SEATTLE (AP) — For many years, diversity in higher education has been measured by how many low-income students and students of color enroll in college. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to make a dramatic change in that definition, by focusing instead on college graduation rates. The foundation, along with the National League of Cities, announced Monday that New York City ; San Francisco ; Mesa, Arizona ; and Riverside , California , will each receive $3 million over the next three years for work designed to boost college graduation. The foundation says its long-term goal is to double the number of low-income adults who earn a college degree or credential that meets job-market demands by age 26. The grants announced Monday are for aligning academic standards between high school and college, strengthening data systems, implementing early assessment and college prep strategies and creating support systems to help students get through school. In announcing the grants, the foundation pointed out the following statistics about the cities where the money will be spent: — Low-income students who graduate from Mesa Public Schools and enroll at Mesa Community College have a 5.4% graduation rate. — Ten percent of the students enrolled as first-year students at the City University of New York in 2006 had earned an associate’s degree three years later. — Riverside City College has a graduation rate of 14%. — About 27% of 9th-graders in San Francisco will go on to earn a post-secondary credential or degree. “We know that in today’s economic climate and labor market, a high school diploma is no longer enough,” said Allan Golston, president of the U.S. Program at the Gates Foundation. “We must not only ensure that young people have access to college; we must ensure that they go on to complete college and earn a degree or certificate with value in the workplace.” Since 2000, the foundation has spent $5 billion on its efforts to improve American public schools, send kids to college and, over the past few years, improve college graduation rates. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Disgruntled students, employees and shareholders have filed a flurry of lawsuits against for-profit colleges since a federal investigation last month found deceptive practices at 15 campuses. The Government Accountability Office report was released Aug. 4, and class-action lawsuits have now been filed in California, Colorado, Arkansas and Utah by former students and employees, who argue in most cases that a school lied to them or misled them. Some companies, including the University of Phoenix and Westwood College, closed campuses or launched internal investigations after the release of the report, which found that admissions officials in four cases encouraged applicants to commit fraud by lying on financial aid forms. Shareholders have filed class-action lawsuits against at least five schools, noting the effect of the report on stock prices and citing securities fraud. Lawsuits alleging deception at for-profit colleges are not new. Last year, the parent companies of the University of Phoenix and Westwood agreed to pay the federal government millions of dollars each to settle separate false-claims lawsuits. In both cases, the schools admitted no wrongdoing. John McKernan, chairman of Education Management Corp., which operates about 95 schools in 31 states, including Argosy University, says lawsuits are part of the territory. “Statistically, the bigger you get, the more (complaints) you’re going to have.” Tampa lawyer Jillian Estes, whose firm has represented students in several class-action suits against for-profits, including Westwood College, says she hopes the federal scrutiny will bolster students’ cases. “We’ve been trying to raise this flag for so long,” she says. “It helps for judges to realize this isn’t just some kids who are a little unhappy, but a nationwide systemic problem.” Westwood in March sued Estes and her law firm for defamation. A Texas agency has threatened to revoke or deny one company’s licenses to operate three for-profit campuses there. One college received a similar warning in Wisconsin. Still, tens of thousands of students say for-profit colleges are their best option. An unprecedented 91,000 public comments were submitted in response to a proposal that would deny federal student aid to for-profit colleges whose graduates don’t earn enough to pay back student loans. The Education Department estimates one-third or more came from students worried that their college would close if the proposal is adopted.

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.

