NEW YORK – Obama’s ambitious education agenda is in peril, as his allies face firing at the polls in November. Dana Goldstein on the shaky state of school reform.

When Barack Obama was first elected president, his education agenda—deploying federal money to turn around failing schools, hold teachers accountable for student test scores, and open more charter schools—earned glowing reviews from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

At the Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander said, “President-elect Obama has made several distinguished Cabinet appointments. From my view of it all, I think you’re best.”

But those were more innocent times. With partisanship at record levels in the run-up to the midterm elections, Obama’s education-reform agenda—once the calling card for his commitment to bipartisan good governance—is under threat from both the left and right.

Congressional Republicans, including those, like Alexander, who once praised Obama’s education policies, are now calling for a return to 2008 levels of federal spending, which would stop the White House from funding additional Pell Grant student loans and cancel plans for another round of Race to the Top, Obama’s signature education-reform grant competition.

Across the country, politicians who strongly support Obama’s education-reform agenda are at risk of being unseated by those who oppose it, or—like incoming Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray—are more ambivalent.

Across the country, politicians who strongly support Obama’s education reform agenda are at risk of being unseated by those who oppose it.

Obama ally Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his D.C. reelection bid in part because of voter dissatisfaction with his hard-charging schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who announced her resignation Wednesday.

Though Rhee’s take-no-prisoners style was a far cry from Obama’s conciliatory tone, her policies on school closings, teacher dismissals, and performance pay closely mirrored the administration’s, and won D.C. $75 million in federal Race to the Top funding.

Gray has been vague about his specific education-reform plans, and did not respond to a request for comment. Janet Bass, spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Gray, says “implementation of Race to the Top is key now, and must be done collaboratively with teachers, school administratiors, and others.”

In Colorado, long considered ground zero for bipartisan education reform, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennett, the celebrated former superintendent of Denver’s public schools, is trailing his Republican Tea Party opponent Ken Buck, who—like fellow Tea Party Senate candidates Sharron Angle and Rand Paul—has said the federal government should stay out of local education policy.

In Denver, Bennett’s handpicked successor as superintendent, Thomas Boasberg, has come under fire from parents’ groups for pursuing an Obama-inspired agenda of school closings and teacher dismissals in poor neighborhoods.

Also at risk is Colorado’s commitment to reforming the teaching profession. Last May, in anticipation of Obama’s Race to the Top grant competition, the state legislature passed one of the most aggressive teacher-reform laws in the country, declaring that student test scores would count for 50 percent of teacher evaluation ratings, and reforming the way teachers are granted tenure and awarded salary increases.

Though a Colorado local of the American Federation of Teachers supports the law, the Colorado Education Association, affiliated with the National Education Association teachers union, has targeted legislators—especially Democrats—who voted for the bill.

Advocates are racing to protect the politicians who’ve supported the Obama reform agenda.

“We’ve been raising money for candidates in Colorado who supported SB 191,” the teacher-evaluation bill, said Charles Barone, federal policy director at Democrats for Education Reform. “We had an event for the sponsors of the bill in D.C.”

Stand for Children Colorado, an education-reform advocacy group, will spend between $150,000 and $300,000 on the campaigns of 18 Democratic and Republican supporters of SB 191 who have been targeted by the Colorado Education Association.

“Regardless of Race to the Top, I think the election would still be difficult and challenging,” said Lindsay Weil, executive director of Stand for Children Colorado. “Winning Race to the Top wouldn’t have changed the positions of the organizations who opposed reform.”

Colorado is not the only state that passed controversial education legislation in part to attract Race to the Top funding, only to be denied the extra federal dollars. Advocates also worry about the sustainability of new education-reform laws in Illinois, Michigan, and Louisiana, none of which won the competition.

“I think in states that didn’t win, the likelihood of some of this stuff getting eroded is real,” said Andrew Rotherham, a former Clinton administration education official and cofounder of the consulting firm Bellwether Education Partners. “I’m not optimistic about [the staying power of] some of these changes.”

Another potential, longer-term pitfall for Obama is whether the education policy levers favored by his administration will lead to lasting gains in student achievement, better teaching, and higher high school and college graduation rates. Research on the outcomes of teacher merit pay programs and charter school expansion, for example, remains mixed.

“The public is not going to care about structural reforms” such as replacing principals or changing teacher-evaluation policies, said Justin Cohen, president of the School Turnaround Group and a former Michelle Rhee staffer in the D.C. public schools. “I would love to see the conversation shift away from those input policies to what we expect to happen as a result of this.”

The Obama administration should set timelines for states and school districts to improve student performance, and should withhold competitive grant funding from those who don’t, Cohen said—regardless of the political fallout.

“I don’t think folks quite understand how troubled the most troubled, lowest performing schools are,” he continued. “The worst thing would be to let them continue failing. Folks need to be very blunt and take the Band-Aid off. Unless people understand just how underperforming these schools really are, we won’t have the outrage we really need.”

