A new survey finds that about 15 percent of teens have sent or received nude or nearly nude photos via text messages

John D. Sutter
CNN

Nearly one-sixth of teens who own cell phones have received nude or nearly nude images via text message from someone they know, according to a new survey on "sexting" from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The national telephone survey confirms parent and teacher worries that young people are using cell phones to send out and receive sexually explicit images of themselves and of romantic partners.

The 800-person survey, released Tuesday by the nonprofit research group, found 15 percent of cell-phone-owning teens ages 12 to 17 had received nude or nearly nude photos by phone. Four percent of the teens said they had sent out sexually explicit photos or videos of themselves.

Older teens were more likely to send sexual images through text messages than younger teens. Four percent of 12-year-olds reported sending sexually suggestive images by text message, while 8 percent of 17-year-olds reported texting nude or partially nude photos.

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According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, over the last 20 years there have been hundreds of allegations of school personnel using restraint and seclusion in abusive ways on children.

George Miller and Cathy McMorris Rodgers
Special to CNN

All Cedric wanted was lunch.

A 14-year old student in a special education classroom in Texas, Cedric was living with a foster family because of a history of neglect, including malnutrition. But on this day in 2002, his teacher tried to punish him by withholding food, despite the abuse he had suffered as a young child.

Cedric's teacher delayed his lunch for hours to discipline him for refusing to do his work. When he wouldn't comply, his teacher put him in a face down restraint and sat on him in front of his classmates. Cedric said repeatedly that he could not breathe. He died minutes later on the classroom floor.

Cedric's tragic story isn't an isolated case in America's schools today.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, over the last 20 years there have been hundreds of allegations of school personnel using restraint and seclusion in abusive ways on children. It's happening disproportionately to students with disabilities, often at the hands of untrained staff. Many of these students bear haunting physical and emotional scars. And in a number of cases, students have died.

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Editor's Note: A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states may have lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

The tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute did an evaluation of the tests.

Take a look at a few sample questions from Wisconsin and Massachusetts here.

Editor's Note: A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states may have lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

The National Center for Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education

Since 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has compared each state’s standard for proficient performance in reading and mathematics by placing the state standards onto the NAEP scale.

The procedure, “mapping,” allows the level of achievement required for proficient performance in one state to be compared with the level of achievement required in another state. The mapping procedure offers an approximate way to assess the relative rigor of the states’ standards for proficient performance.

Take a look at the full report here...

Program Note: Don't miss Randi Kaye’s full report tonight on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Randi Kaye| BIO
AC360° Correspondent

So let me get this straight!

Schools across the country are lowering standards – actually dumbing down lesson plans – to avoid sanctions under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

That act was President George W. Bush’s signature education reform. It mandates that every child in school must be “proficient” in reading and math by 2014 and schools that fall short are subject to sanctions.

Now a new federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered academic standards in recent years. Fifteen states in all lowered proficiency standards in fourth and eighth-grade reading or math from 2005 to 2007. Three states – Maine, Oklahoma, and Wyoming – lowered standards in both subjects at both grade levels. Yikes!

On a positive note, though, the study found eight states actually raised their standards even though their funding was threatened.

The federal study found some states had been lowering their proficiency standards which made it easier for lower test scores to qualify as proficient. Isn’t the idea of going to school about raising students proficiency and making kids smarter? It was when I was younger.

What is more important, avoiding sanctions or giving kids a better education? Parents, if you’re reading this, how would you feel about your child’s school making it easier for your child to get by?

For example, in Mississippi, the state with the least rigorous standards, a score of 163 is considered “proficient” but in Massachusetts, at the top, the bar for proficiency is set at 232. That’s a difference of 69 points. Should your child’s education be determined by zip code?

The standards, according to the study, are highest in Massachusetts and South Carolina. Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee were among the lowest. But the standards around the country are all over the place. Translation: fourth graders in Massachusetts may be learning at a much higher level than those in, say, Tennessee. In the end, who does that hurt? And who will really be better prepared for the future?

