NEW YORK — President Barack Obama ‘s call for a longer school day and year for America’s kids echoes a similar call he made a year ago to little effect, illustrating just how deeply entrenched the traditional school calendar is and how little power the federal government has to change it. Education reformers have long called for U.S. kids to log more time in the classroom so they can catch up with their peers elsewhere in the world, but resistance from leisure-loving teenagers isn’t the only reason there is no mass movement to keep schoolchildren in their seats. Such a change could cost cash-strapped state governments and local school districts billions of dollars, strip teachers of a time-honored perk of their profession, and irk officials in states that already bridle at federal intrusion into their traditional control over education. “If you extend the school year for, say, five days, you’re paying for another week of salaries, another week of utilities and another week of fuel for, in South Carolina , 5,700 school buses,” said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Education. Obama told NBC ‘s Matt Lauer on the Today show Monday that the U.S. school year is too short. OBAMA: GOP would reverse education progress REPORT: Poor science education hurts U.S. economy “The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense,” he said. He did not specify how long that school year should be, but said U.S. students attend classes, on average, about a month less than children in most other advanced countries. U.S. schools through high school offer an average of 180 instruction days per year, according to the Education Commission of the States. That compares to an average of 197 days for lower grades and 196 days for upper grades in countries with the best student achievement levels, including Japan, South Korea, Germany and New Zealand. Many education experts say American kids should spend more time in school. “There’s a growing awareness that American kids are being shortchanged academically by the short school day and the short school year,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University . Today’s American kids have a long summer vacation because previous generations needed the summer off to work on family farms. Now researchers say the tradition causes a “summer learning loss” as kids put aside the books for the summer. The problem hits low-income students especially hard. A Johns Hopkins University study found that disadvantaged kids fall back during the summer break, while better-off kids hold steady or continue to learn. Charter schools that aim to bring low-income students up to grade level, such as the KIPP academies and the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, generally offer a longer school year and a longer school day. In most cases the charter schools have leeway to set their own schedules, in part because their teachers are not covered by union contracts. At traditional public schools where teachers and other employees are usually represented by unions, lengthening the school day or the school year would be subject to collective bargaining, and more hours would cost more money. “It has to be negotiated, and it takes money,” said Janet Bass, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers . “Right now teachers and all other school staff are compensated based on the number of hours they work.” Some states embrace the idea. In Massachusetts , the state issues grants to districts with plans to constructively lengthen instructional class time, said Kathy Christie, chief of staff at the Education Commission of the States. Obama’s Education Department already is using competitions among states for curriculum grant money through its ” Race to the Top ” initiative. “The federal carrots of additional money would help more states do it or schools do it in states where they don’t have a state grant process,” Christie said. But the federal budget is hard-up, too. And while many educators and parents believe students would benefit from more quality learning time, the idea is not universally popular. Texas already forbids school from starting before the fourth Monday of August, a provision designed to save money on utility bills and increase business for tourist destinations and other summer attractions. “Ultimately the states, not the federal government, should have the final word on this and other public school decisions,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry . In Kansas, sporadic efforts by local districts to extend the school year at even a few schools have been met by parental resistance, said state education commissioner Diane DeBacker. “The community was just not ready for kids to be in school all summer long,” DeBacker said. “Kids wanted to go swimming. Their families wanted to go on vacation.” In some states, the school year already starts well before Labor Day and in others nearly stretches to the Fourth of July. Parents are