NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Michael Bloomberg named a top publishing executive with no background in education to head the nation’s largest school system after announcing Tuesday that New York City ‘s longtime chancellor was stepping down. Hearst Magazines chairwoman Cathie Black will become the first female chancellor of the city’s 1.1 million-student school system, replacing Joel I. Klein , who has served as chancellor since 2002. Klein is leaving to become an executive vice president at News Corp . Bloomberg praised Black, a Chicago native who spent eight years at USA Today as president, publisher, board member and Gannett Co. executive vice president, as a “world-class manager.” The billionaire mayor, who often eschews traditional resumes for government posts, said Black’s business skills make her an ideal leader of educators and students. “She understands that we have to make sure that our kids have the skill sets to partake in the great American dream,” Bloomberg said. “In the end, I picked somebody who I have confidence is the right person for this job at this time.” The appointment will require a waiver from the state Department of Education because Black is not a certified teacher. The mayor said Klein will stay on until the end of the year. Black attended parochial schools in Chicago and sent her own children to private boarding schools in Connecticut. She has been on Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” list and is the author of a book called “Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life).” She will be the first woman to lead the New York City school system. At Hearst, she oversees titles including Esquire; Good Housekeeping; O, the Oprah magazine and Popular Mechanics. Black’s appointment reflects Bloomberg’s view that success in business translates to similar achievements in public service. “There is no one who knows more about the skills our children will need to succeed in the 21st century economy,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference with Klein and Black. Before Klein joined the Bloomberg administration, he was with media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG . Previously, he was an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration. He headed the U.S. Justice Department ‘s antitrust division for nearly four years, where his work included launching the case to break up Microsoft Corp. Unlike Black, Klein grew up in New York City and attended public schools. As chancellor, he often clashed with unions and with parent groups that complained of being denied a role in running the schools. “Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities,” said Leonie Haimson, who leads a parent advocacy group called Class Size Matters. Ernest Logan, the president of the union that represents New York City principals, said Klein “had a rocky road” as chancellor but learned on the job. Logan said he knows little about Black. “I’m now going to read her book,” he said. Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew said: “I look forward to working with Ms. Black. As a teacher, I will help in any way I can to improve the education for the children of New York.” Black told reporters she has had “limited exposure to unions” in her previous jobs. Klein was appointed chancellor after Bloomberg won control of the school system and disbanded the Board of Education. Bloomberg and Klein have touted the progress that students have made under their watch, but the state Education Department said last summer that rising scores on standardized tests had been overstated because the tests had become too easy. Black will likely serve no longer than the three years remaining in Bloomberg’s term. “She’s had a career, so maybe she can have the ability to devote the next three years to public service,” Bloomberg said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Graduate schools are seeing steady growth as both recent college graduates and people already in the workforce seek to boost their job prospects in a still-dragging economy. “We see an increase in graduate school applications and enrollments whenever the economy really turns south,” says Nathan Bell, director of research and policy analysis for the Council of Graduate Schools. In its report last month, it said the number of applications to U.S. graduate schools grew 8.3% from 2008 to 2009. The council has tracked grad school enrollments annually since 1986 and surveyed 699 schools in 2009. Total enrollments increased 4.7% in 2009, compared to 3% the previous year. Last year more students than ever took the GRE, the exam required for many graduate programs, and this year may set record highs again, says David Payne, vice president of Educational Testing Service , the non-profit that develops, administers, and scores the GRE. Concern about the job market — and wanting to put off paying back student loans — were major factors for University of California-Davis senior Daniel Yeshiwas, who says he changed his plans to work for a few years before attending graduate school. He plans to apply for fall 2011. “I don’t really know exactly what I want to do yet, but going to graduate school, it’s still moving me towards a career, and it’s something to further put off that question of what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life,” says Yeshiwas. Danielle McManus, a pre-professional and pre-graduate program advisor at the UC-Davis, says reasoning like Yeshiwas’ is not uncommon; she adds that many students apply to grad school as a backup plan, in case they can’t find a job. “Graduate school seems better than the specter of aimless unemployment. If