Dana Goldstein is a Spencer Education Journalism Fellow at Columbia University, and a former associate editor at The Daily Beast. Her writing on politics, women’s issues, and education has also appeared in The American Prospect, The Nation, The New Republic, BusinessWeek, and Slate. You can follow her work at www.danagoldstein.net.

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Flunking His Midterms? (The Daily Beast)

Flunking His Midterms? (The Daily Beast)

Instead, the former judge found a “lively, articulate cross section of people” she meets for dinner, aspiring author workshops, parties and game nights, says Brown, now an attorney who joined Mensa as an undergrad at Spelman College.

“Honestly, it doesn’t look like a convention out of Revenge of the Nerds,” she says with a laugh. “We do have that, but that’s not all. There’s a little of everything.”

Brown, 34, is part of a growing and increasingly visible younger contingent of Mensa, the 58,000- member “High-IQ Society.”

American Mensa says 42% of new members in 2009-2010 were ages 29-49; in the past decade, membership of people under 30 has grown 63%.

American Mensa, now 50 years old, “is getting up there in age,” says national chair Elissa Rudolph, a Mensan for 35 years. But it aims to get “more people involved and younger people more involved,” she says.

It hopes to attract some with National Mensa Testing Day this Saturday; an estimated 6 million people in the USA (about 1 in 50) could qualify, Mensa says.

To qualify, a person must score in the top 2% of the population on an accepted, standardized test. That score can come from Mensa’s own admission test or one of 200 others, such as the Stanford-Binet, the Miller Analogies Test, the GMAT or the GRE.

What’s in it for members, besides bragging rights?

A network of people with whom to share a wide range of social and intellectual activities, says Rudolph, who joined in 1975 when she was a single mother in Pittsburgh.

Andrew Heffernan, 33, a reliability engineer in Albany, N.Y., appreciates the variety of people. “It’s not a professional organization, so we’re not all interested in the same thing,” he says. “Everybody has something new to add.” He was also familiar with Mensa’s “nerd” reputation but put it aside after checking out his local chapter, one of 135 across the country, three years ago.

“It’s not about segregating myself into a highly intelligent group, but learning and trying new things,” he says.

Adds Brown: “You know that the person standing beside you is going to be bright and interesting, even if you don’t share their politics or beliefs. I know I can count on having a lively discussion about something.”

Educating gifted children is of special interest to Mensa, Rudolph

says; more than 1,300 members are under 18. In addition to local activities and excursions, there is a national college scholarship program (for members and non-members alike), resources for gifted children, a quarterly online magazine, Fred, and a group for teens.

Alexis Wise, 19, a member since age 14, coordinates that group via text messages, Facebook and other forms of communications, and she helps plan activities for teens at Mensa’s annual national gathering.

Now a sophomore at Yale, she says: “I have the coolest group of friends, and that’s only grown over the years. I’ve learned so much. Not the type of academic learning we’re used to in school, but learning though conversation, interacting.”

Mensa’s face is changing as it catches a young brain wave

Mensa’s face is changing as it catches a young brain wave

The answer takes achingly long for Anthony, an elementary school student in inner-city Washington. Anthony isn’t dumb; he’s more thoughtful than just about any child you’ll meet. He’s simply applying what he learned in public school. Which isn’t much.

That’s the overarching theme of Davis Guggenheim‘s masterful picture, which vaults itself among the year’s best films.

And while Guggenheim’s point — that public schools are failing our children — may not be an earth-shaker, remember: This is the guy who won an Oscar for turning a PowerPoint presentation into An Inconvenient Truth.

He works some of the same magic here, but by essentially making a reverse image of Truth. Where Guggenheim stoked political friction with Al Gore as Truth‘s tempest, he mostly steers clear of politics here in favor of the children’s stories.

It’s a brilliant move, because you won’t find more compelling stories than Anthony’s, Bianca’s in Harlem and Daisy’s in Los Angeles, among others.

These are kids who not only want a tougher education, they’re gambling on one. The families in Waiting have entered a lottery whose winners get to leave their substandard schools for a mediocre one. The final 10 minutes, as the kids await word if their numbers were called, is as compelling as any feature film.

When Guggenheim asks the boy what a better school would mean for him, Anthony answers quickly: more homework, less television, less playtime.

Does he want to get in? You bet. Asked why: “So my kids have a better future than I did.” It’s hard to argue that he, like all kids in the film, isn’t profoundly teachable, and that’s Guggenheim’s real mission: to put a face on an intractable debate.

The director does get a little heated in his attack on the teachers union, which he accuses of putting politics ahead of pupils. Instead of wading into Michael Moore-like diatribes, though, Guggenheim deflates the tension with a confession: He drives by public schools every morning to take his kids to private schools.

