Two years of cuts in state support saddled the Natomas Unified School District in Sacramento this spring with what school board president B. Teri Burns calls “horribly painful” choices: fewer teachers and larger classes, or keeping teachers but cutting athletics, counseling and after-school programs. Like many districts across the nation, Natomas chose to lay off teachers. So for every three classes of 20 students each that the schools had last year, this year they’ll put 30 students in two classes. The teaching staff in this 10,000-student district will be cut by 100 to 340 next fall. No one’s happy, Burns says: “We have to make choices, and none of them are good.” Conventional wisdom says the smaller the classes, the better the education, because teachers can pay more attention to each child. But while smaller classes are popular, decades of research has found that the relationship between class size and student outcomes is murky. LAYOFFS: Federal funding won’t save many teacher jobs “The research doesn’t show that you get significantly different student outcomes when you go from a class of 25 to a class of 30,” Burns says. With state and local budgets still in flux, it’s hard to know exactly how many teachers will lose jobs this year. But even with $10 billion in additional federal money, part of the $26 billion bill President Obama signed recently, the struggling economy is expected to reverse a decades-long trend toward smaller classes. Education statistics show that school personnel were hired at twice the rate that student enrollment grew from 1999 to 2007. An experiment drives change In the early 1990s, when many states were flush with cash, policymakers championed the findings of a 1985 experiment in Tennessee. The Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project compared academic achievement in small classes of 13 to 17 low-income students with that of students in classes that had 22 to 25 students. The experiment found modest but lasting gains for impoverished African-American students in the much smaller classes in kindergarten and first grade. States extrapolated from those findings to justify spending billions to make relatively modest cuts in class size in all schools, not just in those serving the poor. About three dozen states now fund either voluntary or required class-size reduction programs. In 1996, California launched the first and largest such effort, eventually providing incentives for school districts to lower class size to 20 in kindergarten through third grade at a cost of $20 billion. In 2002, Florida voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that reduced class size over time in all grades. The state estimates that it will cost an additional $353 million this year, on top of the $16 billion the state has spent so far, to meet the requirements. In November, Florida voters will be asked to loosen those requirements to avoid massive spending cuts. A study released in May by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University found that the Florida program had no effect on student achievement. Research on California’s program also showed no gains in achievement attributable to smaller classes. Michael Kirst, an emeritus professor at Stanford University , says excitement over the program resulted in school districts hiring “all sorts of teachers just off the street” who lacked any formal training. Space shortages forced schools to hold the newly created classes in hallways and closets and on auditorium stages. Nonetheless, Kirst says, the program was popular. “One lesson from California is that with parents, smaller class size is overwhelmingly favorable, and they don’t give a fig about the research that says this is not going to help their kids,” he says. “They intuitively believe that small class sizes will allow more individual attention.” Slippery slope? Dan Goldhaber of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington-Bothell says that “the effects of class-size reduction are pretty marginal,” except in the early grades for disadvantaged students. With rampant teacher layoffs, Goldhaber says, “it probably makes sense … to focus not so much on class sizes but on making sure that the teachers you are keeping are really effective.” But Kirst says school districts are facing “a very dangerous period. We are increasing class size to extremely high levels. “I don’t worry about going from 20 to 25 students that much, or 15 to 20,” he says. “But when you go from 20 to 35 in a year or two, I don’t think we don’t know the effects of that.” Contributing: Susan Sawyers of Hechinger

ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Education Department said Tuesday that nine states and the District of Columbia will get money to reform schools in the second round of the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition. Florida, Georgia , Hawaii , Massachusetts , Maryland , New York , North Carolina , Ohio , Rhode Island and Washington, D.C ., will receive grants, department spokesman Justin Hamilton said. The amounts for each state were expected to be announced later. The aim of the historic program is to reward ambitious changes to improve schools and close the achievement gap. The competition instigated a wave of reforms across the country, as states passed new teacher accountability policies and lifted caps on charter schools to boost their chances of winning. Tennessee and Delaware were named winners in the first round of the competition in March, sharing $600 million. The applicants named winners Tuesday will share a remaining $3.4 billion. Another $350 million is coming in a separate competition for states creating new academic assessments. The historic program, part of President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, rewards states for embarking on ambitious reforms to improve struggling schools, close the achievement gap and boost graduation rates. “New York’s schools have made strong strides toward excellence and this grant will accelerate that progress,” said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer , D-N.Y., who met with Education Secretary Arne Duncan on New York’s proposal. “This is great news for parents, teachers, and taxpayers across the state.” Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied for the second round of the competition. The Education Department named 19 applicants finalists in July. More than a dozen states vying for the money changed laws to foster the growth of charter schools, and at least 17 reformed teacher evaluation systems to include student achievement. Dozens also adopted Common Core State Standards, the uniform math and reading benchmarks developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. “The change unleashed by conditioning federal funding on bold and forward-looking state education policies is indisputable,” the Democrats for Education Reform said in a statement. “Under the president’s leadership, local civil rights, child advocacy, business and education reform groups, in collaboration with those state and local teacher unions ready for change, sprung into action to achieve things that they had been waiting and wanting to do for years.” In a speech announcing the finalists last month, Duncan called the change a “quiet revolution.” Between both rounds of the competition, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied. While the program has been praised for instigating swift reforms, the competition for many states was an uphill battle, with teacher unions hesitant to sign on to reforms directly tying teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests, and education leaders concerned winning meant giving up too much local control. A number of states that did not win the competition said they still planned to proceed with the reforms they had proposed, though they acknowledged change would take place at a slower pace. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

They have generic, forward-sounding names like Horizon Science Academy, Pioneer Charter School of Science and Beehive Science & Technology Academy. Quietly established over the past decade by a loosely affiliated group of Turkish-American educators, these 100 or so publicly funded charter schools in 25 states are often among the top-performing public schools in their towns. The schools educate as many as 35,000 students — taken together they’d make up the largest charter school network in the USA — and have imported thousands of Turkish educators over the past decade. But the success of the schools at times has been clouded by nagging questions about what ties the schools may have to a reclusive Muslim leader in his late 60s living in exile in rural Pennsylvania . Described by turns as a moderate Turkish nationalist, a peacemaker and “contemporary Islam’s Billy Graham ,” Fethullah G?len has long pushed for Islam to occupy a more central role in Turkish society. Followers of the so-called G?len Movement operate an “education, media and business network” in more than 100 countries, says University of Oregon sociologist Joshua Hendrick. Top administrators say they have no official ties to G?len. And G?len himself denies any connection to the schools. Still, documents available at various foundation websites and in federal forms required of non-profit groups show that virtually all of the schools have opened or operate with the aid of G?len-inspired “dialogue” groups, local non-profits that promote Turkish culture. In one case, the Ohio-based Horizon Science Academy of Springfield in 2005 signed a five-year building lease with the parent organization of Chicago’s Niagara Foundation, which promotes G?len’s philosophy of “peace, mutual respect, the culture of coexistence.” G?len is the foundation’s honorary president. In many cases, charter school board members also serve as dialogue group leaders. Education officials who are familiar with them say the schools aren’t trying to proselytize for G?len’s vision of Turkey . While Turkish language and culture are often offered in the curriculum, there’s no evidence the schools teach Islam. Nelson Smith, former president of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, sees no evidence of an “active network. What I do see is a really impressive group of educators.” The Turkish-affiliated schools focus on math and science and often appear as top scorers on standardized tests. Still, lawmakers, researchers and parents are beginning to put the schools under the microscope for hiring practices — they import hundreds of teachers from Turkey each year — and for steps they take to keep their academic profile high. The schools’ unacknowledged ties to G?len, they say, mock public schools’ spirit of transparency. “That’s what I was always asking for,” says Kelly Wayment, a former board member and parent at Beehive Science & Technology Academy in Holladay, Utah. He has pressed for more than a year to get the school to acknowledge ties to G?len. “I said, ‘Parents have a right to know.’ ” Wayment says Beehive removed him from the board last year after he began investigating the decision to fire a popular Spanish teacher, saying it was based on a single classroom visit by the Tustin, Calif.-based Accord Institute of Education Research, an education services company with ties to a chain of California charter schools inspired by G?len. He complained to Utah state Rep. Jim Dunnigan, a Republican lawmaker, who launched an audit of charter school governance — the audit is ongoing. But Beehive’s Karlene Welker says Wayment “removed himself (from the board) by pulling his students out of the school.” Utah’s State Charter School Board launched an investigation last year after American teachers complained that Turkish colleagues got hiring and promotion preferences. The charter school board looked into Beehive’s ties to Islam and found them “circumstantial,” but a financial probe found that the school was $337,000 in the red — and that Accord officials had loaned it thousands. The board last April revoked its charter, but in June voted to keep the school open on probation. Dunnigan, the state lawmaker who requested the legislative audit, says the financial details, such as personal loans and public funds spent recruiting overseas faculty, are what concern him. “When they’re in such financial difficulty, should they spend $53,000 to bring these people over from another country?” But questions about hiring and academics also have arisen in Arizona, where Daisy Education Corp. runs five schools and has received certifications for 120 H-1B visas for foreign teachers since 2002, records show. In Texas, the Cosmos Foundation has filed 1,157 H1-B applications since 2001. It operates 25 Harmony schools statewide. Since 2001, Harmony has imported 731 employees using H-1Bs, surpassing all other secondary education providers nationwide. Parents last year also accused one Harmony school of “pushing out” underperforming students — a charge the Texas Education Agency confirmed. Ed Fuller, a University of Texas-Austin researcher, found that Harmony schools throughout Texas had an “extraordinarily high” student attrition rate of about 50% for students in grades six through eight. “It’s not hard to be ‘exemplary’ if you lose all the kids who aren’t performing,” Fuller says. Crossing the line? At minimum, the rapid growth of the Turkish-affiliated schools shows how the freewheeling world of charter schools has changed the face of K-12 education in the USA. In most cases, charters are loosely regulated in exchange for improved performance. A few schools are affiliated with religious groups or offer programs that others can’t. But in several cases, a school’s orientation has forced it to show that it’s not crossing lines and endorsing religion. Examples: •Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a Minnesota charter school authorized by Islamic Relief USA, a Virginia-based aid group. In 2008, the school ran afoul of state officials who said having teachers take part in voluntary Friday prayers could give students the impression that the school endorsed Islam. •Sacramento City Unified School District in California, which for 12 years has fought a lawsuit that says the city’s Waldorf schools are based on the religious beliefs of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Whether such schools continue to grow is no small question, since President Obama has made charter school expansion a priority. While the Turkish-affiliated schools disavow any connection to the G?len Movement, G?len himself maintains in legal filings that he’s the inspiration behind their growth. But William Martin of Rice University in Houston says educators’ assertions of “no organic connection” to G?len are accurate. Nonetheless, he says their efforts to minimize ties to G?len, likely from fear of being branded Islamists, bring “unnecessary and probably counterproductive” suspicion. “I do not think they are a sinister organization.” In an e-mail interview, Mehmet Argin, principal of Tucson’s Sonoran Science Academy, says his school’s parent corporation, Daisy Education Corp., “has no legal or organic ties” with other schools. He cautions against linking charter schools founded by Turkish-Americans directly to the G?len Movement “just because Turkish-Americans may be inspired by Mr. G?len.” In an e-mail interview, G?len denied any direct connection to these schools, rejecting the notion that there is a “G?len Movement,” but acknowledging there may be educators now in U.S. schools who have listened to his philosophy. “I have no relation with any institution in the form of ownership, board membership or any similar kind,” he said. A ‘third force’ G?len has pushed for more dialogue between the Western and Muslim worlds, yet he is a controversial figure in Turkey. The University of Oregon’s Hendrick, whose writings explore the G?len