these students do manage to find a job, however, they might prefer to start making money right away,” she says. In just the past two years, “students have become so hyper-focused on career opportunities that these programs can provide for them,” says Rob Franek, publisher of The Princeton Review test prep and research company. “They are thinking about the value of professional experience through a recession lens.” The Princeton Review’s new guidebooks, The Best 172 Law Schools , The Best 300 Business Schools , and The Best 168 Medical Schools , can help students evaluate whether a graduate program’s value is worth the investment, says Franek; a “career prospects” rating, is included in both the law and business school guides. That rating combines several employment statistics, such as how many students are employed upon graduation, average starting salaries, career services offered, and the number of students employed a year after graduation. Advice for those considering grad school: •Leave at least six weeks to study before any qualifying exams like the GRE or the LSAT, says The Princeton Review’s Rob Franek, and consider different schools’ admissions criteria, (includeded in the company’s guides). •Trying to decide which program to pursue? “Think about which classes you’ve done best in and what you are most interested in, particularly because graduate school is so targeted and so specific,” says UC-Davis adviser Danielle McManus. She also recommends that students ask professors for advice. •Get free practice GRE questions through the ETS website; many MBA programs now accept the GRE, not just the GMAT, says ETS’ David Payne. “With employers, the undergraduate degree is becoming pretty much a required certificate or credential for entry level positions. To advance, a masters degree is becoming more the preferred,” he adds. “Best Career Prospects” Law schools 1. University of Pennsylvania 2. Northwestern University 3. New York University 4. Vanderbilt University 5. Harvard University 6. University of Chicago 7. University of Virginia 8. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 9. Boston College 10. Boston University Business Schools 1. Harvard University 2. Stanford University 3. Northwestern University 4. Georgetown University 5. University of Pennsylvania 6. University of Virginia 7. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 8. Duke University 9. University of California-Berkeley 10. Carnegie Mellon University Source: The Princeton Review’s Best 172 Law Schools and Best 300 Business Schools 2011 Editions (Based on institutional data on graduates’ employment and average starting salaries, and student survey data on how much practical experience and career services support their law and b-schools offered.) More details on the rankings at The Princeton Review .

LOUISVILLE — Elementary schools in white neighborhoods here are whiter now, and those in the black neighborhoods are blacker. Under an integration plan the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2007, the Jefferson County School District required every school across greater Louisville to have an enrollment that was 15% to 50% African-American. The goal was to make schools in the district, where the student population is about two-thirds white and one-third black, racially diverse throughout. The Supreme Court’s decision ended that. Now, Louisville is taking another swing at school integration. Under a new student-assignment plan that’s tied to household income and dependent on increased cross-town busing, elementary schools slowly are being integrated in a different way. Yet the district that lost its case before the high court has fallen short of its goals of having a mix of students from higher- and lower-income areas and a blend of races in all classrooms. Its situation reflects the new landscape for school integration that’s coming into focus three years after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling. The new reality tests the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education — the landmark high-court decision that struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal” schools more than a half-century ago — as school districts decide whether to continue to make integration a priority or return to neighborhood schools, whose enrollments often reflect communities’ racial divide. “I think that minority schools are going to be even more isolated,” says education professor Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at University of California-Los Angeles , which supports integration. “For very large communities, there is going to be no integration experience available. … Segregation perpetuates itself.” The 2007 decision, the first of a series of conservative blockbusters under Chief Justice John Roberts , came as many districts already had been backing away from race-based integration. Supreme Court rulings in the 1990s and shifting political winds had stalled school desegregation, which began with the 1954 decision in Brown and continued until the late 1980s. The court’s new ruling in paired cases from Louisville and Seattle more definitively challenged the integration efforts of previous decades. For educators seeking to mix students of all races, the decision has led to complex new approaches based on income level and other factors. At the same time, it also has generated attempts to create more magnet schools and strengthen academics. The Supreme Court said districts could not look at the race of an individual student but did not bar districts from broadly considering race in certain communities. Under the new Louisville plan, parents list their top four