the rankings measure many factors that don't necessarily reveal how adept a college is at educating students. In particular, a portion of the rankings ask presidents to assess other institutions. His response when he was a president: He couldn't really know.

Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. (Photo: Earlham College / Wikimedia Commons)

"Nobody should fill those forms out," he said. "They don't know what's going on. They're just reacting to prestige, and prestige is the illusion of quality. It may get at something, but it isn't getting at something real or trustworthy."

A small contingent, including Reed, opted out on ideological grounds. But the rankings clearly mean something to many others.

Some list their ranking on their website as an advertising tool. Others make it part of the institution's goal to rise in the rankings and, in extreme cases, may tie presidential bonuses to moving up, according to Robert Kelchen's " Higher Education Accountability."

Others lie to boost their standing. In 2019, the University of Oklahoma submitted false data about its fundraising. And, in 2018, Temple University's Master of Business Administration program was stripped of its ranking after it was found to have lied about its students test data, among other things.

UC Berkeley, which often ranked as the best public school in the nation, was also recently moved to unranked "status" after misreporting alumni giving rates. In that case, the university reported the error itself.

What are numbers without context?

Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in New Orleans, has long refused to participate in the rankings system. He joked that he sends the U.S. News and World Report's surveys back in the mail labeled as junk.

"Since the '80s, we have been a brand-name nation, and it applies to higher education," Kimbrough said. "They're looking for a brand to give themselves some kind of status."

Rankings, though, reflect not what colleges do, but who the college serves, Kimbrough said. The colleges that do especially well in the rankings are generally the ones with the fewest students on Pell Grants, a type of financial aid given only to students from low-income backgrounds. Students from such backgrounds often have less academic preparation and will have more ground to cover.

And numbers sans context, he said, mean little. His university's six-year graduation rate in 2012 was 28 percent, he said. That was true, but it was based on the cohort who started seven weeks before Hurricane Katrina.

The institution had to shut down for a semester, and they operated partially out of a hotel the next. Some people just never came back, Kimbrough said. For the next three years, that was part of the data that informed the U.S. News and World Report ranking.

"They just see the numbers without a full interpretation of about what those numbers mean," Kimbrough said.
Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.
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US News & World Report ranks America's 'best' colleges. But, is there really a way to know?

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CLOSE College rankings purport to tell the public which schools are worthwhile, even though many academics view the rankings as worthless. The latest salvo in the battle between the ranked and the rankers comes out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

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- students returned to school thinking they will have better food because it was promised.
- parents don’t like the fact that schools just reheat frozen food manufactured in factories .
- they feel students should have real food at schools.

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Across the country millions of children are returning to school with the promise that school lunch will be "great again". For the Trump administration, this means adding salt, fat and sugar to the very same school lunches the Obama administration worked to make healthier.

But not everyone agrees that yielding to the concerns of big food lobbyists is the path to school lunch greatness, including the coalition of states and advocacy organizations that sued the Trump administration over the rollback of school lunch standards, as well as a growing number of parents who want schools to do more than just reheat frozen food manufactured in faraway factories.

Yet cutting ties with big food is no easy task for cash-strapped schools. Many lack basic culinary equipment such as knives and cutting boards, while others struggle to recruit and retain enough part-time workers to keep kitchens staffed. We need to invest in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the hundreds of thousands of cafeteria workers who feed the nation's children by empowering them to make meals from scratch using nutritious, locally sourced ingredients.

I have spent the last eight years visiting school kitchens and cafeterias, interviewing these workers and partnering with activists in the movement to bring "real" food to American public schools. I began with a simple interest in learning more about how farm-to-school programs could redirect public dollars to support local farmers and quickly realized just how difficult it is for schools to convert raw chicken, farm-fresh vegetables, and whole grains into a finished meal after decades of cost-cutting.

For over 70 years, the not-for-profit NSLP has been forced to operate as a self-sustaining "business". Relying on lunch ladies' willingness to work for extremely low wages was the primary strategy for containing costs until the late 1960s, when schools increasingly mechanized, privatized and commercialized school lunch in order to rapidly expand the NSLP to urban and rural schools that had been systematically excluded from the program. During this time, the National Restaurant Association, which food activists often call " the other NRA ", convinced Congress that big food companies could deliver a better, cheaper school lunch program than the nation's lunch ladies.

We need to invest in the NSLP and the hundreds of thousands of cafeteria workers who feed the nation's children

By the time older millennials like me walked through the cafeteria doors in the early 1990s, we were greeted by rectangular slices of greasy sausage pizza, generic McRib sandwiches, sugary flavored milk, and lots of canned fruits and vegetables. As a kid I never really imagined that school lunch could be different. And it wasn't until I began spending my days talking with school cafeteria workers two decades later that I began to understand how the people (mostly women) who feed the nation's children had suffered - economically and emotionally - as their jobs were degraded and deskilled.

We need a new model for the NSLP that provides cafeteria workers with access to longer hours, higher wages and more meaningful work. Only then can we begin to realize the potential of the NSLP to reduce the long-term cost of preventable dietary diseases, encourage environmentally and economically sustainable diets, and create good middle-class jobs across the food chain.

Voluntary initiatives such as the Good Food Purchasing Program can help schools ensure that small-scale family farmers, organic growers and young/beginning farmers see a greater share of public food dollars, but the impact will be limited if the NSLP continues to prioritize short-term cheapness over long-term public value.

We need to make a national investment in the future of the food system, and K-12 schools offer the ideal platform. Unlike farmers' markets and CSAs, which rely on individual consumers to vote with their forks for an alternative to the industrial status quo, the NSLP is a multibillion-dollar public program that operates in practically every American neighborhood.

New York City, Boston, and Atlanta are just a few of the nation's large school districts that have committed to feeding all children free school lunches - a move vital to reducing the stigma of the NSLP as "welfare food". This is a great start. But it's not enough. We have to change the labor of lunch - from the way school food is grown, processed and prepared, to the way it is served - if we want to maximize the benefits of the NSLP to children, workers and the environment.