Right now, there is no uniform standard for proficiency. The states, except for Texas and Alaska which declined, are working together to create some type of common academic standards.

The way NCLB works is schools get to set their own standards and write their own standardized tests. All they have to do is make sure their kids pass them. Dumbing them down practically guarantees that! If the students don’t pass, the federal government will take away some of the money the schools were given. Schools may also have to pay for tutoring students or even bus kids to another school where they can possibly do better. So instead of taking that risk, some schools simply made it easier for the kids to look proficient without really being proficient. Then they get to keep their funding and everybody’s happy, right?

Not exactly says the Obama Administration. It’s been trying to persuade states to adopt a uniform set of tougher standards for education but because education policy is largely controlled at the state level, the federal government can’t impose a set of standards. Education Secretary Arne Duncan puts it this way: “We’re lying to our children when we tell them they’re proficient, but they’re not achieving at a level that will prepare them for success once they graduate.”

Read the full report, compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, here.

Follow Randi Kaye on Twitter @randikayecnn.

Editor's Note: A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states may have lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

The tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute did an evaluation of the tests.

Take a look at a few sample questions from Wisconsin and Massachusetts here.

Editor's Note: A new federal study shows that nearly one-third of states may have lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years – a move that helps schools stay immune from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. The Department of Education study found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standards at the middle school level in basic subjects from 2005 to 2007. Were schools allowed to lower standards? And why? Randi Kaye is keeping them honest tonight. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

The National Center for Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education

Since 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has compared each state’s standard for proficient performance in reading and mathematics by placing the state standards onto the NAEP scale.

The procedure, “mapping,” allows the level of achievement required for proficient performance in one state to be compared with the level of achievement required in another state. The mapping procedure offers an approximate way to assess the relative rigor of the states’ standards for proficient performance.

Take a look at the full report here...

John King
CNN

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more from Steve Perry. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Police say a student at Richmond High School was gang raped outside during a homecoming dance.

Steve Perry
CNN Education Contributor

Our kids are subjected to environments and images of violence on a level never seen before. They are numbed. I asked a group of girls about why listening to Chris Brown was wrong and I was not prepared to be blown away by their twisted perception of what is reasonable behavior.

If you have not been in a school lately you ought to be afraid, very afraid. The highest rates of violence are directly related to what is considered acceptable.

From the streets of Chicago – where children watched and an adult taped a child be beaten to death – to Richmond High School where children watched a child's innocence ripped from her soul, we have seen what happens when children lose respect for life.

This is the direct result of kids feeling unraised and unloved. It is also the result of kids growing up without adult structure and high expectations. Communities can become Lord of the Flies environments in which the kids make adult decisions and they decide wrong every single time.

We have got to answer the question, "How much do we love our kids?"

The answer must be enough to create smaller, loving schools with longer school days and years. These schools are structured and driven by high expectations.

We can show kids how to love themselves and others. We can prevent many forms of violence. While there is no cure for crazy, we can create loving educational communities because we have examples all over the nation.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, second from right, listens to Obama's speech Tuesday.

Sam Chaltain
Forum for Education and Democracy, National Director

Today, as young people across the country head back to school, the rest of us would be wise to heed the words of our former president by asking ourselves, our neighbors and our elected officials a simple question:

“Is our children learning?”

The answer, of course, may depend largely on where you live. But what troubles me more than that basic lack of fairness is that our entire public education system isn’t even being asked to measure whether or not young people are learning – only whether they are demonstrating progress on basic-skills standardized tests in 3rd and 8th grade reading and math.

As everyone knows, learning involves more than basic skills and regurgitating information. It requires higher-order skills and the capacity to digest, make sense of, and apply what we’ve been taught.

Why, then, are we allowing well-intentioned policymakers to unintentionally discourage schools from doing those essential things? Why are we judging whether schools are successes or failures based solely on these insufficient numbers? And why are we tolerating a national culture of testing, when we all know from personal experience that what we need is a national culture of learning?