choices for schools, some of which can be near home and some of which are supposed to be in other neighborhoods. Officials consider parents’ requests and other factors, such as a sibling already in school, as they try to meet diversity goals. The plan has taken effect in kindergarten through second grades. It will be phased in to include all of elementary school over the next three years and will start to take effect in middle school next year. “No retreat” has become the official mantra of Jefferson County School Superintendent Sheldon Berman and other school administrators in Louisville. In other places, most recently Wake County, N.C., school boards have moved back to neighborhood-school plans, which can mean plentiful resources for students in affluent areas but the opposite for students in low-income places. Education researchers such as Orfield note blacks and Hispanics do better in racially integrated schools. Students of all races who go to integrated schools are more inclined as adults to live in integrated communities. Focusing on class, rather than race Yet, Richard Kahlenberg, who has worked with schools in Chicago and elsewhere on approaches that integrate students based on income and other non-race factors, says students ultimately may be better off without exclusively race-based methods. “The things we’re looking for in a school — such as peers who will be positive role models and parents who are actively involved in the school — track closer by class than race,” says Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, which researches economic and social issues. Kahlenberg notes that before the ruling, Louisville’s Roosevelt-Perry Elementary, for example, “was beautifully balanced (racially) but was a disaster” academically since it was nearly “100% poor.” Today, classrooms in the two-story brick school have been modernized with technology themes such as robotics. Principal Pamela Howell has spearheaded the reinventing of Roosevelt-Perry as a magnet school that focuses on math and science. She says the upside to discarding race-based plans is that school officials must be more innovative to draw parents’ interest across neighborhood lines. Her message to parents reluctant to try the near-downtown location: “No matter where you live, no matter what you had to do to get here, you will get a high-quality education once you get here.” Yet the school is still in a run-down urban strip where the area’s average household income is about $20,000 annually and the population is mostly African-American. The principal-led transformation works for some parents — but not others. Brandy Schad, who protested her 5-year-old son’s assignment to the magnet Roosevelt-Perry, says the promise of better academics could not persuade her to accept a school that was an hour from her home and had comparatively low test scores. “I certainly understand the importance of diversity,” she says, “but not at the expense of a 5-year-old.” The 2007 ruling revealed a young Roberts Court flexing its conservative muscle on social issues. John Roberts became chief justice in 2005, and conservative Justice Samuel Alito succeeded centrist Sandra Day O’Connor in 2006, leading to a more consequential ideological shift. The 2007 decision in the Louisville schools case was a jolt to the right. Justice John Paul Stevens , who had served since 1975 and retired this past summer, said he believed that no one on the court he joined would have voted the way the five conservatives did in the Louisville case. Roberts wrote that the disputed integration plans from Louisville and Seattle recalled a pre- Brown era. In Brown , the Supreme Court said “separate but equal” schools were inherently unequal and violated the Constitution’s equality guarantee. “Before Brown , schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin,” Roberts said, joined by the court’s most conservative justices. “The school districts in these cases have not (demonstrated) that we should allow this once again — even for very different reasons.” He added, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Dissenting justices observed that before the Brown ruling, only black children were told where they could go to school. Justice Stephen Breyer , joined by the court’s three other more liberal justices, said the majority’s decision undermined ” Brown ‘s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought.” Justice Anthony Kennedy , who is at the ideological middle of a divided court, was the crucial fifth vote for the conservative majority. He wrote a concurring statement that declared diversity in schools remained a “compelling” governmental interest but integration programs had to be “narrowly tailored.” “This nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children,” Kennedy wrote, adding that districts could look at race only as part of a “nuanced, individual evaluation of school needs and student characteristics.” Setting the bar higher Louisville’s efforts to follow the high-court ruling have ushered in new challenges. The new plan has turned out to be far more “disruptive” than the prior plan, says student-assignment specialist Barbara Dempsey, requiring more students to be bused between regions. In two years of the new plan, fewer than half of the kindergarten to second-grade classes have reached the district’s diversity goals, she says. Pat Todd, executive director of student assignments, chalks that up to initial difficulties in balancing diversity with other factors, such as requests for siblings to stay together, and says she expects the elementary schools to meet the goals fully in four to five years. “I do think we will have to make