In the midst of a national conversation marked by lunch shaming and regulatory rollbacks, it may seem impractical to advocate for such sweeping changes. But the imperative to advance a bold, holistic set of school lunch reforms holds more promise than ever.

According to a recent report from the US Department of Agriculture, participation in the NSLP is actually the highest in schools that serve the healthiest food. The best way to make school lunch great for all children is to build a movement - at local, state and national scales - to transform the NSLP into a program that dishes up real food and real jobs in all American communities.

Jennifer E Gaddis is an assistant professor in the department of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of the forthcoming book The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools

Topics

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Why school cafeterias should be the front lines of policy change | Jennifer E Gaddis

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Across the country millions of children are returning to school with the promise that school lunch will be "great again". For the Trump administration, this means adding salt, fat and sugar to the very same school lunches the Obama administration worked to make healthier.

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California Requires Public Universities to Provide Abortion Pills.
- universities states that they requires abortions pill in California.
- campus health centers would be required to offer medication abortion

- people across the world were against the abortion

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- a teacher told a student he’d secured a paid after school job for her to build her skills
- when she showed up for it, he said the job had been canceled
-he took her to dinner instead, purchased her alcohol and kissed her
- she asked the teacher to take her home instead her performed non consensual oral sex   While she cried and begged him to stop

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Chicago Schools Investigation Prompts News Look at Sex Abuse in K-12 Schools

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Federal education officials pointed to thousand of mishandled complaints in recent years.

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-A Trump administration proposal to restrict food stamp eligibility could lead to children losing their eligibility for a free lunch
-More than 500,000 students would lose eligibility for free school lunches
-Child hunger advocacy groups have been sounding the alarm on the proposal for months

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500,000 Poor Kids Could Lose Eligibility for Free School Lunch

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A public posting of a Trump administration proposal failed to acknowledge the impact of the rule change.

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- a school silenced its valedictorian when she brought up sexual assault
- In California a girl named Lulabel Seitz was giving her valedictorian speech and when she mentioned the challenges her and her classmates faced she landed on the topic of sexual assault which was also personal to her
- After mentioning the mishandling of sexual assault the sound went dead and now the question is rather it was ilegal for the school to silence

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At a west County School, they are being helped by the Saint Louis Zoo. Students at Westchester Elementary recently spent the whole day outside with staff members from the zoo. Staff from the school felt that the students had way too much time with the ipads inside, so they wanted to get them to interact more with nature.

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- Michigan colleges make budget cuts, which widely effects people of color
- Rising college prices make it difficult for P.O.C to attend, study shows
- Rising Prices effect attendance in general

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Add rising tuition to the challenges facing K-12 students in communities like Detroit as they strive toward a college degree.

Budget cuts at Michigan's public universities are disproportionately hurting black students by making it more difficult for them to attend college, a new report argues.

The report, by The Century Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan think tank, declares a "college affordability crisis in Michigan."

Budget cuts at Michigan's public universities are disproportionately hurting black students by making it more difficult for them to attend college, a new report argues (Photo: Patricia Beck, Detroit Free Press)

It isn't clear how many students don't attend college due to rising tuition costs versus other factors - just 28 percent of students who graduated from the Detroit Public Schools Community District in 2017 completed one year of college credits within a year of graduation. But the report suggests that affordability hurts college attendance rates in communities of color.

Its authors argue that two decades of budget cuts in Lansing have made it more difficult for families - especially African-American families - to send their children to college. Detroit has the largest proportion of African-American residents - 79% - of any major American city.

Students who earn bachelor's degrees can expect to earn far more over their lifetimes than those with only a high school diploma.

Among the report's key points:

Michigan is among the bottom 10 states in higher education spending as a percentage of the state budget

State spending per student has declined by 40% since 2000

Tuition per student at public universities in Michigan has more than doubled since 2000

African-Americans are half as likely as the general population in Michigan to get a bachelor's degree. Researchers noted that the price of public college takes up a greater share of a typical black household's income than of a typical white household's income.

The full report can be read here.

More: Detroit students leave the city for suburban schools that aren't much better

More: Michigan's new strict reading rule could harm third graders
This story originally was published on Chalkbeat.org/detroit/.
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Report: Michigan skimps on higher education, and students of color pay the price

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CLOSE Add rising tuition to the challenges facing K-12 students in communities like Detroit as they strive toward a college degree. Budget cuts at Michigan's public universities are disproportionately hurting black students by making it more difficult for them to attend college, a new report argues.

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Virginia theological seminary flourished on slave labor, and now they're wanting to pay reparations (1.7 million fund) to their descendants or any black seminarians or worshipers who were discriminated on their campus. This fund would be worked in to students tuition but there is a contradiction because students of color who goes to the school would have to pay that small portion of money unless black people were excluded from it. 

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Virginia theological seminary flourished on slave labor, and now they're wanting to pay reparations (1.7 million fund) to their descendants or any black seminarians or worshipers who were discriminated on their campus. This fund would be worked in to students tuition but there is a contradiction because students of color who goes to the school would have to pay that small portion of money unless black people were excluded from it. 

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-Alexia Nichols

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The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va. The seminary announced this month that it would create a $1.7 million reparations fund. Credit Credit Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

By the time Phillips Brooks arrived at the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1856, the institution was thriving. Founded more than three decades earlier in the Sunday school room of a church in Alexandria, Va., the seminary sat on a 62-acre estate with lush meadows and glorious views of the Washington Monument.

School officials saw the transformation as a sign of divine blessings. But Mr. Brooks, a seminarian who would go on to become the bishop of his home state of Massachusetts, saw more than the hand of God at work.

"There are crowds of slaves about here," wrote Mr. Brooks in one of a series of letters describing life at the school, the first Episcopal seminary in the South. "It is one of the best places to see the sad effects of slavery on the white population, degrading and unmanning them."

