When it opened in 1998, the Shuang Wen Academy was heralded as a new kind of boutique public school, rooted in a mission of cross-cultural understanding. Small and open to children of any background, it was billed as the nation’s first dual-language English-Mandarin public school, teaching fluency in both languages.

At English-Mandarin Public School, High Test Scores, but Also Strife

Therein lies the danger of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, whose popularity has grown in recent years among college-aged drinkers, drawing the attention of concerned health officials, politicians and college administrators. Experts say that even one is a recipe for disaster, and so do officials at Ramapo College: they banned alcoholic energy drinks on campus this month.

Peter Mercer, president of the New Jersey college, said students referred to the above concoction when describing the effects of drinks such as Four Loko, which is particularly popular around the campus. Four Loko is one of a few flashy, canned drinks that take the mixing out of the equation, making it that much easier for students to get dangerously intoxicated, faster. Mercer said concerned students told him the inexpensive 23-ounce, 12% alcohol energy drinks were “all of a sudden very popular,” and Four Loko was involved in a couple of incidents of excessive drinking. Since the start of fall semester, 23 people have been hospitalized with alcohol intoxication.

Mercer called Four Loko a “cynical product” whose only purpose is to get the drinker intoxicated quickly. Others agree: Glen L. Sherman, co-chair of the Alcohol and Other Drug Knowledge Community for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said the drinks are dangerous because of their apparent targeting of underage student consumers and their high alcohol content — drinking one can of Four Loko is the approximate equivalent of drinking four beers, according to an informational page NASPA recently posted on its website.

“These beverages are of great concern to us,” Sherman wrote in an e-mail. “Each campus must decide what specific steps make sense to best educate students about and try to protect them from these risks, and to encourage students to make good decisions when they are confronted by them.”

Ramapo’s ban is part of a “multi-pronged approach” addressing excessive alcohol consumption, Mercer said. Other measures the college has taken include increasing after-hours security measures in residence halls, tightening visitor policies and holding student focus groups.

Those additional steps may be crucial for the ban to have even a shot at success. Kathleen E. Miller, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has studied college students’ use of energy drinks, both with and without alcohol. She said that if the college can’t ban drinks like Red Bull and vodka from local bars, it won’t be able to stop consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages. But the college can send a signal.

“A college ban will make people take a second look and maybe they’ll be more aware of what they’re drinking,” Miller said. “It’s inherently potentially dangerous to mix caffeine and alcohol because you’re sending your body mixed signals.” The caffeine stimulates the system while the alcohol depresses it, making students feel less drunk than they actually are.

Through her research, Miller found that students who consume energy drinks with or without alcohol are more likely to engage in risky behavior like drug use, smoking or binge drinking. That doesn’t necessarily mean the energy drinks cause the behavior, but there is a correlation. Energy drink consumption “isn’t necessarily a gateway behavior, but it is what you might call a red-flag behavior,” she said.

In a June 2008 study published in the Journal of American College Health, Miller found that 26% of surveyed public university undergraduates reported consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol in the past month, while about half said they’d done so more than once.

Efforts at Ramapo have curbed and will continue to curb consumption of alcoholic energy drinks, Mercer said, but “it’s unrealistic to assume that it’ll be totally eliminated.” That’s not stopping him from trying, though: At the next meeting of the New Jersey Presidents’ Council, Mercer plans to make his case to other college and university presidents. “The risk for their students is just as high as the risk for mine,” he said. “I’ll tell them what I’ve done and hope that they may want to follow suit.” States such as New Jersey and New Mexico are considering banning the drinks entirely.

The drinks are also on the federal government’s radar. Last November, the Food and Drug Administration threatened to ban the drinks if manufacturers could not prove they were safe for consumption. No regulations have been issued yet, but an FDA press officer, Michael L. Herndon, told Inside Higher Ed on Friday that the agency has received 19 responses from 27 manufacturers and distributors, and plans to evaluate those submissions and other scientific evidence “as soon as possible in order to determine whether caffeine can be safely and lawfully added to alcoholic beverages.” Herndon said the decision is a high priority but “could take some time.”

