Ohio public school teachers would pay a larger share of their retirement costs, work until they’re older and see pension benefits cut under changes approved Thursday that aim to keep their primary pension fund solvent by saving $10.9 billion.

The State Teachers Retirement System board approved a host of changes to the benefit program that serves the bulk of the pension fund’s 470,000 members. The changes must be approved by lawmakers and the governor.

Spokeswoman Laura Ecklar said the package marks the end of a two-year effort to find a way to keep the pension fund afloat for the long haul.

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The emotional health of college freshmen ”” who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school ”” has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago.

In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.

Every year, women had a less positive view of their emotional health than men, and that gap has widened.

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WENDY KOPP: I mean I think all of us feel such urgency to stop this problem, and it is a true crisis, that we kind of lurch from one big idea to another. And the reality is that, you know, when we look at what is happening in the schools that are putting whole buildings full of kids on a path to graduate from college at the same levels as kids in much more privileged communities, when we really understand what’s happening there, what we realize is, this is about a group of people — teachers, school leaders — who have embraced the different mandate, and who are then pouring themselves into this work with the same level of energy, the same level of discipline that we would find in any high-performing organization where we’re trying to reach ambitious outcomes. And I think we tend to kind of try to oversimplify the problem. I mean if only it was as easy as pouring more funding into this.

[KAI] RYSSDAL: You have actually a great example in the book. It’s in the chapter incidentally called “Silver Bullets and Silver Scapegoats.” You have this example, it’s this school of the future in Philadelphia. $62 million facility, technology provided by Microsoft, everything that the kids can want. And yet, on the Pennsylvania assessments, the school fails miserably.

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Taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know, according to new research. It actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques.

The research, published online Thursday in the journal Science, found that students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods.

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What we, as students, succeed in learning has as much to do with our own self-understanding and receptiveness as it does with the abilities of our teachers to provide us with what we need in our time. A Sufi lesson says: “All of the Wise have to learn how to pass on the knowledge. But they can do this only if the student will allow himself to learn what it is and how it is that he is to learn. Technique of learning is what the teacher has first of all to teach. Unless you are prepared to study the technique of learning, you are not a student. And if your teacher advises you to learn by words, or deeds, or by baking bread””that is your way.”

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When President Obama welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House on Wednesday, he was joined by a group of students from Washington, D.C.’s Yu Ying Public Charter School. It’s a Chinese-language immersion elementary school ”” the first in the nation’s capital and one of only a handful in the United States.

Interest in learning Chinese has surged in the past decade as American economic ties to China have deepened. A growing number of elementary and high schools are offering Chinese classes ”” though few teach it as intensively as Yu Ying in the northeast D.C. neighborhood of Brookland.

Housed in a former convent, the school’s 240 students alternate school days learning in entirely Chinese and English.

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An astronomy professor who sued the University of Kentucky after claiming he lost out on a top job because of his Christian beliefs reached a settlement Tuesday with the school.

The university agreed to pay $125,000 to Martin Gaskell in exchange for dropping a federal religious discrimination suit he filed in Lexington in 2009. A trial was set for next month.

Gaskell is currently working as a research fellow in the astronomy department at the University of Texas.

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Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group ”” these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

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Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college, in large part because colleges don’t make academics a priority, a new report shows.

Instructors tend to be more focused on their own faculty research than teaching younger students, who in turn are more tuned in to their social lives, according to the report, based on a book titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Findings are based on transcripts and surveys of more than 3,000 full-time traditional-age students on 29 campuses nationwide, along with their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that gauges students’ critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills.

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At issue was the fact that applicants to the nursing program’s women’s health track were asked to sign a letter acknowledging that they would be caring for women who are terminating their pregnancies.

The Alliance Defense Fund argued that the letter suggested residents would be required to participate in abortion procedures in violation of a federal law that says recipients of federal funds cannot require someone to perform or assist in abortions if it violates his or her religious beliefs or moral convictions.

Vanderbilt denied the claim….

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Researchers say severe mental illness is more common among college students than it was a decade ago, with most young people seeking treatment for depression and anxiety. A study presented at the American Psychological Association found that the number of students on psychiatric medicines increased more than 10 percentage points over the last 10 years.

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At Christina’s school, Mesa Verde Elementary, where students have been holding difficult discussions about death this week, it was quieter than usual as many students, teachers and administrators left to spend the day at the funeral. Out front was a memorial with messages to Christina. There was a photograph of her hugging her friend Serenity, who wrote, “Christina remember this photo, it was our first sleepover.”

During lunch this week, Kayley Clark, 9, called her mother at home to say that she did not want to eat the school meal of turkey tacos. She has never done that before, her mother said. Getting dressed in the morning, she has been unusually picky about what colors to wear, as if the decision might be her last.

“You know that could have been your kid there outside the supermarket standing right where Christina was standing, when the shooting broke out,” said Leah Simmers, 30, a mother of three. “This hit close to home for every mother I know.”