Guggenheim does his homework, including statistics on the success of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools to counter assertions that poor neighborhoods produce poor institutions. And there are startling images of “problem teachers” sent to a professional detention.

The title comes from Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone. He explains he once saw Superman on TV and thought George Reeves would one day swoop in to save him and his classmates.

It’s an apt title. As divisive as the issue has become, it’s hard to deny the power of Guggenheim’s lingering shots on these children, waiting on a superhero who isn’t going to come.

The children are the heroes of ‘Waiting for Superman’

The children are the heroes of ‘Waiting for Superman’

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When Democrats front-loaded the Affordable Care Act with consumer protections set to kick in six weeks before Election Day, they never imagined health care reform itself would stay so unpopular. The newest reliable poll on public opinion on the new law, sponsored by the Associated Press, shows that 40% of Americans oppose the new law, with 30% saying they have no opinion and just 30% favoring it.

Opposition to the overhaul has remained strong despite efforts by the Obama Administration and pro-health reform advocacy groups to turn the tide. The reason, they say, is that Americans are confused about how the law will work. There’s some truth to this notion, with polls consistently showing that Americans dislike the law overall, but like many of the law’s components when asked about them individually. Polls also show misconceptions are common. The AP survey, for instance, indicates that 65% of people believe the law will probably increase the federal deficit, despite estimates that the law will reduce the federal debt by some $140 billion over ten years. (Read about the first victims of health care reform.)

The Administration is banking on a massive public education campaign about a set of insurance regulations that kick in today to increase support for health reform. Other numbers from the new AP poll, however, suggest how hard that will be. When asked a series of quiz-like questions about new rules already in place – like tax credits for small business – along with the popular insurance regulations that kick in today – like new coverage rules for children – most respondents are already familiar with them and understand how they work, even as they misunderstand more distant changes to the health care system. Additionally, some of the provisions taking effect are fairly narrow in scope, meaning a relatively small number of Americans will be personally impacted by them. (See the top 10 health care reform ads.)

Here’s a rundown of which new consumer protections go into effect today.

Coverage for children with pre-existing conditions

Insurance companies are no longer permitted to exclude from coverage pre-existing conditions in enrollees 18 and under. This provision, while wildly popular in the abstract, comes with a long list of caveats. There’s nothing in the law that prevents insurers from charging as much as they want to cover the costs of paying for pre-existing conditions. While all group plans, such as those provided by employers, will fall under this new rule, individual policies that existed before March 23, 2010, aren’t subject to it. Since new child-only plans will have to cover pre-existing conditions, some insurers have opted not to sell them at all. The government estimates 31,000 to 72,000 uninsured children could gain coverage because of this new rule and up to 90,000 who have insurance but have a pre-existing condition exclusion could get new coverage for their conditions – provided they can afford it.

Ban on lifetime limits and restrictions on annual limits

Insurers are no longer allowed to set a lifetime limit on benefits. This is particularly helpful to people with very expensive or long-term health problems. The government estimates that about 20,000 people in the U.S. hit their lifetime limits every year. The law also begins phasing out annual limits on coverage. Except for individual plans purchased before March 23, 2010, which may have “grandfathered status,” all plans issued or renewed between today and Sept. 23, 2011, will not be able to set annual limits lower than $750,000. (The limit is raised each year until it is eliminated in 2014.) Not all plans have annual limits anyway and some are already higher than this, meaning the new rule will affect fewer than 2 million plans, according to federal estimates. For plans that currently have limits below $750,000 and will therefore have to make changes, the government predicts premiums will increase by percentages in the single digits. (See the top 10 players in health care reform.)

Ban on rescissions

Insurance companies are no longer allowed to retroactively cancel policies just because people make inadvertent errors on their enrollment forms. Such action by insurers, while rare, is often egregious and a way for insurers to avoid paying for care when their customers become very ill. The new rule states that insurers can only rescind policies if enrollees are found to have committed fraud. The ban on unfair rescissions is, like coverage of pre-existing conditions in children, wildly popular but impactful for only a small number of people. The government estimates that currently there are about 10,700 rescissions every year.

Coverage for young adults

Insurance companies must allow parents to include children 25 or younger as dependents on their policies. Children 25 and under can join their parents’ policies even if they are not listed as a dependent for tax purposes and even if they don’t live with their parents. However, as with coverage for children with pre-existing conditions, there are a number of caveats that apply to this new rule. Some plans that existed before the Affordable Care Act was signed on March 23, 2010 – those which maintain “grandfathered status” will not be required to extend dependent coverage to these young adults if they can get their own insurance through work. Children 19-25 who have pre-existing conditions may face exclusion periods. Plus, about half the states already allow adult children to be included as dependents. Still, up to about 2.5 million young adults could gain new coverage.