modifications,” Todd says. “But we will be continuing with a diversity plan, so the students will be better prepared for the future.” There has been political fallout: Two Republican state legislators recently introduced a bill that would require the district to return to neighborhood schools. In this fall’s school board election, the integration plan is a major issue. The plan prompted hundreds of school-transfer requests, one of which came from Schad who, with her husband, who has Crohn’s disease, wanted their son, Ethan, closer to home. Schad says she was dismayed by Roosevelt-Perry’s academic scores and didn’t want to take a chance on the new magnet program: “It’s so new and so fresh that I don’t feel like you can put a whole lot of stock in it.” Her son is now at a school less than a mile from their home. Still, the district has plenty of supportive parents, such as Shweta Krishnani, who chose Roosevelt-Perry after touring the school. Krishnani says she was reluctant at first to send son Sahil, 5, there because of the neighborhood and the school’s low test scores. But Howell convinced her and her husband the grounds were safe and the new technology program was first-rate. Those and other worries, including the two-bus ride her son must take every morning, have been eclipsed by his academic progress. Sahil began the school year in kindergarten but proved himself so advanced he was reassigned to first grade, where he can participate in a LEGO robotics lab and build robots with moving parts and sensors. Krishnani is from Dubai and her husband grew up in India. She says she wants Sahil to mix with students of all races so he will be ready, as an adult, for anything in life or on the job. Howell says she did not object to the old diversity plan but has since realized that with the poverty levels of students, white and black, the diversity “wasn’t pushing us to the top.” With the magnet program, she says, “we are now able to set the bar a lot higher for our students.” Plans vary across the nation

What do a fiction writer, a marine biologist and a sculptor have in common? Those are just some of the professions of 23 trailblazers named today as winners of the so-called genius grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation . Each fellowship comes with $500,000 over the next five years. Since 1981 the foundation has annually selected 20-25 fellows to receive the no-strings-attached award, with the hopes of encouraging freedom of creativity and future contributions. “We’re looking for creativity, brilliance and potential,” says foundation President Robert Gallucci . The foundation selects hundreds of nominators to recommend possible fellows, which are narrowed down and finally selected by a group of professionals in a variety of fields. Some fellows work in fields of math, science and engineering: • Amir Abo-Shaeer, a physics teacher at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta , Calif. • Kelly Benoit-Bird, a marine biologist and professor at Oregon State University. • Drew Berry, a biomedical animator at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. • Carlos D. Bustamante, a population geneticist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif. • John Dabiri, a biophysicist and associate professor at California Institute of Technology , Pasadena , Calif. • Michal Lipson, an optical physicist and associate professor at Cornell University , Ithaca, N.Y. • Nergis Mavalvala, a quantum astrophysicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Mass. • Marla Spivak, an entomologist and professor a the University of Minnesota, St. Paul Abo-Shaeer is the first high school teacher to be a MacArthur Fellow. He created project-based engineering classes and curriculum for his high school. “Project-based learning is something kids can’t get anywhere else. When they come here, it’s experienced-based learning they can’t get from the Internet,” says Abo-Shaeer. Other fellows work in areas of the arts, the economy and many other fields: • Nicholas Benson, a stone carver and owner and creative director of The John Stevens Shop, Newport, R.I. • Matthew Carter, a typographer and co-founder and principal of Carter & Cone Type, Cambridge, Mass. • David Cromer of Chicago, a theater director. • Shannon Lee Dawdy, anthropologist and assistant professor at the University of Chicago . • Annette Gordon-Reed, an American historian and law professor at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass. • Yiyun Li, a fiction writer and assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. • Jason Moran, a jazz pianist and composer of New York. • Carol Padden, a sign language linguist and communications professor at the University of California, San Diego. • Jorge Pardo, an installation artist of Los Angeles. • Sebastian Ruth, a violist, music educator and founder and executive artistic director of Community MusicWorks of Providence • Emmanuel Saez, an economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. • David Simon, author, screenwriter and producer, Baltimore. • Dawn Song, a computer security specialist and associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. • Elizabeth Turk of Santa Ana, Calif., a sculptor. • Jessie Little Doe Baird, indigenous language preservationist and co-founder and director of W?pan?ak Language Reclamation Project of Mashpee, Mass. Padden, who is deaf, studies the linguistics of sign language, various types of sign language and how sign language is developed. She said, through a sign language translator via telephone, that she could use her fellowship funding to create a fun artificial sign language — “something of the Star Trek line.”

