MBA in Australia

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,” said Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis of the dangers of a disengaged citizenry. However, the American people have occasionally failed to heed Justice Brandeis’ warning, with injustices at home and abroad the result.

I had direct, personal experience with one of those failures: the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-American citizens and legal resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. My family was forced from our home in San Jose to an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

Treated like criminals

Barracks at Heart Mountain became homes for over 10,000 people. Each family was confined to a small, narrow room. We had committed no crimes, nor were we suspected of criminal conduct. Nevertheless, guards with machine guns trained their sights on those below who were imprisoned behind barbed wire fences.

Most detainees lost everything — homes, businesses, all other worldly possessions. But all of us lost the freedom and power of opportunity that brought our parents to America in the first place. We were forced at gunpoint to give up the basic dignity that our nation’s founders promised when they declared that “all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.”

I often reflect on that experience, and how it might have been prevented. Aren’t American citizens entitled to

expect more from our government? What went wrong?In our democracy, responsibility resides with citizens and government alike. No one is, or should be, let off the hook when the system fails. In 1942, a disengaged and preoccupied public failed to speak out — just as today too few are speaking out on the erosion of civil liberties, on the pathology of poverty or on threats to our environment.

Civic-minded citizens are not simply born; they must be taught and nurtured. America’s public schools have a special obligation in that regard, for more than any other institution they are charged with creating an informed and an engaged citizenry.

Despite its essential role in our society, civic education has been allowed to decline steadily over the past generation. As a result, too many of our fellow citizens do not know how our political system works, nor do they possess the skills and the motivation necessary to hold government accountable or to prevent injustice.

On the most recent national civics assessment in 2006, two-thirds of students scored below proficient, and less than a fifth of high school seniors could explain how citizen participation benefits democracy. Even worse, civic ignorance is spread unevenly across the American population: minority students are twice as likely as their white counterparts to lack civic knowledge and skills, and low-income students score significantly lower than more affluent students on tests of such knowledge.

Joint effort

Moreover, civic education may be the only way that thousands of new immigrants can come to understand how best to affect change in their new country. For them and for us, civic engagement is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

Restoring the civic mission of schools will require a joint effort by school districts, states, and the federal government. The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools (www.civicmissionofschools.org) has identified a number of strategies, including improved civics assessments, more service learning and professional development, which will help address the problem. But all of us has a role in turning things around.

Today marks the 221st anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. That covenant begins with the words “We the People,” and two centuries later our democracy remains dependent on an informed and engaged citizenry. Only through civic education that prepares the next generation for active citizenship can we ensure the protection of our liberties and our ideals.

Norman Y. Mineta, a native of San Jose, served as a San Jose City Council member, mayor, and in Congress. He was Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton and Secretary of Transportation under President George W. Bush. He is currently vice chairman of Hill & Knowlton, an international communications and public relations firm.

Source:http://www.mercurynews.com/

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings yesterday sought to reinvigorate support for the No Child Left Behind law even as the two major-party presidential candidates have distanced themselves from it. She contended that the law has helped improve public education and should be strengthened.

The 2002 federal law, considered one of President Bush’s major domestic achievements, aims to have all public school students proficient in reading and math by 2014. But criticism has grown over the dramatic expansion of testing mandated under the law, and efforts to renew and revamp the law have stalled in Congress.

In a speech to educators and advocates from across the country, Spellings urged support for the law’s core principle: requiring states, school systems and schools to show that students can handle reading and math at grade level.

“We must resist pressure to weaken or water down accountability,” Spellings said in an education summit hosted in the District by the nonpartisan Aspen Institute. “To those who reject this goal, I ask, ‘What’s your answer?’ I have yet to meet a parent who doesn’t want their child on grade level right now, today, not 2014.”

So far, education has been a low-key issue in a presidential campaign largely dominated by concerns over the slumping economy, the war in Iraq and rising oil prices. Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), have said that they support the goals of No Child Left Behind but that the law needs to be revised. McCain, who voted for the legislation, has avoided mention of the law on the campaign trail, while Obama has sharply criticized its implementation.

