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.

Article for Allison's Presentation

Colleges Offer 4-Year Graduation Guarantees, but Students Show Little Interest from the Chronicle of Higher Education

Article for Brent's Presentation

Prestige Chase is Raising College Costs from the New York Times.

Article for Que's Presentation

Big Bucks Compromising Athletes' Education? from NPR

Article for TJ's Presentation

Why It's Time to Replace No Child Left Behind from Time Magazine.

Articles for Chanel's Presentation

Social Media Blackout from Inside Higher Ed.

Association for Social Media and Higher Education.

Facebook and Job Interviews from Boston.com

Minority Students Receive Harsher Punishments

NPR reported today on a new study that finds that "minority students [in K-12] receive much harsher punishment than their white counterparts."

The findings come from a national collection of civil rights data from 2009-10 of more than 72,000 schools serving 85 percent of the nation.

'The sad fact is that minority students across America face much harsher discipline than non-minorities, even within the same school,' Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters.

Duncan said some school officials might not have been aware of inconsistencies in how they handle discipline, and he hoped the report would be an eye-opener.

Navajo Nation Sues Urban Outfitters

More tangentially related to our class, but still interesting:

The Navajo Nation has sued Urban Outfitters Inc. months after the tribe sent a cease and desist letter to the clothing retailer demanding it pull the "Navajo" name from its products.

The lawsuit filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New Mexico alleges trademark violations and violations of the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which makes it illegal to sell arts or crafts in a way to falsely suggest they're made by American Indians when they're not.

Check Your Sources...

...especially if they're "Indian legends." Many, or perhaps most "Indian legends" aren't actually Indian stories. The post is really worth reading in full, because it discusses how to find out what stories are authentic, why it matters, and how it all relates to colonialism - all of which is relevant to research methods as well.

Authentic indigenous stories come from a different cultural context than you may be familiar with. That should be obvious, but I think that it bears noting. If you go into these stories expecting to have your cultural beliefs and norms reinforced, you’re dong it wrong. Trite western moral lessons are not going to be handed to you in our stories.

Listening to or reading authentic aboriginal stories means you are accessing different cultures. Please don’t forget that. And the next time someone tells you a “Native American” saying or story, ask yourself if it resonates with you because it’s really “indigenous wisdom”…or if it’s just a western story wrapped up in a cloak of indigeneity.

Mascots

Here are the links I mentioned:

Native Appropriations blog post about mascots, focused on the scientific research on their effects and with links to the studies and further resources.

Native Appropriations blog post about mascots, more focused on her personal plea as a Native person.

If you want to comment on her posts, feel free to do so, but remember that there is a real person writing those posts, and it is an issue very close to her. She has had some posts where the comments have gone from disagreeing to personal attacks, so please comment respectfully.

Wikipedia And Its Discontents

If you are used to using Wikipedia for research, you should read this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education,, which is written by a well-regarded published scholar who's written two books on the Haymarket Riot and yet could not get Wikipedia to acknowledge the many errors in its coverage of that event because "One of the people who had assumed the role of keeper of this bit of history for Wikipedia quoted the Web site's 'undue weight' policy, which states that 'articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views.' He then scolded me. 'You should not delete information supported by the majority of sources to replace it with a minority view.'"

The scholar was deleting incorrect information and replacing it with correct information, but was again scolded by Wikipedia editors: "My [next attempt at] improvement lasted five minutes before a Wiki-cop scolded me, 'I hope you will familiarize yourself with some of Wikipedia's policies, such as verifiability and undue weight. If all historians save one say that the sky was green in 1888, our policies require that we write "Most historians write that the sky was green, but one says the sky was blue." ... As individual editors, we're not in the business of weighing claims, just reporting what reliable sources write.'"

In other words, Wikipedia gives you majority viewpoints, even when new research proves that the majority is actually wrong. Peer-reviewed scholarly journals function in the opposite way: They require authors to be aware of the most recent research, even (or especially) when it shows that previous research was wrong, because they do not want to repeat the errors of previous scholarship.

State of Indian Education Speech

National Indian Education Association (NIEA) President Quinton Roman Nose gives the 2012 State of Indian Education address, which begins with personal history and the boarding schools and goes on to talk about contemporary issues in Indian education.

Educational Divide Growing Between Rich and Poor

Today's New York Times reports on the growing educational gap between rich and poor Americans:

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

The article includes links to several studies, so it's a good place to start if you are interested in these issues.

Menominee Language Issue

Here are the links for the Menominee language controversy:

NBC coverage, including video of interview with Washinawatok family and a link to the school's letter.

Coverage in Indian Country Today, with discussion of what happens after the CYA letter.

Editorial from NBC Latino by Esther Cepeda, about the fear that monolingual Americans may have about being in a multilingual environment.

ABC coverage, including quotes from tribal chairman and students at the Menominee tribal school in Neopit.

Initial coverage in the Shawano Leader, with a final paragraph that basically makes Esther Cepeda's point about the fear of multilingualism.