WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to make permanent a $2,500 college tuition tax credit that’s set to expire at the end of the year. The American Opportunity Tax Credit was included in the $814 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed last year. He had proposed making the tax credit permanent in his 2011 budget proposal, but Congress has not acted on his request. YOUR MONEY: Some tax benefits for college expire at end of 2010 COSTS: Student loan program changes affect rates, repayment Obama appeared in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday with three families who have taken advantage of the tax credit. Obama says the credit is worth $10,000 over four years and will help families invest in their children’s future. A Treasury Department analysis says 12.5 million people used the credit last year, for an average of about $1,700. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Waiting for Superman begins with a simple question: What’s four minus two? The answer takes achingly long for Anthony, an elementary school student in inner-city Washington. Anthony isn’t dumb; he’s more thoughtful than just about any child you’ll meet. He’s simply applying what he learned in public school. Which isn’t much. That’s the overarching theme of Davis Guggenheim ‘s masterful picture, which vaults itself among the year’s best films. TRAILER: Get a peek of ‘Waiting for Superman’ And while Guggenheim’s point — that public schools are failing our children — may not be an earth-shaker, remember: This is the guy who won an Oscar for turning a PowerPoint presentation into An Inconvenient Truth . He works some of the same magic here, but by essentially making a reverse image of Truth . Where Guggenheim stoked political friction with Al Gore as Truth ‘s tempest, he mostly steers clear of politics here in favor of the children’s stories. It’s a brilliant move, because you won’t find more compelling stories than Anthony’s, Bianca’s in Harlem and Daisy’s in Los Angeles, among others. These are kids who not only want a tougher education, they’re gambling on one. The families in Waiting have entered a lottery whose winners get to leave their substandard schools for a mediocre one. The final 10 minutes, as the kids await word if their numbers were called, is as compelling as any feature film. When Guggenheim asks the boy what a better school would mean for him, Anthony answers quickly: more homework, less television, less playtime. Does he want to get in? You bet. Asked why: “So my kids have a better future than I did.” It’s hard to argue that he, like all kids in the film, isn’t profoundly teachable, and that’s Guggenheim’s real mission: to put a face on an intractable debate. The director does get a little heated in his attack on the teachers union, which he accuses of putting politics ahead of pupils. Instead of wading into Michael Moore-like diatribes, though, Guggenheim deflates the tension with a confession: He drives by public schools every morning to take his kids to private schools. Guggenheim does his homework, including statistics on the success of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools to counter assertions that poor neighborhoods produce poor institutions. And there are startling images of “problem teachers” sent to a professional detention. The title comes from Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone. He explains he once saw Superman on TV and thought George Reeves would one day swoop in to save him and his classmates. It’s an apt title. As divisive as the issue has become, it’s hard to deny the power of Guggenheim’s lingering shots on these children, waiting on a superhero who isn’t going to come.

PUEBLO, Colo. — At 8:28 a.m., the cafeteria ladies of Centennial High School take up positions in the second-floor hallway, just outside closed classroom doors. Each woman is pushing a cart loaded with milk, juice, whole-wheat doughnuts and individual packages of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereal. When science teacher Sue Aronofsky opens the door of her classroom, kids stream into the hallway. “You go around, you get your stuff, and you tell the lady thank you,” she says. Students eat at their desks as announcements drone from the public-address system. After a brief pause to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag and toss empty milk cartons, Aronofsky’s freshmen turn to examining pill bugs under magnifying glasses. Time: 8:45 a.m. The same scene occurs all over the 1,034-student school. Last year, when Centennial served free breakfast in the cafeteria each morning before the start of classes, fewer than 100 students showed up to eat daily. On this morning four days into the new year, with breakfast delivered to classrooms, 864 students have been fed. That many children eating school breakfast is rare. Although the number of hungry children in the U.S. is rising, fewer than half of the kids who could be eating a free or low-cost breakfast at school are getting one. TRAFFIC: Cities opt for creative commuter options COACHING: Qualified students aim higher ‘DROPOUT FACTORIES’: Program fights truancy at young age BACKYARD COTTAGES: Extra income in Seattle In Pueblo, school officials take a counterintuitive approach: They offer free breakfast to all children regardless of income, so no one is embarrassed to be eating it. In most schools here, breakfast is served right in the classrooms. As a result, 76% of Pueblo’s needy kids eat school breakfast. That’s more than any state and almost every big city, according to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), which tracks participation in school meal programs. Now, states such as Colorado and Florida, anti-hunger groups and congressional lawmakers from both parties are pushing schools to follow programs such as Centennial’s — an effort not only to improve students’ performance in school but to combat rising hunger in tough economic times. The number of U.S. households that can’t consistently put food on the table rose to 17 million, or 14.6%, in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture , the highest level in a decade. The use of food stamps is at an all-time high, and so is the percentage of children receiving free or reduced-price school meals, which rose from 59.3% in 2007 to 62.5% in 2009. DELINQUENTS: For D.C., hope in treating young offenders SOLAR CITY: Toledo reinvents itself as a solar-power innovator STAYING FREE: Unlikely mentors give felons hope The low number of needy kids eating breakfast at school “is a tremendous concern,” says Gary Davis, founder of the Got Breakfast? Foundation, which gives schools grants to increase breakfast participation. “It’s a message that really has to be heard: that there’s just a simple way that we can improve our society.” The cost of school breakfast for needy kids, such as the cost of their lunches, is eligible for federal reimbursement. Most U.S. schools — 86% — offer it. But of the nearly 19 million children who eat a free or reduced-price lunch at school, only 8.8 million also come for breakfast, according to FRAC. Efforts to change this are underway: •In Colorado, where only 39% of needy kids eat a school breakfast, Democratic Gov. Bob Ritter launched an effort in July to get school districts to increase participation in breakfast with the help of Share Our Strength, a national advocacy group that fights childhood hunger. •In Florida, a new law this year requires free breakfast in all schools where 80% of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. •In Congress, renewal of the Child Nutrition Act would allow start-up grants for universal free breakfast programs. The bill also would make it easier for high-need schools to serve universal meals by allowing more ways for schools to make kids eligible for free and low-cost meals. The