This month, more than a century after the last enslaved people labored on campus, the seminary's leaders announced plans to atone for that history. They are creating a $1.7 million reparations fund, becoming one of the first American institutions to allocate money specifically for the descendants of the enslaved. The fund will also provide financial support for black seminarians and black worshipers who experienced discrimination on campus.

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Virginia Theological Seminary in a Civil War-era photograph. Credit Mathew Brady/Library of Congress

A handwritten bill for $510 for "the brick work & material for Servants building per contract." Credit Virginia Theological Seminary Archives

An undated image of what is believed to be the "servants" quarters mentioned in the $510 bill. Credit Virginia Theological Seminary Archives

"We need to come to terms with a past that has an ugly side, a wicked side," the Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, the seminary's dean and president, said in an interview.

"When you're talking about something as heinous as slavery, there's no amount really that can actually satisfy that sin," Dean Markham said. "It's just too enormous. But we're going to do the hard work, recognizing that our past is full of sin and grace."

The move places the southern seminary at the forefront of a growing number of universities and religious institutions striving to make amends for their involvement in America's system of involuntary servitude. And it comes as some groups move beyond apologies, considering actual financial compensation to descendants.

Last year, the Catholic sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart created a reparations fund to finance scholarships for African-Americans in Grand Coteau, La., where the nuns had owned about 150 black people.

This spring, students at Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, voted to create a fund, financed by student fees, to benefit the descendants of the 272 people who were sold in 1838 to help keep the college afloat. (The plan has yet to receive approval from Georgetown's board of trustees.)

The Jesuits, who founded and ran Georgetown and organized the 1838 slave sale, are currently in talks with descendants of the people they once owned. Those descendants are seeking $1 billion for a foundation that would finance educational, health, housing and other needs.

In a statement, Timothy P. Kesicki, the president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, said the Jesuits and Georgetown officials "have been constructively engaged in discussing the descendants' vision for a pathway forward."

The decision by Virginia Theological Seminary moves the debate over reparations - which in recent months has bubbled up in presidential campaigns and in the halls of Congress - from the theoretical to a reality.

"It's important because the conversation about institutional obligations to the descendants of the enslaved typically gets confined to a discussion of research and fact-finding," said Craig Steven Wilder, a historian at M.I.T. who has written extensively about universities and their ties to slavery.

"It's the religious institutions that have started to lay out a path from there toward restorative justice," Dr. Wilder added. "It's much harder for religious institutions to be silent on the moral implications of their own history."

Seminary officials plan to pore over archival records for the stories and the names of the enslaved men and women who toiled there. Credit Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

The fund at the Virginia Theological Seminary will be administered by the Rev. Joseph Thompson, the director of the Office of Multicultural Ministries. The institution plans to spend about $70,000 each year.

The seminary hopes to identify descendants of the enslaved laborers who worked on campus and seminarians who experienced discrimination at the school. Officials plan to discuss their needs and to offer financial assistance, officials said. "Everything is on the table," Dean Markham said.

Officials also hope to support local churches with historical ties to the seminary and African-American alumni, especially black Episcopal clergy and those working in black congregations.

Dean Markham said the decision to create the fund had touched off "a lively debate" within the seminary's community where it has been discussed by members of the board, faculty and alumni.

"People had a lot of questions to ask," Dr. Thompson added. "There are obvious logistical challenges and obvious philosophical questions. I'm very excited to tackle those questions with the dean's task force."

Seminary officials plan to begin charting the way forward by digging into the past. They plan to pore over archival records to try to unearth the names and stories of the enslaved men and women who toiled on campus. Several of the institution's founders were slaveholders, including Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner." Census records indicate that at least five faculty members owned black people as well, according to the Rev. Joseph M. Constant, the author of "No Turning Back: The Black Presence at Virginia Theological Seminary."

But most of the enslaved people on campus were rented from local plantations, including from Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate. Enslaved laborers are believed to have built several buildings on campus, including Aspinwall Hall, which currently houses the seminary's administrative offices, said Christopher Pote, the seminary's archivist.

The sight of so many enslaved men and women on campus in the 1850s astonished Mr. Brooks, the young seminarian from Massachusetts.

"All the servants are slaves," Mr. Brooks wrote to his father in 1856. And students who tried to minister to the enslaved encountered threats and resistance.

One Northern student, he wrote, held a meeting once a week for the enslaved people at the seminary, but had been told to give it up, "or he will have to suffer."

"Another who has preached some in the neighborhood has been informed that there was tar and feather ready for him if he went far from the seminary," Mr. Brooks continued. "And in general they have been given to understand that their tongues were tied and they were anything but free. A pretty style of life, isn't it?"

Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist and author who covers race and race relations as a contributing writer for The New York Times. Her articles about Georgetown University's roots in slavery touched off a national conversation about American universities and their ties to this painful period of history. @rachelswarns * Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Seminary Creates $1.7 Million Fund to Pay Slavery Reparations. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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The Seminary Flourished on Slave Labor. Now It's Planning to Pay Reparations.

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By the time Phillips Brooks arrived at the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1856, the institution was thriving. Founded more than three decades earlier in the Sunday school room of a church in Alexandria, Va., the seminary sat on a 62-acre estate with lush meadows and glorious views of the Washington Monument.

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-Universities and colleges are sponsoring retirement communities on their grounds.
-they are doing this in hope of the students will learn from the elders.
-many students have mixed feelings being around people that reminds them of their parents or grandparents who they just escaped from.

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Judy and Martin Cohen and their cat Carly currently reside in Rye Brook, N.Y. They plan to move to a new retirement complex on the nearby Purchase College campus. Credit Credit Joe Carrotta for The New York Times

Universities and colleges are sponsoring retirement communities on their grounds, hoping that young and old can enrich each other's lives while filling the school's coffers.

Judy and Martin Cohen and their cat Carly currently reside in Rye Brook, N.Y. They plan to move to a new retirement complex on the nearby Purchase College campus. Credit Credit Joe Carrotta for The New York Times

College is a place to escape parental oversight for many new arrivals. But a growing trend on college campuses - to place retirement homes near the dorms - may one day prompt students to ask: "Is that grandma over there on the quad?"