But Mercer doesn’t need FDA regulations to deem the drinks unsafe, especially when it comes to students. “I don’t accept that it’s a rite of passage to collegiate life that people put themselves at risk,” he said. “I can’t accept that.”

Alcohol and caffeine drinks: the next student health problem?

Alcohol and caffeine drinks: the next student health problem?

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – County officials in central Missouri argued Tuesday that they should not be required to pay to educate a 16-year-old girl awaiting trial for the alleged murder of a young neighbor.

Attorneys for Alyssa Bustamante have asked the Missouri Supreme Court to order officials in Cole County to pay for her education. Bustamante is charged as an adult with first-degree murder in the October 2009 death of 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten near Jefferson City.

Prosecutors say Bustamante led law officers to the girl’s body in a wooded area and told investigators that she wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.

In a written brief filed Tuesday with the Supreme Court, the Cole County Commission argued that it would be unconstitutional to order county officials to pay for Bustamante’s schooling without state funding.

The county contends that jail inmates already have access to GED materials and that providing additional education could require jails to provide security for instructors, hire extra employees and set aside space for classes.

The Missouri attorney general office’s argued earlier this week that Bustamante’s education should continue. The office contends that all juveniles have a right to a free public education.

Earlier Tuesday, Bustamante’s attorneys asked for prosecutors to return letters, cards and notes seized after Bustamante was taken into custody last October. Cole County Prosecutor Mark Richardson said investigators still are reviewing the items to determine if they contain evidence.

Bustamante is scheduled to go to trial next spring. A hearing has been set for December.

County: No education for Mo. teen murder suspect (AP)

County: No education for Mo. teen murder suspect (AP)

In “Waiting for Superman,” the new education documentary, the union leader Randi Weingarten is portrayed, in the words of Variety, as “a foaming satanic beast.”

Despite Image, Union Leader Backs Change for Schools

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says almost every chance he gets that Republicans would cut education spending by 20 percent if their party wins control of Congress in the Nov. 2 elections. He also says they would repeal a new college tuition tax credit.

But as Obama makes these assertions to draw contrasts between the parties and give voters a reason to keep Democrats in power on Capitol Hill, he’s leaving out some important facts.

Take his claims about the Republican campaign plan, the Pledge to America.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — An occasional look at assertions by public officials and how well they adhere to the facts.

___

Obama says Republicans would pay to keep a set of expiring tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by cutting spending on education, an area where he’s investing billions of dollars from kindergarten through college.

“And when you ask them, well, how would you pay for some of this stuff, they don’t really have good answers,” Obama said Sept. 28 in Albuquerque, N.M., shortly after Republicans released the plan. “But one way they would pay for it is to cut back our education spending by 20 percent and eliminate about 200,000 Head Start programs, and reduce student aid to go to college for about 8 million students.”

He’s argued the point almost daily since then, from discussions on the economy in voters’ back yards to statements in the sunny White House Rose Garden.

But the GOP plan doesn’t say that. A search of the document doesn’t find the word “education” anywhere in its 48 pages.

The White House says the claim is based on an analysis by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of the Republicans plan’s proposal to return federal spending to 2008 levels. A White House spokeswoman says the administration also crunched the numbers.

The think tank says such a reversal would require immediate cuts of 21 percent, or $101 billion, in spending on programs unrelated to national security or veterans. The center chose education as an example and said a cut that size would trim more than $8 billion from K-12 funding, on top of cuts by state and local governments.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House Republican leadership, said the analysis is faulty. While the pledge calls for deep spending cuts, it doesn’t specify where they should be made, he said.

At a campaign event Tuesday night in Washington, Obama said the tuition tax credit “could be repealed if Republicans take over. They’ve already proposed to cut education spending by 20 percent.”

The American Opportunity Tax Credit, worth $2,500 a year, was included in the $814 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed into law last year. The tax credit is available for the 2009 and 2010 tax years, but is scheduled to expire at the end of this year because of how the law is written. Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to make the credit permanent.

So how does a law that is expiring in just over two months get repealed by a party that’s not in power?