renewal, postponed from 2009, passed the Senate in August with $4.5 billion in increased funding. A version with $8 billion in additional funding awaits action in the House. The current law expires Sept. 30. “There are just a lot of kids whose families are not going to be able to supply all their meals for them,” says Bill Shore, co-founder of Share Our Strength. “The impact (on hunger) of adding 50,000 kids to the school breakfast program dwarfs anything else we could do.” ‘It’s the right thing to do’ In Pueblo — a city of 103,000 that is 104 miles south of Denver — 72% of schoolchildren qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Under U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, a family of four with an annual income of less than $40,793 can receive school meals at a reduced price of no more than 30 cents. A family of four with income less than $28,665 is eligible for free school meals. But in Pueblo, breakfast is served free to everyone in all 38 schools. In 24 schools, children are served breakfast in the classroom or, if the food carts can’t be hauled upstairs, kids grab breakfast at the front door on their way to class. Jill Kidd, Pueblo’s nutrition services director, started serving breakfast in class in 1998 in four of the district’s poorest schools, and she has been expanding the classroom breakfast program ever since. “It’s simple,” she says. “And it’s the right thing to do for kids.” Pueblo serves a burrito, French toast or other hot breakfast four times a week, and offers cereal every day, including an unsweetened variety such as Cheerios. (Centennial students got only sweet cereals the first week this school year because adding the school to the in-class breakfast program initially stretched district supplies, Kidd says.) Cheyenne Roque, 15, a freshman at Centennial, grabbed the high-fiber doughnut from the breakfast cart. Her mother works at a craft supply store and her dad at a discount store. The family includes three kids, her grandmother and uncle. Food stamps help the family make it through the month, but school breakfast and lunch make the groceries at home go further. “That’s why we have more food at home, because we eat breakfast and lunch at school,” she says. Removing the stigma Getting more kids to eat breakfast at school is key to achieving President Obama’s campaign pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015, according to groups such as Share Our Strength and Feeding America, a food bank network. The best way to do so, they say, is with a program like Centennial’s that feeds rich and poor kids alike. In a 2001 U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program in 79 schools, offering free breakfast to all kids in the cafeteria increased the number of students who ate breakfast in school from 19% to 28%. At schools that served free breakfast in the classroom, participation rose to 65%. Feeding free breakfast to students who can afford to pay avoids the stigma for students who can’t but don’t want everyone to know. Serving breakfast in class means kids don’t have to get there early to be fed, Kidd and other school nutrition directors say. Bus schedules, parents’ work schedules, and, for high school students, the desire to sleep as late as possible make getting to school early for breakfast difficult. Andrea Ayala, 28, an unemployed single mom of four, grew up in Pueblo eating breakfast at school when it was for poor kids only. She and her four siblings “always had to go to the cafeteria and be there before school. … My mom made us,” Ayala says. Now her four kids eat breakfast at school along with everyone else, she says: “They see everybody else getting what they’re getting.” Feeding more children breakfast is an easy pitch to budget-squeezed school districts because if enough of their kids are eligible for low- or no-cost meals, federal reimbursement can cover the cost of the entire program. The more breakfasts they serve, the more federal reimbursement they get and the greater economy of scale they enjoy. The USDA spent $12.7 billion on school breakfast and lunch last year. Reimbursement to schools for breakfast range from 26 cents for a child who pays full price to $1.74 for a free breakfast in a high-poverty school. More than half of all students in Pueblo eat breakfast at school. The program pays for itself and doesn’t require any money from the district, Kidd says. “We aren’t asking taxpayers to feed every kid a free breakfast at school,” says Courtney Smith, director of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry program. “We are saying that in very high-need areas, a way to effectively provide breakfast at school is through a universal breakfast program.” Part of an education In Pueblo, Kidd has converted schools to free in-class breakfast one principal at a time. Administrative reluctance is typically the biggest obstacle to classroom breakfast, its proponents say. Since the federal No Child Left Behind law made performance on state tests critical to schools, the pressure to maximize class time is intense. “As a principal, you have to guard instruction time,” says Tharyn Mulberry, Centennial’s principal. When he first mentioned classroom breakfast, his faculty “did not like it,” he says. “They did not want the disruption of it.” First, Kidd arranged to serve breakfast in class last year on the days when Centennial students took the all-important state assessment tests. Then she told Mulberry, “If it’s good for test days, it’s good for every day.” Studies indicate that children learn better when they aren’t hungry. Kids who eat breakfast right before taking tests score higher than kids who ate hours before. Results of pilot programs in the city of Milwaukee, statewide in Maryland and elsewhere show that serving breakfast in class results in less tardiness, less disruptive behavior and fewer visits to the nurse. “We’re a little obsessive about it at this point,” Kidd says. She has pitched one principal on the idea of in-class breakfast so many times — without success — “if I mention it again, he’s going to kill me.” At Park View Elementary, on Pueblo’s east side, where all 418 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, breakfast is served only in the cafeteria, not the classroom. “I don’t feel that that truly is the best use of the instruction part of the day,” Principal Shiela Perez says. “By the time that it’s been delivered, by the time they’ve been given the opportunity to eat and everything’s been cleared up, that can drag out … into 45 minutes of the day.” Instead, children must arrive by 7:40 a.m. to eat, 20 minutes before class begins. A little more than one-third of the students — 37% — eat breakfast at school. “If they walk in at 7:55 they’re not going to get turned away,” Perez says. “We’re just trying to encourage them to get here.” Like it or not, making sure children get fed has become central to schools’ mission. Feeding hungry kids “is a given. We’re in many cases the biggest social support for our children,” says Stephanie Garcia, president of the Pueblo school board. “This is a necessary part of the educational process.” For Kidd, the next step in helping hungry children is to move beyond the school day. Like other schools, Pueblo has a program that sends bags of food home with needy kids on Friday to get them through the weekend. Kidd would like to add an after-school supper program, and start farmers markets at schools located in “food deserts,” neighborhoods without food stores. She is also now in charge of the 10% of Pueblo students who are homeless. It’s a job Kidd feels highlights the difference a school can make in a kid’s life, especially if it comes with decent meals. “We’re the safe time in their day. We’re the good time in their day,” she says. “If we can feed them and love them, maybe we can make the other 16 hours more tolerable.”