We can do better.

We can have schools in every neighborhood that teach children both basic- and higher-order skills, that allow creativity and innovation to flourish, and that lead all children to discover how to fully and effectively participate in our economy and democracy.

Before that can happen, however, we need to start having a different conversation. We need to restore the focus of public education reform to its rightful place – on learning, and on the core conditions that best support it.

To help bring about this subtle shift of thinking, a coalition of individuals, education advocates, civil rights leaders and philanthropic organizations has launched the Rethink Learning Now campaign with a simple goal – to ask people to reflect on what they already know to be true about powerful learning, to share those personal stories, and then to use that collective wisdom to help the country better understand what a healthy, high-functioning learning environment actually looks like.

Already, the campaign has collected a diverse set of stories – from citizens to Senators to the Secretary of Education himself – and begun outlining a core set of essential conditions for schools to cultivate.

-  Angela V. from Texas wrote about her junior year of high school, when a new teacher demanded more of her than she knew she was capable of. “My family, church, and community imbued me with a strong, positive sense of self,” she writes. “Where I was lacking, however, was with respect to my academic self-esteem.”

- Jamal F. from California shared memories of long afternoon walks as a young boy with his grandfather. “We cannot think that we need to replicate in public schools the level of understanding and the personal connection between a boy and his grandfather,” he offers. “But we can identify conditions that made this learning experience meaningful and attempt to foster them in our schools.”

- And Arne D. from Chicago – yes, that Arne D. from Chicago – talked about spending time in his mother’s after school tutoring program on the South Side of Chicago. “Everyone was challenged to do their best, every single day,” he wrote. “It was the ultimate in high expectations, both for individuals and the group as a whole.”

In the weeks and months ahead, thousands of other people across the country will share their own stories. As the number of stories grows over time, we’ll all see, in real-time, which attributes appear most often across such a diverse set of experiences. And as that list takes shape, we’ll all be better equipped to hold ourselves, our lawmakers and our local communities more accountable to implementing policies that are based more clearly on what young people need in order to thrive – and stay – in school, and not just on what is easiest to quantitatively measure.

Editor's Note: Sam Chaltain is the National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy, a DC-based education “action tank.” His next book, “American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community,” will be released in October 2009.

AC360°

The White House released the text of a controversial back-to-school speech to students from President Obama that has angered some conservative parents and pundits.

The speech was posted to the White House website.

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Read the rest of the speech here and tell us what you think.

Editor’s note: At 12:00pm  ET tomorrow, President Obama will go to a high school in Arlington, Va., to deliver a back-to-school speech to the nation’s students. The White House plans to release the speech online today.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

You frequently hear claims that the United States has the best health care system in the world, despite data that suggest otherwise.

You never hear claims that the United States has the best school system in the world, because of data that suggest otherwise.

In fact, you never (okay, almost never) hear anything good about public education in this country, at least not until the subject is college or university.

Have the public schools been talked down to the point where broad-based success (rather than the individual student, school or district) is impossible – a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?

Americans often say they distrust Congress and the whole lot of them should be thrown out – but then go ahead and re-elect their own representative.

Well, something like that goes on when the topic is public education.

In the most recent edition of an annual poll by the educators association Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup more than half of those responding graded their local schools with an A or a B but gave the nation’s schools overall significantly lower marks, with fewer than one in five awarding an A or B. "This continues a long-standing difference, suggesting that Americans like the schools they know but are much less positive about public education in general," a review of the poll observed.

"The reasons for this disconnect are simple," Gerald Bracey, a Phi Delta Kappa columnist and author of Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, told eSchool News. "Americans never hear anything positive about the nation's schools and haven't since the years just before Sputnik in 1957." Bracey cited not only the news media and education advocacy groups for the bad-mouthing, but also politicians, up to and including the White House. "On the other hand," Bracey said, "parents use other sources and resources for information about their local schools: teachers, administrators, friends, neighbors, newsletters, PTAs, and their kids themselves; and they're in a much better position to observe what's actually happening in American schools."