The White House says it would be repealed if Republicans make good on a promise to end the stimulus.

Liz Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the stimulus program, said that if Republicans get their way they’d have to immediately freeze stimulus spending. Oxhorn said that if all stimulus spending were halted “today,” there would be no money to pay the tax credit next year when students and families who are now spending on tuition and other college costs would claim the credit on their 2010 income tax returns.

But it’s not that simple. Republicans don’t have enough votes now to freeze the stimulus; if they did, they could have ended the program already.

To end the stimulus, Republicans first must win control of the House and Senate on Nov. 2, then wait until a new Congress convenes in January before taking steps to fulfill any of the Pledge of America promises.

___

Online:

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: http://www.cbpp.org

Republican Pledge to America: http://pledge.gop.gov

FACT CHECK: Obama’s education claims missing facts (AP)

FACT CHECK: Obama’s education claims missing facts (AP)

It’s a claim made by a charter school leader in the education documentary Waiting for Superman, which places much of the blame for bad schools nationwide on union rules that protect incompetent teachers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on national television last week that he would overhaul the way city teachers are granted tenure, linking their advancement to improving student test scores.

“Just as we are raising the bar for our students through higher standards, we must also raise the bar for our teachers and principals — and we are,” Bloomberg said.

But city teachers say that if bad teachers have won tenure protection it’s the fault of the administrators who gave it to them.

“We don’t make that decision. Whoever the principal is makes that decision,” said LezAnne Edmond, a Manhattan high school teacher with 15 years of experience.

Teacher tenure has its roots in academic tenure, which was intended to protect academic freedom; once granted, professors are rarely fired. Tenure rules for K-12 teachers vary from state to state, with some operating more like universities and others that offer no stronger protection than job security laws that prevent people from being fired without cause.

States including California, Florida and Colorado have passed or proposed legislation to change tenure laws in hopes of securing education funding under President Barack Obama‘s “Race to the Top” program.

New York City teachers can win tenure after three years. Once they are granted tenure they cannot be fired without an administrative hearing. What the teachers union calls due process, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein call a system that has protected incompetence.

The issue gained prominence with the Sept. 24 release of “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” opening to wider release on Friday. The documentary from “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim suggests that kids receive a superior education in charter schools without unions.

NBC‘s Sept. 27-28 education summit covered much of the same ground. Bloomberg used a 15-minute MSNBC segment to announce a tenure crackdown.

“We’ll do more to support teachers and reward great teaching, and that includes ending tenure as we know it,” he said. Bloomberg said principals must start denying tenure unless their students have made two years of progress on state tests.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, responded that principals can already deny tenure “for any reason” and that teachers “would welcome an objective tenure-granting process based on agreed-upon standards.”

But the union has opposed using state test scores — the city’s preferred benchmark — to measure teacher performance.

City Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said the union is being disingenuous.

“On one hand, they seem to be blaming principals for too many teachers getting tenure,” she said in an e-mail. “On the other hand, they don’t want principals to take into account student performance when making tenure decisions.”

This year, 3.7% of teachers who reached the end of their three-year probationary period were denied tenure, up from 2.3% the year before. Another 7.2% saw their probation extended by a year.

Ernest Logan, president of the union representing New York City principals, said his members take student achievement into account.

“I don’t think people are just granting people tenure because they’ve been there three years,” Logan said.

Veteran city teachers say they need tenure for job security and to protect the First Amendment rights it was designed to safeguard.

“I need tenure to speak out,” said Arthur Goldstein, a union chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Queens.

Goldstein said he has complained publicly about overcrowding and other issues.

“I’m standing up for the kids of Francis Lewis High School and I absolutely need tenure,” he said.

Katharine Dawson, who retired last summer after 12 years as a city schoolteacher, said tenure “protects you from favoritism, it protects you from all kinds of things.”

Asked about tenure protecting bad teachers, she said, “Maybe there’s two bad teachers per school. Is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”

One teacher whom Bloomberg would like to throw out is Melissa Petro, whose essay about using Craigslist to sell herself as a prostitute was published in the Huffington Post on Sept. 7, the same day she was awarded tenure by the principal of her Bronx elementary school.

