Article for Kayla's Presentation

No Financial Aid, No Problem. For-Profit University Sets $199-a-Month Tuition for Online Courses, from the Chronicle of Higher Education

Article for Keltie's Presentation

After Shootings at Oikos U., a Scholar Urges a Nuanced Look at Stereotypes and Bullying, from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Article for Ida's Presentation

Florida Charter Schools Failing Disabled Students, from National Public Radio.

Educational Statistics, Media, and Poverty.

An interesting commentary on the Education Week blog on a recent study of American education:

Poverty is, in fact, the issue. While American students' scores on international tests are not as bad as critics say they are, they are even better when we control for the effects of poverty: Middle-class students in well-funded schools, in fact, score at or near the top of world. Our average scores are respectable but unspectacular because, as Farhi notes, we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty, the highest of all industrialized countries. Only four percent of children in high-scoring Finland, for example, live in poverty. Our rate of poverty is over 21%.

The implications of this fact are enormous: It means that the "problem" of American education is not ineffective teaching, not teachers' unions, not lack of national standards and tests, and not schools of education: It is poverty.

This conclusion is supported by additional evidence: High poverty means, among other things, lack of food and lack of quality food, lack of health care, and lack of access to books. There is massive evidence documenting the pernicious effect of hunger, illness and limited reading material have on school performance. The best teaching in the world has limited effects when children are hungry, sick and have little to read.

Peregrine-Falcon-Cam, Because It's Neat

No, it has nothing to do with class, but it's here at UWO and it's pretty cool: We have a nesting pair of peregrine falcons in a nesting box atop Gruenhagen, and there's a live falcon-cam. Not much to see at the moment (mostly the falcon will sit there keeping the eggs warm), but keep an eye on it as spring progresses and the eggs hatch!

Article for Torie's Presentation

Pink Hair Suspension Overruled by Delaware School District from USA Today,

New Orleans, Lower Ninth Ward, Seven Years Later

The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story on the Lower Ninth Ward this past weekend entitled "Jungleland." The story looks at how, in the years since Katrina, the district has been rebuilt in some places, and left to run wild in most places, turning whole blocks into virtual wilderness.

Most residents of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans are anxious. “A lot of people in my little area died after Katrina,” Brock said. “Because of too much stress.” The most immediate sources of stress that October morning were the stray Rottweilers. Brock had seen packs of them in the wildly overgrown lots, prowling for food... “I know they used to be pets because they are beautiful animals.” Brock corrected herself: “They were beautiful animals. When I first saw them, they were nice and clean — inside-the-house animals. But now they just look sad.”

The Lower Ninth has become a dumping ground for unwanted dogs and cats. But it’s not just pets. The neighborhood has become a dumping ground for many kinds of unwanted things. Contractors, rather than drive to the city dump in New Orleans East, sweep trailers full of construction debris onto the street. Auto shops, rather than pay the tire-disposal fee ($2 a tire), dump tires by the dozen... You also see burned piles of household garbage, cotton-candy-pink tufts of insulation foam, turquoise PVC pipes, sodden couches tumescing like sea sponges and abandoned cars. Sometimes the cars contain bodies. In August, the police discovered an incinerated corpse in a white Dodge Charger that was left in the middle of an abandoned lot... Nobody knew how long the car had been there; it was concealed from the closest house, half a block away, by 12-foot-high grass. That entire stretch of Choctaw Street, for that matter, was no longer visible. It had been devoured by forest. Every housing plot on both sides of the street for two blocks...was abandoned. Through the weeds, you could just make out a cross marking the spot where Brock’s neighbor had drowned.