Education Secy. Arne Duncan has his doubts. “Too many people don’t understand how bad their own schools are. They always think it’s somebody else’s kid who’s not being educated. They don’t understand that it’s their own kid who’s being short-changed. That’s part of our challenge. How do you awaken the public to believe that your own kid isn’t getting what they need and you don’t know it. If they would wake up, they could be part of the change. We need to wake them up,” Duncan said in an interview with Phi Delta Kappa’s magazine.

Waking them up may be difficult. The latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, conducted at the end of August, found education tied for fourth as the most important issue facing the country, tied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at 8 percent, but trailing the economy (41 percent), health care (20 percent) and the deficit (15 percent) percent. Remove the economy from the list and education still ranks fourth.

As it orbited overhead in 1957, the Soviet satellite called Sputnik scared the daylights out of Americans.

The American education world’s version of Sputnik came in 1983, when a blue-ribbon panel appointed by President Ronald Reagan issued a report titled “A Nation at Risk.”

The first paragraph sounded an alarm: “We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The second paragraph warned: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

A year ago, the only teacher on the panel defended that strong language. "Any reasonable teacher should have understood at the time — and I did — that we need to tighten up that belt. We have to do something," Jay Sommers, a former National Teacher of the Year, told USA Today.

Something has been done, a series of reforms that led up to the No Child Left Behind act, a signature piece of legislation from the administration of George W. Bush, which, with the best of intentions, put an emphasis on basic reading and math skills, judging the effectiveness of schools through test data.

Of course, as anyone in the news business knows, the initial headline gets more attention than the follow-up later. So it was several years later when an internal analysis by the federal government determined that some data in “A Nation at Risk” had been misinterpreted, that things weren’t nearly as bad as the report stated, that in fact there were measurements showing improvement.

So what is the state of public education in 2009? To hear some folks talk, public schools are a disaster to be avoided. But has public education been talked down more than it deserves?

Consider this from UCLA Professor Michael Rose: "God knows, there is a lot wrong with our schools. But the scope and sweep of the negative public talk is what concerns me, for it excludes the powerful, challenging work done in schools day by day across the country, and it limits profoundly the vocabulary and imagery available to us, constrains the way we frame problems, blinkers our imagination. This kind of talk fosters neither critique nor analysis but rather a grand dismissiveness of despair."

Rose told me he first wrote those words 15 years ago. I told him they sound as true now as they did then.

Census Bureau data of note:

56 million

The projected number of students to be enrolled in the nation’s elementary through high schools (grades K-12) this fall.

11 percent

Projected percentage of elementary through high school students enrolled in private schools this fall.

98,793

Number of public schools in 2006-07. In 2007-08, there were 28,218 private schools.

3,970

The number of public charter schools nationwide in 2006-07. These schools enrolled 1.2 million students.

The White House says President Obama's address next week to schoolchildren isn't a policy speech.

Alan Silverleib
CNN

Call it a lesson in contemporary political discourse.

Educators across America found themselves at the center of a political storm this week as conservatives exploded in anger over President Obama's plans to give a speech to the country's schoolchildren.

A stunned White House insisted the address, planned for Tuesday, and accompanying suggested lesson plans are meant simply to encourage students to study hard and stay in school.

But some parents said they aren't buying it. They said they're convinced the president is going to use the opportunity to press a partisan political agenda on impressionable young minds.

Keep reading...

Rep. Pete Stark (L) and Jim Greer (R).

John Avlon
CNN Contributor

As a heated wingnut summer heads to a close, we look at a new GOP “socialist” attack on President Obama for speaking to school children, a ‘brain dead’ attack on Democratic centrists and, in a bonus round, a callous conspiracy theory just in time for the 8th anniversary of 9/11.

President Obama is slated to give a speech to America’s school children next Tuesday on the subject of taking personal responsibility for their success in school.