IOWA CITY — The hour when Ariana Kramer will begin her college career is fast approaching — and her parents are in an office supply store, disagreeing about hanging files, of all things. “She’ll need them,” her mother says. “I don’t think so,” her dad counters. Ariana, meanwhile, walks dreamily through the store, offering no opinion on this particular decision. She is, in fact, confident that she will have what she needs when she starts her freshman year at the University of Iowa . FRESHMEN: Class of 2014 doesn’t know cursive, Clint Eastwood BY THANKSGIVING: Some first-year students want to call it quits NAVIGATING COLLEGE: Authors offer updated advice She has mom, the family organizer, with her, and dad, the calm encourager. And they have “the list,” which mom printed from one of those “what-you’ll-need-at-college” websites. New laptop. Check. Comforter with matching sheets. Check. Laundry detergent. Body wash. Antacid. Check. Check. Check. Mind you, Robin and Paul Kramer aren’t those crazy college parents — not like the mother who, as relayed by one dean of students at one California college, stayed in her daughter’s dorm room with her for four nights to help her adjust (until the daughter’s roommate complained). Nor have they ignored barricades intended to keep parents from trying to register for classes for their children, or crashed student-only orientation events, which officials at universities across the country say happens more and more. Still, even for average parents, the letting go is difficult — more so, they and many others say, than it was for parents of college-bound freshmen in decades past. Robin Kramer recalls how her own parents, who never attended college, dropped her off with a trunk full of belongings at Drake University , also in Iowa, in 1978. She set up her room and attended orientation without them there. “It’s just what you did then,” she says. It was much the same for Paul, whose father took him to the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and then went fishing. “It was a culture shock,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I was going to survive.” Perhaps that is part of what makes this “process of leaving,” as Robin calls it, more difficult. It is, all at once, overwhelming and exciting for everyone involved. But some say it’s often hardest for parents, who remember the days of college when there were fewer support systems in place for students. “I’m supposed to shed a few tears and then send her to the world, right?” the rational Robin tells her emotional self as she considers 18-year-old Ariana, the eldest of their two children. That remains to be seen. ‘Cut the cord!’ So how did we get here, anyway? It’s not that saying goodbye was easy for parents of past generations. But these days, moms and dads have gone from reading books that tell us how to raise The Happiest Baby on the Block to new handbooks such as The Happiest Kid on Campus: A Parent’s Guide to the Very Best College Experience (for You and Your Child) . YOU and your child? Linda Bips, a psychology professor who advises parents on letting go, used to carry scissors into workshops. “Cut the cord!” she would tell them. It evoked the chuckles she was looking for. “But I don’t do that anymore, because no one would listen anyway,” says Bips, a professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., and author of Parenting College Freshmen: Consulting For Adulthood . The process, she has learned, has to be gradual. Marshall Duke, a psychology professor at Emory University in Atlanta, has been giving those kinds of talks for three decades and also has noted more parents struggling. For one, they’re more connected than ever, by Facebook and text messages and, increasingly, online video chat. They’re also often paying huge sums of money on their children’s education. “So they think that gives them license to intervene as they would in other investments,” says Duke, who also encourages parents to take a step back, even when it goes against the fiber of their very being. He wants them, in effect, to let their children falter, to figure things out for themselves, to become adults. For Ariana Kramer, it means giving up the comfort of what she freely calls the “bubble” she grew up in, the quiet home and highly ranked schools in suburban Chicago where her main task in life was to study hard and get herself where she is today. In physical distance, it wasn’t so far from the working-class neighborhoods where her parents grew up. The Kramers both marvel at the freedom they had as kids, riding city buses as preteens and able to stay out with friends until the street lights came on. That was their signal that it was time