The Washington Monthly has yet again irked some educators, as it did three years ago, by ranking what it calls “America’s Best Community Colleges” using openly available student engagement survey data. Using benchmarking data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and four-year federal graduation rates in an equation of its own making, the magazine attempts to rank the top 50 community colleges in the country in its latest issue. Though the periodical’s editors say they only hope to highlight “what works and what doesn’t” at these institutions by ranking them, CCSSE officials have denounced the use of their data in this way and argue it may do more harm than good. “Community colleges are often underrecognized,” said Kevin Carey, author of the magazine’s community college rankings and policy director at Washington-based think tank Education Sector. “But there’s been a lot of attention paid to them, thanks to the president’s recent effort [with the American Graduation Initiative]. Since he supports investing and improving community colleges, we felt like it was a good time to ask, ‘What do good community colleges look like?’ If we’re going to spend a lot of money, let’s see what reflects best practices out there.” STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: Community colleges must expect more, report says PART-TIMERS EXCLUDED: Graduation rate data paint an unfair picture, critics say Carey admitted that such a ranking of community colleges would not be possible without data from CCSSE, a survey run by the University of Texas at Austin that goes out to students at around 650 two-year institutions and uses the results to judge the colleges on broad categories such as “active and collaborative learning,” “student effort,” “academic challenge,” “student-faculty interaction” and “support for learners.” Though every participating college’s survey data are made public, institutional officials are encouraged to compare their benchmark scores only to national averages and those of large peer groups, such as institutions of similar size or in a similar geographic area. Despite warnings from CCSSE officials that its data sets were never meant to be used to generate college rankings, Carey defended the decisions to do so and to have CCSSE data count for 85% of a college’s ranking. “We always equate admissions selectivity with quality,” Carey said. “Well, all community colleges have the same admissions policy, but they aren’t always as good as one another. Part of this was to find a way to talk about excellence in the sector. We’re publicizing information about best practices. We’re talking about it here, and this is an interesting and long-overdue conversation that we need to have at the federal level.” Carey noted that these rankings could encourage some community colleges to seek out the best practices of others, starting something of a domino effect of reform initiatives. He also added that the list could serve as something of a consumer tool for students looking for a community college. “I think there are some people who can’t choose their community college, but some can,” Carey said. “For instance, take our top college, Saint Paul College. Well, there are other community colleges in metropolitan Minneapolis-Saint Paul that aren’t listed. If you’re a student and have no information about which community college is better, you’ll probably go wherever is most convenient. But, if you do have some information, you might drive an additional 20 to 30 minutes to get to another community college. It might be worth it.” Those without much choice in the matter of where to attend a community college, given their location, may also consider taking online courses from those institutions ranked higher in the list, Carey added. Repeating his stance that only the best community colleges ought to be lauded for their good work while encouraging others to essentially replicate their success by taking similar reform measures, Carey noted that he never considered listing the “50 worst” community colleges in the magazine or continuing his list beyond number 50. He mused that some of the worst-performing community colleges may not have even participated in CCSSE, and that listing the bottom-performing institution that did would be an unfair punishment. Still, he did acknowledge that, conversely, some of the best-performing institutions might not have participated in CCSSE, though he considers this less likely. Kay McClenney, CCSSE director, criticized Washington Monthly’s use of CCSSE data in creating a ranking of community colleges, calling it both “inappropriate” and “unauthorized.” She noted that she turned down the publication’s request for a more user-friendly version of the open-source CCSSE data sets, adding that it likely pulled the data in what must have been a very tedious process from CCSSE’s website. CCSSE, McClenney argued, is a tool best used when its results are reviewed internally. She added that it does not make sense to compare one community college directly to another, given the significant differences in missions, socioeconomic status of students, budgets and other factors. She said that using broader benchmarks and peer groups is a better way to judge. “Benchmarking is a process that is entirely different from rankings,” McClenney said. “Our major issue here is that ranking just oversimplifies what’s going on in these colleges. It doesn’t take into comparison major variables. And, from a statistical standpoint, there isn’t that much of a difference between, say, number one and number 15 on the list. It creates a false impression.” Though she disagrees with Carey’s usage of CCSSE data, McClenney did at least find value in his reason for doing so. “I grant that [Carey] has positive purposes here,” McClenney said. “He’s attempting to do something he believes is for the cause of goodness. I sympathize with the idea of institutions learning from one another. That’s something we promote in our work. We just disagree that ranking is the way to go about it.”