Mary Jane Karger and her husband, Tom, both 74, have put down a 10 percent deposit on a retirement community to be built on 40 acres of the 500-acre Purchase College campus, a former cattle farm that is now part of the State University of New York.

Purchase is one of a growing number of colleges sponsoring retirement communities on campus or thinking about it. It is a marketer's dream, monetizing spare land, while milking the baby boom generation's affluence by appealing to their obsession with staying forever young.

"I don't know how much students in their late teens and 20s want to talk to people in their 70s," said Mrs. Karger, a retired school social worker who plans to live there. "I kind of like to think that they would."

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Mary Jane and Tom Karger live in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., but plan to move to Purchase College's new retirement complex, which is expected to open in 2023. Credit Joe Carrotta for The New York Times

The schools say their motive is more educational and social - encouraging intergenerational mixing - than financial. But the communities promise a new revenue stream for institutions that are coping with reduced state operating support and declining college enrollment in many parts of the country. They are bringing a new generation (or old generation) to campus to fill classes, eat in dining halls, attend student performances and become mentors.

"Look at the whole demographic issue, tuition debt and how states have defunded higher education," said Tom Schwarz, who recently retired as president of Purchase College. "So the result of that is tuition is going up, the need for scholarships is going up. So it's like well-working gears. It sort of fits together."

Retirees who are happy to be living on campus, including alumni and faculty members, could become a fertile source of fund-raising. "We don't expect 100 percent of the people to contribute, but in a sense, they're contributing just by living there," Mr. Schwarz said.

Many students have mixed feelings about sharing their college years with people who remind them of the parents and grandparents whose orbit they have just escaped.

Anton Creutzfeldt, a junior at Purchase College, worried that older people would object to noise and late-night partying. "It's an interesting idea, but we struggle already on campus to have it feel like a college, because there's not that much of an outlet for recreational stuff," he said.

Mr. Creutzfeldt said he had been in classes that were audited by old people, and their presence changed the atmosphere. "Obviously, an older person taking the class doesn't really care if they pass or fail," Mr. Creutzfeldt said. "They're taking it for the enjoyment, or the desire to learn. It creates a difference in the objective in class. An older person will go on a tangent about something because it's interesting to them, or they have personal experience with it, while everyone else is just trying to get through the lecture."

Two-bedroom villas, shown in a rendering, will be offered in the retirement community at Purchase College, as well as one- and two-bedroom apartments. Credit Broadview-Senior Living at Purchase College

The plans at Purchase College include a learning commons where residents, students and faculty members could interact, shown in a rendering. Credit Broadview-Senior Living at Purchase College

The Kargers, on the other hand, resist the old-fogey stereotype. They say the whole reason they are moving to Purchase College and not to Miami is that they like to stay up late and party. Mrs. Karger believes that the other residents will be the same - not your parents' grandparents. "They're forward thinkers, not the ones to go down to Florida and order the early bird special," she said.

Other students said they might like having surrogate grandparents on campus. Annie Yang, a senior majoring in economics at the University of Chicago, said she had basically been raised by her grandmother while her parents were working. She said she could see herself living with old people on campus, especially if she got a break on housing fees in return.

"Grannies are my weakness," she said. "I feel there is a not-trivial population of people like me who have a connection to old people and wouldn't mind a discount on housing."

The retirement housing at Purchase, expected to be ready in about three years, will be open to anyone 62 and older; the median age of those who have put down deposits is 77.

The complex will start with about 220 apartments and houses, plus a sprinkling of assisted living and memory-care beds, and can expand to 385 units.

Arizona State University is working on a similar project on its campus in Tempe that is scheduled to open next spring. Its high-rise development of 252 apartments is nearly sold out.

Other schools are following suit. Kendal, a nonprofit organization that supports a network of retirement communities, is in talks with the University of Pennsylvania and another major university about putting retirement housing on their campuses, according to Larry Elveru, a spokesman for Kendal.

Lasell Village, a pioneering retirement community on the campus of Lasell University outside Boston, is providing consulting services to other universities, senior living organizations and developers, said Anne Doyle, the village president, who is a university employee.

Marketing for these projects focuses on the academic angle. Arizona State officials avoid the word retirement, preferring to talk about "independent lifelong learners." Purchase is calling its development an "intergenerational senior learning community."

Administrators envision a two-way street, in which older people with experience as doctors, lawyers or musicians become mentors to students, and students use the retirement community as a lab for internship work in, say, gerontology or art therapy.

To encourage cross-generational mingling, Arizona is adopting Ms. Yang's model, inviting some performing arts students to live at no cost in the same apartment building as the older residents, in exchange for sharing their talents with the residents in some way.

At the Mirabella at Arizona State University, provisions being built in for older residents include grab bars. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

The retirement housing being built at Arizona State's Tempe campus is scheduled to be completed in 2020. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

The retirement housing being built at Arizona State University will occupy a 20-story high-rise. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

"We thought there was an awful lot to be learned about the aging population in today's world, and how people want to continue to learn all their lives," said Todd Hardy, managing director of innovations zones at Arizona State.

At Lasell Village, created in 2000, the residents live in 16 interconnected buildings, like houses on a college campus, that are named after educators like Margaret Mead and John Dewey.

Residents are required to take college classes, with tuition included in their monthly fees. One of the most popular this fall is a social justice class, whose enrollment is half students and half residents. The retirement community, in turn, provides internships and employment for students, as well as income for the university from rent and payment for support services like information technology and security.

"Just from a business perspective, it's a very strong enterprise," said Ms. Doyle, the president of the community.

Purchase and Arizona State will give student ID cards to their older residents, and say they are working out the details of how much access to campus amenities the residents will be offered.

At Purchase, residents and students will take short courses together, because research has shown that most retirees had little interest in full-length courses. And a student performance space is being built within the retirement complex.