Free preventive care

Insurers must cover preventive care without requiring enrollees to cough up co-pays or co-insurance. The rule only applies to preventive care delivered by practitioners in an insurer’s network. Plans with “grandfathered status” do not have to abide by this new rule. Procedures, screenings and tests that are considered “preventive” will be determined by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Centers for Disease Control (for vaccines) and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Other new rules

Regulations that kick in today also allow people more freedom to choose doctors within their insurers’ networks and freedom to receive covered care in emergency rooms even if they are not pre-approved. Insurers also must follow a strict set of guidelines when handling claim appeals.

See 10 health care reform ads.

See TIME’s health and medicine covers.

View this article on Time.com

Related articles on Time.com:

• Health Reform Will Impact Existing Plans More Than Promised
• Making History: House Passes Health Care Reform
• A Page From Hillary
• The Dems’ Universal Ailment
• What Insurers Are Trying to Get Out of Health Reform

The New Health Care Rules: What They Will and Won’t Do (Time.com)

The New Health Care Rules: What They Will and Won’t Do (Time.com)

For more than 35 years, the City University of New York, one of the nation’s most diverse higher education systems, has quietly struggled with a minority group that says it has been passed over for jobs. In June, members of the group issued a blistering report the size of a phone book. In July, one employee filed a federal discrimination lawsuit, and some state lawmakers are pushing for hearings this fall into what they see as blatant ethnic bias.

If the fierceness of the battle is not unusual — fights over affirmative action are a staple on campuses — what is surprising is the group waging it: Italian-Americans.

Of all the universities and colleges that offer protections for minorities, CUNY appears to be the only one that has declared Italian-Americans an official affirmative action category in employment, promising special efforts to recruit, hire and promote them, according to national higher-education groups.

The declaration, made in 1976 and reaffirmed in later years, came after pressure from Italian-American legislators in Albany responding to complaints of bias from the faculty and staff. The lawmakers also created a research institute at the university to counsel students of Italian heritage and study “the Italian-American experience.”

Yet ever since, a group of Italian-American professors and staff members at the institute and at CUNY have been making the case that the university has failed them.

They have produced a mountain of manifestoes, research studies and lawsuits, and exposed a deep vein of grievance in an ethnic group that has risen to prominence in fields like politics, law and medicine. Some of the dissidents have lamented that Italian-Americans are still stereotyped in popular culture as mobsters or muscle-bound buffoons; others have described an unsympathetic Italian-American administrator as an “Uncle Tony” — the equivalent of an Uncle Tom.

Though CUNY vigorously denies the allegations, the critics have met with some success: Outside arbiters have largely upheld claims that Italian-Americans are underrepresented in university jobs. In a written opinion, the civil rights lawyer and federal judge Constance Baker Motley, who oversaw a settlement in 1994, called the group’s lack of progress “unconscionable given the existence of an affirmative action commitment.”

Still, for some who work in higher education, the notion of protections for Italian-Americans — at a university where 70 percent of the 262,000 full-time students are black, Latino or Asian — has prompted some head-scratching.

“In the diversity of the community that is New York City, it seems particularly unusual that Italian-Americans would be considered disadvantaged,” said Ada Meloy, general counsel of the American Council on Education. “After all, in New York we had an Italian-American governor, and we may have another one coming up.”

Joseph V. Scelsa, who was one of the institute’s first directors and led the legal fight that resulted in the settlement, said Italian-Americans seemed to be well represented on the staffs of other New York-area colleges, but had long been mistreated at CUNY.

“There have been so many cases of discrimination that I personally know of — from not getting hired to not getting promoted to not getting tenure,” said Dr. Scelsa, who is now president of the Italian American Museum in Manhattan. “It’s so clear that there’s been no serious attempt to increase our numbers.”

The latest skirmish centers on a lawsuit filed in July in United States District Court by Vincenzo Milione, a researcher at the institute, now known as the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, in memory of the state senator who first held hearings on Italian-Americans at CUNY.

The suit says CUNY and the institute’s current director, Anthony J. Tamburri, retaliated against Dr. Milione, cutting his staff and rescinding a prestigious job title, after Dr. Milione, in 2006, made a presentation to Italian-American state lawmakers. In the presentation, Dr. Milione argued that Italian-American representation on the faculty and the staff had remained flat — between 5 percent and 6 percent — over three decades, while that of groups like blacks, Latinos and Asians had climbed.

“Did affirmative action work at CUNY?” he asked in a recent interview. “Yes. But it did not work for Italian-Americans.” The New York office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that his suit had merit.

CUNY officials said that Dr. Tamburri would not comment, but they defended the university’s record. As of last fall, they said, Italian-Americans represented about 7 percent of the full-time instructional staff of 11,000, up from 5.8 percent in 1981. While the increase was modest, it occurred while the proportion of white employees fell sharply, to 54 percent from 74 percent, as the university strove to hire blacks and Latinos.