Last time I checked, personal responsibility and socialism were opposite concepts, but that didn’t stop Florida GOP Chair Jim Greer from firing off an unhinged press release.

Keep reading...

The National Center for Education Statistics found that the U.S. students placed below average in both math and science.

By Sally Holland
CNN Senior Producer

American children aren't necessarily getting smarter or dumber-but that might not be good enough to compete globally.

A special analysis put out by the National Center for Education Statistics last week compares 15-year-old U.S. students with other countries in the Organization for Economic Development and found that the U.S. students placed below average in both math and science. In math, the high schoolers were in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated, putting them behind countries like Finland, China and Estonia.

According to the report, the U.S. math scores were not measurable different in 2006 than the previous scores in 2003, but as other countries have improved, the United States has remained stagnant.

As for science, the U. S. falls behind countries like Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a room full of science and math experts of the National Science Board on Tuesday morning that this will hurt the U.S. as we compete in the international community. He said, "We are lagging the rest of the world and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways."

He added, "I think we have become complacent. We've sort of lost our way."

Speaking to the audience, Duncan acknowledged that in some areas of the U.S., it is hard to find good math and science teachers. To solve that problem, he said, "I think we should pay math and science teachers a lot more money. We pay everybody the same. We have areas of critical need, math, science, foreign language, special education in some places. I think we need to pay a premium for that."

The National Education Association, which represents teachers, is arguing against such a proposal. "Simply being a teacher of a hard-to-staff subject does not equate with effective instruction, and therefore, should not be rewarded in-and-of-itself through a salary differential," according to an NEA position statement.

For the younger students, the 4th and 8th graders that were part of the mathematics testing have improved their average scores compared to their European counterparts, but still lag behind their peers in Asian countries like Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Singapore.

In science, 4th graders have fallen behind other students even though their average scores remain about the same. The 8th graders scores remain about the same compared to 1995.

"It has huge implications," Duncan says. "I think as a real economic imperative we have to educate our way to a better economy."

The study by the National Center for Education Statistics can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2009/analysis/index.asp.

Ferguson writes that there are still large achievement gaps across races in American schools.

Ronald F. Ferguson
Special to CNN

Raising the quality of teaching and learning in American schools is a priority. It receives a great deal of attention in our national discourse and should receive more.

Test scores and graduation rates are improving faster in other nations than in the United States and this threatens our quality of life in a competitive world.

In addition, achievement gaps between racial groups in the United States remain large. The social and political vitality of the nation may depend on closing these racial gaps. Blacks and Hispanics are doing better than in the past compared to whites, but still not nearly good enough.

Making schools better should be only one part of our national strategy. Life at home has been a relatively neglected topic and needs to come out of the shadows.

Especially in churches, neighborhood organizations, families and informal social networks, helping parents do their best needs to be as big a priority as achieving excellent schools.

This goes beyond public policies.

Keep reading...

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more about the DREAM Act and who it may impact on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

A fence separates the United States from Mexico in the U.S. Border Patrol's Yuma Sector in San Luis, Arizona.

From the Senate's version of the DREAM Act:

A bill to amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to permit States to determine State residency for higher education purposes and to authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.

Read more...

Editor's Note: Tune in to AC360º at 10pm to find out more about undergraduate students facing hurdles because of their immigrant status and what the DREAM Act could mean for them.

A group of undocumented students interviewed for the story.

Traci Tamura
CNN Senior Producer

The issue of illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico is always a hot button topic. I have produced numerous stories on illegal immigration from all sides and from both sides of the border.

My most recent story that I produced for the AC360° about undocumented students took me back to my college roots – UCLA.

When I came back to campus this go around it was to meet with a group of undocumented students who belong to IDEAS (Improving Dreams Equality Access and Success). We talked to them about how their illegal status affects their quest to get an education.

Just hearing about how they don't qualify for any financial aid, can't get drivers licenses and the impact it has on their lives made me think about my own college experiences.