The New York Legislature approved the long-term lease of state land for the project in 2011, and Purchase College set up a nonprofit organization to develop it with a private operator, at a projected cost of $320 million. Officials are expecting a base of $2 million in annual rental income, to be used to almost double the college's $1.8 million scholarship fund and to hire new faculty members.

At a recent marketing session for the Purchase project, called Broadview Senior Living, Ashley Wade, the project's marketing director, gave a hard sell to about 25 potential buyers.

"You don't have to go to class," Ms. Wade said. "You just get to go to class."

Many of the listeners were in sticker shock. The Purchase College "entrance fee" ranges from $595,000 for an apartment to $1,995,000 for a small house; monthly services fees range from $4,300 to $8,700 for one resident and $1,500 more for a second person. When the unit is vacated, 90 percent of the entrance fee is refundable to the residents or their heirs. One-fifth of the units are reserved for people with incomes at or below 80 percent of the median income for Westchester County; for them, the entrance fees start at $250,000.

Prices at Arizona State's project, called Mirabella, range from the mid-$300,000s to more than $1 million for a penthouse apartment.

Judy Cohen, 82, a retired English teacher, and her husband, Martin, 84, a cardiologist, wondered whether they would be welcomed by the students.

"The students have their own life," Dr. Cohen said. "I don't know how many would want to come and sit with. ..." As his voice trailed off, his wife picked up the thread: "Old people," she said. "Let's put the word out there."

Anemona Hartocollis is a national correspondent, covering higher education. She is also the author of the book, "Seven Days of Possibilities: One Teacher, 24 Kids, and the Music That Changed Their Lives Forever." @anemonanyc

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Yes, This Actually Is Your Grandparents' Campus. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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At Colleges, What's Old Is New: Retirees Living on Campus

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Universities and colleges are sponsoring retirement communities on their grounds, hoping that young and old can enrich each other's lives while filling the school's coffers. Judy and Martin Cohen and their cat Carly currently reside in Rye Brook, N.Y. They plan to move to a new retirement complex on the nearby Purchase College campus.

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From Israel, found a few wines from California and France, and even a very tasty, and great-value wine. The wine is flavorful and fine.

https://expo.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/g66l-2019/09/3a383986548582/sipping-in-september-12-wines-reviewed-photos.html

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- Schools are doing more drug tests
- Some kids to not like this idea
- They feel that it is because of peer pressure
- https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2019-09-05/school-districts-double-down-on-drug-testing-targeting-even-middle-schoolers

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USF consolidation, students Data, GPA, rigged.
- Lawmakers are telling USF to rework their consolidation plan or lawmakers will
- it happened over 3 campuses University of South Flordia,St. Petersburg and Sarasota.
- all courses were labeled honors and GPA's where boosted

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-College rankings purport to tell the public which schools are worthwhile, even though many academics view the rankings as worthless.
-In America, the U.S. News & World Report rankings are regarded as the gold standard. The publication's methodology usually changes annually, but it includes student retention and graduation rates, resources available to faculty, and the opinions of fellow college leaders and high school counselors.
-Americans’ obsession with choosing the best product also informs the longevity of U.S. News college rankings, which began in 1983. They persist because choosing where to start a higher education career is confusing and there are hundreds of colleges, each promising a quality education. But when students can't figure out who is telling them the truth, a list of winners and losers can seem like a clarion through the noise.

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College rankings purport to tell the public which schools are worthwhile, even though many academics view the rankings as worthless.

The latest salvo in the battle between the ranked and the rankers comes out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. A statistics professor and a group of students say, based on an statistical analysis, Reed College appears to be under-ranked compared to other schools on the U.S. News & World Report's ranking of "best colleges." The publication denies that claim and questions the accuracy of the group's work.

Though the two parties may not come to an agreement, the debate speaks to a broader conversation about the value of quantifying the college experience. Mainly, is there any?

"They don't know what's going on. They're just reacting to prestige, and prestige is the illusion of quality. It may get at something, but it isn't getting at something real or trustworthy."
Douglas C. Bennett, former president, Earlham College, on U.S. News & World Report college rankings
In America, the U.S. News & World Report rankings are regarded as the gold standard. The publication's methodology usually changes annually, but it includes student retention and graduation rates, resources available to faculty, and the opinions of fellow college leaders and high school counselors. It also create snapshots of colleges that include cost, application deadlines and a school's history.

"Taken together, the rankings and profiles - combined with college visits, interviews and your own intuition - can be a powerful tool in your quest for the right college," the company's website reads.

Americans' obsession with choosing the best product also informs the longevity of U.S. News college rankings, which began in 1983. They persist because choosing where to start a higher education career is confusing and there are hundreds of colleges, each promising a quality education. But when students can't figure out who is telling them the truth, a list of winners and losers can seem like a clarion through the noise.

Reed College rankings: 38th or 90th?

As a statistician, professor Kelly McConville is well aware of the value of numbers, but she too had questions about U.S. News' ranking system.

So, McConville and students Bailee Cruger, Huaying Qiu and Wenxin Du set about creating a model to test it following a suggestion by the college's institutional research office. Using federally available government data from t he Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and their model, they said they were able to recreate the U.S. News ranking with 94% accuracy.

In their model, Reed ranks 38th for liberal arts colleges nationally, but U.S. News' model put the college at 90th. McConville said there is "variability in the accuracy of the prediction," but it does provide evidence Reed is under-ranked.

Reed College in Portland, Oregon. (Photo: User:Cacophony / Wikimedia Commons)

"We were really surprised," she said. "It seemed like their models implied that Reed should be ranked higher."

The point, McConville said, wasn't to fight over which equation was best, but to show the limitations of a one-size-fits-all model, and to demystify the process of rankings.

Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, challenged the Reed College findings on two grounds. First, he argued, it was "not possible" to reverse-engineer the college rankings based only on IPEDS data.