PHILADELPHIA — Duong Nghe Ly can’t wait to begin his senior year at South Philadelphia High School. A day of violence there last year changed his life, and he wants to learn if his school has been transformed as well. Last Dec. 3, after years of attacks on Asian immigrant students, something finally snapped. Fueled by rumors, a group of students roamed the halls searching for Asian victims until one was attacked in a classroom. Later, about 70 students stormed the cafeteria, where several Asians were beaten. About 35 students pushed past a police officer onto the so-called “Asian floor,” but were turned back. After school, Asians being escorted home were attacked anyway by a mob of youths. Almost all the attackers were black — but few observers believe the violence was due to racial hatred. Instead, they cite isolation of different groups within the school, certain students’ warped “gangster” values, and for some, simmering resentments over perceived benefits for Asian students. About 30 Asians were injured that day; seven went to hospitals. Past attacks had been reported to administrators and police, but students say nothing seemed to change. Ly (pronounced LEE) was in the lunchroom for what he calls “the riot.” Days later, he was followed home from school and punched in the face on his front stoop. He had arrived from Vietnam two years earlier, speaking nearly no English, the son of poor, uneducated parents. He thought America would be like the Hannah Montana TV episodes he had watched in Vietnam. What he found was closer to The Wire . So he kept his head down, sought silent refuge among his countrymen and tried to make his way through the broken system. Dec. 3 was a turning point. He realized the system must change — and that he and his fellow immigrants were the ones to make that happen. Their method? Guided by local activists, and despite reservations from some parents, about 50 Asian students boycotted school for a week. “Before, I was timid. I didn’t really want to get myself into trouble,” says Ly, 18. Then he realized, “If everybody’s silent, nobody speaks up, the problem keeps going on without being resolved. I feel like I or my friends have to speak up and organize to tell people this is not right. “We had to fight for it.” ‘Just suffer it’ Duong Ly’s parents, ethnic Chinese who grew up in Vietnam, worked 27 years to grasp the bottom rung of the ladder to American success. His mother, Phung Mac, attended school through the second grade, when her family ran out of money to pay for more. His father, Tu Ly, made it through the sixth grade. In 1981, they submitted their first paperwork to immigrate to the United States. “You had to have a certain background to go to school, be in the Communist Party,” Tu Ly says in Cantonese as his son translates. “Your grandparents had to be a party member for you to get into good schools. Otherwise it cost a lot of money to get an education.” Ly’s parents lived in Ho Chi Minh City, eking out a living selling “pho” noodle soup, rising at 5 a.m. and working in their shop until 9 or 10 at night. All extra money went toward school for Duong (pronounced YUHNG) and his older brother, and fees for immigration paperwork. At times they could not pay their rent and were forced to move, but they always made sure their boys stayed in school. Ly’s mother developed painful hip problems. Her younger brother, who had already moved to America, sent money to pay for an operation. It was unsuccessful — the doctor said it was “an experiment. If you want a better … operation, you need to pay more money,” she says in Cantonese. In 2008, after spending about $20,000 on immigration fees, the family was approved and came to Philadelphia. “We finally achieved our wish: freedom,” Tu Ly says. “We finally had a chance for a better education.” South Philadelphia High looms over an entire city block in a poor section of South Philadelphia long populated by descendants of voyagers from Italy, other European nations and the black American South. Asians and Latinos are now coming in greater numbers. Today, the school is about 70% black and 18% Asian. During Duong Ly’s first year, there were 45 reports of “dangerous incidents” such as weapons possession or assaults at the school of about 1,000 students, enough to earn a “persistently dangerous” label from the state. There also were 326 reports of lesser crimes such as fighting, threats or robberies. The graduation rate was 48%. Only 16% of students were proficient or better in reading and 8% in math, according to state test results. Within weeks of starting school, Ly was robbed in the bathroom. His older brother was punched in the face. “Our friends told us, ‘Just suffer it,’” Ly says. They didn’t report either incident. ‘Discrimination happens’ Duong Ly speaks dispassionately, expressing no racial animosity, when asked to explain how fellow students could commit such vicious attacks. “Because they live in a violent environment,” he suggests. “Maybe their parents have problems and troubles, so they want to express their anger by violence.” His father also declines to condemn the attackers. “In Vietnam,” he says, “the original Vietnamese people don’t like us because we are a different ethnicity. People from the countryside who move to the city get discrimination from city people. It’s the same here. They don’t have an understanding about who we are. Discrimination happens in every society.” About a dozen black students were suspended or expelled after Dec. 3. Their names have been kept secret, and they have not commented publicly. Some other black students show little sympathy for them. “They’re just hating on other races. They don’t have anything better to do with their lives,” says Tyreke Williams, who graduated last June. Wali Smith makes no excuses for the attacks, but understands where they come from. A community specialist who holds workshops on anger management and conflict resolution in various schools, he witnessed the Dec. 3 violence. The South Philly native says blacks have always felt marginalized in the neighborhood dominated by Italians and Irish. Now, some students feel an almost unconscious resentment when they see their Asian counterparts studying on their special second-floor sanctuary, which was established to provide language programs and provide a more welcoming environment. “Those (black) kids feel the majority of the staff there does not care about their education,” Smith says. “They see these Asian kids come in and be nurtured, and they want that same kind of comfort.” Then there is a small group of troublemakers with a value system that says, “it’s cool to be gangster,” Smith says. “But really you’re afraid, a scared coward. So you take advantage of weak people.” “It’s not based on race, it’s based on opportunity,” Smith said of the history of violence against Asians. “If they go to the bathroom and take your money, and you don’t report it, they’ll just keep riding it until the wheels