“Were CUNY not proactively engaging in affirmative action for Italian-Americans, one would expect to see Italian-American representation in CUNY fall at the same rate as that of whites,” Jennifer S. Rubain, university dean for recruitment and diversity, said in a statement. “That has not happened.”

Unlikely Group Charges Bias at University

PHILADELPHIA – President Barack Obama, in a message Tuesday to America’s students, urged them to ignore bullies and treat each other with kindness and respect, saying part of the beauty of life “lies in its diversity.”

Obama acknowledged that school is tough and that it can be made even tougher by the presence of classroom bullies who make fun of students and try to make those who are different from them feel bad.

He said students should ignore the bulliers and celebrate the differences among them.

“What I want all of you, if you do take away one thing from my speech, I want you to take away the notion that life is precious, and part of what makes it so wonderful is its diversity,” Obama said from a Philadelphia school during his second back-to-school address.

“We shouldn’t be embarrassed by the things that make us different. We should be proud of them,” he said. “Because it’s the things that make us different that make us who we are, that make us unique.”

After the White House announced last year’s speech, some parents threatened to pull their kids from class during Obama’s remarks. Conservatives also accused him of trying to inject politics into the classroom.

A similar outcry has been missing this year.

Schools were not required to show the speech, as was the case last year. Some schools also gave parents the option of having their kids participate in another activity during the broadcast. As with last year’s speech, the White House released the text a day early so people could read it and judge for themselves.

Speaking from the auditorium at the Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School for fifth- through 12th-graders, Obama urged students to stay in school, study hard and take responsibility for their education. He said the nation’s ability to compete globally in the 21st century depends on an educated work force.

He also said nothing is beyond their reach as long as they dream big, work hard and focus on learning.

“Nobody gets to write your destiny but you,” Obama said.

___

Online:

Obama’s speech: http://tinyurl.com/39petwu

Obama urges students to be tolerant of each other (AP)

Obama urges students to be tolerant of each other (AP)

MADISON, Wis. – University of Wisconsin student Leo Burt approached his former journalism instructor at the student union one day in August 1970.

The intense 22-year-old thanked the man for encouraging him to write for a left-wing student newspaper, where he covered the Vietnam War protests raging on campus and where his politics had become radicalized. And he said goodbye because he was planning to live underground in Canada for reasons he wouldn’t share.

“Only 10 days later, there he was on television,” the instructor, Jack Holzhueter, recalled. “And I was shocked to know that Leo had participated in this event.”

Forty years after a powerful bomb exploded on the Madison campus, Burt remains the last fugitive wanted by the FBI in connection with radical anti-Vietnam War activities. He vanished almost immediately after the bombing, and is now what one former prosecutor calls “Wisconsin’s state ghost.”

This week, the university will mark the anniversary by opening a recording booth in the library, where people can relate their memories of the event for inclusion in the university archives and in a documentary theater project. A small plaque honoring Robert Fassnacht, the 33-year-old scientist killed in the blast, is the only permanent sign on campus that the bombing happened.

Burt and three other radicals parked a stolen van packed with fertilizer and fuel outside the university’s Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall and lit the fuse in the early morning hours of Aug. 24, 1970. The bomb attack, the nation’s most powerful until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, killed a graduate student who was doing research in the middle of the night, injured others and caused millions of dollars in damage. The bombers fled to Canada.

Three of the four men were captured in the 1970s after trying to live underground; they were convicted, served short prison terms and resumed their lives. One, Karl Armstrong, operates a juice stand near the bombing site. His brother, Dwight, died of lung cancer in Madison in June. David Fine has worked as a paralegal in Portland, Ore.

Other radicals from that era have been caught, including most recently the former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Kathleen Ann Soliah, who was captured in Minnesota in 1999 after nearly 25 years on the run.

But nobody knows what happened to Leo Burt, an Irish Catholic kid from the Philadelphia suburbs who came to Wisconsin on an ROTC scholarship and joined the rowing team. He would now be 62.

Those who knew Burt are growing increasingly skeptical the student they remember as hardworking, smart and disciplined will ever be found.

“The FBI’s guess is as good as mine as to where he is, if he’s even alive,” Armstrong said. “I have absolutely no clue.”

Asked how Burt was able to elude authorities when he and his brother could not, Armstrong laughed. “Well, maybe because he’s a smarter guy,” he said, explaining that Dwight Armstrong had confided in others about their identities.

Armstrong said the FBI should offer Burt amnesty to turn himself in since history has proved the war in Vietnam a failure. He said the bombing “was the right thing to do at the time” in response to the shooting of protesters at Kent State and they did not intend to harm anyone.

But Chris Cole, the FBI supervisory agent who oversees the search for Burt, said Fassnacht’s death made the case a continuing priority. Fassnacht, a husband and father of three, “was doing nothing more than his job and lost his life.”

