Shortly after landing at Malcolm X Shabazz High School as a Teach for America recruit, Dominique D. Lee grew disgusted with a system that produced ninth graders who could not name the seven continents or the governor of their state. He started wondering: What if I were in charge?

Three years later, Mr. Lee, at just 25, is getting a chance to find out. Today, Mr. Lee and five other teachers ”” all veterans of Teach for America, a corps of college graduates who undergo five weeks of training and make a two-year commitment to teaching ”” are running a public school here with 650 children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

As the doors opened on Thursday at Brick Avon Academy, they welcomed students not as novice teachers following orders from the central office, but as “teacher-leaders.”

“This is a fantasy,” Mr. Lee said. “It’s six passionate people who came together and said, ”˜Enough is enough.’ We’re just tired of seeing failure.”

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Caught this on the morning run–definitely a subject I would rather not think about, but one that has to be faced. Watch it all–KSH.

A few decades ago, the court decided 150 cases a term. That number has dropped by about half, meaning each justice must write about eight majority opinions a term. Yet the practice of entrusting much of the drafting to clerks remains entrenched.

“We have created an institutional situation where 26-year-olds are being given humongous legal authority in the actual wording of decisions, the actual compositional choices,” Professor [David] Garrow said.

The justices forbid their current clerks to talk to the press, and most former clerks refuse to discuss the work they performed for living justices in any detail. But Artemus Ward and David L. Weiden received responses from 122 former clerks to a question concerning the drafting of opinions for their 2006 book “Sorcerers’ Apprentices.” Thirty percent of the clerks said their drafts had been issued without modification at least some of the time.

Reviewing the book in The New Republic, Judge Posner, a close student of the court, wrote that “probably more than half the written output of the court is clerk-authored.”

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The University of Wisconsin should not have prohibited the use of student funds for the worship-related activities of a Catholic campus group, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison distributes funds from student fees for activities of registered student groups but rejected paying for worship, religious instruction and proselytizing by Badger Catholic.

“A university cannot shape Badger Catholic’s message by selectively funding the speech it approves, but not the speech it disapproves,” wrote Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Wednesday (Sept. 1) decision.

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Something has changed on many college campuses across America. As they seek to raise their profiles, universities are investing in once-obscure sports that do not come close to paying for themselves, even in the face of dire budget cuts. It’s still not clear whether it pays off, but winning in all sports is what matters now, and the message is driven home from the highest levels of the university.

“If we are going to compete in something, we want to win at it ”” whether it is in pediatrics or women’s gymnastics,” said J. Bernard Machen, the University of Florida president. “It is important to our supporters, both financial and among our community. It is part of our culture. We want people to know that Florida is a place for winners.”

Some university officials and even athletic directors worry about whether the emphasis on athletics is worth the significant sums that universities invest in them.

“We talk about football coaches’ salaries, we talk about basketball coaches’ salaries,” Gene Smith, Ohio State’s athletic director, told his colleagues last year at a conference on spending in college athletics. “The salaries in many of our Olympic sports have tripled since 1994.”

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Mr. [Arne] Duncan joined Ms. [Michaelle] Rhee in advocating the use of student test scores as a measure of teaching ability and paying teachers for performance. Ms. [Randi ] Weingarten agreed that teacher performance should be measured, but objected to the recent publication of teacher evaluations by the Los Angeles Times, calling that particular evaluation system flawed. Mr. Duncan, in contrast, praised the publication.

Meanwhile, teacher union leaders in Los Angeles have urged a boycott of the Times and asked union members to suspend their subscriptions. So much for thoughtful discourse.

On this issue Ms. Weingarten and the teacher unions are fighting a rearguard action. A recent Gallup poll found, unsurprisingly, that 72 percent of public school parents believe teacher pay should be based on performance.

That’s a reasonable expectation, since the future of their children is at stake.

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For generations, medical students have spent two years in classrooms and laboratories, memorizing body parts and dissecting specimens, eagerly anticipating the triumphant third year when they would be immersed in working with actual people who have actual diseases.