to go home. They went to neighborhood schools. Their friends lived across the street. They walked home for lunch. “When we were growing up, there were no Amber Alerts,” says Paul, who is 50. After they finished college and married, the Kramers eventually moved to their current home. Paul worked his way into medical sales and Robin, who is 49, created an at-home job for herself by managing businesses of lawyers and other self-employed professionals. It became apparent how different their children’s lives would be when they found themselves arranging “play dates” and driving them from activity to activity. “You had to be so much more involved,” Robin says — partly because, like a lot of people, they had fewer children to focus on than the average family of generations past. Ariana worked in the summers, eventually becoming a counselor at a Wisconsin camp she attended for years. That helped her become more independent, she says. But even she’ll acknowledge that the thought of taking the train or bus into the city, as her parents did, is still daunting. Over this past summer, she took on household duties — doing laundry, loading the dishwasher, learning how to write a check — to help prepare her for that real world she’s anticipating. In August, she moved in to her dorm at Iowa on the first day possible, so she had extra time to get her bearings. “I like simple,” she says. “I need simple.” Times are a-changin’ By many estimations, the Kramers are a low-drama family. But even they are having their prickly moments when they arrive in Iowa City, and that’s to be expected in this time of heightened emotions, experts say. Ariana rolls her eyes, for instance, when her mom suggests that she put her class assignments in her BlackBerry calendar. “Mom, I’m not like you. You’re way, too, uh …” — Ariana pauses and chooses her words carefully when she remembers her words are being monitored by a reporter — “better organized than I am.” It’s all part of the subtle push and pull that has been happening all summer, her mother says. One minute it’s “I can do it myself!” The next, Ariana is asking, “Mom, can you help me with this?” Robin is having her own internal struggles, trying to step back but finding it a challenge. “Let’s be real. As a mom, sometimes it’s just easier to do it yourself,” she says, as she stands amid boxes and unpacked suitcases in the room Ariana will share with a roommate. It’s nothing fancy, your basic 1920s-era dorm room, upgraded with an air conditioner that is welcomed on a late summer day in muggy Iowa. “Thank God I have you guys. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do this,” Ariana says, as her mother deals out tasks. Per Robin’s instructions, mother and daughter unpack her clothes first, as Paul sets up the clock radio, the portable telephone and the microwave. For him, the dorm room and this whole visit make him a bit wistful: “I wish it were me,” he says. That, too, is a normal parental response to this transition, says Bips, the Muhlenberg College psychologist who’s also a baby boomer and remembers “never trusting anyone over 30″ back in her own college days. “Life is more serious as you get older. There’s more loss. There’s more responsibility,” she says “So I would guess people in their 50s, who have to pay for college and worry about their jobs and the economy — yeah, wouldn’t it be nice to go back?” Some parents also feel nostalgic as the realization hits that their role — one of their main purposes in life — is changing, says Duke, the Emory psychologist: “If it’s a first child — my gosh, that’s a sobering signal about the progress of life.” Increasingly, colleges and universities have noted the support parents need in letting go, so much that they are starting to formalize the goodbye. At St. Olaf College in Minnesota, incoming freshmen are shown a video with their smiling, crying parents waving goodbye as one big group. First-year students at the University of Chicago, meanwhile, walk their parents to the university gate as bagpipes play in what some university staff call the “parting of the seas.” At Drexel University ‘s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, a goodbye reception includes an unofficial “crying room,” set up with tissues and a counselor. It’s kind of a gentle joke, but one that’s meant to send a message. “The idea was that we understand this is a major change for everybody,” says Ian Sladen, LeBow’s assistant dean of undergraduate programs. “It’s just as tough for parents — probably tougher, really.” But in the end, the message from universities and colleges is the same: Parents, please go home. At the University of Iowa, there is no formal goodbye ceremony. The