FBI officials continue to chase leads and offer a $150,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Burt has few living relatives, and his father and stepmother have long been deceased. The FBI says his relatives have cooperated with the investigation but could shed no light on Burt’s whereabouts. A half brother, Donald Burt, declined comment.

Joe Brennan Jr., a writer whose father rowed with Burt at Monsignor Bonner High School in Drexel Hill, Pa., said he believes he is living under another identity in the St. Catharines area of Canada. He said Burt had traveled there every summer as a youngster to watch a boat race.

Brennan, who hopes to publish a manuscript about Burt, said he believes Burt has been able to live underground because “he is quite simply a highly disciplined and driven individual, very unlike the other student radicals you saw from that period.”

Burt’s former rowing coach at Wisconsin, Randy Jablonic, said he was one of the hardest working athletes he saw in 40 years of coaching, his muscles bulging with strength from doing squats up and down the steps of Camp Randall Stadium.

“If he used that same persistence to be evasive, he’d be very tough to find,” Jablonic said.

Burt also had luck. Shortly after the bombing, then-Sauk County Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel Hiller was patrolling northwest of town and pulled over a light-colored Corvair matching the description of one seen near the blast. The four men inside said they were going camping, and Hiller let them go after a Madison police dispatcher could not send an officer to question them.

“It’s one of those things where you had them in your hand, and they slipped away,” Hiller said recently, recalling Leo Burt wearing round glasses as a passenger in the car.

FBI Special Agent Kevin Cassidy said Burt was last seen escaping with Fine out the back of a boarding house in Peterborough, Canada, days after the bombing while authorities arrived in the front. He left behind a wallet with a fake ID.

Cassidy said he assumes Burt is still alive. After the case aired recently on “America’s Most Wanted,” dozens of tips poured in but none panned out. Burt stayed on the “Most Wanted” list until 1976. He beat the odds: The FBI says 463 out of 494 fugitives who have been on the list since 1950 have been apprehended or located.

Holzhueter, the instructor who had urged Burt to write for the Daily Cardinal, said he remains haunted by Burt’s disappearance.

“Whatever Leo did, it was principled,” he said. “He was a man of great integrity. Some would say he was a killer and stop there, but he was far more complex than that.”

40 years later, Wis. bomber is a ‘ghost’ (AP)

40 years later, Wis. bomber is a ‘ghost’ (AP)

It’s a trend that is likely to grow as seniors’ ranks swell with baby boomers, who by 2015 will represent some 35% of the U.S. population, looking to either acquire new job skills or simply enjoy new learning experiences. (Baby boomers are people born between 1946 and 1964)

Nearly six decades after graduating from college, Pete Shannon still can’t get enough of lectures and homework assignments.

The 78-year-old Dallas retiree has taken dozens of classes at his local community college since he stopped working as a certified public accountant in 2004. This summer he studied music composition, and in the fall he plans to tackle philosophy and whatever else piques his interest.

Exams can be challenging, but one thing he doesn’t sweat is tuition bills. In one of many such arrangements across the U.S., Dallas County residents age 65 and over get up to six hours’ tuition free at Richland College every semester.

“It’s a marvelous opportunity,” Shannon says, calling the college his “candy store.” “It’s a wonderful place to go. The catalog is rich with all kinds of classes.”

The prospect of having to pay for even moderately priced college classes might sound daunting to a retiree living on fixed income. But numerous discounts, tuition waivers and other deals make it possible.

“There are more opportunities than in the past for senior citizens to take college classes and get help paying for them,” says financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com.

Many community colleges and some four-year colleges allow seniors to audit classes for free and significantly reduce tuition for those who take them for credit. The financial arrangements vary widely by school and so do the age requirements — generally 60, 62, or 65 and over.

Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., offer free tuition for senior citizens at some or all of their public colleges, according to FinAid.org. The student still must buy textbooks and may have to pay fees.

Two relatively new opportunities offer even more help.

The Senior Scholarships program, created last year as part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, provides $1,000 education awards for people 55 or older who volunteer 350 or more hours a year. The money may be used for the volunteer’s own education or transferred to a child, foster child or grandchild.

And the American Opportunity tax credit can lower taxes for students of any age dollar-for-dollar for the first $2,000 spent on tuition, fees and course materials. The credit also applies to 25% of the second $2,000. Unless extended, the temporary credit expires at year’s end.

More seniors might head back to school if they knew about the deep discounts and freebies — or lived near colleges. As it is, education remains an untapped resource for most.

According to data released in June by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans from age 65 to 74 say they spend 6.77 hours on leisure and sports on a typical weekday, watch 3.58 hours of TV, spend 0.71 hour reading, 0.59 hour socializing and 0.03 hour on education. That’s less than two minutes, compared to 0.46 hour or about 28 minutes for the population as a whole.