Some travel for hours by bus just to make an 8am class. When I lived on campus it was still a "struggle" to make it to class on time and all I had to do was walk across campus.

Part-time job – not one that pays legally. Which means any research grant positions in their field of study is off the table. I have very fond memories of working at the local Ski & Sports shop to help pay my way through college.

Leasing an apartment, without a social security number – out of the question. I don't think anyone forgets their first apartment. I remember the excitement of renting a small one bedroom with a friend who I had been my roommate in the dorms.

As undocumented students, they aren't able to do some of the social things that are the fabric of college life. Go to an R-rated movie or frequent a college student’s survival staple – Happy Hour. I remember Taco Tuesday's at the local bar where you could buy one drink and eat dinner for free.

Hopping on a plane for a quick Spring Break trip – no way. These mostly straight A, high achieving students can't even think about doing that. They can't fly without identification and it's risky to even cross state lines by car.

After spending some time with these students, you realize they face daily challenges that most of their fellow students can't even imagine. The biggest among them is living with the daily fear of getting stopped and deported.

My biggest college worry – mid-terms and finals.

Their future outlook...

Nancy got accepted to UCLA and Harvard Master's in education programs.

Jacob and Christopher want to be top notch doctors.

Mario wants to be an economist.

Jacqueline and Nancy aspire to be lawyers.

All of them have the potential and passion to reach those goals but the reality is their future hinges on immigration reform.

My reality – I got to help tell their story.

Obama arrives Wednesday in the Saudi Arabian capital on the first leg of his trip to the Mideast and Europe.

Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
For The Wall Street Journal

Arabs appreciate the fact that President Barack Obama has decided to deliver a major speech in an Islamic country (Egypt) about relations between the United States and Muslims, many of whom were alienated by American foreign policy in recent years.

More than half of the 300 million residents of the Middle East are people under 25 years of age. The region has the fastest growing labor force in the world.

With an already high unemployment rate of 15%, the Middle East must create 80 million new jobs in the next five years just to keep apace of our demographics. Unemployment is a problem afflicting all 22 member states of the Arab League, but it is most conspicuously a youth issue. Fifty percent of the jobless are under the age of 25, roughly double the world average. Women have an especially difficult time finding jobs.

These increasingly restive youths are particularly vulnerable to those who would preach radicalism and hostility toward the West, especially the U.S.

Read more...

Sidney Frank getting honorary degree in 2005.

49 Sidney Frank scholars graduating Sunday

Norman Boucher
Editor & Publisher, Brown Alumni Magazine

Sidney Frank was too poor to spend more than a single year at Brown University in the late 1930’s. But it was through a friend he made at Brown that he got his first job in the liquor industry and over the years wound up making billions off sales of Jaegermeister and, later, Grey Goose Vodka.

Frank had fond memories of Brown, and in 2004, when he was richer than he’d ever dreamed he would be and it was time to unburden himself of some of this wealth, he phoned President Ruth J. Simmons - the kind of call a university president can only fantasize about receiving, she says –to offer some of his fortune to Brown.

With that call began an unlikely friendship between a Jewish, cigar-smoking, rough-voiced liquor baron and an eloquent, Harvard-educated academic who happens to be the great-granddaughter of slaves.

What united them was a childhood of poverty and the hope that education will continue to offer a way out. And so Frank made what at the time was the largest gift ever to Brown: $100 million. But there was one very big string attached: the money could be used only to pay full freight for students, who like Simmons and him, could never otherwise afford an Ivy League education.

And so among the roughly 1550 cap-and-gowned seniors getting their degrees on Brown’s College Green this Sunday will be the first group of 49 Sidney Frank Scholars, young men and women who are helping lead a quietly subversive campaign to nullify the idea that the Ivy League is a club that only the rich can afford to join. More Frank scholars will follow them - 32 every year.

Sidney Frank died in 2006. But somewhere, you can bet, he will be toasting them with a chilled glass of Grey Goose.