Yet another national study, this one by Educational Testing Service, is giving failing grades to the way schools prepare young people to participate in civic life."Fault Lines in Our Democracy," issued Wednesday by the Princeton, N.J.-based nonprofit, diagnoses a "disconnect" between what students are taught about American government and what they retain, and concludes that students need not just more lectures about civics but more opportunities for hands-on participation in civic activities.
Author: Frank LoMonte
Maine joins cyberbullying crackdown, but new law has a twist
Maine has become the latest state to give schools jurisdiction over what K-12 students publish online while off-campus, with a new "cyberbullying" law signed by Gov.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: When colleges go into P.R. mode, remember that the P.R. office creates public records too
For those responsible for burnishing the public-relations image of the University of Montana, the last half-year has brought a nightmarish cycle of one unspeakably bad story after another.First, the Grizzlies football program was plunged into turmoil by a string of sexual-assault allegations against prominent players, leading UM to fire its head football coach and athletic director.Next, the university was accused of foot-dragging in bringing charges against a visiting Saudi national student who -- when confronted with accusations that he raped one student and attempted to sexually assault another -- fled the country and evaded prosecution.Then, the U.S.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Rise in student loan defaults illustrates human toll of economic statistics
It's important, and relevant, to tell the story about the continued employment difficulty facing new college graduates.
Tennessee school board vows “investigation” of yearbook over gay student’s profile story
Responding to fierce public criticism, the Lenoir City, Tenn., school board is investigating the decision to publish an article in the 2012 Lenoir City High School yearbook in which a student describes his decision to come out publicly as gay.Today's Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that, during a discussion of the yearbook article at Wednesday's board meeting, Chairwoman Rosemary Quillen promised "a permanent solution so that situations like this never happen again."Nothing was said publicly about the status of English department chairman and yearbook adviser James Yoakley, an 11-year veteran of LCHS who has been the target of public hostility.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: “That’s personnel” is rarely the right response
How public employees are performing their jobs (or whether they're showing up at all) would appear to be pretty essential information for journalists (or just inquisitive citizens) to figure out whether government agencies are, or aren't, working effectively.It's long been the case, however, that personnel information is some of the toughest information to obtain by way of a public records request, in part because of the myth that personnel records are always confidential.For instance, a North Carolina television reporter was told that, because of "personnel confidentiality," she couldn't be told why the City of Charlotte was still paying the city's former top tourism official for at least two months after he left the job, or how long it would continue paying him into the future.And a New York requester recently was denied access to questionnaire responses completed by candidates for a city planning board, which asked about their qualifications to serve.
The College of Arts and… What? Licking libel — no butts about it.
As a professor of comparative literature, Cornell University's Walter Cohen undoubtedly has read some pretty racy texts in his time.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Private campus, public records — SMU’s Daily Campus puts on a clinic on covering sexual assaults, athletics spending
If your campus newspaper broke the story that big-name athletic director, recruited and paid top dollar to build a major-conference powerhouse, had helped instead dig the athletic program into an $18.6 million yearly deficit, you'd think you had a pretty strong semester.For the staff of The Daily Campus at Southern Methodist University, it might not even have been the biggest story of the week.That distinction may belong to the investigative team responsible for "Sweeping Rape Under the Rug," a painstakingly reported package that begins with a gasp-inducing statistic: "Over the past 25 years, more than 100 SMU students reported they were sexually assaulted.
Campus preacher prevails in 1st Amendment challenge to Tenn. college’s permit rules
A public university can't make a speaker wait 14 days for a permit to give a talk or distribute literature on campus sidewalks, or give notice of the topics he intends to address, a federal appeals court ruled this week.John McGlone, an evangelical Christian preacher from Kentucky, brought suit against Tennessee Technical University after being told to leave campus property during two April 2009 visits because he had not complied with TTU's speaking permit rules.A federal district court threw out McGlone's case.
The grizzly truth about copyright law and student photographs
If you have Internet access, if you know somebody with Internet access, if you've been standing near somebody with Internet access -- then you've already seen, probably multiple times, the Viral Falling Bear Picture.It's a superb moment-captured shot, the work of a Colorado student photographer, Andy Duann, who (as he describes in this interview) hustled without even taking time to put on socks, to be in exactly the right spot when agents from the state Parks and Wildlife Department tranquilized the campus interloper and caught him in a net.But getting a 200-pound-bear out of a tree may be simple compared with unscrambling the ownership issues that have arisen concerning the photo.