Shannon, who got his undergraduate degree in business economics from Rice University in 1953, is happy to stay in school for life. He says he takes college classes to get out of the house, at his wife’s urging, and exercise his brain. The rest of him gets a workout, too, as he often bikes the 4 1/2 miles (6.4 kilometers) to campus.

A perfect 4.0 grade-point average through 114 credit hours shows he’s not taking any mental shortcuts.

“I like writing the papers and doing the work,” he says. “It’s more complete than Googling a subject. And by the time you finish the semester, you’ve learned something.”

Thanks to the tuition deals, he reckons he has spent no more than $1,000 on education expenses since he retired. But he’d dig a little deeper into his retirement savings if he had to.

“Frankly, I’d go to college even if I had to pay up to $1,000 a year for it,” he says. “I’d consider it part of my personal entertainment budget.”

If retirement-age students decide to borrow to pay for college, loans don’t have to be as burdensome as they might expect.

Federal student loans are discharged on the borrower’s death. That means the retiree student’s heirs won’t get shortchanged because of those late-in-life classes in history and Chinese. The senior can also choose the repayment plan with the longest payback period, thus the lowest monthly payment.

When finances aren’t an issue, most any educational experience is still possible in retirement. Anne Carter Harrison-Clark of Williamsburg, Virginia, is thriving as a 71-year-old student at the William & Mary Law School.

Learning more about the law is something she long aspired to do during a career as a lobbyist and public policy lecturer at Georgetown University, among other roles. Now she has both the time and money to do it, thanks to she and her husband Bob selling property near the top of the market six years ago.

Immersed in her third year of law classes, she is thrilled to be studying at the college where her great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was educated. She doesn’t at all mind being the only white-haired student or getting constantly asked why she’s there.

The short answer to that is she wants to keep the brain cells going with new information and new contacts. And she doesn’t know where this educational “journey” will take her, although she does intend to get her law degree at some point, on her own schedule.

“This whole (college) experience has been like dessert, like double fudge icing on a cake. Just a wonderful experience,” says Harrison-Clark, who already has a Ph.D. in politics. “I highly encourage it.”

Retired? Head back to school with college discounts

Retired? Head back to school with college discounts

GEORGETOWN, Ky. – Call it vacation Bible school, Glenn Beck-style.

Some three dozen kids ages 10 to 15 are spending five nights this week learning what organizers — some with tea party ties — say they won’t hear in school about the Constitution, the founding fathers and the role of faith in the birth of the United States.

“If we’re going to take our country back, we’ve got to remember where we came from — not only as adults, but we need to teach our children,” said Tim Fairfield, one of the teachers, who wore a three-cornered hat at the opening class of Vacation Liberty School. It’s held in a church basement in Georgetown, a city just north of Lexington that is the site of a major Toyota assembly plant.

The curriculum includes lessons like “equal rights, not equal results,” “recognize men don’t create rights — only God,” and “understanding falsehoods of separation of church and state.”

And organizers say the program has drawn interest from people looking to start new chapters in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Florida and other communities in Kentucky.

It’s is an offshoot of the 9/12 Project, inspired by Beck, the conservative commentator, who had no direct role in the planning of the Kentucky school. He did not respond to a request for comment made through his publicist. The project, which seeks to unify Americans around nine values — including honesty, hope and sincerity — and 12 principles, was behind some of the raucous protests at health care forums around the country last summer.

On Monday, the first night of Vacation Liberty School, the basement of Gano Baptist church was converted into a tyrannical kingdom meant to resemble colonial England where students were told they must suppress their laughter, sit apart from their friends and flawlessly recite “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Against the urgings of a mock king’s representative, the brave ones ventured through the rugged terrain of a maze of upside-down tables discovered an adjoining room with all the luxuries of the New World. There they could play basketball, toss beanbags and ride a teeter-totter while being showered with confetti as Neil Diamond’s “Coming To America” blared over the speakers.

Some parents showed up early to quiz the organizers about the curriculum. Others said they wouldn’t mind a conservative slant to balance out what they say is a liberal influence in the public school system.

“Other people are trying to put their viewpoints out there, so I don’t see any reason why we can’t put our viewpoints out there,” said John Cravens, the father of two children who attended.

Eric Wilson, head of the Kentucky 9/12 Project, acknowledges he and many others behind the school are strong supporters of the conservative tea party movement, which claims Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul as one of its highest-profile members. But he says the curriculum was carefully planned to make sure politics didn’t creep in.

“We may be playing in the same sandbox,” Wilson said. “But in the 9/12 Project, we’re going to tell you where the sand came from while the tea party is telling you what sand to buy.”

Joe Conn, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, isn’t so sure. A news release announcing the school referenced the tea party, leading him to believe that if Vacation Liberty School isn’t crossing the line into politics, it’s coming close.