NASHVILLE — Offering middle-school math teachers bonuses up to $15,000 did not produce gains in student test scores, Vanderbilt University researchers reported Tuesday in what they said was the first scientifically rigorous test of merit pay. The results (pdf) could amount to a cautionary flag about paying teachers for the performance of their students, a reform strategy the Obama administration and many states and school districts have favored despite lukewarm support or outright opposition from teachers’ unions. The U.S. Department of Education has put a great deal of effort into prodding school districts and states to try merit-pay systems as part of its Race to the Top competition, although teachers’ unions have often objected on the grounds that they don’t have fair and reliable ways to measure performance. In most school districts, teacher pay is based on years of experience and educational attainment levels. The report’s authors, of the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education, stress that theirs is just one approach. The Nashville teachers who hit the mark based on their students’ test scores received a bump in their paychecks but no additional mentoring or professional development. Neither their principals nor fellow teachers knew who participated in the experiment or who received bonuses. Matthew G. Springer, director of the federally funded NCPI, said pay-for-performance is not “the magic bullet that so often the policy world is looking for.” At least in this experiment, Springer said, “it doesn’t work.” The study was conducted from 2006 to 2009 in partnership with the nonprofit RAND Corporation . A local industrialist and Vanderbilt benefactor, Orrin Ingram, put up the nearly $1.3 million in bonuses. Some 296 middle-school math teachers — two-thirds of the district’s middle-school math teachers — volunteered to participate in the experiment. Half were placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored significantly higher than expected on the statewide exam known as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. One third of the eligible teachers — 51 of 152, or 34% — got bonuses at least once. Eighteen teachers received bonuses all three years. Except for some temporary gains for fifth-graders, though, their students progressed no faster than those in classes taught by the 146 other teachers. The local teachers’ union in Nashville agreed to the experiment in collective bargaining, according to Erick Huth, president of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association. He said the results were not at all surprising. “I’ve believed for a long time that what improves instruction is having an instructional leader who is able to get all players in a school to collaborate,” Huth said The bonuses amounted to as much as 30% of teachers’ yearly salaries here in the Music City, where the scale runs from $36,000 to $64,000, Huth said. The nation’s 3.2 million public school teachers earned $53,910 on average in 2008-09, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The study was released at a two-day conference, “Evaluating and Rewarding Educator Effectiveness,” at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College that drew participants from Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Washington, D.C. and other places conducting their own experiments with performance pay. Some states have moved to tie teacher and principal evaluations to student test scores. The study did not shake the faith of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in merit pay. “While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder,” said Sandra Abrevaya, a spokeswoman for Duncan. It did not address the Obama administration’s push to “change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better.” The Nashville experiment, known as POINT (Project on Incentives in Teaching), doled out the $15,000 bonuses to those teachers whose students performed “at a level that historically had been reached by only the top 5% of middle school math teachers.” Teacher performance was calculated by using a value-added model, which predicts how students will do in a given year based on how they performed in the previous year. The teachers had to hit the 80th and 90th percentiles to pocket the $5,000 and $10,000 bonuses, respectively. The study’s design, in which teachers were judged against percentile benchmarks rather than their colleagues’ performance, sought to preserve collaboration among teachers. In surveys about the program, most teachers said they were already effective without the incentive of additional pay. Eight in ten said they didn’t change the way they taught to improve their odds of earning a bonus. Many teachers came close to getting a bonus — so close that they would have qualified if their pupils answered two or three more questions correctly on the 55-question state exam. The Nashville math teachers, according to the study, “expressed moderately favorable views toward performance pay in general, though less so for POINT in particular.” The experiment ran smoothly, although the teachers became less enthusiastic over the three years. “They did not come away … thinking it had harmed their schools,” the study said. “But by and large, they did not endorse the notion that bonus recipients were better teachers.” The fact that many fifth-grade teachers teach multiple subjects to the same students may have been a reason for the positive impact of merit pay found in fifth grade, according to the study’s authors. But “the effect did not last. By the end of 6th grade it did not matter whether a student’s 5th grade math teacher had been in the treatment or control group,” the study said. The researchers said the Nashville experiment didn’t stir the negative reactions that have attended some other merit pay programs, but it “simply did not do much of anything.” Springer of NCPI said the study lays a foundation for further experiments on a topic that educators have been debating “for over a century.” Tennessee Commissioner of Education Timothy Webb said the Nashville study shows, “Money alone is not enough to encourage people to go into challenging schools and teach the most difficult students.” He stressed the importance of improving teachers’ working conditions, not just their pay. Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said he does not believe the study says much of value and worries it will only confuse the issue. “The fact that that teachers don’t respond to cash bonuses like rats do to food-pellets does nothing to diminish my confidence that it’s good for schooling if teacher pay better reflects the contributions that teachers make,” Hess said. “Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is not any kind of short-term test-score bump but making the profession more attractive to talented candidates.” William Slotnik, executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Compensation Reform and Student Learning at the Community Training and Assistance Center, has argued that performance-based compensation tied directly to the educational mission of a school district can be a lever to transform schools. But he said it will take more than financial incentives to improve student achievement and that merit pay “is hard to get right. … If all you are doing is focusing on money, there is no track record in that resulting in the kind of changes needed to do this work well.” Contributing: Christopher Connell is a freelance writer. Liz Willen contributed to this article. It was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Columbia University

Drury University junior Garret Shelenhamer ditched his car and gets to his classes and volunteer commitments using a shiny, new bike provided by the school. Shelenhamer is one of a number of students across the USA taking advantage of free or low-cost bike-sharing programs, which have become increasingly popular. Drury students agreed to pay a $20-a-year sustainability fee, which funds the bike program. The Springfield, Mo., school purchased 40 new bikes for use by students in time for the fall semester. “It’s helped me so much. It’s been fun,” Shelenhamer said. BIKE POWER: Gyms retrofit bikes to produce electricity DENVER: Bike-share program takes off Nearly 90 American universities, from New York University to the University of Alaska-Anchorage , offer some form of campus bike program, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Programs have launched or will launch this year at a wide range of universities, including Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville; John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio; the University of Cincinnati ; Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C.; Samford University in Birmingham, Ala .; Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken , N.J.; and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C . “The demand is coming from students,” says Jeremy Friedman, manager of sustainability initiatives at New York University. This summer, NYU kicked off a pilot bike share program with a fleet of 30 bikes available for free checkout from the front desk of many residence halls. Fueling the demand are the public embrace of biking culture, new miles of bike lanes and the economic recession that has many tightening their spending, Friedman says. “In the future, we may find ourselves in the role of trying to encourage more biking, but for now, we are behind the demand,” he says. “We’re just trying to keep up.” Wendy Anderson, director of campus sustainability at Drury, says the bike program appeals to students, who are active and likely to grumble about costs associated with a car. “I think universities are trying to keep up with the increasing competitive nature of higher education,” Anderson says. “I’m not saying this is a recruiting tool, but it offers a richer experience in student life.” At College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., students came up with the idea for a bike program and made it a reality in April, college spokeswoman Diane Hageman says. The program offers 30 bikes for free, daily checkout until the first snowfall, Hageman says. Paul Rowland, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, says bike programs have found fertile soil on college campuses. “One thing about the campus is it has a fairly high density of individuals, students as well as staff. It is relatively defined, and there are a lot of movements every hour or every half an hour,” he says. Bikes help alleviate traffic congestion, improve campus safety and reduce greenhouse gas emission, Rowland says. In 2008, faced with a parking crisis, the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, raised parking permit fees and began to give away free bikes to freshman students who promised not to bring cars to campus, university spokeswoman Kathleen Taggersell says. Since then, the university has given out 530 bikes and, as a direct result of the program, turned a 95-space parking lot into a basketball court with a river-view tent for university events, Taggersell says. University bike programs are usually funded by an internal grant or a student fee, Rowland says. Bikes are checked out differently. Some programs require membership, some are free, and some charge a rental fee. Though many schools rely on staff to check out bikes, some have gone high-tech. This fall, Washington State University in Pullman installed a $140,000 automated system for its bike program, says Jamie Bentley, the environmental well-being coordinator at WSU. Students swipe their identification cards to unlock a bike from one of the four docking stations on campus, Bentley says. The convenience has drastically boosted the use of the bike program: 454 people checked out a bike in the first two weeks this fall, compared with 583 users last year, Bentley says. Tang reports for the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader .

WASHINGTON — Students enrolled this semester in “Education in Black America” at Howard University got their reward Thursday morning for slogging to campus instead of sleeping in: About 10 minutes into class, singer-songwriter John Legend strode in. No introduction needed. “Surprise, surprise,” Legend said, as cell phones came out and cameras flashed. “I’m glad you didn’t skip class today.” Legend, 31, was guest professor as part of an mtvU program called Stand In , in which big names such as Bill Gates and Madonna show up unannounced and teach a class on a subject they care about. For Legend, a Grammy Award winner who grew up in poverty, that subject is education reform — a key theme of the just-released Waiting for Superman documentary, for which he wrote a song. So it made sense to arrange with professor Greg Carr to appear in Carr’s class, which was discussing the education of ex-slaves when the knock at the door came. Equal access to quality education is “the civil rights issue of our time,” Legend told students. Noting that next week marks the 53rd anniversary of the day nine black students were escorted by federal troops into the all-white Little Rock Central High School , he said “minorities today are still fighting for access to quality schools.” He warned against the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” decried high dropout rates at schools in black and Latino neighborhoods, and, responding to one question, suggested that merit-based admission programs can perpetuate inequities. “(You can’t) break that cycle of poverty if you only educate the ones who have been best-educated already,” he said. “I think you can have a better education no matter who you are.” Carr called the session “a candid exchange between a group of black students and a performer with a global profile who also shares their experience.” Students said Legend’s appearance was a great way to start the day. “What he said is extremely key,” sophomore marketing major Stephen Baiyewu, 19, said after class. “John Legend is one of the most respected African-American R&B artists.” And here are two of many tweets that circulated throughout the morning: • @ATLsBishopCrazy day, MTVU in the classroom, John Legend teaching…cant ask for much more. •@johnlegend: Had a great time @ Howard. Thanks to Prof Carr and his students. Great discussion. And yes they were surprised.

Long before he became a Hollywood star, Denzel Washington was a Mount Vernon, N.Y., schoolboy who spent after-school hours and weekends at his local Boys & Girls Club. For 18 years, Washington has been national spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. On Wednesday, he’s in Washington to help launch a new national program, called Be Great: Graduate, to identify kids who are at risk of dropping out of school and give them the help they need to stay and finish. “Our goal is simple to state but hard to achieve,” Washington said in a statement. “We want to help every Boys & Girls Club member advance to the next grade level every year and graduate from high school on time, prepared with the attitude, knowledge and confidence to succeed and achieve.” DIPLOMAS NOW: To fight ‘dropout factories,’ school program starts young FIRST TO GO TO COLLEGE: Students stay the course When he was a child, he says, “the club staff motivated us to dream big and take our education seriously. Kids today need that … more than ever.” About a third of U.S. students don’t graduate from high school, says a 2010 report by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center; for Latino and black boys, the rate jumps to nearly 50%. Many of the 4 million children and teens who participate in Boys & Girls Clubs “have the least and need the most to achieve a great future,” says organization president Roxanne Spillett.