Secondly, Morse said the publication doesn't penalize schools that don't participate in the surveys. He added that the magazine relies on IPEDS data when colleges decline to take part in the survey.

Christopher R. Marsicano, a professor at Davidson College who studies higher education, said it appears the students were able to predict the U.S. News rankings with a high degree of accuracy. But, he cautioned, it would be impossible to replicate the scores exactly without the publication's precise formula.

He couldn't perfectly replicate the students' work, but Marsicano looked at publicly available data for colleges in U.S. News rankings in the high 30s and the low 90s.

He said Reed appeared to share many traits with the high-30s groups, including graduation and retention rates, money spent on students and SAT scores. He did say it's possible Reed, however, got a bump for having a higher graduation rate than what U.S. News had predicted. Its prediction, Marsicano said, was 5 points below Reed's lowest graduation rate in nearly the past decade.

"It seems that U.S. News just doesn't have a good handle on Reed in general," he said. "And to be fair, Reed doesn't send in the survey - so how could U.S. News adequately have a handle on Reed?"

'Nobody should fill those forms out'

Rancor over the rankings has long been brewing.

Douglas C. Bennett is one of those longtime critics of the rankings. While president of Earlham College in Indiana, he did not participate in the system and, in 2007, he signed a letter encouraging other leaders in higher education to do the same.

Little has changed, he said, since his 2011 retirement. Among his complaints, Bennett said the rankings measure many factors that don't necessarily reveal how adept a college is at educating students. In particular, a portion of the rankings ask presidents to assess other institutions. His response when he was a president: He couldn't really know.

Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. (Photo: Earlham College / Wikimedia Commons)

"Nobody should fill those forms out," he said. "They don't know what's going on. They're just reacting to prestige, and prestige is the illusion of quality. It may get at something, but it isn't getting at something real or trustworthy."

A small contingent, including Reed, opted out on ideological grounds. But the rankings clearly mean something to many others.

Some list their ranking on their website as an advertising tool. Others make it part of the institution's goal to rise in the rankings and, in extreme cases, may tie presidential bonuses to moving up, according to Robert Kelchen's " Higher Education Accountability."

Others lie to boost their standing. In 2019, the University of Oklahoma submitted false data about its fundraising. And, in 2018, Temple University's Master of Business Administration program was stripped of its ranking after it was found to have lied about its students test data, among other things.

UC Berkeley, which often ranked as the best public school in the nation, was also recently moved to unranked "status" after misreporting alumni giving rates. In that case, the university reported the error itself.

What are numbers without context?

Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in New Orleans, has long refused to participate in the rankings system. He joked that he sends the U.S. News and World Report's surveys back in the mail labeled as junk.

"Since the '80s, we have been a brand-name nation, and it applies to higher education," Kimbrough said. "They're looking for a brand to give themselves some kind of status."

Rankings, though, reflect not what colleges do, but who the college serves, Kimbrough said. The colleges that do especially well in the rankings are generally the ones with the fewest students on Pell Grants, a type of financial aid given only to students from low-income backgrounds. Students from such backgrounds often have less academic preparation and will have more ground to cover.

And numbers sans context, he said, mean little. His university's six-year graduation rate in 2012 was 28 percent, he said. That was true, but it was based on the cohort who started seven weeks before Hurricane Katrina.

The institution had to shut down for a semester, and they operated partially out of a hotel the next. Some people just never came back, Kimbrough said. For the next three years, that was part of the data that informed the U.S. News and World Report ranking.

"They just see the numbers without a full interpretation of about what those numbers mean," Kimbrough said.
Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.
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US News & World Report ranks America's 'best' colleges. But, is there really a way to know?

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CLOSE College rankings purport to tell the public which schools are worthwhile, even though many academics view the rankings as worthless. The latest salvo in the battle between the ranked and the rankers comes out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

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Local IT conference awards $330,000 to St. Louis tech, education groups

Gateway to Innovation, an annual St. Louis IT conference, said Monday it has donated $330,016 to local technology organizations, educational institutions and nonprofit groups.
Gateway to Innovation named its 2019 funding recipients at an event at the T-Rex downtown incubator.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2019/09/09/local-it-conference-awards-330-000-to-st-louis.html

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Student loan problems
- The U.S. Department of education issued new rules that can make it harder for students to get federal loan forgiveness if they attend schools that close suddenly.
- Betsy DeVos says that it is to easy for students to get student loan forgiveness .
- Devos is trying to get the nation to focus more on student loans because we have 1.6 trillion dollars in student loan debts.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/08/30/college-student-loans-loan-forgiveness-betsy-devos-department-of-education/2168669001/

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-Varsity students offer free test-prep classes to high school students.
-St. Louis Public Schools will stream the classes live in classrooms and provide food and transportation for students who stay after school for such classes.
-Varsity had charged $779 for the test-prep class it is now offering for free.
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/clayton-based-varsity-tutors-offers-free-test-prep-classes-for/article_2313a613-ecbf-5bae-ae33-f57b11845bd5.html

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- few years ago daiz spent time reading to her son and she received many text alerts
- they urged her to read stories loaded on an ipad researchers gave her
- well timed text messages has lead parents to increase in reading to toodlers

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Story Highlights

Any parent can sign up for brain-building texts or app alerts to help kids 5 and under

Researchers say texts to parents are the most affordable way to help low-income kids stay on track

CHICAGO - As a single mom who works full-time, Elizabeth Diaz doesn't always have time to read bedtime stories to her four children each night.

But a few years ago, the time Diaz spent reading to her children increased sharply. As part of a local study, Diaz was receiving text alerts on her phone that urged her to read stories loaded on an iPad researchers had given her.

"When they reminded me, I wanted to do more of the reading goals," said Diaz, 35.

Amid today's advanced technologies, the humble text message is offering new promise for closing gaps in achievement among students - by targeting the behavior of their parents. Informed by science, several new texting programs have helped parents and caregivers develop habits at home that best help kids succeed.