Bloomberg demanded that Petro be pulled from the classroom, but she has tenure and cannot be fired without due process. She has been assigned to an office job pending an investigation. A phone number for Petro could not be found.

NYC takes aim at teachers’ ‘tenure for breathing’

NYC takes aim at teachers’ ‘tenure for breathing’

NEW HAVEN — It was well after midnight, and the invitation-only party for Yale University undergraduates was reaching a peak. In the upscale nightclub Elevate, not far from campus, more than 100 students in semiformal attire were on the dance floor as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” pulsed over the sound system. In a throwback to childhood, a buffet table held platters of chicken nuggets and French fries.

At Yale, Anger Over Tactics Used in Raid of Off-Campus Party

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday accused Republicans of wanting to slash education spending and said this would “unilaterally” disarm the country as it competes with emerging powerhouses China and India.

Ramping up his pre-election rhetoric, Obama said Republicans would jeopardize long-term U.S. prosperity to finance tax cuts for the rich, and pay for this with steep cuts in spending on schools and colleges.

“China isn’t slashing education by 20 percent right now. India is not slashing education by 20 percent. We are in a fight for the future — a fight that depends on education,” he told a White House meeting to boost community colleges.

“That’s like unilaterally disarming our troops right as they head to the frontlines.”

His remarks were a rallying cry to Democrats ahead of the November 2 congressional midterm poll, with the White House warning that cherished programs like education would be on the chopping block if Republicans make gains as expected.

Polls show voters worried by a record U.S. budget deficit. Republicans say this is an obstacle to bringing down unemployment stuck near 10 percent.

They favor extending Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans to support a tepid economic recovery, while Obama wants to let the tax break expire for wealthier Americans.

‘SEED CORN’

The president said a proposal by Republican House of Representatives leader John Boehner to fund the extension of all Bush-era tax cuts would effectively cut education spending by 20 percent.

“You don’t eat your seed corn. We can’t accept less investment in our young people if our country is going to move forward,” he said.

Obama’s estimate is based on figures by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank. It calculated that Boehner’s proposal would require an immediate $101 billion cut in 2010 spending to keep the deficit in check.

Republicans say these numbers had no basis.

“The President’s untrue talking points don’t change the fact that the American people are asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ and he has no new answers,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

Republicans argue Obama’s claim of 20-percent cuts in education is based on invalid assumptions that the reductions in spending would be across the board, and targeted at programs that have increased in the last two years.

Republicans would return nonsecurity spending to 2008 levels and work with Democrats to decide where to cut spending.

Obama proposes letting tax cuts expire for American households earning more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 a year. He says extending the breaks would cost $700 billion that the country does not have.

“What we can’t do is fund tax cuts for those that don’t need them by slashing education for those who do. There is a better way for us to do this,” he said.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

Republicans aim to slash education spending: Obama (Reuters)

Republicans aim to slash education spending: Obama (Reuters)

Worried your Android apps are spying on you? You should be, according to a recent study that found several popular Android Apps regularly share your location and critical phone data such as your phone number with advertisers and others. Researchers from Intel Labs, Penn State, and Duke University randomly selected 30 out of 358 popular apps from the Android Market for this study. The computer scientists were able to track each application’s behavior using a special monitoring program called TaintDroid developed by the researchers.

Here’s a breakdown of the researcher’s findings:

-15 popular Android apps sent location information to advertisers without requiring user consent

-9 apps transmitted a user’s International Mobile Equipment Identity number, a unique device identifier

-7 out of those 9 apps did not mention IMEI collection in their End User License Agreements including one unnamed popular social networking app and one unnamed location-based search application

-2 applications transmitted a user’s phone number and ICC-ID–a SIM card’s serial number–both of which are unique identifiers

The researchers did not name which specific apps were behaving irregularly. You can read the entire paper about Android app security here (PDF) and you can find out more about TaintDroid here.

While those findings may sound scary, the good news is I’ve got 7 tips for you to keep prying eyes off your Android smartphone or your iPhone.