similarly divided. Parent Irene Facciolo in Montpelier, Vt., said kids need the summer break and learn while they’re away from school. “I really feel like they need the time to regenerate,” she said. But Laura Spencer of Orlando, says she would rather have her 10-year-old daughter learning than hanging out. “Summer is a lost opportunity,” said Spencer, who believes having kids out of school for three to four months makes an already flawed education system worse. Associated Press reporters Erica Werner in Washington; Tom Breen in Raleigh, N.C.; Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle; April Castro in Austin, Texas; Alan Scher Zagier in Columbia, Mo.; and Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vt., contributed to this story. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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

All great businesses start with a bright idea. The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine today release their eighth rankings of 25 top graduate and undergrad university programs for budding entrepreneurs, whose bright ideas can turn into successful businesses. The rankings are posted online at Entrepreneur magazine’s website, http://www.entrepreneur.com/topcolleges with facts about each university. The schools will be featured in the October issue of Entrepreneur magazine. The Princeton Review selected these 50 programs from about 2,000 surveyed, saying they satisfy multiple criteria within three main categories: students and faculty, academics and requirements, and enriching experiences outside the classroom. The top schools stand out because they have a high number of experienced faculty, students launching businesses after graduation, and experiences outside of the class room, says Princeton Review senior vice president and publisher Rob Franek. “Students are working with successful entrepreneurs who are working with the primary source and then bringing that experience back down to the classroom for that student,” says Franek. He adds that these schools often offer entrepreneurship competitions and classes to students of any major, creating a “culture of entrepreneurship.” Over the past few years, the number of entrepreneurial programs has grown tremendously, especially as universities recognize the value of interdisciplinary studies, says Franek. Arthur Warga, dean of the University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business, ranked as the No. 1 undergraduate program, says a full entrepreneurship program, rather than just a couple of classes, is vital to provide “a really comprehensive group of mentors and resources that they can turn to for advice during the process of building a business.” The Princeton Review’s list of the top 25 best graduate and undergraduate entrepreneurship programs: Top 25 graduate programs 1. Babson College , Wellesley, Mass. 2. The University of Chicago 3. University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, Mich. 4. Brigham Young University , Provo, Utah 5. University of Arizona , Tucson 6. Rice University , Houston 7. University of Virginia , Charlottesville, Va. 8. Stanford University , Stanford, Calif. 9. University of Texas at Austin 10. Washington University in St. Louis 11. Acton MBA Entrepreneurship, Austin, Texas 12. DePaul University , Chicago 13. Tulane University , New Orleans 14. University of Southern California , Los Angeles 15. Drexel University , Phildelphia 16. Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 17. University of Washington , Seattle 18. Temple University , Philadelphia 19. University of Wisconsin-Madison 20. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 21. Syracuse University , Syracuse N.Y. 22. Simmons College , Boston 23. Wake Forest University , Winston Salem, N.C. 24. University of Illinois at Chicago 25. University of South Florida , Tampa Top 25 undergraduate programs 1. University of Houston , Houston, Texas 2. Baylor University , Waco, Texas 3. Babson College, Wellesley, Mass. 4. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 5. University of Southern California, Los Angeles 6. University of Dayton , Dayton, Ohio 7. Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y. 8. University of Notre Dame , Notre Dame , Ind. 9. Washington University, St. Louis 10. DePaul University, Chicago 11. Xavier University , Cincinnati 12. University of Arizona, Tucson 13. Temple University, Philadelphia 14. Northeastern University , Boston 15. University of Oklahoma , Norman, Okla. 16. Lehigh University , Bethlehem, Pa. 17. City University of New York , New York 18. Belmont University , Nashville 19. Drexel University, Philadelphia 20. Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 21. The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala. 22. Loyola Marymount University , Los Angeles 23. University of Wisconsin-Madison 24. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 25. Chapman University , Orange, Calif.