Want to feed squirrels, transform into a zombie or use science to whip up bacon-flavored cotton candy? Forget chess club. College students today are attracted to clubs with activities that are more innovative — maybe even downright wacky. College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom. Students who participate in co-curricular activities study more, have higher GPAs and are more satisfied with their social lives, says Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. DISTANCE EDUCATION: Students form clubs online STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: Survey measures it using five categories The average student participates in two campus activities, according to a 2009 NASPA report, which surveyed more than 14,000 students from 35 U.S. colleges and universities. Students who attend smaller colleges tend to become involved in more organizations, the report says. Joining clubs is one of many ways students network and develop lasting friendships, says John Gardner, president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and author of Your College Experience: Strategies for Success . Students interact, learn more David Bebeau, 20, founded the Humans vs. Zombies club at the University of Wisconsin in 2009. Bebeau describes Humans vs. Zombies, which has become popular on campuses across the country, as a “massive game of tag.” Players are split into two groups; humans who are tagged by zombies become zombies themselves, and the game ends when the last human is tagged. As many as 300 students play the week-long game that goes on 24/7. Bebeau says the club brings together a diverse group of students who wouldn’t otherwise interact. “We get athletes with the hardest of the hard-core nerds, and people who would never actually play together have become very good friends,” he says. Though the main purpose of some clubs is just to have fun, others extend the learning experience. At the Culinary Institute of America , students may sit in a wine class for several hours a day and then attend a wine-tasting sponsored by the Bacchus Wine Society later that night, says David Whalen, associate dean for student activities, recreation and athletics. “They’re back there lining up at the door because they want to learn more about wine.” Students also flock to cooking demonstrations by the Avant-Garde Cuisine Society, which has taught aspiring chefs how to make ice cream using liquid nitrogen. Students who had a handful of clubs at their high school are often overwhelmed by the hundreds of organizations they can join once they step onto large campuses. Officials have different views on whether they should dive in right away or wait a few weeks until they’ve adjusted to their new courses and environment. The answer depends on the student, says Tina Samuel Powellson, associate director in the Office of Student Involvement at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, which offers about 345 student organizations. She says there is no “cookie-cutter” plan — “I would encourage students to take their time, to get to know what’s the best fit for them,” she says. In the NASPA survey, 65% of students said participating in campus activities helps them learn to balance their social and academic lives; 14% said their commitment to clubs caused their grades to drop, but 25% said their grades increased. Gardner says it’s good for students to “jump in” and join clubs right away because clubs can make a large campus feel smaller, and students can immediately make friends. “Friendship formation is task No. 1 for most students,” he says. “If you don’t make friends, you’re lonely, you’re anxious, you feel sort of adrift.” But he adds that students should be careful not to join too many organizations at once, so they’re not distracted from other activities such as studying and going to class. “It’s a question of balance and not overdoing it,” he says. R?sum?-building While some campuses boast hundreds of clubs — the University of Michigan has more than 1,200 — students attending smaller schools don’t lack opportunities to get involved. Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina sponsors about 40 student organizations. Because it’s a two-year college with about 9,000 full-time students, clubs experience a high turnover. This can present a challenge for less popular clubs, says Chris Libert, student activities coordinator. “Most likely, the club advisers are here, but the participants might not be,” he says. But Libert says it’s important for students to partake in activities — even at community colleges — if they want their r?sum?s to stand out. Employers look for “well-rounded people” and students who did more than one activity, he says. Even if clubs like the University of Minnesota’s Campus People Watchers or Princeton University’s Muggle Quidditch Team (based on the Harry Potter stories) seem to have no apparent benefit, college experts say they provide a way for students with similar interests to “connect” and “engender creativity.” They also offer an alternative to the party scene. “They’re a very healthy form of stress relief,” Gardner says. “It’s better to spend time in this kind of group, rather than drink excessively.”