Movement, calls him “Turkey’s most famous religious personality.” His movement is considered the nation’s “third force” alongside the military and Turkey’s ruling Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, or AKP Party. In 1999, after traveling to the USA for medical treatment, G?len was charged in Turkey with trying to create an Islamic state. Since then he has remained in Pennsylvania. After the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in 2007 denied his bid for a visa as an “alien of extraordinary ability in education,” G?len sued, saying his followers “had established more than 600 educational institutions” worldwide. He eventually prevailed, earning a green card in 2008. But Turkish educators in the USA continue to disavow their ties. “G?len is both the reason behind his schools, and he has nothing whatsoever to do with them,” Hendrick says.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Yale University says it has hired retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal to teach a graduate level seminar on leadership on its New Haven, Conn., campus. McChrystal is the former commander of the Afghanistan war. He was fired in July by President Barack Obama because of disparaging comments he and his aides made about their civilian bosses. POLL: Public support firing of McChrystal JUNE: McChrystal fired, replaced by Petraeus Yale announced Monday that McChrystal’s seminar will “examine how dramatic changes in globalization have increased the complexity of modern leadership.” McChrystal said in a statement accompanying the release that he was looking forward to sharing his “experiences and insights as a career military officer.” 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.

BELL, Calif. (AP) — Three administrators whose huge salaries sparked outrage in this small blue-collar suburb of Los Angeles have agreed to resign, the City Council said Friday. Council members emerged from an hours-long closed session at midnight Friday and announced that they’d accepted the resignations of Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo, Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia and Police Chief Randy Adams. Rizzo was the highest paid at $787,637 a year — nearly twice the pay of President Obama— for overseeing one of the poorest towns in Los Angeles County . Spaccia makes $376,288 a year and Adams earns $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck. The three will not receive severance packages, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. Rizzo will step down at the end of August and Spaccia will leave at the end of September. Adams will also leave at the end of August, after completing an evaluation of the police department, the Times said. “I’m happy that they resigned but I’m disappointed at the pension that they’re going to receive,” said Ali Saleh, a member of the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse or BASTA. Rizzo would be entitled to a state pension of more than $650,000 a year for life, according to calculations made by the Times. That would make Rizzo, 56, the highest-paid retiree in the state pension system. Adams could get more than $411,000 a year. Spaccia, 51, could be eligible for as much as $250,000 a year when she reaches 55, though the figure is less precise than for the other two officials, the Times said. Saleh said the crowd applauded after the announcement but immediately yelled out questions about what would happen to the council members. Four of the five of them are paid close to $100,000 annually for part-time work. When the crowd’s questions were not answered, they shouted, “Recall!, Recall!” Revelations about the pay in Bell has sparked anger in the city of fewer than 40,000 residents. Census figures from 2008 show 17% of the population lives in poverty. Enraged residents have staged protests demanding the firings and started a recall campaign against some council members. “Woo-hoo, the salaries. Wow. What can I say? I think that’s unbelievable,” Christina Caldera, a 20-year resident of the city, said as she stood in line at a food bank. Caldera, who is struggling after recently losing her job as a drug and alcohol counselor, said she generally was satisfied with the way the city was being run but felt high-paid officials should take a pay cut. “What are they doing with all that money?” she asked. “Maybe they could put it into more jobs for other people.” Attempts to leave messages seeking comment from Rizzo and Spaccia failed because their voicemails were full. A message left for Adams was not immediately returned. The county district attorney’s office is investigating to determine if the high salaries for the council members violate any state laws. The City Council also intends to review city salaries, including those of its own members, according to Councilman Luis Artiga and Mayor Oscar Hernandez. “We are going to analyze all the city payrolls and possibly will revise all the salaries of the city,” Artiga said. However, both men said they considered the City Council pay to be justified. “We work a lot. I work with my community every day,” the mayor said, as he shook hands with and embraced people leaving the food bank Thursday. Council members are on call around the clock, and it is not uncommon for them to