Upending that century-old tradition, the aspiring doctors who started their training at New York University School of Medicine last week got to meet real patients on their very first day. But not to worry ”” they were armed only with laptop computers, not scalpels.

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How good is one teacher compared with another?

A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles ”” with some saying it is an effective method for increasing teacher accountability, and others arguing that it can give an inaccurate picture of teachers’ work.

The system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade.

People who analyze the data, making a few statistical assumptions, can produce a list ranking teachers from best to worst.

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As far as I am concerned, Tulane University President Scott Cowen is a national hero–someone needs to give the man a medal–KSH.

Harvard University announced last Friday that its Standing Committee on Professional Conduct had found Marc Hauser, one of the school’s most prominent scholars, guilty of multiple counts of “scientific misconduct.” The revelation came after a three-year inquiry into allegations that the professor had fudged data in his research on monkey cognition. Since the studies were funded, in part, by government grants, the university has sent the evidence to the Feds.

The professor has not admitted wrongdoing, but he did issue a statement apologizing for making “significant mistakes.” And beyond his own immediate career difficulties, Mr. Hauser’s difficulties spell trouble for one of the trendiest fields in academia””evolutionary psychology.

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This [19th century] emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be skeptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.

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“Inclusion on Parade Magazine’s ”˜College A-List’ of the top seven small state schools in the country is more evidence of the College’s growing national reputation” says College of Charleston President P. George Benson. “This latest recognition is particularly significant because it is based on the recommendations of high school guidance counselors from across the nation, who are charged with providing students with unbiased advice about the quality, affordability, and accessibility of higher education institutions.”

According to Parade Magazine, “The campus itself is a piece of history located in the heart of Charleston’s historic district, and students studying historic preservation and arts management (Charleston is home to the Spoleto Festival) have a living laboratory at their disposal. Marine biology is also very strong.”

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Mr. Rasmussen has a partial answer for …[White House Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel’s question, and it lies in a significant division among the American public that he has tracked for the past few years””a division between what he calls the Mainstream Public and the Political Class.

To figure out where people are, he asks three questions: Whose judgment do you trust more: that of the American people or America’s political leaders? Has the federal government become its own special interest group? Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors? Those who identify with the government on two or more questions are defined as the political class.

Before the financial crisis of late 2008, about a tenth of Americans fell into the political class, while some 53% were classified as in the mainstream public. The rest fell somewhere in the middle. Now the percentage of people identifying with the political class has clearly declined into single digits, while those in the mainstream public have grown slightly. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents all agree with the mainstream view on Mr. Rasmussen’s three questions. “The major division in this country is no longer between parties but between political elites and the people,” Mr. Rasmussen says.

His recent polls show huge gaps between the two groups. While 67% of the political class believes the U.S. is moving in the right direction, a full 84% of mainstream voters believe the nation is moving in the wrong one.

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Nathaniel is transferring to Vanderbilt University as a sophomore and Abigail is beginning her senior year at the College of Charleston.

When more than 1,100 students arrive for the first day of the school year at Beech Hill Elementary today, Principal Rene Harris will be making sure everything is running smoothly.

Teachers will be easing children back into the learning world after lazy summer days. Food service workers will be preparing the first day’s lunch.

And school counselor Tammy Masopust will be helping out in any way she’s needed, while quietly watching for the subtle signs that indicate students might be having problems.

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It is generally true that you get what you pay for, but not necessarily when it comes to higher education.

A study scheduled for release Monday about the value of a college education, at least when it comes to the basics, has found the opposite to be true in most cases. Forget Harvard and think Lamar.

Indeed, the Texas university, where tuition runs about $7,000 per year (Harvard’s is $38,000) earns an A to Harvard’s D based on an analysis of the universities’ commitment to core subjects deemed essential to a well-rounded, competitive education.

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I don’t have children, but I know from friends who do that, despite the mind-boggling entertainment opportunities available in the 21st century, helping to alleviate their boredom in the summer holidays can be a test of creativity akin to sculpting them in marble. Children still think there’s “nothing to do”. They’re still bored. And despite adults thinking of the phrase “I’m bored” as the whining mantra of the inexplicably dissatisfied child, we adults are bored too. Boredom is endemic. And it’s getting worse….