“All Americans want kids to learn about the government and political system,” he said. “It’s something quite different when kids are being indoctrinated in church in one political tradition. That’s quite different from learning objectively and academically about civics.”

He cautions Gano Baptist could risk losing its tax-exempt status if explicit political lessons are being taught in a church setting.

But the Rev. Wayne Lipscomb, the pastor there, says he had no political motivations for allowing the classes to be held without a rental fee. Tickets were distributed online for free.

“I think our kids need to know about the founding fathers and they need to understand the connection between God and the founding fathers,” he said. “They don’t need to hear the revisionists’ stories of history.”

With such weighty topics swirling, 13-year-old Matthew Porter seemed to get some of them jumbled.

“I didn’t know faith, hope and charity were parts of the Constitution,” he said. “I thought they made it as laws, nothing to do with church.”

Although there was no talk of Democrats or Republicans during Monday’s session, there was an activity geared toward teaching children the dangers of communism.

Given pistols to shoot soap bubbles out of the air, the students quickly learned they could do it far more easily by refilling from their own buckets of water rather than having to share a communal one.

Fairfield told the class the lesson is that while secular communism sounds good in theory, free enterprise works far better in practice.

Later in the week, the economic teachings would extend to lessons on debt and inflation. As more money is printed, the costs of candy and toys at the school’s canteen will skyrocket.

Even in the New World it’s not all fun and games, the children learned. When told it was time to clean up, 10-year-old Taylor Lopez responded with a quip.

“Now we have to clean up America?” she asked.

___

Associated Press Writer Roger Alford contributed to this report.

School aims to re-teach civics with focus on faith (AP)

School aims to re-teach civics with focus on faith (AP)

WASHINGTON — A pared-down immigration bill that would give as many as 2.1 million undocumented immigrants under 35 a shot at higher education and legal status is receiving renewed interest because of the short time frame before the November midterm elections.

The DREAM Act — or Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors legislation — would give undocumented young people the chance to earn permanent residency and eventually citizenship if they graduate from U.S. high schools, have been in the country at least five years continuously and meet educational or military service stipulations. The bill was first introduced in Congress in 2004.

President Barack Obama gave a speech last week intended to jump-start comprehensive immigration legislation, but some advocates think a piecemeal approach might be more successful.

According to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute , California ranks first in the nation with an estimated 553,000 potential beneficiaries of the DREAM Act, or 26 percent of the total. Texas is second with 258,000 estimated eligible under the bill, Florida is third with 192,000, followed by New York , with 146,000, and Arizona , with 114,000.

Critics say the legislation, which is pending in the Senate , would open the door to amnesty, but a report by the Migration Policy Institute estimates that only 825,000 of the 2.1 million potential beneficiaries might actually participate.

DREAM bill sponsor Sen. Richard Durbin , D- Ill. , is open to making it part of an overall package, aides said, or moving it separately. It last failed to pass the Senate in 2007.

“We should not punish children for their parents’ mistakes,” Durbin said. “That is not the American way. The DREAM Act says to these kids: ‘America will give you a chance. We will give you the opportunity to earn your way to legal status if you work hard and play by the rules.’”

The Migration Policy Institute report concludes that the DREAM Act would have a wide reach.

“While most of the potential DREAM Act beneficiaries reside in traditional immigrant destination states such as California and Texas , it’s interesting that the legislation could touch the lives of more Hispanic youth and young adults proportionately in new destination states such as Nevada , Oregon , Maryland , Georgia and North Carolina ,” said Jeanne Batalova, an MPI policy analyst. “More than one in 10 Hispanics under age 35 in those new destination states potentially would stand to benefit from passage of the DREAM Act.”

States with most potential DREAM Act beneficiaries

State….. Estimate….. % of total

United States ….. 2,150,000 …..100

California ….. 553,000….. 26

Texas ….. 258,000….. 12

Florida ….. 192,000….. 9

New York ….. 146,000….. 7

Arizona ….. 114,000….. 5

Illinois ….. 95,000 …..4

New Jersey ….. 90,000….. 4

Georgia ….. 74,000….. 3

North Carolina ….. 51,000….. 2

Colorado ….. 46,000….. 2

Virginia ….. 45,000….. 2

Nevada …..41,000….. 2

Maryland …..39,000….. 2

Oregon …..31,000 …..1

Utah …..23,000 …..1

Nebraska ….. 11,000….. 1

Notes: Only 16 states with sufficient sample sizes of their estimated DREAM beneficiaries are presented in the above table.

Source: Migration Policy Institute

ON THE WEB

Read the Migration Policy Institute report

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DREAM Act receives renewed interest in immigration debate (McClatchy Newspapers)

DREAM Act receives renewed interest in immigration debate (McClatchy Newspapers)