take calls in the middle of the night from people reporting problems with city services, Artiga said. Though many residents are poor, Hernandez said they live in a city they can be proud of, one with a $22.7 million budget surplus, clean streets, refurbished parks and numerous programs for people of all ages. He pointed proudly down a street to a park filled with new exercise equipment. When Rizzo arrived 17 years ago, Hernandez said, the city was $13 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Rizzo obtained government grants to aid the city, the mayor said. Rizzo was arrested near his home in Huntington Beach in March and charged with misdemeanor drunken driving. He pleaded not guilty and is due back in court for an Aug. 5 hearing, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office. The Los Angeles Times reported the salaries last week, prompting a large protest Monday at City Hall in which residents shouted and demanded that Rizzo be fired. California Attorney General Jerry Brown said his office has launched an investigation in conjunction with the state’s public employee retirement agency into pension and related benefits for Bell’s civic leaders. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

OXFORD, Ohio (AP) — Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away — not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets. The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of Animal House and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News & World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools. CAMPUS DRINKING: College’s problem or society’s? FRESHMEN: Study booze more than books The school suspended two of the sororities and put the third on probation. A task force is reviewing discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, and the campus group governing sororities says it will begin teaching new members to speak out when they witness bad behavior. There is little evidence excessive alcohol consumption is any worse at Miami than other colleges, but students are worried the antics will damage the school’s reputation. “It’s embarrassing,” said Christina Zielke, 21, a senior from Cleveland, who doesn’t belong to a sorority. “This kind of thing gives a bad name not just to the Greek system but to the university and students like me who aren’t in the system.” Students also are worried the debauchery could even devalue a Miami diploma, said Heath Ingram, student government president. “They’re angry about the actions of a few damaging Miami’s reputation and the effect that might have on getting into the best graduate programs and job opportunities,” he said. The three sororities’ spring formals took place over the span of about a month. On March 26, Alpha Xi Delta sisters and their dates vomited, dropped drinks on the dance floor and tried to steal booze at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, center officials reported. One male even tried to urinate on the center’s Slave Pen, a slave-holding pen reclaimed from a Kentucky farm, the officials said. Two weeks later at the Pi Beta Phi formal, staff at Lake Lyndsay Lodge in nearby Hamilton found a couple having sex in a closet and two girls “repeatedly trying to urinate into the sinks on the bathroom counter,” the lodge said in a complaint letter to the school. It complained of students vomiting, flipping over an appetizer table and of being so drunk they couldn’t walk. On April 23, about 30 students on the way home from a Zeta Tau Alpha formal trashed a bus and harassed and shouted obscenities at the driver, who tossed them off, the transportation company said. The company had to send another bus. Miami suspended Alpha Xi Delta and Pi Beta Phi and put Zeta Tau Alpha on probation. Zeta Tau Alpha’s Miami chapter president, Meghan Hughes, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that “while a small percentage of our members behaved inappropriately, we all take responsibility.” Other members or officers of the local chapters did not respond to requests for comment. National leaders of the sororities supported the school’s discipline and put their chapters on probation, though some noted that members told them some of the claims were exaggerated. About one-third of Miami’s 16,000 students belong to one of its more than 50 Greek groups. Larissa Spreng, president of the Miami Panhellenic Association governing campus sororities, said students in fraternities and sororities are disappointed in behavior she says doesn’t represent the Greek community. She called it “an atypical Miami semester.” The association requires new members to take a program on managing alcohol and other risks. Next year, for the first time, it will focus on the need for bystanders to speak out when witnessing bad behavior, Spreng said. A new task force of Greek and non-Greek students, staff and student-group advisers is meeting this summer to review and recommend changes in discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, said student affairs Vice President Barbara Jones. The school already requires freshmen to complete an online alcohol-education program. Miami, which has had to discipline other Greek groups over alcohol, last year invited a national Greek coalition to assess its Greek organizations and programs. The