Does this persistent, gnawing boredom damage us? It’s not a question that’s been asked much in the 150 years since we started moaning about it; even philosophers seem to find boredom boring, preferring instead to concentrate on ethics and epistemology. Goethe reckoned that boredom was the premier creative impulse, and without it we’d never even bother picking up a pen, paintbrush, musical instrument or, these days, a 5-megapixel digital camera. But the average teenager in an average British town on an average Friday night would find themselves hard pushed to value the boredom that’s been forced upon them by modern life. Boredom is the predominant cause of inner city violence, because, tragically, violence is exciting. And that briefest of thrills is increasingly unlikely to be displaced by the prospect of a game of table tennis.

I’m not a philosopher, obviously. I’m just someone who’s a bit bored, so the idea of me offering advice is laughable. But in the absence of religious fervour, class war or complete economic meltdown to distract us, a better way to deal with boredom than desperately pursuing excitement might be to embrace it. Welcome that feeling of mild dissatisfaction.

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With the cost of private universities now topping $35,000 for tuition, fees, room and board each year, Americans are tapping retirement accounts, asking extended family members to help out with college costs and keeping kids at home for the first few years of school to cut down on living expenses. One worrisome trend: Parents who took money from their retirement accounts withdrew an average of $8,554 in 2010 compared to $5,318 in 2009.

To pay for college, families are also borrowing more heavily from traditional sources including financial aid. And usage of 529 college savings plans is on the rise. ”Families are digging deeper and taking a number of measures to make college more affordable,” says Bill Diggins, senior consultant with Gallup. “They see great value in college. It’s an investment in the future. Most strongly agree that a college degree is more important now than ever.”

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In 1993, not so terribly long ago, I signed up for my first e-mail account. I remember using it to compose and exchange haikus with other novice faculty about our daily travails, to keep up with friends from graduate school, and to sign up for more electronic mailing lists than I could possibly follow.

One year later, while I was still goofing around with my new electronic toy, cultural critic Sven Birkerts wrote in The Gutenberg Elegies, “Ten, fifteen years from now the world will be nothing like what we remember, nothing much like what we experience now. . . . We will be swimming in impulses and data””the microchip will make us offers that will be very hard to refuse.”

He must have had a crystal ball. In precisely the amount of time Birkerts predicted, I have gone from marveling at the novelty of e-mail to being simultaneously resentful of its hold on my life and unable to imagine how I would live without it.

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The Charleston County School Board decided Monday night to scale back its request to voters and ask them to approve a six-year, one-penny sales tax increase to pay for construction projects.

Board members had planned to put an eight-year sales tax increase on voters’ ballots in November, but a lack of business community support and revised revenue figures led them to reduce it by two years. The six-year tax would generate an estimated $75 million per year for a total of $450 million.

The money would go toward building 14 new schools, renovating four schools, acquiring land in three developments, conducting seismic evaluations of six buildings, creating design plans for one school and improving existing schools’ athletic facilities.

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Gone are quiet classrooms with desks all in a row and a teacher at the blackboard.

Instead, a peek into nearly any classroom across the Miss-Lou will reveal noise, movement and technology that sometimes does the teaching.

And though little about how children learn today seems normal to adults, educators insist that learning in a global society means parents, grandparents and guardians must do a little learning of their own.

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I had lunch this summer with a prospective graduate student at the evangelical college where I teach. I will call him John because that happens to be his name. John has done well academically at a public university. Nevertheless, as often happens, he said that he was looking forward to coming to a Christian university, and then launched into a story of religious discrimination.