In an interview last week, Spellings said she does not think either candidate would make renewal of the law a priority upon entering the White House. “It’s not their thing,” she said. “It’s George Bush’s thing. George Bush campaigned for president on No Child Left Behind.”

The law requires annual testing of reading and math skills in grades three through eight and once in high school. Schools must show progress each year, as must groups of students, including ethnic minorities and disabled students. Certain schools that fall short face interventions.

The law has been credited with revealing pockets of underperforming students, even in some highly regarded school systems. But critics say that schools need more federal funding to carry out the mandate and that the focus on reading and math has pushed other subjects, including history, art and science, to the back burner.

In the Bush administration’s waning months, Spellings has used regulatory authority to propose tweaks to enforcement of the law. In the most significant, all states would be required by 2013 to use the same formula to calculate the high school graduation rate.

Spellings also launched a pilot project in Maryland and several other states that moves away from the law’s “pass-fail” system, which makes no distinction between a school in which many students fail reading and math tests and one that misses targets because a few students fall short.

Source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Parents and family are the No. 1 enablers, and the No. 1 obstacles” to student success, Sara Martinez Tucker, the undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Education, told a group of educators, parents and community organizers at the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans on Thursday.

During the daylong summit, held to discuss education reform and Hispanic education attainment, speakers tackled topics from Hispanic high school dropout rates to parental and family involvement in education. Tucker encouraged the audience to “take some of these best practices and give to communities,” to help the children.

Greater community involvement was often cited as a key component to decreasing high school dropout rates and promoting higher education, and thus, a better quality of life. Some promoted educational services to children outside of the classroom, while others lauded community-based programs.

The vice president for children’s programs, Clara López, and development director, María López, of a multifaceted program designed to help Hispanic students and parents get involved in education from pre-school to college presented on the subject.

Eduardo Cancino, assistant superintendent from Hidalgo, Texas, applauded community programs and also noted the efforts of public schools. Cancino has implemented a variety of programs focused on increasing the number of college-bound students in the community, as well as promoting adult literacy, financial literacy and parental empowerment. He said that it was important to “strengthen the home environment.”

Other speakers also emphasized the importance of families.

“Parents need to know what’s going on in their child’s school, and they need to know what options they have, whether it’s good or bad,” said Doug Mesecar, assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. Like many of the presenters, Mesecar is a strong advocate of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policies. He said that there is a need to break down the walls of communication between parents and schools to improve the engagement of parents in their child’s education.

It is programs like the Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE), said the institute’s president and CEO David Valladolid, that enable parents to be more active. The training program to help parents work collaboratively with their children’s K-12 schools has graduated over 400,000 parents and has implemented its program in 16 languages. Initiated in 1987 in California, it has proliferated eastward and has recently established a chapter at George Mason University in Northern Virginia. Valladolid said that it was crucial to bring schools, parents, communities and businesses together as equal partners for a child’s education.

Ana Burns, a parent graduate of PIQE with five children, expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to learn how to approach and prepare her children for the American school system. Parents also learned important practical functions, such as how to ask questions, talk to counselors and apply for federal aid.

Keynote speaker Margaret Spellings, secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, echoed the need for continued efforts to close the achievement gap. Hispanic students “deserve all that it takes to achieve the American dream,” said Spellings. She warned about the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and flatly stated that “we cannot stand for that attitude.” She praised NCLB for focusing its resources on underachieving student groups, but added that there was a long way to go.

Source:http://diverseeducation.com/

A US-style intelligence test seen by government advisers as helping disadvantaged youngsters get into university actually favours white boys from grammar schools, research has found.

A government inquiry into university admissions, headed by Professor Steven Schwartz, vice-chancellor of Brunel University, recommended the use of American SATs – tests in maths, critical thinking and writing – as a means of helping to improve the chances of young people from disadvantaged homes getting a place at one of Britain’s universities. But, a team of researchers from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has now concluded that they have the opposite effect. The researchers said: “Some students appeared to perform less well on the SAT than expected: females compared to males and Asian, Chinese and those whose ethnicity was unknown compared to white students; whereas students in grammar schools did better than might be expected compared to comprehensive students.”