Joe Turant pointed to the rent-a-text signs in Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Florham Park , N.J., bookstore window last month and told his incoming freshman daughter, Caitlyn, “That’s what you’re doing.” With potential savings up to 50% off the price of a new textbook, the Colonia, N.J., father says renting textbooks will free up money for other things, such as the meal plan. E-BOOKS: iPad the next textbook? Maybe not “If we can get them through rental, great. Otherwise, she’s going to go online to try to find a lower price,” says Turant, who jokingly reminded his daughter that “Dad’s paying.” College students will be able to shop early and save hundreds of dollars on textbooks as more than 1,000 campus bookstores nationwide launch discounted rental programs this fall. The timing is right: The federal Higher Education Opportunity Act, which took effect July 1, says colleges must list required course materials for students during registration. “Students will be able to take advantage of more cost-saving options sooner, and they can save hundreds,” says Nicole Allen, textbook advocate for the Student Public Interest Research Groups. College textbook prices have risen at nearly four times the rate of inflation since 1994, with an average of $900 spent a year, Allen says. Successful pilot programs The rise of rentals means students can see substantial upfront cost savings without having to gamble on buying a used book and hoping the bookstore will buy it back, Allen says. Students can highlight and write in the rentals; normal wear and tear is expected. The country’s two largest college bookstore companies, Follett and Barnes & Noble, embraced the rental option after successful pilot programs last fall. Just 250 college campuses nationwide offered some textbook rental program during the 2009-10 school year, according to the National Association of College Stores. This fall, some 1,300 campuses will offer textbooks for rent. In late July, Follett had 720 of its 860 stores adopt the rental option, says spokesman Elio DiStaola. And half of Barnes & Noble’s 640 campuses have signed on, says Jade Roth, vice president for books at Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. Follett saved students $2 million off the cost of new textbooks in its seven pilot bookstores, including the University of Texas-Arlington, the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, and Rio Hondo Community College in Whittier, Calif., DiStaola says. An online alternative Typically, about 25% of the bookstores’ titles were available for rent. This fall, the stores expect to offer about 40% of titles for rent. “I’ve had students come up and thank us for this,” says Bill Coulter, bookstore director at the University of Texas-Arlington, where 6,000 students chose to rent last school year. “In my 44 years in this business, that never happened before.” “One student came up to the register and saved $300 … he was excited,” says Lee Cobb, textbook manager at the University of North Florida’s bookstore. Chegg.com, a California-based online rental company with 4.2 million titles available for rent — some up to 80% discounted — is expanding, too, by partnering with eight campus bookstores this fall. It partnered with California State University in Fresno in January and saw its number of Fresno users jump from 400 to 1,600, says Chegg.com spokeswoman Tina Couch. Meanwhile, Kyle Smith , 21, a Bridgewater, N.J., political science major at Drew University in Madison, N.J., says he’s excited to see how much money renting textbooks can save him. Drew’s bookstore will offer about 30% of its titles for rent this fall. Typically, Smith shops online for used textbooks. Being able to see the books he’ll need and whether he can rent will help in deciding if he can afford to take a course, Smith says. “Some poli sci courses call for nine or 10 books,” Smith says. “For me, it’s all about the bottom line. If it’s cheaper to rent, that’s what I’ll do.”

Teens with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to drop out of high school or delay completing high school than other kids, a new study has found. Researchers analyzed U.S. data and found that nearly one-third of students with the most common type of ADHD either drop out or delay high school graduation. That rate is twice that of students with no psychiatric disorder. “Most people think that the student who is acting out, who is lying and stealing, is most likely to drop out of school. But we found that students with the combined type of ADHD — the most common type — have a higher likelihood of dropping out than students with disciplinary problems,” study senior author Julie Schweitzer, an ADHD expert and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis , said in a university news release. “This study shows that ADHD is a serious disorder that affects a child’s ability to be successful in school and subsequently in a way that can limit success in life,” she added. Developing methods to help students with ADHD graduate high school could have significant long-term societal benefits, according to Schweitzer. “If you don’t have your high school degree, you’re going to have less income. You can’t buy houses and cars. People who drop out of high school are more likely to be reliant on public assistance. This is a disorder that has serious long-term impacts on your ability to be successful and contribute to society, not just in school, but for the rest of your life,” she said. The researchers also found high drop-out rates among students with other mental health disorders. The rates were 26.6% for those with mood disorder, 24.9% for those with panic disorder, and up to about 20% for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, generalized anxiety disorder and social phobia. Smoking was also associated with a high risk of dropping out. The study found that 29% of students who smoked failed to complete high school on time, compared with 20% of those who used alcohol and 24.6% of those who used drugs. The study was published in the July online edition of the Journal of Psychiatric Research .