fall off.” School, community and beyond The Asian students and activists reserve almost all of their criticism for administrators and the school district, which they say consistently failed to protect students. A school district spokesman did not return a call for comment. Administrators have insisted that they responded to Asian students’ complaints and tried their best to combat violence that has become part of the culture for some Philadelphia youths. “These problems are long-standing and go beyond the school and into the community,” district superintendent Arlene Ackerman said a week after the attacks. A report by a retired judge, which was commissioned by the district, said there were confrontations between a small group of black and Asian students on Dec. 2 that led to the widespread Dec. 3 attacks on random Asians. The report was criticized by Asians who say it failed to account for years of documented violence and that investigators did not interview many student victims and witnesses. Yet Duong Ly is still enthusiastic about his school. He says the English as a Second Language program is good, the teachers care, there are plenty of computers with Internet access — and it’s all free. “If I study hard I will get a lot of opportunities, scholarships, grants…,” he says. “It’s rewarding to work hard and study hard here, more than in Vietnam. I can go to a better school, go to college, get a career, then I can take care of my parents. So I like it more here.” He also likes his new home, a narrow, two-story row house bought from his uncle. They are the only Asians on the block. The front door opens into the living room, where the family’s bicycles (they have no car) share space with an old, fat television, couches and a folding table for meals. On the far wall is a handsome curio cabinet of polished wood, ornately carved, holding photographs of ancestors. Tu Ly works as a cook in an Asian supermarket. His wife is unemployed. The family has permanent resident status and expects to become naturalized citizens within a few years. Recently, Medicaid paid for a hip replacement for Duong’s mother. “We owe this country a lot,” Tu Ly says. “The government paid a lot of money for my wife’s operation. We will work our best to contribute to society. My children can choose whatever job they like, as long as they do something to contribute to this country.” New initiatives The boycott was not an easy step to take. Some students were afraid of being expelled. Many parents were against it, fearing their children would become even more conspicuous targets. Some said local activists were making the situation worse. Once it started, though, attitudes changed. “After the boycott, I felt much more confident and powerful because our voices were heard by the people,” Duong Ly says. The district installed 126 security cameras. A “50-50 club” took Asian and black students on group outings. More bilingual staffers and diversity training were added. Principal LaGreta Brown was forced out on the eve of a faculty no-confidence vote after a local newspaper discovered her certification had lapsed. All eyes are on the incoming principal. Otis Hackney III is 37, a black Philadelphia native, fresh from two years as principal of a mostly white suburban high school. He got the call from Philly one night when he was standing on the sidelines of his school stadium, watching a lacrosse game under the lights. “My first thought was, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Hackney says during an interview in his new office, the cinderblock walls bare except for a picture of the singing legend Marian Anderson , class of 1921. Soon, though, Hackney accepted the challenge. His immediate agenda includes building a relationship with the Asian community and creating a group of school stakeholders who meet regularly to set goals. Hackney says all students should feel comfortable approaching him: “I want to listen more than I speak. Students are often much more honest than adults.” He bought a new conference table and spiffed up a room for community meetings: “The message is, this is an important place where we talk about important things.” He’s getting Asians out of their special floor and into the rest of the building. He’s looking at United Nations-style translation headphones for immigrant parents. He is the fifth principal in six years, and he wants to stick around. There is much to heal. The Vietnamese embassy has complained to the U.S. State Department. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a complaint with the Justice Department, which on August 27 found merit in the claims and advised the district to settle the matter. An investigation by the state Human Rights Commission is pending. The dynamic that exploded on Dec. 3 has not disappeared. “If you’re that angry and frustrated about something that your behavior manifests itself that way, what are we not addressing as a school, as a community?” asks Hackney. “As African-Americans, we can’t forget our own struggle to the point that we become what we fought so hard against.” “That’s one side. The other side is, when you have an immigrant population that comes in, what are the skill sets they need to function in this society? It can be very difficult for that child and that family to function in schools. So how do you put all that together? That’s my job. “Part of it is getting people to see the human side in every person, identifying with their struggle. Once people begin to do that, you realize folks aren’t as privileged as you think they are. They don’t speak the language. They don’t have that many advantages over you. You’re just not taking advantage of the ones you have.” Hope ahead? Duong Ly had a busy summer: An internship at the University of Pennsylvania on Asian health issues; a psychology class at a community college; trips to conferences in Houston and Boston to discuss his new activism; being photographed for a Philadelphia magazine story that labeled the boycotters “heroes.” In between, he spent a little time working on his college essays and a lot of time on Facebook . On Wednesday, he will walk through the battered metal doors of South Philadelphia High to start his senior year at what he hopes is a changed school. “I’m really looking forward to it,” he says. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