This is a preview of a week-long video series starting Monday, May 24 about people who are veterans, single parents, full-time workers — and students, too. Click “see trailers” (above, left) now for the preview, and check back here, students2.usatoday.com , next week for the full video on each featured student. What comes to mind when you hear “college student”? To many Americans , it’s someone who goes to college straight from high school, lives in a dorm, and gets a degree four years later. But things have changed. Three-fourths of today’s students no longer fit that traditional model. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, about half of today’s students are financially independent; 49% are enrolled part-time; 38% work full time; 27% have dependents of their own. Almost half — 12 million — attend two-year community colleges rather than four-year schools. And most students who start college don’t finish. Only 56% of students at four-year colleges complete a degree within six years, and just 20% of first-time students at public community colleges get a degree or certificate within three years. In their own words A video project dubbed “Take America to College” aims to tell the story of today’s non-traditional college students in their own words and images. The project organizers in January put out a casting call and more than 200 nontraditional college students responded by sending in their stories; 78 uploaded audition videos. Five were chosen to represent the millions of students who struggle to complete a college degree. They are: •Dennis Medina, a police officer and a night student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston; •Kathryn McCormick, a single mom who waitresses 35 hours a week and is enrolled at Valencia Community College in Orlando •Shane Burrows, who works full-time as a sales assistant while studying at Sierra Community College in Rocklin, Calif.; •Brandon Krapf, an Iraq war veteran studying at American University in Washington, D.C.; •Charnee Ball, a Navy veteran, also at Valencia Community College in Orlando The students each received $500 and won a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with policymakers. Their stories are featured in a week-long series of videos airing online here at students2.usatoday.com starting May 24. The videos are produced by Purple States TV, a media company that uses both professionally filmed and self-filmed video footage to dramatize issues of public policy, in collaboration with DCTV and the Seattle-based social marketing firm Banyan Branch, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Kodak donated Zi8 Pocket Video Cameras used by the students to capture and share their stories. Real students, real stories More background on the five team members and their stories: •Dennis Medina — a Boston police officer chosen for the team in an online contest. “I’m not your stereotypical student,” Medina says. “I wear plain clothes with the Boston Police Department Youth Violence Strike Force also known as the gang unit. When I was employed by the corrections office, I started taking college classes, but money got tight, and life got in the way. When I moved to the Boston Police Department, I realized that without a college degree I couldn’t further my career. I can only take one or two classes a semester. Going to college is almost impossible … I have court during the day, then I have my regular shift which is 4 p.m. to midnight. I also have family obligations. I live with my wife, two sons and a daughter and my grandson also lives with us.” •Kathryn McCormick — A single parent and full-time waitress, studying to become a physician assistant. “Each year I take out about $15,000 in student loans to pay my bills. This is an incredibly large amount of money that is going to take me a long time to pay off when I get out of school,” she says. “It’s also not enough to pay my bills. I still have to work. The program I’m trying to get in is extremely competitive and I need every single ounce of my time that I can possibly squeeze out of my day to make sure that my grades are perfect. I’d love to see a change in financial aid as far as the one-size-fits-all cap that they have. It doesn’t matter whether you are a single mom of two kids and struggling and working and trying to do the best that you can. A person who’s a single person still gets the same amount of money as you do. That’s really hard.” •Shane Burrows — Works full time as a sales assistant while accumulating college credits toward an associates degree; he wants to be a music teacher. He is having trouble completing his degree because core courses aren’t available in the evenings, or are being cut because of California’s budget crisis. “When I turned 18, I dropped out of college and worked two jobs because I just couldn’t afford to pay for my education,” he says. “I lost my mom when I was only 7. My dad could only afford to provide a house over our heads, food, clothing, and basics to get by. I needed to work to live and unfortunately I had to put school on the side. After taking five years off school, I decided to go back part time at a junior college. I work full time and quit my second job so I could have time for school. I would love to take more than four classes a semester but I can barely afford to live let alone pay for classes and books. I’m drowning in debt and on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. With rising tuition costs and budget cuts cutting classes, I feel like I’ll never finish.” •Brandon Krapf — an Iraq war veteran, now in the Army reserves and a senior at American University, in Washington, D.C. “When you get the GI Bill it’s supposed to cover tuition but you end up living off of it. They don’t come and tell you, ‘Oh hey, listen, you also have to cover books, rent and your regular bills on top of that.” Luckily with the post 9-11 GI Bill it’s been a lot easier for student vets but there’s still been a lot of troubles with it, especially last semester when they had a huge influx of new applications for the GI Bill. Going to school’s probably put me in debt with student loans a good $100,000 dollars.” •Charnee Ball — Navy veteran who wants to be an aviation mechanic. She is not receiving GI benefits because she was discharged under the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. “I know the people who make those decisions think it’s for the greater good, but believe me, there’s been so many qualified technicians and officers and people who went and did their job and served their country that have been discharged for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I did my job. I served my country. And when I need it most, I’m not eligible (for benefits). So it’s really hard for me to make it through, to realize my dream of becoming an aviation mechanic. Right now I’m about $38,000 in debt from student loans. It is a struggle every day to find the money to make ends meet.” Have questions about the students’ college experiences? Leave them in the comments, or save them for a live discussion with Take America to College participants on May 26, 2010 at 1 p.m. ET. You can set an e-mail reminder for the chat in the window below. Chat with the students