HOUSTON (AP) — A teacher and three other educators at a Houston charter school were charged Monday in connection with the videotaped beating of a 13-year-old boy who was attending the school. Teacher Sheri Lynn Davis , 40, was charged with injury to a child, a third-degree felony, and could face up to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine if convicted, said Harris County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Donna Hawkins. A cellphone video recorded by another student shows Davis pummeling a 13-year-old boy in class on April 29. She was fired the following week from Jamie’s House Charter School in northwest Houston. Three school employees — including school superintendent and founder Ollie Hilliard, principal David Jones and a teacher who witnessed the attack, Gabriel Moseley — were charged with failure to report child abuse, a misdemeanor charge, Hawkins said. Those defendants face up to one year in Harris County jail and up to a $4,000 fine if convicted. In the video, Davis is seen shoving, kicking and dragging the student, Isaiah Reagins, across the classroom floor as he tried to protect himself. Reagins suffered a black eye and other bruises in the attack. His mother, Alesha Johnson, sued Davis and the school. “What today signifies is what the kids have been telling us and what we’ve been saying all along is in fact true,” Brant Stogner, Johnson’s attorney, said Monday. “This goes beyond just one teacher and one kid, this goes to show a deeper problem at that school.” Reagins is living out of town with family and attending vacation Bible school, Stogner said. He will not return to Jamie’s House in the fall. “He’s recovering well from his physical injuries, but it’s hard to tell the extent of his emotional and physical injuries,” Stogner said. “At this point, we’re going to allow him to be a little boy this summer and when school starts up, see how he handles being back in school.” An attorney for Davis, Chip Lewis, has said the attack started when she tried to break up a fight in the hall and heard her classroom door shut and lock behind her. She shook the door until she caught the attention of a student who opened it, and that is when the recorded incident began. Davis has apologized for the beating, saying she was “without excuse” for the attack. She has also met with the student’s mother, and apologized. On Monday, Lisa Andrews, another attorney for Davis, said the full story will come out in court. “I feel very confident that when the entire story comes out and what precipitated Ms. Davis to do what she did, she will be vindicated,” Andrews said. An attorney for Moseley, Carvana Cloud, did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear whether the other defendants had retained lawyers. A voicemail left for the school was not immediately returned. Following the incident, the Texas Education Agency assigned a conservator to the school to review safety, discipline and teacher training and assist with improvements. The conservator will spend the summer reviewing the school’s discipline and training policies, according to an agency spokeswoman. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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

IRVINE, Calif. — If campus activism still brings to mind peace signs, a sea of white faces and liberal strongholds like Berkeley , meet Jesse Cheng. Cheng is a third-year Asian-American studies major at the University of California , Irvine, a campus less than five decades old in the middle of Orange County , a place of strip malls and subdivisions that gave birth to the ultraconservative John Birch Society . Comfortable talking with both administrators and anarchists, Cheng is a presence at protests but avoids getting arrested. He doesn’t want to put his graduation at risk or upset his mother, who worked hard to get him here and worries for his safety because she witnessed what happened to dissidents in her native China . Cheng is part of a growing movement of minority students rallying around a new cause — fighting a budget crisis that’s undermining access to higher education at a time when students of color have become a stronger demographic force. “For a lot of students of color, this is our dream and our hope — to get to college,” said Cheng, who is about to start a one-year term representing students from all 10 University of California campuses on the system’s board of regents. “We never thought we’d make it and we’re here. And we’re not going to give it up so easily.” While talk about a rebirth of student activism surfaces every few years whenever sweatshop labor or some other cause draws a decent crowd, some observers believe organizing around threats to higher education has the potential to grow into something big, maybe even a national movement. But a visit to a developing activist hotspot like UC-Irvine — where tensions have run high this year over everything from student tuition hikes to gender-neutral bathrooms and Middle East politics — illustrate the challenges involved. The increased diversity of students, many of them the first in their families to attend college, is both a strength and a liability. Splits have emerged over tactics and agendas, making coalition-building more challenging than ever. “It’s a very diverse group, a lot of students of color, which makes it more difficult to organize,” said Alejandra Ocasio, a fourth-year student from San Diego active in a Hispanic campus student association. “We all have our own interests. It can be difficult to reconcile those things.” At 27,000-student UC-Irvine, the scene includes a Pakistani-American working behind the scenes on budget issues as her own financial aid disappears, a Filipino-American struggling to shake fellow Asian students from political apathy and a gay African-American activist who thinks the focus on student fees obscures larger problems like the evils of capitalism. The fact that students