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…I have a somewhat jaundiced view of the competing battles to proselytise the young. The propaganda can be self-defeating. Adults have an endless moral panic about the young. We have some justifiable fears that they will kill themselves sticking junk up their arms or drink down their gullets. But we take those justifiable (although sometimes exaggerated) fears and extend them to other areas such as their cultural ignorance and moral turpitude. I lament the fact that my kids don’t know the King James Bible and are religiously illiterate. But there is nothing I can do about it. And I think there is not much that the educational bovver boys of faith and the supine politicians they have snared can do either. I reckon the Chaplaincy Program is pouring an immoral amount of money down the educational toilet. There is nothing more boring and alienating than RE teachers. They are the unwittingly the assault pioneers of unbelief.

So let us think more realistically about the epistemological inspirations of the young. Let us put aside our moral panic. Let us be open-minded about letting both the godless and the godly have their spaces. Remember the mullahs of Iran. They have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the young. I suspect that the Christian mullahs of Australia will share the same fate as they try to shove God down the unwilling or bored throats of the young. For kids are not anti-God. They just have so many other things to think about.

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Although the sciences are heavily represented among Mr. Brockman’s contributors, the volume ranges beyond the usual suspects (e.g., the ubiquitous technology booster Clay Shirky) to include visual artists, architects and musicians whose voices are all too often missing from discussions of technology and contemporary culture.

Whether poets or programmers, the book’s contributors write from the perspective not of “digital natives” but of creatures from an earlier age who have had to adapt to the changes wrought by the Internet. As members of a transitional generation, they are poised to address both practical and philosophical themes.

Most of the contributors are enthusiastic about the bounty that the Internet provides, particularly to scientific research, global communication and personal expression. Indeed, several contributors are disparaging of those who question the Internet’s costs, dismissing such people as “neophobic” or “curmudgeons and troglodytes.” Still, a few writers belie such easy caricature. The neuroscientist Joshua Greene suggests, in a blunt but apt metaphor, that the Internet, for all its revolutionary pretense, is “nothing more, and nothing less, than a very useful, and very dumb, butler.”

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It has long been thought that people who hold engineering, science and business degrees from major Universities are well prepared to become successful entrepreneurs and a very interesting study by some MIT professors provides strong evidence of this, but I think it is very intriguing to see the scale and degree of success liberal arts educated graduates have achieved as entrepreneurial innovators.

To some people, including myself, this data supports a long held intuition that successful entrepreneurs have the ability to think in dynamic and non-linear ways and then to aggressively challenge conventional wisdom in pursuit of an innovative endeavor. Furthermore, the best entrepreneurs I have worked with are incredibly artful communicators and motivators which I think is certainly a skill learned and honed from a liberal arts education. People will debate forever the question of whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught but what I have learned is that there appears to be a substantial correlation between a liberal arts education and becoming a successful entrepreneur.

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The first sentence of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life got it right: “It’s not about you.” Our reason for being should begin not with our happiness, our ambition, or our giftedness, but with God. We are not the hope of the world. God is.

Which is why I’m often puzzled by the advertisements put out by Christian colleges and seminaries. I understand that an advertisement for higher education is going to emphasize what the school can do for you and what the school will equip you to do in the world. That’s fine. The school wants students to enroll; that’s why the advertise. So they are bound to make an appeal to the “you” reading the ad. But a little restraint would be nice.

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Watch the whole ESPN video. My favorite moment–what he says about his parents in the interview–KSH.

An overwhelming majority of Americans are frustrated that it’s too difficult to get rid of bad teachers, while most also believe that teachers aren’t paid enough, a new poll shows.

The Associated Press-Stanford University poll found that 78% think it should be easier for school administrators to fire poorly performing teachers. Yet overall, the public wants to reward teachers ”” 57% say they are paid too little, with just 7% believing they are overpaid and most of the rest saying they’re paid about right.

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An Ohio pension fund has sued Wells Fargo & Co to recover losses suffered when a bank that it bought put the fund’s money into a risky investment vehicle that failed.

The School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, represented by state Attorney General Richard Cordray, said it lost $29.6 million because a unit of Wachovia Corp mismanaged a securities lending program marketed as a “low-risk” way to boost returns.

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The 30th anniversary of the Charleston-based Renaissance Weekend gets under way today with a guest list that includes some of the nation’s luminaries from the fields of art, law, medicine, politics and science.

The gathering, headquartered at Charleston Place Hotel, is expected to bring 1,100 participants to the city to take part in 500 lectures, seminars, discussions and performances. The event concludes with song at the stroke of the New Year.

Event founder Phil Lader, a city resident and former ambassador to the Court of St. James, said this “granddaddy of ideas festivals” draws a wide range of participants with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

“It has always been a celebration of the power of ideas and relationships,” Lader said Monday. “Civility is the dominant theme. The discussion traditionally brings more light than heat.”

