Higher Education News

Just three days after Rodney D. Bennett was named the university's next leader, a tornado devastated the campus and shifted his priorities.

Highly publicized attacks on women have led to discussions about bias and harassment.

With students newly interested in making their own food and experimenting with recipes, dorm kitchens are being remade as gathering places.

A recent symposium brought together researchers in the digital humanities with scientists from the data-heavy trenches of computational biology.

Francis L. Lawrence led Rutgers from 1990 to 2002, and Gerald W. Lynch was president of a criminal-justice college from 1977 to 2004.

The Community College of Baltimore County has reached out to the 2,000 workers laid off by RG Steel. The expected flood of applicants hasn't come.

Michael T. Benson, Eastern Kentucky's next leader, is president of Southern Utah University. Read about that and other job-related news.

The expectations legislatures place on them are higher than ever, campus chiefs said at a gathering in San Francisco, but they're finding more understanding, too.

The discovery that one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings was a student at UMass-Dartmouth led to an unnerving ordeal for the campus.

Christopher L. Eisgruber, a constitutional scholar, will replace Shirley M. Tilghman, who announced last fall that she would step down this year.

Many worry that religion will be seen as the determining factor in the suspects' actions, and that the suspicion that followed September 11, 2001, will re-emerge.

Students hunkered down in dorms or off campus on Friday, but tensions gave way to relief when the second suspect, a student at UMass at Dartmouth, was apprehended.

On one campus, grieving for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings shifts abruptly to anxiety'and evacuation'after a suspect is found to be a student there.

Mr. Alda played a central role in creating a center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook that helps researchers explain their findings to a general audience.

Today GLSEN hosts its national Day of Silence-a day where students throughout the country take a vow of silence to call attention to anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools. I want to encourage all of us NOT to be silent on an important issue: the need to address and eliminate bullying and harassment in our schools.

No student should ever feel unsafe in school. If students don’t feel safe, they can’t learn. And if left unaddressed, bullying and harassment can rapidly escalate into even more serious abuse.

I want to remind students, parents, and administrators of the power of supportive clubs, like the Gay Straight Alliances or GSAs, to foster safe school environments. The Department of Education has provided guidance to schools on their obligations under federal laws to provide equal access to extracurricular clubs, including GSAs, as well to address bullying and harassment and gender-based violence.

Let’s work together to end bullying and harassment in schools.

Please visit StopBullying.gov and find additional resources from the Department of Education below–including school obligations under federal law:

• Equal access to extracurricular clubs
• Bullying and harassment
• Gender-based violence
• Sexual violence on college campuses

Arne Duncan is U.S. Secretary of Education

Glimpses of life in academe from around the world. 

“This job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation.”

— President Barack Obama, December 16, 2012

In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school, President Obama has called for a collaborative effort to keep our children safe at home, at school, and in the community. The National PTA and U.S. Department of Education have joined together to support schools and communities as we work towards this goal.

To kick off this joint effort, National PTA President Betsy Landers recently joined Secretary Arne Duncan for a town hall meeting to discuss school safety at Loch Raven High School in Baltimore, Md. The event included an open conversation with students, parents, teachers, and community members about school safety in the community. Over 350 community members attended the town hall to voice concerns and share ideas on how we can work together to create a safer learning environment. Watch the video archive of the event here.

Conversations as important as this one must continue long after everyone leaves the town hall. Here are a few good resources that may be helpful to you as we work to improve school and community safety:

U.S. Department of Education –

• Reducing School and Community Violence: Now is the Time
• Resources for Schools to Prepare for and Recover from Crisis
• Helping Youth and Children Recover From Traumatic Events

The National PTA –

     Safety Tool Kit

• A comprehensive, step-by-step program leader’s planning guide; (en Español)
• A take-home safety tip sheet – (en Español)
• Six activity lesson plans (children in K-5 and their families):

1. “Look-a-likes” – poison prevention (en Español)
2. “Cycling skills clinic”  – bike safety (en Español)
3. “Get low and go” – fire, burns and scalds prevention (en Español
4. “Fire escape map” – fire, burns and scalds prevention (en Español)
5. “Safety sleuths” – playground safety (en Español)
6. “The ultimate playground” – playground safety contest (en Español)

Kelsey Donohue is a senior at Marist College (N.Y.), and an intern in ED’s Office of Communications and Outreach

This op-ed appeared in the Apr. 19, edition of the Washington Post.