Well-timed, well-crafted text messages to parents have led to an increase in reading to toddlers and a rise in Head Start enrollment and attendance, studies show. At the high school level, they've led to teens skipping fewer classes, completing more homework and earning higher grades.

More tech for learning: 4 novel ways to get kids reading

The interventions are particularly focused on lower-income parents, whose children often start to slip behind their wealthier peers' cognitive and academic development before kindergarten begins.

But some of the texting programs are available to everybody. Last year, the Bezos Family Foundation created a way for parents to sign up for weekly texts that suggest free, on-the-spot activities to engage the minds of their kids. The tips, based on the science of early learning, are available on a website and a free smartphone app. But usage increased much faster among low-income parents when the tips were sent via text, in part because they reached caregivers who didn't have Internet-enabled phones.

The past six years have seen an explosion of evidence around how to engage parents at scale through low-cost technological interventions, said Peter Bergman, a professor of economics and education at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

"Texting is just a means to an end," he said. "It's really about reaching parents at the right time with the right information.

How's your kid doing in school?

Bergman was one of the first researchers to study the results of texting parents.

For one of his early studies at a Los Angeles high school in 2010, he tapped out messages from his own phone to hundreds of parents of students who were missing homework.

The results were striking: Homework completion of the students whose parents were texted shot up by 25% compared with students who missed an equal number of assignments but whose parents were not texted.

Turns out, most parents thought their children were performing better than they actually were, according to surveys at the beginning of the study.

"When we asked 'How many assignments do you think your kid has missed?' parents understated the number of missed assignments by 10, on average," Bergman said.

The results shot down the supposition that parents didn't care about their children's academics; they simply didn't know. Thanks to the ubiquity of cellphones, the text alerts allowed parents to receive accurate information about their children's performance, and it created an opportunity for them to intervene in a timely manner.

What about teacher texts to students? The trend is growing, but so is concern about i t

Now Bergman has helped to start a nonprofit that would allow more districts to adopt the text-alert technology.

"In terms of bang for the buck, it's a clear win," Bergman said.

The best nudge for parents: Personalized texts

Much of the work happening now around changing parents' behavior stems from the research of Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist and Noble Prize laureate who revolutionized theories about money, management and more with behavioral economics. He is the author of the best-selling book "Thinking, Fast and Slow."

In the years since his theories hit the mainstream, researchers have been exploring how to apply behavioral science to parenting. The goal is to understand why caregivers don't do certain things that are likely to lead to better academic outcomes for their kids. Researchers want to help parents form new habits - in ways that are culturally sensitive and not overly paternalistic.

For example, studies show children who attend high-quality Head Start programs are better prepared academically and socially for kindergarten than their peers who skip it. Yet rates of children signed up for Head Start can be uneven, and attendance is notoriously low.

How to intervene?

One recent study in New Orleans sent parents personalized texts with directions about enrolling their children in Head Start. Those people were more likely to sign up than similar low-income parents who did not receive text reminders.

And something unexpected happened: Parents who received personalized texts - rather than robo-alerts - tapped back to complain that the website materials for Head Start were confusing.

"Those interactions were revealing about what the barriers were for parents," said Lindsay Weixler, the lead researcher from Tulane University. She ran the study again after administrators revised the enrollment materials online.

"Lots of parents were getting thwarted by a complex process."

'I'm always running around'

Public schools - particularly those that serve low-income children - shoulder most of the blame for the achievement gap in America. That's the difference in academic performance between white children of means and other large subgroups, such as kids who are low-income or racial minorities.

In reality, that achievement gap is often yawning before kids tumble into kindergarten. It starts in the ways children are nurtured and talked to from birth.

But the private world kids inhabit from birth to age 5 has long been hard for researchers to study, let alone influence, said Ariel Kalil, a developmental psychologist at the University of Chicago. Five years ago, she co-launched a laboratory to study how to help parents adopt behaviors that would put more of their babies and toddlers on paths to success.

Two of the lab's recent studies took place at El Hogar del Niño, a bustling Chicago Head Start center. Kalil and her team distributed iPads loaded with children's books to parents, then split them into two groups: One group received help setting goals around reading to their kids, and they also received text alerts that encouraged them to follow through. The other group didn't receive any extra encouragement.

By the end of six weeks, parents who received texts had read more than twice as as much of the iPad stories to their kids as the other parents.

In another study focused on attendance, Kalil and her team texted parents about what their children would miss if they didn't attend Head Start that day.

"We reduced chronic absenteeism by 20% over an 18-week period," Kalil said.

Today, the staff at El Hogar Del Nino have overhauled their IT system so they can send text messages to hundreds of parents each day, reminding them of everything from upcoming home visits to missing medical forms for their children.

Sandra Cardosa, a mother who took part in one of the studies a couple of years ago when her son was 3, said she prefers that style of communication.

"I'm always running around, and I can read a text faster than answering a call," she said.

CLOSE

'Brain-building' in early childhood

A considerable amount of effort to engage parents has come from the Bezos Family Foundation, run by Jackie and Mike Bezos, parents of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

The flagship effort: Vroom, a series of more than 1,000 quick tips for on-the-spot activities that are rooted in the science of brain development. The goal is to help parents turn everyday activities such as feeding and dressing their children into moments that develop focus, self-control and the ability to understand other people's perspectives - skills research has linked to thriving in school and beyond.

We vetted Vroom app. But be careful: Study says some other preschool apps manipulate kids to watch ads and make purchases

A free app and website house all those tips in one place. Parents can sign up for automatic Vroom tips via text or app alerts that are personalized for the age of the parent's child.

Tonia Tucker, a mother in Milwaukee, learned of Vroom from a friend who visited her in the hospital the day after she gave birth. Now, 15 months later, she consults the app to get ideas for how to more fully engage her son, Anderson.

Recently, a text from Vroom suggested she and Anderson turn the music off and on while saying "off" and "on" - a game that would help the toddler make connections between the words and the actions. When she got the alert,Tucker was about to go for a walk, so she turned the game into "stop" and "go" with Anderson riding in the stroller.