of color are at the forefront of campus protests marks a significant shift, said Arthur Levine, a former president of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York who has studied student activism. “In the past, minorities have tended to provide leadership for the minority protests,” Levine said. “Now they’ve moved to center stage. They’re leading the protests.” On a recent morning, Cheng led a quick tour of activism at UC-Irvine. Here, he explained, is the designated “free-speech zone” in front of the administration building. About 1,000 people, a big crowd for a campus often maligned as apathetic, crowded onto the steps and filled an area between two flagpoles on March 4, a national day of college student demonstrations against tuition hikes and program cuts. “Everyone was silent,” Cheng recalled. “It felt more like a lecture. I mean, it was a great moment — a teaching moment. But it wasn’t a punch-you-in-the-face kind of deal.” Therein lies one challenge to organizing a movement around budget issues: a massive fee increase like the one UC students are facing this year is painful and personal. But it’s not as visceral as, say, the Vietnam War , which was a matter of life and death for students of the 60s and 70s facing the draft. “Our crisis is different — and our demographics are very different,” Cheng said. The March 4 Day of Action for Public Education began as a California-only event, a sequel to fall demonstrations against the state Board of Regents’ decision to boost UC undergraduate fees, the equivalent of tuition this fall by 32% for in-state students. The $2,500 fee hike brings UC education fees to about $10,300, plus about another $1,000 for campus-based charges. Despite no real organization, the protest spread nationwide. Most demonstrations were peaceful, although protesters threw punches and ice chunks in Milwaukee and shut down a major freeway in Oakland, during rush-hour traffic. It’s no accident that California, with its ethnic diversity and severe budget problems, is the epicenter of revived activism, said Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism who teaches at the City University of New York. The momentum building over budget problems, Johnston said, “speaks to the demographic transformation of the student body. In the 1960s, the average student was coming from a family of means, someone who was white, male, with a history of academic achievement in the family. In 2010, none of those things are as likely.” Johnston said the combination of students of lesser means taking on greater loans and American public higher education buckling under diminished state support and recession is a recipe for greater student engagement. In California, Cheng is joined in the cause by first-generation minority college students such as Victor Sanchez, who attends the University of California, Santa Cruz and leads the University of California Student Association. “It’s more than just fighting for what’s morally right,” said Sanchez, who has a Mexican father and Costa Rican mother and describes fighting for access to honors programs and Advanced Placement courses in high school. “It’s righting the wrongs of our own experiences, the stuff we’ve gone through, for our brothers and sisters and generations after.” Like much contemporary student activism, Sanchez and Cheng combine direct action and lobbying. Their pragmatism leads them to meet with administrators to press causes such as preserving the Cal Grant program for low-income students and boosting financial aid for their undocumented peers. But Sanchez also sees value in standing apart when the moment is right — like when he was kicked out of the state Capitol after staging a “study-in.” The point was to call attention to diminishing state support that has led to fee increases, staff furloughs and program cuts at a system considered the jewel of American public higher education. “For me, it’s most effective to have one foot in and one foot out,” Sanchez said. “What’s the point of addressing the powers that be if you don’t meet with them? We have to be a thorn in their sides and strong enough to advocate without losing our position.” At UC-Irvine, capturing students’ attention is another challenge shaped by cultural currents. Many Asian and Asian-American students, who are by far the largest racial group on campus at 47% of the student body, come from more moderate to conservative families and shy from political action, said Justine Calma, who became involved in campus activism by co-chairing a Filipino student organization. “Who isn’t opposed to a 32% fee increase?” Calma said one recent afternoon at the university’s Cross-Cultural Center, or “The Cross,” a gathering spot for minority student activists. “It’s not really a contentious issue. To see just a few of us come out … I fight for every handful.” UC-Irvine’s year of tumult is catalogued in messages scrawled in chalk on campus sidewalks and stairwells. “Free Gaza,” reads one. “Funeral for Education” says another. Then there is the more benign, “Good luck on your midterms.” The university has long been a hotbed of Muslim-Jewish tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the latest flare-up, 11 students, afterward known as the “Irvine 11″ were arrested in February for repeatedly interrupting a talk by Michael Oren , Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Next came the “Irvine 17,” a group staging a sit-in with a list of a dozen demands ranging from gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students to disarming police officers of Tasers. Restoring budget cuts was on the list, too. A group that included members of the Radical Student Union, a group of self-described anarchists and Marxists, occupied the library to protest reduced hours. Then, on May 4, students dressed in black staged a mock “Funeral for Education” complete with a wooden coffin. Some longtime activists, minority students among them, are