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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program | Campus Pride | The leading national organization for LGBT student leaders and campus groups

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program | Campus Pride | The leading national organization for LGBT student leaders and campus groups:

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program



LGBTQ-Friendly Online College Fair 2015




    THANK YOU!

    Campus Pride & GLSEN extend our appreciation to our presenting sponsor Toyota as well as the hundreds of LGBTQ and ally students who participated in the first-ever online college fair. A very special thanks also to the 50+ LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities.
    Please learn more about these campuses and other LGBTQ-friendly campuses online at CampusPrideIndex.org
    Check this page often for updates on the 2015-16 Campus Pride National LGBTQ-friendly College Fair Program to take place in Fall 2015 in eight to ten different cities across the country.
    • Bentley University
    • Brooks Institute – The Visual Arts
    • Cal Poly Pomona
    • California State University, Chico
    • Centennial College
    • Columbia College Chicago
    • Duke University
    • Eastern Illinois University
    • Eastern Michigan University
    • Ferris State University
    • Hanover College
    • Illinois Wesleyan University
    • Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
    • James Madison University
    • Johns Hopkins University
    • Knox College
    • Metropolitan State University of Denver
    • Nebraska Methodist College
    • New Mexico State University
    • Noodle
    • North Dakota State University
    • Northern Arizona University
    • Oakland University
    • Occidental College
    • Ohio University
    • Otterbein University
    • Point Foundation
    • Roger Williams University
    • Rutgers University
    • Salem State University
    • San Diego State University
    • Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
    • St. Cloud State University
    • SUNY Purchase
    • The American University of Paris
    • The Ohio University
    • The Ohio State University
    • The University of Illinois at Chicago
    • UMBC-University of Maryland Baltimore County
    • University of Arizona
    • University of California, Santa Cruz
    • University of Houston
    • University of Idaho
    • University of Iowa
    • University of Maine at Machias
    • University of Miami
    • University of Pennsylvania
    • Virginia Commonwealth University
    • Wabash College
    • Wentworth Institute of Technology
    • Western Michigan University
    • Willamette University MBA
    • as of 3/19/2015


    LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index
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    If you have already completed the LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index, your campus may upgrade to a Premier Campus for FREE. Learn more.
     
    Spotlight Campus
    Region:  Midwest
    Type of Institution:Master's College/University, Public/State Institution
    Size:  14,000
    In-State Tuition:  $8,865
    Out-of-State Tuition:  $18,810

    Honor Roll
    Note: The Honor Roll recognizes the achievements of colleges and universities who score a LGBT-Friendly star rating of 3 stars or above. The campuses are selected randomly from the LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index for every new site visitor.
     


    “Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29

    “Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29:



    “Doxxing”: A Primer





     I learned a new term today: doxxing (also spelled doxing). In short, doxxing involves the spreading of personally-identifiable information (documents, of “dox”) on the internet.