President Obama put forward a plan last week to make access to high-quality early learning a reality for every 4-year-old in America by making full-day preschool available to families with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

Parents, teachers and principals nationwide agree that we need to do more to ensure that children from disadvantaged families begin kindergarten at the same educational starting line as do children from better-off families. The president’s plan includes a cost-sharing arrangement with states, with the entire federal investment of $75 billion covered by a new cigarette tax, and with incentives for states to make programs available for even more middle-class families.

Members of Congress have asked me: How do we know early learning works? What about its lasting impact?

Let’s examine the record.

At an elementary school I recently visited in Bladensburg, teachers told me how much better-prepared students are for the classroom if they’ve been to preschool. “It makes a huge difference,” said one 21-year teacher.

Research backs her up. Studies consistently demonstrate that high-quality early education gives children the foundation they need to succeed. No study is perfect, but the cumulative evidence that high-quality preschool works is overwhelming. Consider a study of 4-year-olds in Tulsa who attended Oklahoma’s high-quality universal preschool program, with small class sizes and well-trained teachers — features that are components of the president’s proposal. They started kindergarten seven months ahead in literacy skills and four months ahead in math skills. Likewise, children who attended Boston’s high-quality preschool program gained seven months in literacy and math. Studies of preschoolers in New Jersey showed substantial gains in literacy and math. These consistent gains are critical steps toward long-term success in school.

Skeptics of early learning say these programs “don’t work” because some studies have failed to find major effects in later grades — the so-called “fade out.” But that’s not quite right.

The most rigorous research that can be compared with what we are proposing — high-quality, full-day preschool — shows crucial benefits in high school graduation rates, employment and avoidance of criminal behavior. Although the best scientific evidence for the long-term effects of early education comes from studies of multiyear programs dating to the 1960s and 1970s, a recent study of New Jersey students who received one year of high-quality public preschool found that by fifth grade, they were less likely to be held back or placed in special education. The few more recent long-term assessments of public preschool consistently indicate similar benefits, including increased graduation rates and reduced arrest rates.

High-quality preschool appears to propel better outcomes by enhancing non-cognitive skills such as persistence, self-control and emotion regulation — skills that depend on early brain development and social experiences and contribute to long-term academic outcomes and career success.

The study often cited by skeptics — the Head Start Impact Study — isn’t a great comparison to the president’s proposal. It examined the effect of offering access to Head Start, not the effect of participation (nearly 20 percent of the 4-year-olds in the Head Start group never attended). The president’s proposal would require higher qualifications for staff than was the case in this study, and this administration has begun putting in place needed quality-control improvements to Head Start.

Preschool works. But is it worth the cost?

Studies of the savings from high-quality early learning demonstrate that the answer is yes. Graduates of such programs are less likely to commit crimes or rely on food stamps and cash assistance; they have greater lifetime earnings, creating increased tax revenue. Although the range of savings varies across studies, the studies consistently find robust returns to taxpayers.

Can we replicate what works? We can, and we must. If the United States is to remain a global economic leader, high-quality preschool must become the norm. The moral case is compelling, too. As President Obama has said, every child should have the opportunity, through hard work, to join the middle class. Children shouldn’t be denied equal educational opportunity at the starting line.

The countries we compete with economically are well ahead of us in preschool opportunity. We rank 28th in the proportion of 4-year-olds enrolled in early learning in surveys by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and 25th in public funding for early learning. Fortunately, we have great examples to learn from: Oklahoma, Georgia, New Jersey and Boston all have excellent preschool programs.

Making quality early-learning opportunities a norm for every 4-year-old will take more than money. It will take a new commitment to recruiting and keeping excellent staff, and tackling many of the other challenges in our K-12 system. That’s why we propose to invest an additional $750 million to support innovation and preschool capacity-building in states. To make a critical difference for all children, high-quality early learning must be followed by rich educational opportunities and robust learning experiences at every stage of the journey to college and careers.

The evidence is clear. We need to stop asking whether early learning works — and start asking whether we have the national will to make it a reality for the children who need it most.

Source information about studies mentioned in this column has been posted at www.ed.gov/early-learning/research.

Arne Duncan is U.S. Secretary of Education.

The administration is getting faculty input now on how to brace for budget cuts, but anger lingers and may be felt at a Faculty Senate meeting today.