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s education chief says the federal government has launched an investigation into whether the state discriminates against teachers who are nonnative English speakers. The probe was launched by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education. It’s the most recent of several federal investigations aimed at Arizona, which has been in the spotlight for its law targeting illegal immigrants, Senate Bill 1070. “It may be that the Senate Bill 1070 issue is causing some sort of campaign, I don’t know, by the federal government against Arizona,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne told The Arizona Republic . The state Department of Education for years has been monitoring the fluency of teachers who instruct English learners. In April, the education department began instructing districts to fire teachers who weren’t proficient in English. Federal officials disclosed the investigation in a letter to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Horne said. Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa in Washington, D.C. declined comment to The Associated Press on Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Horne predicted the federal agencies will conclude the state has done nothing wrong. “I’m sure they’re going to find everything is fine,” Horne said. “Teachers who are teaching English need to be fluent in English, and if kids can understand what they’re saying, it’s not an issue.” The state Department of Education has pushed a get-tough attitude on teachers who lack basic English skills or whose grammar is considered so poor that it could detract from a child’s ability to learn. Critics say the policy could eliminate talented teachers who have a positive influence on students struggling to learn English. Some believe the Arizona Department of Education singled out Latino teachers when it audited classes taught by bilingual teachers, criticizing them for pronunciation, grammar and not speaking English well. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Some professors believe Wikipedia has no place in the footnotes of a college paper. But could it have a place on the syllabus? The Wikimedia Foundation , the nonprofit organization that does fundraising and back-end support for the popular open-source encyclopedia, says yes. So do the nine professors at prominent colleges who have agreed to make creating, augmenting, and editing Wikipedia entries part of their students’ coursework. “We’ve known for a long time that students are the fuel of Wikipedia,” said LiAnna Davis, a Wikimedia spokeswoman. “{hellip}We feel there is a place for Wikipedia in the classroom.” ON THE WEB: A stand against Wikipedia MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Research methods ‘beyond Google’ “Students have access to so many journals and library materials and other scholarly materials that other people just don’t have access to,” she said. Wikimedia’s new alliances with professors stem from its Public Policy Initiative, an effort to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of topics relating to U.S. public policy. On a grant from the Stanton Foundation, Wikimedia started recruiting public policy professors who were willing to have their students create content for Wikipedia. This fall, the foundation will help nine instructors — four at George Washington University , two at Georgetown University , and one each at Indiana University at Bloomington, Syracuse University , and Harvard University — integrate Wikipedia-related assignments into their syllabuses. (Wikimedia does not pay the professors to do this; the Stanton grant pays for foundation staff and training associated with the project.) “The social media trend is something that students have definitely latched on to, and regardless of what everyone else thinks, they’re going to continue to be involved with it,” says Carol Ann Dwyer, a public affairs instructor at Syracuse , who is among Wikimedia’s academic recruits. “I would prefer, particularly if they’re going to become ‘Wikipedians,’ that they do it properly.” The foundation also recruited student “ambassadors” at those colleges to serve as on-campus resources for professors and students who might be less familiar with the technical aspects of contributing to Wikipedia. It gathered the ambassadors in Washington this summer for three days of training. The foundation also recruited “online ambassadors” — experienced Wikipedia users from around the world — to serve as a second line of support, especially for students who might need help while burning the midnight oil the night before a due date. The particular ways the professors are planning to work Wikipedia into their courses vary. The graduate students in Peter Linquiti’s policy analysis course at George Washington will be asked to pen a detailed critique of an existing entry, assessing its “credibility, intended audience, currency of content, degree of support for the information and analysis, use of policy analysis tools or concepts, extent of balance and/or bias, and any recommended changes to content, style, and tone,” according to a summary provided to Wikimedia. They will then submit appropriate edits to the entry, and then monitor those edits for a week to see what happens to those changes in the fray of editing and counter-editing that is a common byproduct of the site’s wild-west revisions policy. Rochelle Davis, an assistant professor in the school of foreign service at Georgetown, says contributing to Wikipedia dovetails nicely with the sort of literature review and summarizing that she already has students do as part of preparing to write an argumentative paper. Davis says she plans to simply have the students in two of her classes format those summaries for Wikipedia, submit them to the site, then use that as a jumping-off point for writing a proper research paper. In this way, the