PHOENIX — A promise kept is a precious gift. And then it becomes a responsibility. That transformation is happening this week at Grand Canyon University here for 15 incoming freshmen. They are at the school because 10 years ago a promise was made to them. VIDEO SERIES: Arizona Republic shows lives changed At the time, they were third-graders at Granada Elementary School in west Phoenix. Many were poor, and most of their families probably didn’t consider college an option. When university officials brought them and their parents together to promise the students that they could go to the college for free, none of them really understood what it meant. Now, it is the students’ time to fulfill that promise. A teacher gunned down “Sydney’s Kids” were named after Sydney Browning, a Phoenix native and a Grand Canyon graduate. On Sept. 15, 1999, she was sitting in Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth when a gunman walked in and started shooting. Browning was the first of seven to die. In life she was committed to educating the less fortunate. She taught at Success High School, a Fort Worth public school that brought former dropouts back to the classroom. Sydney’s Kids were chosen to honor her. Two days before the shooting, a group of students from Granada Elementary visited GCU to sing Happy Birthday for the school’s 50th anniversary. The students impressed GCU administrators who, the next year, made them a promise: If their grades and test scores were good enough to get in, they would go to the university free. Armando Rivera was one of those students. Now 18, he remembers the parents being more excited than the children. “Honestly,” he says, “at the time, I didn’t understand it.” On Thursday, freshmen Jessica Reyes, Cameron Stafford and Daron Beck chatted in Daron’s dorm room. Jessica, like Armando, plans to be a doctor and will major in biology. Daron will study business. Cameron is thinking of business or marketing. They are all aware that being one of Sydney’s Kids comes with responsibility. “It’s a special gift,” Cameron says. “Now, I have to fulfill it.” Some kids can’t be found On freshman registration and move-in day, faculty and school administrators helped freshmen move into their dorms. Among them were people who helped make the promise and keep it. Joyce Hatch is GCU vice president of financial aid. “I was here when they came and sang,” Hatch says. “I was here when the promise was made.” For a while, the promise seemed in doubt. In the early 2000s, GCU was in dire financial shape. It severed its ties with the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention. In 2004, a venture capital firm bought GCU and turned it into a for-profit institution. But GCU remained committed to Sydney’s Kids. Three years ago Jennifer Hatch, Joyce’s daughter and an admissions counselor, began looking for them. Of the 60 students offered the scholarship, 15 are taking advantage of it. One more will start next semester, and a 17th will enroll next year. Some of the other students hadn’t kept up their grades. The rest moved away or just fell through the cracks. GCU was unable to find some of the students. The promise is still open to them.

NEW YORK — For their first fire drill, students at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy trooped out of the building behind their teachers. All that was missing were the sirens. The blaring alarms had been muted, for fear they could trigger terror in children who recently arrived from war zones and other conflict areas. The silent fire drill was part of the balancing act for staff at the six-week program that helps youngsters who have survived wars and refugee camps prepare for a new experience — American public school. For some of the kids, formal education has been haphazard or nonexistent, said Elizabeth Demchak, principal of the school, run by the International Rescue Committee , which works with refugees and asylum-seekers. For others, school consisted of sitting and taking notes surrounded by dozens of others with a teacher reciting a lecture. Preparing them means helping them learn how to go to school along with what they learn there. “When they enter the classroom in September, things won’t be so new for them, and having taken away that freshness, that newness, you’re also taking away that fear,” Demchak said. That’s where something like the fire drill comes in. Running a drill, explaining what it is, can help keep students from reacting negatively when they experience it in school. “If a child has lived in an environment, especially in a conflict area, where they’re accustomed to hearing sirens and sirens are a signal for an emergency … when they hear an alarm going off in their school it may trigger a certain memory, it may make them act in a certain way,” Demchak said. “We’re teaching them how to disassociate certain triggers that had a negative connotation with things that are here to help and protect them,” she said. The Youth Academy program has about 120 kids this summer who will be in kindergarten to 12th grade this school year. The students’ homelands are a litany of the world’s hot spots, combat zones and conflict areas: Iraq. Afghanistan. Sierra Leone. Burma. Most have been here for less than 18 months. Some will be starting school in America for the first time. In the program, the children work on their English, writing and math. They take art, dance and music. They go on field trips. From the length of the day to changing rooms between classes to raising their hands and interacting with teachers, the program tries to mimic what students will experience. That was a blessing for Helen Samuels, 17, who attended two years ago and works there this summer. Half Burmese and half Thai, she hadn’t been in school for two years when she arrived here in June 2008 from the refugee camps along the Burma-Thailand border. She was a frightened girl and the program helped reassure her. “We had to learn all the basics of how to be a student, starting from you had to come to class on time,” Samuels said. “It helped me, to prepare me to see school is not something scary.” Among those starting this fall is Basserou Kaba, a 16-year-old from Ivory Coast, an African nation divided between government and rebel forces. The teen, who was in 12th grade before coming here in April, will start in 10th grade to improve his English. He is happy that U.S. teachers expect students to ask questions, unlike those in his homeland. “In my country, the teacher teach what he wants,” Kaba said. “You don’t understand, it’s your problem.” Kaba admits he’s a little nervous about his language skills but says he’s now comfortable with the idea of going to school. “In this program, I came to know what is the school in U.S.,” he said. The IRC program and others like it can play a vital role in helping them build their lives in a new country, said Michele Pistone, a law professor at Villanova University School of Law who specializes in refugee issues. New arrivals can benefit from being taught such common practices for Americans, she said, as parental involvement in a child’s education. “In the United States, our system, there’s much more interaction between parents and teachers than there is elsewhere around the world,” Pistone said. “A lot of the refugees I’ve worked with — because they’re coming from an environment where there isn’t that expectation of involvement — they tend not to be.” The IRC program, which ends Friday, holds parent-teacher conferences and encourages parents to get involved. One who did is Bushra Naji, 53, who was a teacher in Iraq for 25 years before leaving for Syria in 2006 and the United States in 2008. Now she volunteers, helping students in kindergarten through second grade. In Iraq, she said, she taught English by writing on a blackboard and having her students repeat after her. Here, she said, her eyes shining and her smile bright, it’s “very exciting” to see the teachers interact with the children. “I wanted to be younger,” she said, “to be teacher here.