school is implementing the group’s recommendations to improve Greek values, including more alumni and faculty involvement. Some educators and researchers suggest binge drinking among college students has increased over the past decade — and that women are catching up to men in terms of the percentage who binge — but statistics from major national studies indicate very little change. Schools are seeing increases in both the number and severity of alcohol-related incidents, not just among sororities and fraternities, said W. Scott Lewis, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration. The disparity between stable drinking trends and reports of worse behavior may be that “we really don’t have good measures of behavior associated with drinking and parties,” said Robert Saltz, senior scientist at the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. The two- and one-year suspensions for Alpha Xi Delta and Pi Beta Phi mean they lose their campus dorm suites and can’t recruit members or participate as a group in campus activities. Zeta Tau Alpha can’t hold social events with alcohol the first year of its two-year probation. Jenny Hoy, the mother of a Chi Omega sorority member at Miami, thought the discipline was fair. “As a parent, I’m concerned about what is basically roguish behavior, but I don’t believe it will permanently damage the school’s image,” said Hoy, 46, of Reno A member of another Miami sorority doesn’t approve of the conduct but doesn’t think all members misbehaved. “I don’t think it’s fair that people who were innocent are being punished, too,” said Kappa Kappa Gamma member Rachael Fraleigh, 19, of Chicago. Lake Lyndsay Lodge manager Lyndsay Rapier-Phipps, a Miami graduate, acknowledged that about a quarter of the students were the worst troublemakers at Pi Beta Phi’s formal. But she said others “just stood around watching and laughing.” 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.

LAS VEGAS — The annual convention of the Career College Association was just gearing up for the day Thursday when word started circulating that the U.S. Senate’s education committee planned to start this month a series of hearings on the increasing flow of federal student aid money to for-profit higher education . It was a stark reminder — in case anyone here really needed it — that the rapidly growing college sector faces a level of federal scrutiny probably unmatched since the early 1990s, when Congress approved a set of changes to the Higher Education Act aimed at reining in perceived abuses of the financial aid programs by what were commonly referred to as “fly-by-night trade schools.” Just how much today’s environment felt like d?j? vu from 20 years ago depended on whom you talked to here. To many financial analysts, investor types and others who focus on stock prices or otherwise take a short-term view, the mood was one of steady-state alarm, focused on the cloud of intensified federal regulation that has loomed over colleges for the last year. Those in this group believe that the for-profit sector has a target on its back, with a coalition of consumer advocates, short-selling investors (who profit if stock prices fall), and ideological government bureaucrats pushing an aggressive, activist agenda. To some observers who’ve worked in and around the industry longer, though, the current round of federal scrutiny (in the form of potentially tough new rules) — while unfair in their eyes — is a far cry from the ’90s, for a few reasons. First, they argue, for-profit colleges are too embedded in the fabric of higher education, and too essential to meeting President Obama’s goals for increasing the country’s college completion rates, to be dealt with in a way that would seriously damage their ability to contribute to that effort. FOR-PROFIT: Sector leads way in e-textbook use COLLEGE BLOG: New student group support for for-profit association Second, during the purge of the early 1990s, for-profit colleges were singled out for scrutiny, with policies put in place that focused specifically on reining them in. This time around, while some federal policymakers clearly have special concerns about for-profit colleges, higher education leaders in all sectors are feeling (and in many cases bristling at) heightened scrutiny from federal, state and other policymakers who see higher education as underperforming and costing students and taxpayers alike too much. “I don’t know anybody in our sector who doesn’t think that the ’92 amendments, and all the trauma they brought about, ultimately had a positive outcome and changed the nature of quality assurance in this sector for the better — though it was clearly something we resisted at the time,” said Elise Scanlon, a Washington lawyer who spent nearly 20 years as an accreditor of for-profit colleges. “Right now it’s hard to see what could come out of this round that would make things better for us, but it is clearly part of a push for better information about quality in all of higher education, at a time of increasingly scarce resources.” Mood of the meeting By many measures, the advocates for for-profit (or “private sector,” as they prefer to call it) higher education who gathered here for the annual meeting of the sector’s main advocacy group could be feeling good. Enrollments