university does, however, have an orientation and newsletter for parents and an advisory board, where any concerns are addressed. Meanwhile, Ariana also is taking a class called “The College Transition,” a relatively new course that helps freshmen ease into college life. “I clearly need a course like that to survive,” she says, her eyes widening for emphasis. Courses like these, often referred to as “University 101,” are becoming more common on college campuses. The aim is to turn out students who are independent and ready for the workplace — without their parents in tow. “It was almost a badge of honor 30 years ago when students couldn’t make it,” says Sladen at Drexel. “No one would be proud of that today.” And that should help put parents at ease, he says. ‘Make the most of it’ After nearly three days together in Iowa, the moment for Ariana to say goodbye to her parents and 16-year-old brother Chase finally arrives. Her parents get a little philosophical over sushi. “If they ask you ‘What’s the best time of your life?’ I think everybody will say college,” her dad says. “So make the most of it.” “Have fun,” her mom adds. “But don’t forget about the academics.” As her parents say goodbye, Ariana takes on the role of comforter. “I’ll call you,” she says as she hugs her mom, who begins to tear up. Ariana grabs dad and then her brother, who’s also starting to cry. She teases him: “If you break anything in my room, you’re in trouble.” They laugh. Chase, of anyone, has seemed the saddest about his sister leaving: “I think she’ll be OK as long as she copes with everything,” he had said the day before. “Oh, she will,” her mom assured him. “She’s a coper.” And it is true, Robin and Paul have faith in their daughter. “Basically, I think she’s very grounded and has a good head on her shoulders,” Robin says. She pauses. “But I’ll still be thinking, ‘Did she remember to do X, Y and Z?’” Ariana’s family departs, and the new freshman looks content, if not a little lost. She leaves her door open (that’s how you meet people, her resident adviser said). She looks around her room. “It’s weird,” she says. “What do I do now?” It won’t be long before she phones home. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The kindergarten class of 2010-11 is less white, less black, more Asian and much more Hispanic than in 2000, reflecting the nation’s rapid racial and ethnic transformation. The profile of the 4 million children starting kindergarten reveals the startling changes the USA has undergone the past decade and offers a glimpse of its future. In this year’s class, for example, about one out of four 5-year-olds will be Hispanic. Most of today’s kindergartners will graduate from high school in 2024. More Hispanic children are likely in the next generation because the number of Hispanic girls entering childbearing years is up more than 30% this decade, says Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire ‘s Carsey Institute. “It’s only the beginning.” U.S. MAP: County-by-county look at diversity DIVERSITY: Minority births drive growth in U.S. CENSUS 2010: Full coverage A USA TODAY analysis of the most recent government surveys shows: •About 25% of 5-year-olds are Hispanic, a big jump from 19% in 2000. Hispanics of that age outnumber blacks almost 2 to 1. •The percentage of white 5-year-olds fell from 59% in 2000 to about 53% today and the share of blacks from 15% to 13%. “This is not just a big-city phenomenon,” Johnson says. “The percentage of minority children is growing faster in the suburbs and in rural areas.” In Lake County, Ind., a Chicago suburb, the under-20 population went from 51.8% white in 2000 to 47.1% in 2008, Johnson’s research shows. In rural Nebraska’s Colfax and Dakota counties, the share of Hispanic youths is rising while young whites are down from 60% to about 45% in the same period. •Schools face linguistic challenges. The share of 5-year-olds who speak English at home slipped from 81% in 2000 to about 78%. The share of Spanish speakers grew from 14% to 16%. “That makes issues of language development and how to teach them even more important than 10 years ago,” says W. Steven Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. “In some districts, 40% of their kids are Latino, and 4% of their teachers are. It’s a huge gap.” Educators are grappling with the challenge, and “we really have a long way to go before we understand what the best methods are,” says Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the non-profit New America Foundation . Today’s kindergartners are tomorrow’s high schoolers, and “we need to know what their needs are.” •Kindergarten enrollment is up, from 3.8 million in 2000 to about 4 million.