Of course, Tucker knows she can pick up any book for ideas on activities she can do with her inquisitive son.

"But you don't always have time to pick up a book," she said. "Your phone is always with you."

What else to do with your baby: 'Baby talk' is a good thing and can actually help infants learn better
Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.
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Reading at home and school attendance shot up with a cheap, easy solution: Texting

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CLOSE Any parent can sign up for brain-building texts or app alerts to help kids 5 and under Researchers say texts to parents are the most affordable way to help low-income kids stay on track CHICAGO - As a single mom who works full-time, Elizabeth Diaz doesn't always have time to read bedtime stories to her four children each night.

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- One in eight schools don't have a library which makes children miss out on studying.
- Primary schools are more likely to have library than secondary schools.
-Students that have free meals less likely get positive benefits a school a school library can provide.

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Around one in eight schools do not have a designated library space - and those with a higher proportion of poorer children are more than twice as likely not to have one, a study has found.

Campaigners have warned that there is an "inequality of access and opportunity" that needs to be dealt with so that all children in the country can benefit from what a school library has to offer.

Primary schools are less likely to have a library than secondary schools, the report says , and often libraries are being used as classrooms or meeting rooms rather than for reading, the study found.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

A survey of 1,750 schools across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, found that 87 per cent have access to a designated library space - but around one in eight (13 per cent) do not.

It shows discrepancies between rich and poor, as more than nine in 10 (91 per cent) of schools that have less than 10 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) have a library area.

This drops to 81 per cent among schools where 25 per cent to 49 per cent are eligible for FSM, and to 56 per cent where half or more pupils are eligible for school dinners.

"These findings indicate that pupils in schools with a higher proportion of free school meals are less likely to experience the range of positive benefits a school library can provide," the report says.

It comes at a time when county councils have been forced to close public libraries amid spending cuts.

The research, commissioned by the Great School Libraries campaign , highlights the benefits having a library can have on reading and writing skills, enjoyment of reading and improving general academic achievement.

More than half (59 per cent) of school libraries were reported to be used as a classroom for non-library lessons and a similar proportion (51 per cent) were used for meetings.

No hype, just the advice and analysis you need

Nick Poole, chief executive of CILIP, a library and information association, warned: "The research paints a picture of inequality of access and opportunity and insecure employment that we cannot accept. The findings highlight the urgency of securing national school library strategies and investment in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, drawing on the example of Scotland."

Children's author Cressida Cowell added: "This research shows inequality in library provision that is a social mobility time bomb. Nobody has yet answered this question for me: if a child's parents cannot afford books, if there isn't a library in their school, and they don't have opportunities to visit a public library, how on earth can they become a reader for pleasure?"

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: "The government's severe funding cuts to our education system have left school leaders having to make difficult choices about what they can actually afford and it is those schools, often in the most deprived areas of our country, that are having to suffer the most as a consequence.

"The government must fund our schools sufficiently so the centrality of literacy, in an information age, is both celebrated and actively developed in young people."

A Department for Education spokesperson said: " We want all children to have the opportunity to read widely - that's why we've strengthened the national curriculum to focus on developing reading skills, and increased the focus on phonics to help children acquire the basic building blocks of reading.

"School libraries play a role in this and schools are responsible for deciding how to provide this service for their pupils. We recently announced an investment of £14bn more in schools over the next three years to 2022-23, allowing schools to invest more in teachers and resources - such as library provision - to ensure all children get the top-quality education they deserve."

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One in eight schools do not have a library with poorer children more likely to miss out on reading

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Around one in eight schools do not have a designated library space - and those with a higher proportion of poorer children are more than twice as likely not to have one, a study has found.

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-Flames consumed more than 500 acres of a Los Angeles hillside on Monday, shutting down a major commuter thoroughfare and threatening the renowned Getty Center museum
-500 firefighters are battling the blaze while 3,300 homes nearby neighborhoods were evacuated
-more than 2,600 homes and businesses were without power on Monday morning

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Flames consumed more than 500 acres of a Los Angeles hillside on Monday, shutting down a major commuter thoroughfare and threatening the renowned Getty Center museum, authorities said.

More than 470 Los Angeles firefighters are battling the blaze and at least 3,300 homes in nearby exclusive neighborhoods were evacuated after flames were first reported at about 1:30 a.m., fire officials said.

The brush fire also forced the closure of Interstate 405, one of the nation's most congested commuter corridors connecting the San Fernando Valley and other northern suburbs to West Los Angeles.

While the flames were within sight of the Getty Center, museum officials said in a statement they're confident their renowned gallery would be spared: "We have activated our full emergency response. Our thoughts are with neighbors and first responders."

More than 2,600 homes and businesses were without power on Monday morning, the Department of Water and Power said.

Authorities urged everyone to get out and stay out of neighborhoods in and around the Brentwood and Westwood districts of Los Angeles. Firefighters were also being hampered by 20 mph winds that are pushing flames.

"Get out when we say get out," Mayor Eric Garcetti told reporters on Monday. He said some homes have already been lost.

Los Angeles Lakers star Lebron James is among those forced to flee.

"Man these LA aren't no joke," James tweeted at 3:53 a.m. "Had to emergency evacuate my house and I've been driving around with my family trying to get rooms. No luck so far!"

"Sons of Anarchy" creator Kurt Sutter posted Instagram video of flame lighting up the late night, early morning darkness.

" Evacuated... Apparently, everything around me is burning the f--- down. Rough week," he wrote.
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed.

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Flames engulf Los Angeles hillside, threaten the famed Getty Center museum

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Flames consumed more than 500 acres of a Los Angeles hillside on Monday, shutting down a major commuter thoroughfare and threatening the renowned Getty Center museum, authorities said. More than 470 Los Angeles firefighters are battling the blaze and at least 3,300 homes in nearby exclusive neighborhoods were evacuated after flames were first reported at about 1:30 a.m., fire officials said.