wary of focusing too narrowly on the higher-education budget crisis. Ryan Davis, a gay African-American student and one of the Irvine 17, said rising student fees are just a symptom of the larger problem of a “racist, hetero-normative, capitalist structure we want to take down by any means necessary.” To Davis, that flawed structure allows for curriculum that glosses over minority contributions, campus workers not extended job protections and student bodies that don’t reflect the state’s diversity well enough. “We’re just trying to make sure that’s highlighted and we’re not just washing over that in all the rhetoric over fee hikes,” said Davis, of San Diego. Yet Davis said he doesn’t see student activists who work with administrators and elected officials on the budget crisis as enemies. And work-within-the-system students like Sarah Bana say they need students like Davis. “If Ryan doesn’t yell at people and tell them what is wrong, I can’t say, ‘Here is one little way you can fix it,’” said Bana, executive vice president of Associated Students of UC-Irvine, the undergraduate student government. A Pakistani-American whose father is a wholesale jeweler in downtown Los Angeles, Bana said the budget crisis drew her into activism. She receives both Pell and Cal Grants for low-income students. Over the last three years her financial aid was cut in half. An extra roommate recently moved into her apartment to save another $100 a month in rent. Manuel Gomez, UC-Irvine’s vice chancellor for student affairs, said the efforts of student leaders such as Cheng and Bana have already made a difference. He pointed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘s recent promise to veto any state budget that does not include more money for higher education as a gesture that might not have happened without student protests. “There’s traction here, real traction,” Gomez said. “This affects children. It affects children’s futures … My question is, ‘Is the vision compelling enough to sustain itself beyond reducing fees?’ Is has to go beyond anger.” With the mass actions from two months ago fading from memory, attention now shifts to a high-stakes California budget revision this month. Higher education’s share hangs in the balance. The next student regent for the UC system, the friend to radicals and administrators alike, has three simple goals moving forward: to get students into college, make them feel safe there and get them out with a degree. “I definitely think this is the birth of something,” Cheng said. “I’m not sure what the something is yet.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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The Princeton Review , a leading test-prep company, has agreed to stop using claims about average score gains in its marketing materials. While company officials say that they believe the claims were accurate, and that they were preparing to move away from such claims without outside prodding, the decision came after an investigation by the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which found the decision to stop making such claims to “be necessary and appropriate.” (The organization acts as an arbitrator among companies that agree to have complaints probed.) The inquiry was based on a complaint from Kaplan Inc., a major competitor in the test-prep industry. Kaplan asserted that Princeton Review had no basis to talk about score gains because the start point for measuring gains was generally determined by diagnostic tests, while the end point was a live test. Critics have said that they believe test-prep companies’ initial tests yield low results, encouraging people to sign up for courses and to credit the companies for large gains later. Whatever the accuracy of the claims, they have been quite visible. Examples cited in the investigation of the Princeton Review include: “In fact, our students improve their GMAT scores by an average of 90 points” or “Our students improve their GRE scores an average of 206 points” or “Our SAT Ultimate Classroom students average a score improvement of 255 points.” Scott Kirkpatrick, president of Princeton Review’s Test Prep Division, said that Kaplan’s complaint may have helped contribute to a sense that “the timing was right” to stop making score gain claims. But he said that the shift also reflects internal thinking about “who we want to be as a company.” He said that the company wanted to be “a true education company. Instead of talking about beating specific tests, we are about preparing all students for their next step on their own terms.” He said that every student “learns in a different way” and that learning “is not all about score improvement.” He said some students need and want large gains, and others need and want small gains. While test-prep companies should assure prospective students and their families about the results of their services, they should talk broadly about education, Kirkpatrick said. The company’s original focus was on “serving the upper echelon of students,” Kirkpatrick said, while today, the company wants to reach everyone. And it may also be harder for Princeton Review to focus on helping people “beat” the tests when the company is (like Kaplan before it) now in the business of providing course offerings and degrees, not just test-prep services and college guides. Kaplan praised the findings by the advertising group and the decision by Princeton Review. While Kaplan has not made comparable claims, it too has adjusted marketing in recent years by ending the use of testimonials in which test takers talk about their large gains after using Kaplan services. “We are moving away from even these individual testimonials in an effort to further move the discussion away from specific scores and in the direction of quality of programs and the student experience,” a spokeswoman said. Many admissions officers and testing critics have worried for years that the test preparation industry favors wealthier students, and also that test-prep companies may exaggerate their impact, leaving many applicants feeling that they have no choice but to sign up. Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said the evidence has long suggested that test-prep companies overstate the impact of their services. He said that the announcement from Princeton Review is positive, but that “everyone else in the coaching business remains free to fabricate score gain claims and promote them to the hilt.” Last year, the National Association for College Admission Counseling released an analysis on the impact of test-preparation services that backed the claims of companies that they do produce gains on the SAT. But the research suggested that the gains are relatively small — gains that theoretically shouldn’t matter much in admissions decisions. But NACAC also found evidence that at plenty of colleges, these kinds of gains could make a difference. SAT: 30-point bump can pay off in admissions ON THE WEB: More testing, less logic INSIDE HIGHER ED ARCHIVE: An LSAT without racial gaps? David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at NACAC, called the agreement by Princeton Review to stop the use of score gains in marketing “an important” action and “a step in the right direction.” He said that NACAC commissions that have studied standardized testing and test prep have heard from people who believed that there are “false diagnostic tests that led to inflated test score improvements” but that NACAC was never able to document the issue. He said that the inquiry by the advertising group “offers further evidence that students need better information, at a minimum, to protect against misrepresentation with regard to test preparation.” While Princeton Review and Kaplan may not be making such claims, others are. Many of the boutique companies that have proliferated in the test-prep industry in recent years have websites full of testimonials about large gains in scores and promises of minimum gains. The testimonial page of Knewton, for example, leads off with Alex R. saying “Thanks for the 240 point increase.” And the comparison it offers on the GMAT test-prep course plays up a money-back guarantee for anyone who doesn’t see a 50-point jump in scores. Josh Anish, a senior editor at Knewton, said that the company measures gains in several ways. If a student has taken a test prior to enrolling in one of Knewton’s programs, that test is the base. If not, the company does have diagnostic tests. He said that because the company hires many people who used to work for the testing companies such as the Educational Testing Service , Knewton is confident of the accuracy of its diagnostic tests. Anish said that there is nothing wrong with boasting about score gains. He said that’s what customers want. “We are proud of our courses,” he said, and many of the clients are “a type-A audience and they want to know about return on investment.” READERS: What standardized tests have you taken and what did you do or use to prepare?

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A prank literally spelled out in the University of Utah student newspaper has prompted administrators to put a hold on nine students’ transcripts. The seniors wrote goodbye columns for The Daily Utah Chronicle ‘s April 28 edition. The first letter of each column is in larger type; together, they spell out two words referring to genitalia. One is penis; the other is a derogatory word for female genitalia. Editor Rachel Hanson, one of the nine seniors, said she’s concerned the administration’s response could violate freedom of the press. “It was childish and stupid, but it’s not a cause for institutional notice,” said Jim Fisher, an associate professor of communication and the paper’s faculty adviser. “It, at the very least, has a chilling effect, and at the most could be censorship. I don’t agree with the behavior at all, but I support their right to be idiots.” The Chronicle has a tradition of hiding vulgar or racy phrases in the year’s final edition. But in the past, the words were better hidden and in some cases have been tamer, like “drunk.” STUDENT NEWS: Court upholds ban on alcohol ads NOTRE DAME: Students apologize for cartoon about gay violence Students earlier this week got e-mails informing them of the holds on their transcripts and requesting a meeting with the associate dean of students. The e-mail Hanson got said the students may have engaged in “intentional disruption or obstruction of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary proceedings or other University activities,” which could be grounds for disciplinary action. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Student Press Law Center wrote a letter to university officials defending the students’ actions. “While the content in question might offend members of the campus community, it is unquestionably protected expression under the First Amendment,” the letter said. University Vice President for Student Affairs Barb Snyder told The Associated Press that all nine students were allowed to participate in commencement activities Friday. She said the hold on each student’s file would be removed after they meet with the associate dean to discuss the matter. “We’re not in any way trying to interfere with their free speech rights,” Snyder said. “The language used was offensive to many members of the university community … men as well as women.” “We’re just having a conversation about the motivation and what they learned from it, if anything,” Snyder added. Writer Michael McFall said that while he defends the use of the word penis, he thinks the group abused its freedoms by printing the other word. “We meant it in the anatomical opposite to penis,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune . “We overlooked” that the word is derogatory to women, McFall added. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.