in the institutions have grown to nearly 10% of all postsecondary students, and the economic downturn of the last year has enrollments booming. The exhibit hall at the meeting here was bristling with companies of all sorts seeking to sell their services to the institutions, a reflection of their steady and sturdy growth. Bottom line (as it were), business is booming. And yet, that very same enrollment growth — and the fact that it is driven in significant part with Pell Grants and federal student loans — has given new and added urgency to consumer advocates, federal regulators, and others who believe that the for-profit institutions are charging students too much for an education of inferior quality. (A series of critical news media stories have focused on dubious practices.) Those concerns have been at the forefront of the Education Department’s push since last winter to consider a new mechanism for ensuring that vocational programs are helping their graduates find “gainful employment,” among other rules aimed at bolstering the “integrity” of the federal financial aid programs. The department’s favored approach, which would judge programs based on a ratio comparing the incomes of graduates to their monthly payments on their student loan debt, has been vehemently opposed by many career college officials, who say that instituting such a policy could force the closure of many programs and potentially cut off access to college for tens if not hundreds of thousands of students. Lobbyists for and leaders of the colleges have been feverishly opposing the gainful employment regulation (as well as some of the department’s other expected rules), arguing that department officials do not have sufficient evidence and/or justification to support the approach, urging the Obama administration to reconsider. COLLEGE: What if higher ed just isn’t for everyone? OBAMA GOALS: Community colleges like new attention They appear to have made at least minor advances in slowing down the department’s progress in recent days. On Friday, the Office of Management and Budget placed a cryptic note in the Federal Register concluding that the department’s proposed program integrity rules could have a major economic impact, a designation that requires the Education Department to strengthen the evidence it must provide to justify the need for the regulation. In announcing a June 24 hearing (and “a series” of others to follow) by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the panel’s chairman and long a critic of corporate higher education, cited on Thursday the rapid expansion of for-profit colleges and of the federal student aid funds flowing to them. “Students at for-profit institutions are borrowing more, and more frequently, than their peers at nonprofit schools, and according to the Department of Education, one in five students who left a for-profit college in 2007 defaulted on their loan within three years,” the committee’s news release said. “We need to ensure for-profit colleges are working well to meet the needs of students and not just shareholders,” said Harkin. “We owe it to students and taxpayers to make sure these dollars are being well spent.” For-profit college leaders said they welcomed the chance to tell their story. “Nontraditional students are the new tradition in higher education, and federal student aid is helping millions of working adults get the skills and abilities they need to compete in a global workforce,” Harris Miller , president of the Career College Association, said in a statement. “For these students to be successful, however, change is needed. Private sector institutions are bringing important innovations to postsecondary education, and we welcome the opportunity for a full and open exchange with the committee. These hearings will give our inclusive educational institutions an opportunity to address myths with facts and figures.” To critics of the colleges who see them as under siege from federal policymakers and others, that may sound like bravado. But it’s a view shared by some others who’ve seen for-profit higher education survive previous tough scrutiny, as in 1992. “Back then, lots of people said, ‘Oh my god, the world’s going to end, it’s going to put us all out of business,’” Nancy Broff, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel of the Career College Association, said of the 1992 renewal of the Higher Education Act. “The reality is that this is a very adaptable and resilient group of people and institutions, and they have learned to adapt. And they will this time, too.” Leaders in the sector express confidence that even as federal policymakers seek greater oversight of the institutions, they will avoid steps that could severely impair the colleges’ ability to meet Americans’ demand for higher education, especially at a time when many public institutions are cutting their enrollments because of budget gaps. The country cannot come close to President Obama’s college completion goal without help from the private sector colleges, they say. “The long-term trend is that we need more [higher education] capacity,” said Daniel Hamburger, president and chief executive officer of Devry, Inc. “In the end, I’m confident that smart people will generally find solutions that are in students’ best interests.”