John had been a straight-A student until he enrolled in English writing. The assignment was an “opinion” piece and the required theme was “traditional marriage.” John is a Southern Baptist and he felt it was his duty to give his honest opinion and explain how it was grounded in his faith. The professor was annoyed that John claimed the support of the Bible for his views, scribbling in the margin, “Which Bible would that be?” On the very same page, John’s phrase, “Christians who read the Bible,” provoked the same retort, “Would that be the Aramaic Bible, the Greek Bible, or the Hebrew Bible?” (What could the point of this be? Did the professor want John to imagine that while the Greek text might support his view of traditional marriage, the Aramaic version did not?) The paper was rejected as a “sermon,” and given an F, with the words, “I reject your dogmatism,” written at the bottom by way of explanation.

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When South Carolina lawmakers slashed funding for public colleges and universities, tuition soared.

But tuition did the same thing during better times, when lawmakers raised higher education funding.

While lawmakers and college officials point the finger of blame at each other, annual tuition increases over the past decade have nearly tripled the cost of a four-year degree from a South Carolina public university.

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New Jersey’s most impoverished city will close all three branches of its public library at year’s end unless a rescue can be pulled off.

Camden’s library board says the libraries won’t be able to afford to stay open past Dec. 31 because of budget cuts from the city government. The city had its subsidy from the state cut.

The library board president says the library system, which opened in 1904, is preparing to donate, sell or destroy its collections, including 187,000 books.

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Rather than issue a plain-vanilla bond with a fixed interest rate, Denver followed its bankers’ suggestions and issued so-called pension certificates with a derivative attached; the debt carried a lower rate but it could also fluctuate if economic conditions changed.

The Denver schools essentially made the same choice some homeowners make: opting for a variable-rate mortgage that offered lower monthly payments, with the risk that they could rise, instead of a conventional, fixed-rate mortgage that offered larger, but unchanging, monthly payments.

The Denver school board unanimously approved the JPMorgan deal and it closed in April 2008, just weeks after a major investment bank, Bear Stearns, failed. In short order, the transaction went awry because of stress in the credit markets, problems with the bond insurer and plummeting interest rates.

Since it struck the deal, the school system has paid $115 million in interest and other fees, at least $25 million more than it originally anticipated.

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College students who download music and movies from peer-to-peer file-sharing programs such as LimeWire and KaZaA will find themselves cut off when they return to campus this fall.

Every college across the country must either have installed software to block illegal file-sharing or have created some other procedure for preventing it. The requirement is part of the 2008 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which took effect July 1.

Some schools have been working to comply with the provisions for several years.

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In a country that endorses Islam as the official religion, bans conversion to other religions, and punishes Christian proselytizing by death, Saudi Arabia’s recent welcome of an American Christian scholar is a landmark.

Leonard Swidler, a professor of Roman Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Philadelphia’s Temple University, is the first such scholar invited to exchange views with faculty at Al Imam Muhammed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh ”“ the citadel of Saudi Arabia’s ultraconservative brand of Islam.

Dr. Swidler’s visit in late June underscores a shift toward greater openness in some official Saudi religious institutions, which previously had been leery of contact with outsiders of different faiths.

“Maybe it’s not exciting for some people, but it’s a very big change in Saudi Arabia,” says Fahad al-Alhomoudi, a faculty member at Al Imam who helped arrange Swidler’s visit.

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Brigham Young University was named the nation’s most religious campus, and Sarah Lawrence College the least religious, in new rankings released Tuesday (Aug. 3).

The Princeton Review released the 2011 edition of their yearly assessment of “The Best 373 Colleges,” which included rankings of the most and least religious students.

Mormon-owned BYU rose from second place in last year’s rankings; it also ranked first in the list of “Stone-Cold Sober Schools,” an honor which the school has held for 13 consecutive years.

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One of the hot debates in academia is now reaching the courts. The question: Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives? Some professors and students say they do, but it’s not an easy charge to pin down.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a “closeted faith.”

“They just do not want to bring up that they are religious in an academic discussion. There’s somewhat of almost a culture of suppression surrounding discussions of religion at these kinds of academic institutions,” Ecklund says.

She says the scientists worried that their colleagues would believe they were politically conservative ”” or worse, subscribed to the theory of intelligent design. Ecklund says they all insisted on anonymity.

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