BOSTON (AP) — They gather on statehouse steps with signs and bullhorns, risking arrest. They attend workshops on civil disobedience and personal storytelling, and they hold sit-ins and walk out of class in protest. They’re being warned that they could even lose their lives. Students fighting laws that target illegal immigrants are taking a page from the civil rights era, adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial segregation. “Their struggle then is ours now,” said Deivid Ribeiro, 21, an illegal immigrant from Brazil and an aspiring physicist. “Like it was for them, this is about survival for us. We have no choice.” Undocumented students, many of whom consider themselves “culturally American” because they have lived in the U.S. most of their lives, don’t qualify for federal financial aid and can’t get in-state tuition rates in some places. They are drawing parallels between themselves and the 1950s segregation of black and Mexican-American students. “I think it’s genius,” said Amilcar Shabazz, chairman of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts . “If you want to figure out how to get your story out and change the political mood in America, everybody knows the place to start your studies is the civil rights movement.” For two years, Renata Teodoro lived in fear of being deported to her native Brazil, like her mother, brother and sister. She reserved her social contact for close friends, was extra careful about signing her name anywhere, and fretted whenever anyone asked about her immigration status, because she been living illegally in the United States since she was 6. Yet on a recent afternoon, Teodoro gathered with other illegal immigrants outside the Massachusetts Statehouse with signs, fliers and a bullhorn — then marched the streets of Boston, putting herself in danger of arrest by going public but hoping her new openness would prompt action on the DREAM Act, a federal bill to allow people like her a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service. “I don’t care. I can’t live like this anymore,” said Teodoro, 22, a leader of the Student Immigration Movement and a part-time student at UMass-Boston. “I’m not afraid, and I have to take a stand.” The shift has been building, said Tom Shields, a doctoral student at Brandeis University in Waltham who is studying the new student movement. “In recent months, there has been an interest in connecting the narrative of their struggle to the civil rights effort for education,” Shields said. The movement has gained attention of Congress. Sens. Dick Durbin , D-Ill., and Richard Lugar , R-Ind., sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in April, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under DREAM, which stands for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors act, and which they’re sponsoring. Last month, three illegal immigrant students demanding to meet with Arizona Sen. John McCain about DREAM were arrested and later detained for refusing to leave his Tucson office. High school and college students in Chicago and Denver walked out of class this year to protest Arizona’s tough new law requiring immigrants to carry registration papers. In December, immigrant students staged a “Trail of Dreams” march from Miami’s historic Freedom Tower to Washington, D.C., to raise support for DREAM. Similar student immigrant groups have sprung up at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Houston . By attaching themselves to the civil rights movement, Shabazz said, the immigrant students can claim the moral high ground and underdog status of the debate. “The question now is … can they convince moderate, middle-of-the-road, independent voters to support them?” he said. The Rev. William Lawson, an 81-year-old civil rights leader and retired pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, called the student activists’ tactics courageous and said he’d like to meet them. But Lawson, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr ., cautioned student immigrant activists to prepare for peers getting arrested, deported or possibly killed. “You do have to expect consequences. Many civil rights activists faced injury, sometimes death,” said Lawson. “And I’m not sure how many of these (students) understand the fundamental philosophy of nonviolence.” Students have to keep in mind the audience they’re trying to win over, said Lonnie King, 73, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the group responsible for sit-ins at segregated restaurants across the South in the 1960s. “They need to understand that the bulk of folks are in the middle,” King said. “They have to coach their message to make it broadly appealing.” In Massachusetts, hundreds of student activists have gone through training by Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a former organizer with the late Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers movement. At special camps, students attend workshops on civil disobedience, storytelling and media outreach. Students who have attended the workshops even continue to use the well-known farm workers’ rallying clap at the end of organizing meetings. “They know that clap,” Ganz said, “because I taught them that clap. It’s all about the experience.” Teodoro said the training changed her life and showed her the cause was larger than herself. During the rally last week in Boston, she led a march from the Massachusetts Statehouse to Sen. Scott Brown’s office at the John F. Kennedy federal building, which also houses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Along with Carlos Savio Oliveira, 22, of Falmouth, Mass., another illegal immigrant, the pair walked into the federal building to hand Brown’s staff 1,500 letters of support for the DREAM Act. Outside supporters wore T-shirts with the words “Brown is beautiful” — a pun referring to the Chicano movement chant and Brown’s well-publicized nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan magazine as a college student. Brown, whose office was previously the site of a sit-in by the same group, has not said whether he supports the bill. In September, Teodoro and a dozen other students also took a week-long trip from Boston to the South, with Shields driving. Along the way, they met with black former students who desegregated Clinton High School in Tennessee and Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They visited civil rights museums and filmed the journey for a planned documentary. But the highlight was meeting Carlotta Walls LaNier , a member of the Little Rock Nine. Teodoro cornered LaNier at a book signing of her memoir, “A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.” “I went up to her at the signing and told her my story and tried not to cry,” Teodoro said. “She listened. Then, she hugged me.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.