Android Users: Check Your Permissions

You can find a list of what your apps are doing by visiting the Android Market via your mobile device. Go to menu>downloads to see a list of the apps you’ve downloaded. Then select the app you want to check up on and go to menu>security. This will give you a list of all the information on your device that your application can access. This won’t tell you what those apps are doing with that information, but at least you can get rid of any applications that want access to information you’re not comfortable sharing with it.

Note that some of Android’s sharing and permissions information is a little hard to understand. Many apps, for example, say they have “full Internet access,” but the Market doesn’t explain what that means. Android’s developer documentation isn’t much help either, but it appears “full Internet access” means an app has unfettered access to send and receive data.

iPhone Users: Check Your Location

If you’re an iPhone user, you don’t have the same wide array of permissions you can access through your phone. You can, however, check to see which of your apps are using location information. On your phone navigate to Settings>General>Location Services. This will show you a list of all the apps on your phone that use location information, and ones that have accessed your location in the past 24 hours are marked with an arrow. You can also deny any application access to your location information from this list.

Check Those Comments

Google relies on community policing to keep the Android Market safe, so make sure you take advantage of each application’s comments section. Look for complaints about how an app functions or problems with your specific device. Also, make sure you read a little deeper than just the first few comments at the top.

IPhone users are unlikely to find complaints about malware or other dirty deeds in the comments. Nevertheless, comments are still an important source to find out what others think about the quality of a particular app.

Just as important as checking comments is to share your own thoughts about apps you’ve used. If you’ve been scammed by a peculiar app, make sure you share your horror story with others.

Developer’s Website

Developers of fishy applications will (more often than not) have fishy Websites for their apps. It’s a simple rule of thumb, and it can often save you time and heartache. Watch out for Websites that are poorly constructed, haven’t been updated in a while or don’t contain any valid contact information.

Apple recently pulled apps built by Vietnam-based iPhone developer Thuat Nguyen for “violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns.” Nguyen reportedly bilked iPhone users out of hundreds of dollars. Users could’ve saved themselves a lot of trouble if they’d merely checked Nguyen’s Website, which redirected to a parked domain called home.com. A clear red flag.

Read Those Updates

Whenever an application wants to update be sure to check what the changes are to see if it’s asking for anything new. IPhone users can do this by tapping on the apps that have updates available in the iPhone’s onboard App Store application. Android users should read over the new permissions list that appears before you install the update to make sure it isn’t asking for new permissions you don’t want it to have.

Keep an Eye on TaintDroid

Right now TaintDroid is a monitoring tool that requires you to modify your firmware to work. It is not an installable application right now, so TaintDroid is not ready for everyday users. However, the creators of TaintDroid plan to turn the program into an open source project. In a few months, maybe some enterprising developer will be able to create a usable TaintDroid application.

Keep an Eye on Amazon

Rumor has it that Amazon is working on its own curated Android app market similar to Apple’s App Store. Details are unclear about which devices will be able to use the market. But it’s worth keeping an eye on as Amazon may be able to effectively neutralize many, but not all, bad actors before they reach the online retailer’s rumored Android market.

Still A Small Risk

Remember that while these tips will help maintain your privacy and security you take an inherent leap of faith with every app you download. The hope is that developers won’t abuse your trust, and that safeguards such as community policing (Android) and quality control monitoring (iPhone) will keep out rogue developers.

But there’s always a small chance you could end up using an app that violates your privacy or has some rogue functionality built-in.

The good news is that tools such as TaintDroid and Lookout Mobile Security’s App Genome project are working to expose applications that are behaving badly.

TaintDroid Demo:

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Android App Spygate: Tips to Put an End to Spying Apps (PC World)

Android App Spygate: Tips to Put an End to Spying Apps (PC World)

LIKE any concerned parent, Ronald Laconi, president of the Chartis Private Client Group, sat with his son through a security presentation for college freshmen a few weeks ago. “We spent a good hour and a half hour going through the safety procedures,” he said.

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Aaron Houston for The New York Times

Christie Alderman, vice president at the insurance firm Chubb & Son, said parents needed to consider whether their position would make them an attractive target for a lawsuit.

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