process mirrors a strategy already employed by many college students, only in reverse: Instead of starting with a Wikipedia page as a nexus to find more authoritative material, the students would do research first, then consolidate their findings into a concise entry on the site. “I’m tired of my grad students saying, ‘All we ever do is critique and discuss and deconstruct,’ ” Davis says. “So I’m going to make them create something that’s not just a thing for me to read; it’s going to go out into the community.” The fact that summarizing for Wikipedia comes with the pressure of knowing others might read and rely on their work might even prompt students to be more meticulous than they might have if the summaries were for Davis’s eyes only, she says. Several other people involved with the project made the same point. The tower and the crowd Academe historically has viewed Wikipedia, which allows any visitor to edit its entries and relies on the vigilance of volunteer fact-checkers, with a great deal of ambivalence. In 2007, the history department at Middlebury College took a stand against citing Wikipedia entries directly in papers, and many others have worried that Wikipedia sows the same moral hazard in students as Google by enabling, by virtue of its breadth and convenience, lazy research habits. A study published earlier this year in the online journal First Monday reported that more than half of college students use Wikipedia at some point in the research process either all or most of the time (though their professors might be relieved to hear that 70% of those students use it at or near the beginning of their research). In recent years, academics seem to have gotten used to Wikipedia being around (and have perhaps recognized its efforts to keep out bad information), and much of the discussion has shifted to how it can be applied constructively. The professors who have partnered with Wikimedia’s Public Policy Initiative are not the first to incorporate Wikipedia into their courses — the foundation counts 59 such instances between 2007 and 2009 — and academics have certainly played a role in helping build and edit the site since it opened in 2001. The initiative does, however, represent the first time the foundation has pushed to seed a community of contributors within higher education. “This is exciting to be sure!” wrote Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana and author of The World Is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education , in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed. “That is a key part the mission of all of us in a higher education setting — to generate as well as disseminate knowledge in different disciplines,” Bonk wrote. “Given that Wikipedia is now central to the knowledge dissemination process as well as the linkages between content and fields, such partnerships are make sense.” But for as much that the academic cloisters and the ?ber-democratic site might have to offer each other, there remains intractable philosophical tension between the two that could foil the collaboration. Linquiti’s exercise of having students track the changes made to their entries by the equally empowered masses hints at the vulnerability of their contributions. The mutability of Wikipedia entries is why Neil Waters, a history professor at Middlebury, still forbids his students from citing them. In its guidelines, Waters points out, Wikipedia instructs visitors to “Be bold in updating articles and do not worry about making mistakes” — hardly a scholarly protocol, he argues. “I want my students to worry about making mistakes, and to learn how to avoid them, and how to take responsibility for what they write,” wrote Waters in an e-mail. Alan Liu, chair of the English department at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of the popular academic blog Voice of the Shuttle, noted the importance of resolving these process issues if academe wants to make its authoritative voice louder in Wikipedia. “The academic community provides a constrained and relatively standard set of protocols for constructive collaboration and refereeing that could be built on (whereas the larger global community behind Wikipedia was more problematic because there is actually no such thing as a global community with sufficiently shared motives and standards of collaboration),” wrote Liu in an e-mail. Much remains to be hashed out between academics and the general public as far as working out such “standards of collaboration,” he said, to resolve the tension between the academic value of peer review and the social media value of crowd-sourcing. “New policies, institutional arrangements, practices, protocols, and technologies will need to be created on both sides of the divide” — between higher education and the “foundations of networked public knowledge” such as Wikipedia and Google — “to create productive and socially-good ways for experts and the crowd to teach, and learn from, each other,” said Liu.” As a handful of loose alliances between Wikimedia and professors, the project “does not seem complete enough.” Wikimedia says it plans to recruit 15 more professors by the spring, and hopes to expand the collaborations beyond public policy eventually. “We are trying to develop a model, a body of documentation, and some technical tools and Wikipedia community processes that will be useful around the globe and in a variety of topic areas; and we hope to set into motion something that will be self-sustaining by volunteer and academic groups,” Frank Schulenberg, head of public outreach at Wikimedia, wrote in a statement. “While we are working only with U.S.-based public policy programs during the pilot program, we will also be continually seeking opportunities to engage our Wikimedia chapters, professors, students, and Wikipedians in other parts of the world and in other topic areas.”

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.