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WASHINGTON — English only? With Hispanic enrollment surging in schools, many Spanish-speaking parents are having trouble helping their children with homework or communicating with U.S. teachers as English-immersion classes proliferate in K-12. An Associated Press-Univision poll highlights the language and cultural obstacles for the nation’s Latinos, who lag behind others when it comes to graduating from high school. MISMATCH: 87% of Hispanics value higher education, 13% have college degree The findings also raise questions about whether English-immersion does more to assimilate or isolate — a heated debate that has divided states, academics and even the U.S. Supreme Court. Arizona recently ordered its schools to remove teachers with heavy foreign accents from English-language instruction, while the Obama administration is seeking to push more multilingual teaching in K-12 classrooms. “The language barrier is still a serious risk factor for Hispanics,” said Michael Kirst, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education who helped analyze the survey. Even with many schools replacing Spanish with English in classrooms, for a student evaluated as learning English, “the odds of completing high school, and particularly college, significantly drops.” The nationwide poll, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, found the vast majority of Hispanics — 78% — had children enrolled in K-12 classes that were taught mostly in English, compared with 3% in Spanish. Just 20% of mainly Spanish-speaking parents say they were able to communicate “extremely well” with their child’s school, compared with 35% of Hispanics who speak English fluently. About 42% of the Spanish speakers said it was easy for them to help with their children’s schoolwork, compared with 59% of the Hispanics who speak English well. Children of Spanish-dominant parents also were less likely to seek help with homework from their families. Fifty-seven% of those parents said their children came to them with school questions. That’s compared with 80% for mainly English-speaking Hispanic parents, who also were more likely to send their children to relatives or friends for answers. The hardships often center on language for Latino parents, who value a high school diploma more than the general population and want to support their children, according to the poll. But educators say the problems can be cultural, too, if some Hispanic parents feel less comfortable acting as vocal advocates for education, such as meeting with teachers or lobbying for an extra honors class. Under federal law, if the parents’ English is limited, schools must provide notices and information about student activities in a language they can understand. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is now reviewing some school districts to see if students are being denied a fair education. “It’s difficult for me,” said Carmen Arevalo, 30, who arrived in the United States 12 years ago from El Salvador and doesn’t speak English. Arevalo has an 8-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter in Miami public schools and says she has constant challenges with communication, even though many of her children’s teachers speak English and Spanish. “Sometimes I feel uncomfortable, because sometimes I don’t know what they will be saying to the children,” Arevalo said as she watched her son play soccer. Roxana Montoya, an El Salvador native in Miami who is learning to speak English, says she often struggled to help her 12-year-old son with school. Montoya said she would check the Internet to translate her questions for teachers and spend hours going through his middle-school coursework. “He’d get out at 3 and at 9, we still wouldn’t be done with the homework,” she said. The educational stakes are high. Roughly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home, with Hispanics representing the largest share, according to 2009 census data. Hispanics also now make up one-fourth of the nation’s kindergartners, part of a historic trend in which minorities are projected to become the new U.S. majority by midcentury. Still, Hispanics are nearly three times as likely than the general U.S. population to drop out of high school, and half as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree. Other AP-Univision poll findings: •Many Hispanics lack confidence in the quality of education at their local public schools. About 47% said they believed the K-12 schools were excellent or good, compared with 48% who described them as “fair,” “poor” or “very poor.” •About 63% of Hispanics believe it would help the U.S. economy “a lot” if more students completed high school, compared with 40% for the general population. Citing some of the racial gaps, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is urging parents to take more responsibility. He said the government will require districts to get input from communities on ways to improve underperforming schools before receiving federal money. The Education Department also wants to devote an additional $50 million next year to promote English learning. Part of that will be used for research and development of “dual-language immersion,” a bilingual approach gaining favor among many linguists. Dual-immersion is a shift from the direction of states such as California, Arizona and Massachusetts , where voters have largely banned bilingual classes. On a broader level, some 30 states and numerous localities have passed laws making English the official language, a move that critics say will lead to more cuts in bilingual programs. The debate has splintered the Supreme Court, which sided 5-4 with Arizona last year in saying the federal government should not supervise the state’s spending for teaching students who don’t speak English. Doris Chiquito, 30, of Miami, who was born in the U.S. to Ecuadorean parents, is among those who would like their children to value Hispanic culture. Chiquito, fluent in English, says she enrolled her 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter in bilingual classes so they would also speak Spanish and not “feel ashamed of being Hispanic.” Her daughter, Ariana Gonzalez, says she likes having classes in both languages. “It helps me learn Spanish, and I know how to talk with my grandparents,” she said. “I like that I get to speak English because some of my friends don’t know Spanish, and then I talk to them in English.” The AP-Univision Poll was conducted from March 11 to June 3 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago . Using a sample of Hispanic households provided by The Nielsen Company, 1,521 Hispanics were interviewed in English and Spanish, mostly by mail but also by telephone and the Internet. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Stanford University’s participation in the study was made possible by a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Challenging civil rights organizations and teachers’ unions that have criticized his education policies, President Barack Obama said Thursday that minority students have the most to gain from overhauling the nation’s schools. “We have an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind,” Obama told the centennial convention of the National Urban League . RACE TO THE TOP: 18 states, D.C. named $3B grant finalists VIDEO: Education is the key economic issue, president says The Urban League has been a vocal critic of Obama’s education policies, most notably the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” program that awards grants to states based on their plans for innovative education reforms. A report released earlier this week by eight civil rights groups, including the Urban League, says federal data shows that just 3% of the nation’s black students and less than 1% of Latino students are affected by the first round of the administration’s “Race to the Top” competition. Obama pushed back Thursday, arguing that minority students are the ones who have been hurt the most by the status quo. Obama’s reforms have also drawn criticism from education advocates, including prominent teachers’ unions like the American Federation of Teachers , who have argued that the reforms set unfair standards for teacher performance. Obama said the goal isn’t to fire or admonish teachers, but to create a culture of accountability. He pinned some of the criticism on a resistance to change. “We get comfortable with the status quo even when the status quo isn’t good,” he said. “When you try to shake things up, sometimes people aren’t happy.” Seeking to ease his strained relationship with the powerful teacher’s unions, Obama hailed teachers as “the single most important factor in a classroom,” calling for higher pay, better training and additional resources to help teachers succeed. “Instead of a culture where we’re always idolizing sports stars or celebrities, I want us to build a culture where we idolize the people who shape our children’s future,” Obama said. The president laid the groundwork for what he called “an honest conversation” about education with comments on several recent developments that were designed as sweeteners for his mostly minority audience. For instance, he said his goal with his domestic agenda, including the economy, health care and other priorities, is to create “an economy that lifts all Americans — not just some, but all.” That comment earned him significant applause and pleased murmurs in the room. The president also said he very much looks forward to signing a bill recently passed by Congress to reduce the disparities between mandatory crack and powder cocaine sentences. The matter has been a longtime thorn for the black community, as the quarter-century-old law that Congress changed has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient treatment to those, mainly whites, caught with the powder form of the drug. “We got it done,” Obama said. “It’s the right thing to do.” And he forthrightly addressed the racial firestorm over the recent ouster of a black Agriculture Department official. He said the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod “marked both the challenges we face and the progress we’ve made.” “She deserves better than what happened last week,” Obama said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Civil rights leaders are criticizing Obama administration education reforms aimed at turning around low performing schools and closing the achievement gap for minority students. Eight civil rights organizations, including the NAACP , contend in a document released Monday the Education Department is promoting ineffective approaches for failing schools. They also claim the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition — a program with a goal of spurring innovative reform in states — leaves out many minority students. “We want to be supportive, but more important than supporting an administration is supporting our children across the country and ensuring that they have an opportunity to learn,” said John Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation for Education, one of the groups that developed the document. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a White House adviser met with the groups Monday, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson , the Rev. Al Sharpton and the presidents of the National Urban League and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The groups distributed the document to members of Congress last week. Duncan has called education “the civil rights issue of our generation,” and many of the reforms the administration has pushed aim to improve educational opportunities for the most vulnerable students. “The administration is dedicated to equity in education and we’ve been working very closely with the civil rights community to develop the most effective policies to close the achievement gap, turn around low performing schools and put a good teacher in every classroom,” Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton said. The Obama administration’s education reforms have drawn criticism from education advocates, including prominent teachers’ unions like the American Federation of Teachers , which gives money to many of the groups that signed the civil rights document. AFT President Randi Weingarten said she supports the proposal but that her organization had nothing to do with writing it. “I think the civil rights movement has done something really important here,” Weingarten said. “They are setting a very different prescription for how to ensure quality education for all.” The proposal calls into question many of the Education Department’s initiatives, including the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition and the $3.5 billion to turn around low performing schools. Citing federal data, the groups say just 3% of the nation’s black students and less than 1% of Latino students are impacted by the first round of the Race to the Top competition, which awarded about $600 million for Tennessee and Delaware to undertake innovative reforms. Finalists for the second round of grants are to be announced Tuesday. “No state should have to compete to protect the civil rights of their children in their states,” John Jackson said. The document also proposes creating standards for equal access to early childhood education, effective teachers, college preparatory curriculum and quality resources. And it takes a critical