Their findings echo concerns being expressed about the tests in the United States.

The NFER researchers looked at the results of 9,000 pupils who took part in a pilot of the SATs tests organised by the Sutton Trust – the education charity headed by the millionaire philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl dedicated to increasing the take-up of places at elite universities by young people from disadvantaged groups.

Many universities were waiting in the wings to see the results of the Sutton Trust pilot before deciding whether to go down the route of some elite British universities in using the SATs admission tests.

The research threw up some interesting findings about the performance of pupils on free school meals – saying they performed better than their GCSE or A-level results would suggest in critical reading, but worse in maths. Overall, though, there was no difference between them and the rest – although the researchers pointed out that very few of children receiving free school meals were included in the pilot of top performing pupils in the schools that took part.

The findings appear to confirm fears already expressed in the US – that middle-class families, whose children are more likely to make it into grammar schools, can more easily afford coaching for the tests. In addition, their schools are likely to spend more time preparing their pupils for them. In a speech, Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, said: “I visited an upscale private school and observed a class of 12-year-old students studying verbal analogies in anticipation of the SAT. The time involved was not aimed at developing the students’ reading and writing abilities but rather their test-taking skills.”

Ministers have so far indicated that – while they want to widen participation among disadvantaged groups in higher education – they will leave it up to individual universities to decide how best to pursue this goal.

The research findings, presented at an international conference in Cambridge organised by Cambridge Assessment – the parent body for three exam groups – coincide with a speech from Alison Richard, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, which warned against government interference in university admissions.

The Labour Government has presided over a huge increase of children aged 3 and 4 in “pre-primary programmes”, from just over half in 1998 to nine out of ten children in 2006, the report, Education at a Glance, says. This compares with an OECD average of seven in ten.

The report found British expenditure on education to be above average, with private sources growing faster than public spending.

Some of that extra money was spent on keeping young primary-age children in school longer than their counterparts. English seven-year-olds endured 100 more hours than average in the classroom each year.

The report said that the UK had among the largest class sizes in primary schools, with only Japan, South Korea and Turkey having more children in lessons. However, class sizes at secondary level were lower than average.

The pace of expansion at university level in OECD countries was outstripping past projections and was expected to continue, it said. While 37 per cent of teenagers in OECD countries went to university in 1995, that figure rose to 57 per cent by 2005.

Britain has an above-average graduation rate, the report said, but had dropped from fourth to 12th since 1995 and was “likely to be surpassed” by other countries. Its dropout rate from degree courses is also relatively high.

Mr Schleicher said that Britain had recently devoted more of its GDP to education than any other country.

It has one of the largest differences in salaries between graduates and non-graduates. Mr Schleicher said:

The rows of children, who were seated obediently, many wearing neat polo shirts in the school’s colors with their hands folded on their laps, hollered approval. Barber seemed to do a little dance as she crossed the stage to receive the coveted certificate from Spelling.

Of about 700,000 schools in America, 320 were named 2008 No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon Schools by the US. Department of Education Tuesday. The government program designates public and private elementary, middle and high schools that show impressive academic growth and achievement.

So why did Spellings pick southwest Atlanta’s F.L. Stanton as the site to personally deliver the news?

Flanked by Cox and Hall during a media briefing following the announcement, she said she wanted to honor this school for its “terrific track record” as well as Atlanta’s educational leadership team. During her announcement, Spellings described Hall as a trusted adviser.

Nine Blue Ribbon Schools were named in Georgia, five of them in the metro area.

Barber and the principals of all the award-winning schools are invited to a ceremony in Washington this fall, and the schools will receive a Blue Ribbon flag to fly over their school.

“There’s an expression that says if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door,” Spellings told the children, explaining that their school will be considered an example to others.

Before making the announcement, Spellings and other officials stopped in to visit Christi Giddens’ third-grade math class. In a lecture about organizing and interpreting data, fourteen lap topped-students watched various graphs on their screen.