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Monday, May 3, 2010

'Daily Show' to feature district's communist controversy | California Watch

'Daily Show' to feature district's communist controversy | California Watch

'Daily Show' to feature district's communist controversy

Flickr photo by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of StaffChairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, is interviewed by Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show."
Mary Anne King, former host of the children's TV show "Romper Room," has a new calling: protecting children from being seduced by the propaganda of Communist China.
Her main antagonist is the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District school board, which in January voted to import Chineseteachers and accept $30,000 in funding from an organization affiliated with China's Ministry of Education. Hacienda is the largest district in the San Gabriel Valley, which is east of Los Angeles. It serves roughly 78,000 students.
The board, which is mostly made up of Chinese descendents, hopes to use the People's Republic of China resources to implement a Confucius Classroom program at a local middle school. But their decision has King and others seeing red. King told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune:
We have teachers that are well-educated from our universities and our country. We do not need to import teachers from China to teach a doctrine that we neither agree with, nor do we want it offered in the United States of America.
Sounds like an segment for an episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"? Well, don't worry, it soon will be. The satirical news program's crew filmed the school district's board

For-profit colleges see stocks drop after official's speech

Several for-profit college companies, including a California-based outfit, saw dips in their stock prices this week after a senior education official likened the industry to Wall Street firms that played a part in the financial crisis.
The Associated Press reported that Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges Inc. and several major for-profit players that serve students in California experienced drops after Deputy Undersecretary of Education Robert Shireman's speech to regulators last week:
Shares of DeVry Inc. dropped $4.09, or 6.1 percent, to $62.61 on Thursday. And stock in Apollo Group Inc. – which runs the University of Phoenix chain, the nation's largest for-profit school – slid $3.56, or 5.8 percent, to $57.94.
Shares of Corinthian Colleges Inc. fell 87 cents, or 5.1 percent, to $16.04; Career Education Corp. sank 3.36 cents, or 10.1 percent, to $30.05 and Strayer Education Inc. lost $3.04, or 1.2 percent,


Chat live with Robert Rosenthal, head of Center for Investigative Reporting

Join Center for Investigative Reporting Executive Director Robert Rosenthal for a live video chat this Thursday, May 6 at 11 a.m. Rosenthal will discuss the Center's new project, California Watch, and take your questions about investigative reporting and the future of journalism.
The chat will happen live via UStream in the embedded player below. Just bookmark this page and return on May 6th to join the discussion.