NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Michael Bloomberg named a top publishing executive with no background in education to head the nation’s largest school system after announcing Tuesday that New York City ‘s longtime chancellor was stepping down. Hearst Magazines chairwoman Cathie Black will become the first female chancellor of the city’s 1.1 million-student school system, replacing Joel I. Klein , who has served as chancellor since 2002. Klein is leaving to become an executive vice president at News Corp . Bloomberg praised Black, a Chicago native who spent eight years at USA Today as president, publisher, board member and Gannett Co. executive vice president, as a “world-class manager.” The billionaire mayor, who often eschews traditional resumes for government posts, said Black’s business skills make her an ideal leader of educators and students. “She understands that we have to make sure that our kids have the skill sets to partake in the great American dream,” Bloomberg said. “In the end, I picked somebody who I have confidence is the right person for this job at this time.” The appointment will require a waiver from the state Department of Education because Black is not a certified teacher. The mayor said Klein will stay on until the end of the year. Black attended parochial schools in Chicago and sent her own children to private boarding schools in Connecticut. She has been on Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” list and is the author of a book called “Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life).” She will be the first woman to lead the New York City school system. At Hearst, she oversees titles including Esquire; Good Housekeeping; O, the Oprah magazine and Popular Mechanics. Black’s appointment reflects Bloomberg’s view that success in business translates to similar achievements in public service. “There is no one who knows more about the skills our children will need to succeed in the 21st century economy,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference with Klein and Black. Before Klein joined the Bloomberg administration, he was with media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG . Previously, he was an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration. He headed the U.S. Justice Department ‘s antitrust division for nearly four years, where his work included launching the case to break up Microsoft Corp. Unlike Black, Klein grew up in New York City and attended public schools. As chancellor, he often clashed with unions and with parent groups that complained of being denied a role in running the schools. “Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities,” said Leonie Haimson, who leads a parent advocacy group called Class Size Matters. Ernest Logan, the president of the union that represents New York City principals, said Klein “had a rocky road” as chancellor but learned on the job. Logan said he knows little about Black. “I’m now going to read her book,” he said. Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew said: “I look forward to working with Ms. Black. As a teacher, I will help in any way I can to improve the education for the children of New York.” Black told reporters she has had “limited exposure to unions” in her previous jobs. Klein was appointed chancellor after Bloomberg won control of the school system and disbanded the Board of Education. Bloomberg and Klein have touted the progress that students have made under their watch, but the state Education Department said last summer that rising scores on standardized tests had been overstated because the tests had become too easy. Black will likely serve no longer than the three years remaining in Bloomberg’s term. “She’s had a career, so maybe she can have the ability to devote the next three years to public service,” Bloomberg said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors fled for-profit college stocks on Thursday after the sector’s bellwether predicted a 40-percent drop in student enrollment next quarter and withdrew its forecast for next year. The news chilled an industry facing increased government scrutiny over concerns about soaring student loan defaults. Enrollments at for-profit schools surged during the recession. Big advertising budgets drew students trying to bolster their resumes as a hedge against high unemployment. But critics claim the schools are not helping students find better jobs and say enrollment counselors sign up many students who are unprepared for higher education. When they drop out, they are still stuck paying back their student loans. CLOSER LOOK: For-profit colleges under fire over value, accreditation Apollo Group Inc ., which runs the University of Phoenix , attributes its expected enrollment decline to changing practices aimed at satisfying new government regulations. Apollo will no longer pay its counselors bonuses based on how many students they enroll. It also will provide new students with a free three-week trial program to see if they are ready for school, weeding out those at risk of leaving school before earning degrees. Meanwhile, the industry is facing a proposed new rule from the Department of Education that could limit schools’ access to federal financial aid — the bulk of their revenue — if graduates’ debt levels are too high or too few students repay loans. And, many schools are close to maxing out how much revenue they can receive from federal financial aid resources. Federal regulations cap that amount at 90%. The industry averages 83%, largely because they focus on recruiting lower-income students who qualify for federal Pell Grants . “Now, they have to slow down enrollment and be less active in targeting these students. They have to go back to the more traditional students who are working adults,” said Matt Snowling, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. In afternoon trading, shares of Apollo tumbled $12.64, or 26%, to $36.86. The rest of the sector followed suit. Education Management Corp. shares lost $2.70, or 20%, to $10.57. DeVry Inc . fell $8.67, or 17%, to $41.90; Corinthian Colleges Inc . decreased $1.16, or 19%, to $4.86; ITT Educational Services Inc. dropped $10.58, or 16%, to $55.34; Career Education fell $3.29, or 16%, to $16.898; Strayer Education Inc. declined $21.21, or 14%, to $135.84. Shares of newspaper publisher Washington Post Co., which owns the Kaplan school chain, slumped $34.61, or 8.1%, to $394. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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.

NEW YORK (AP) — The City University of New York and IBM will open a unique school that merges high school with two years of college, allowing students to earn an associate’s degree, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday in announcing a series of ambitious educational initiatives. Those students will be “first in line for a job at IBM,” Bloomberg said in his announcement. The mayor also renewed a proposal to do away with automatic teacher tenure and instead ensure it’s linked to classroom performance. He also said the city would work with the state to end “seat time” — requiring students to spend a certain number of hours in desks learning every subject — and would try to change a state law that requires schools to buy printed textbooks rather than use digital content. “That may be good for the business textbook industry but it’s really a bad deal for our students in this day and age,” Bloomberg said. The mayor also said the city will use a $36 million federal grant to enlist highly skilled teachers to work in low-performing schools and mentor fellow instructors. ” New York City is … laying the foundation to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start college or a career,” Bloomberg said. The mayor said the city wants to use a four-tier rating system to determine whether a teacher gets tenure, and said that beginning this year, only teachers rated “effective” or “highly effective” will be awarded lifetime job protection. Tenure would be awarded only if a teacher has made an impact on student achievement, he said. “Just as we are raising the bar for our students through higher standards, we must also raise the bar for our teaches and principals — and we are,” the mayor said. Bloomberg has proposed ending automatic teacher tenure in recent years. The state Legislature amended the law earlier this year to add student test scores and performance as criteria in evaluating teachers. Tenured teachers can be dismissed for incompetence or insubordination under the law but have due process rights. “If the mayor wants to change seniority he will need to talk to the Legislature,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers , the city teachers’ union. Mulgrew said that tenure decisions are arbitrary. “Most teachers would welcome an objective tenure-granting process based on agreed-upon standards,” he said. The partnership with IBM for a high school-college hybrid will build on work that the company is already doing in community colleges, said Stan Litow, vice president of corporate affairs for IBM. “We have every confidence that large numbers of those kids would be able to assume entry-level jobs at IBM and other IT companies,” Litow said. Earlier Monday, Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker said about $40 million has been raised so far to match the $100 million donation to the city’s school system from Facebook ‘s founder Mark Zuckerberg . Booker appeared in Manhattan with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Zuckerberg at NBC News’ “Education Nation” Summit. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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