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Geno Auriemma was in the middle of a thought when a cellphone went off nearby. It was a call he just had to take.

“No, we haven’t lost since you’ve been inaugurated,” Auriemma told President Barack Obama. “How about we keep it that way for another couple of years?”

The UConn women’s basketball team has put together a winning streak for the ages. With their 93-62 victory Tuesday night over Florida State before 16,294 at the sold-out XL Center, the Huskies have won 89 games in a row, surpassing the record set by UCLA men’s team from 1971 to ’74.

“It’s a great thing for sports,” Obama told Auriemma. “It’s something to be celebrated.”

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On a quick break between classes last week, Reef Al-Shabnan slipped into an empty room at Catholic University to start her daily prayers to Allah.

In one corner was a life-size painting of Jesus carrying the cross. In another, the portrait of a late priest and theologian looked on. And high above the room hung a small wooden crucifix.

This was not, Shabnan acknowledged, the ideal space for a Muslim to pray in. After her more than two years on campus, though, it has become routine and sacred in its own way. You can find Allah anywhere, the 19-year-old from Saudi Arabia said, even at the flagship university of the U.S. Catholic world.

In the past few years, enrollment of Muslim students such as Shabnan has spiked at Catholic campuses across the country….

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The U.S. teen birth rate in 2009 fell to its lowest point in almost 70 years of record-keeping ”” a decline that stunned experts who believe it’s partly due to the recession.

The birth rate for teenagers fell to 39 births per 1,000 girls, ages 15 through 19, according to a government report released Tuesday. It was a 6 percent decline from the previous year, and the lowest since health officials started tracking the rate in 1940.

Experts say the recent recession ”” from December 2007 to June 2009 ”” was a major factor driving down births overall, and there’s good reason to think it affected would-be teen mothers.

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Rushing a student to a psychiatric emergency room is never routine, but when Stony Brook University logged three trips in three days, it did not surprise Jenny Hwang, the director of counseling.

It was deep into the fall semester, a time of mounting stress with finals looming and the holiday break not far off, an anxiety all its own.

On a Thursday afternoon, a freshman who had been scraping bottom academically posted thoughts about suicide on Facebook. If I were gone, he wrote, would anybody notice? An alarmed student told staff members in the dorm, who called Dr. Hwang after hours, who contacted the campus police. Officers escorted the student to the county psychiatric hospital.

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The school committee in Cambridge, Mass., stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy when it voted in October to include a Muslim holiday on its academic calendar. Though not particularly controversial among local residents, this change earned the ire of Bill O’Reilly, who asked his Fox News viewers, “Are we going to give Hindus a holiday, are we going to do the Wiccan thing?”

Earlier this month, the school committee in Acton-Boxborough, a Boston suburb, voted to close its schools on a Christian holiday (Good Friday) and two Jewish holidays (Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah). In the bordering district in Harvard, Mass., the school committee voted last week to scrap religious holidays altogether.

Elsewhere across America, public school districts are wrestling with whether the First Amendment requires inclusion or exclusion when it comes to recognizing religious holy days.Should school districts reflect the growing diversity of their student bodies by including more religions’ holy days? Or does the Constitution demand that public schools exclude days off for religion altogether?

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…the biggest roadblock today is that so many of America’s best-educated, best-placed people are too invested in old social models and old visions of history to do their real job and help society transition to the next level. Instead of opportunities they see threats; instead of hope they see danger; instead of the possibility of progress they see the unraveling of everything beautiful and true.

Too many of the very people who should be leading the country into a process of renewal that would allow us to harness the full power of the technological revolution and make the average person incomparably better off and more in control of his or her own destiny than ever before are devoting their considerable talent and energy to fighting the future….

In most of our learned professions and knowledge guilds today, promotion is linked to the needs and aspirations of the guild rather than to society at large. Promotion in the academy is almost universally linked to the production of ever more specialized, theory-rich (and, outside the natural sciences, too often application-poor) texts, pulling the discourse in one discipline after another into increasingly self-referential black holes. We suffer from ”˜runaway guilds’: costs skyrocket in medicine, the civil service, education and the law in part because the imperatives of the guilds and the interests of their members too often triumph over the needs and interests of the wider society….

We can see the same unhappy pattern in knowledge-based American institutions beyond the groves of academe. The mainline Protestant churches have a hyperdeveloped theology, an over-professionalized clergy ”“ and shrinking congregations. The typical American foundation is similarly hyperdeveloped in terms of social and political theory, over professionalized in its staff ”“ and perhaps thankfully has a declining impact on American society because its approaches are increasingly out of touch….

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all–he is a remarkable fellow.

How useful are the views of public school students about their teachers?

Quite useful, according to preliminary results released on Friday from a $45 million research project that is intended to find new ways of distinguishing good teachers from bad.

Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research.

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What can schools — and parents — do to relieve some of the résumé-building pressure that young people are feeling?

See what you make of the ideas suggested.