viewpoint of the administration’s approach to turn around failing schools, including closing them or replacing much of the staff. “Low-performing schools will not improve unless we also change the resources, conditions and approaches to teaching and learning within the schools or their replacements,” the assessment states. But the plan has one glaring omission: no Hispanic groups signed on to support it. Raul Gonzalez from the National Council of La Raza said his organization decided not to endorse the document because there were concerns with how the groups see charter schools. The civil rights groups want charter schools to focus more on attracting diversity than the needs of the children in their community, Gonzalez said. “To suggest that a charter school started by community members who want to help kids in their community cannot serve 100% Hispanic kids in a community that’s 100% Hispanic — that they should be penalized for that or they shouldn’t be allowed to open up — that doesn’t make sense,” he said. But he applauded the civil rights groups for pushing for more financial support for programs that would help increase parental involvement in schools. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

LOS ANGELES — When state budget cuts imperiled city schools, a group of parents fought back by enlisting Hollywood stars to spread a message targeting one of their own, Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar . The satirical video featuring actors Megan Fox and fiancee Brian Austin Green highlights how funding shortfalls have killed jobs for librarians, nurses, translators, janitors and teachers. While the video was filmed in the affluent hills above Hollywood where Green’s son attends Wonderland Avenue Elementary School, the cuts are more deeply felt at an inner-city school like Markham Middle School. Both schools have been highlighted as the Los Angeles Unified School District has grappled with $1.5 billion in budget cuts and nearly 3,000 teacher layoffs during the past two years. But comparing the two schools shows a remarkably uneven impact, and just how much depends on factors ranging from income and parent involvement to teacher tenure. The state’s education funding crisis, now entering its third school year, only promises to widen the breech between the haves and have-nots in the nation’s second-largest school district. Nestled in leafy, secluded Laurel Canyon, Wonderland is more than just a top school in the city — it’s one of the best in the state. In addition to the video that has been viewed more than one million times, Wonderland second graders were featured on CNN writing to Schwarzenegger to protest budget cuts. Serving gang-plagued Watts and two of the city’s largest housing projects, Markham is one of the city’s lowest performers with test scores 34% below the acceptable mark. The ACLU sued the school system this spring charging that Markham students weren’t learning from substitutes who replaced laid-off teachers. Schwarzenegger himself held up Markham as an example of how the teacher tenure system backfires because layoffs disproportionately strike younger teachers eager to work in the inner-city. The two schools have been long divided by more than freeways. The year before Tim Sullivan became Markham principal two years ago, 142 students were arrested around the 1,500-pupil campus. The assistant principal went to prison for sexually abusing female students. To keep kids safe on their way to school and maintain Markham free of gang graffiti, Sullivan decided to meet regularly with local gang leaders. “This isn’t the place for the weak and fainthearted,” said the 43-year-old principal. A more basic problem was finding teachers. Sullivan didn’t get a single inquiry at district job fairs so he recruited recent graduates keen for the challenge at annual salaries averaging $45,000. When budget cuts rolled around last year, Markham lost half its teaching staff — 35 teachers — because they hadn’t reached tenure. They were replaced by substitutes at a daily salary of $173 — more than a fulltime probationary teacher earns, but without benefits. In some cases, the subs served as little more than babysitters. Several gave all students a C grade because they didn’t have enough schoolwork to grade adequately, according to the ACLU lawsuit. Another 34 teachers, including 10 long-term subs, got pink slips this year, spurring the ACLU’s successful injunction to halt the layoffs. “A high moral calling can only last so long before you feel like the butt of a joke,” said English teacher Nicholas Melvoin, who was laid off last year but returned as a long-term substitute. The layoffs have stripped the curriculum to basics, without electives. Markham’s plight drew the attention of Schwarzenegger, who used the school as backdrop to announce his support of tenure reform that would allow schools flexibility in layoffs. Across town, Wonderland Principal Don Wilson’s problems are far different. A pile of resumes sits on his desk for a job opening next year. Electives are not subject to district funding whims. The school has full-time art, music and gym teachers, plus teaching assistants for each teacher, paid for by parents through the PTA’s fundraising nonprofit, which raises $350,000 a year. Boosters have paid for elaborate playgrounds, cutting-edge equipment in classrooms, field trips and professional development for teachers. But Wilson must work to keep that revenue flowing. He spent a recent Saturday night in a tent on the playground to help raise $500 per child in a sleepover fundraiser. “You become a developer,” Wilson said. “That’s a huge part of what I do here.” Parents are asked to contribute $700 a year per child and many donate more in cash and other initiatives such as buying mugs embossed with children’s art work. “Parents really value the public school opportunity because they’re not paying the big tuition bill,” said PTA President Terri Levy as she organized an appreciation event to provide breakfast, lunch and a car wash for each teacher. Wilson knows he’s fortunate, although he, too, has lost personnel and is down to having a nurse only one day per week at his 550-pupil school. The principal, who spent much of his career in the sprawling city’s more urban schools, said suburban and inner-city parents want the same for the children. But Wonderland parents possess not only a huge amount of resources, including those to make the slickly produced video opposing cuts, they also have high expectations. That’s the key difference, Wilson said. “They bring expectations as to what an education should be,” he said. “At other schools, parents and teachers come with a limited vision of high expectations.” Markham’s Sullivan doesn’t begrudge more affluent schools in the district. He does wish the system was more equitable. “Just give us an even playing field to show what we can really do,” he said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.