    I noticed that some usage of the term presumes inappropriate “dropping” of personal “docs.” However, it seems that the perceived appropriateness of doxxing can sometimes be difficult to determine and seems to be tied to the motivations of the one “dropping the docs.” In his On the Media article dated March 10, 2014, producer Alex Goldman captures the complexity in determining such appropriateness (and, indeed, of defining doxxing):
    The word “Dox,” for years an internet term of art for revealing personal information online, suddenly entered the popular lexicon last week when Newsweek published a story about a man named Satoshi Nakamoto who the author claims is the founder of Bitcoin. But I have to say that I think the term is not being very well applied in this case, and before we can decide whether the outing of Satoshi Nakamoto is, in fact, doxxing, we should have a better idea of what doxxing actually means. …
    Back in the pre-world wide web universe, doxxing, or “dropping dox,” as it was known then, was basically a petty, retributive act meant to shame or embarrass rivals, and to establish supremacy as a hacker. A good example of the classic variety of doxxing occurred last week at Duke University. First, a student named Thomas Bagley outed a woman who goes to his school that he recognized as appearing in pornograpy to some of his friends (in itself a sort of analogue version of doxxing). Bagley, in turn, was doxxed by the CEO of a porn company for having a pretty healthy online pornography budget.
    In the case of Newsweek’s article, however, it’s more complicated than doxxing as I define it. Generally, doxxing is perpetrated against private individuals without any relationship to newsworthiness or the public interest. The same can’t be said about the identity of Bitcoin’s creator. A guy who invented a crypto currency that has an (albeit miniscule) chance of destabalizing the online payments industry is certainly newsworthy. At the same time, the article ran with a picture of Nakamoto’s house and license plate, easily allowing reporters to discern its location, which, as a journalist, makes me pretty uncomfortable. The article’s impact is complicated by the fact that the man himself denies any relationship to Bitcoin, and Newsweek’s article, while building a pretty excellent circumstantial case that Nakamoto is Bitcoin’s founder, is conspicuously absent any smoking guns. …
    So what are my conclusions? Well, I think that whether or not Newsweek’s Bitcoin article is actually doxxing kind of rests on whether the author was correct about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. In the larger context, I feel like it’s only doxxing when revealing a person’s information has no news value whatsoever. But what determines news value is, of course a gray area. In the end, I hate to get all Potter Stewart on you, but when it comes to doxxing, I know it when I see it
    Thus, the motive of the writer as intending to serve the public interest via newsworthiness of publishing personal information is (for Goldman, and for me, as well) a key issue in determining what actually constitutes negatively-connoted “doxxing.”
    Not all view the term doxxing as negative. But it’s complicated.
    If one takes the term doxxing at its most general, it simply involves “dropping documents.” Yet the definition has nuances. Some refer to “doxxing” the as the publicizing of personal information not otherwise publicized. Yet others maintain that it is “doxxing” for one to even draw attention to publicly-available, personally-identifiable information.
    To some, doxxing is always negative. To others, it is not. Again, I think motive plays an important role. If I assemble a dossier of publicly-available personal information on an individual and disseminate it as a means of revenge, I think most would agree that my actions would fit the term “doxxing” in a clear, negative sense. However, if I reference information available on a nonprofit tax form in order to establish that the “Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29:

    Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update | Seattle Education

    Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update | Seattle Education:

    Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update

    #PARCCWALKOUT for updates
    resist-the-test
    From Fair Test with additions made in italics:
    Testing Resistance & Reform News
    As the peak of spring standardized exam season nears, parents, students, teachers, superintendents, school board members, and state officials are escalating campaigns to stop testing overuse and misuse.  Once again this week, testing resistance and reform stories come from more than half the 50 states demonstrating the breadth and depth of the national movement.
    Colorado State School Board Rejects High “Cut Scores” on Controversial New Test
    http://blogs.denverpost.com/coloradoclassroom/2015/03/11/state-board-rejects-cut-scores-high-school-cmas-tests/4597/

    Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

    Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 


    Click Here to go to the WebsiteUnited Opt Out Team
    Home
    Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

    Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child. | Reclaim Reform

    Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child. | Reclaim Reform:



    Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child.

    mom and child at schoolhouse steps a
    Pearson testing “monitors” your child electronically without your prior knowledge or consent. Pearson is foreign company collecting information (lucrative data mining) on American children without the knowledge or consent of the parent or child. It seems fair to call this “spying” as it accesses any social media your child may use. Here is Bob Braun’s full, updated account.
    Pearson does NOT deny this, even in its own written release attempting damage control for the corporation itself.Yes it looks at your child’s social networking actives and reports it to each state’s government officials.
    Pearson, on its own site, attracts new employees to specifically –
    By building a world-class education evidence base, we’ll push boundaries with ground-breaking research. We’ll embed what we know in our products and use data to improve them… Examples of what we do include: collecting data on learners’ digital activities.”
    This seems like the right time to request a Department of Justice investigation into this behavior.
    Until a full investigation by the Department of Justice is completed, any “no law was broken” PR statements are political hype or mere conjecture.
    Here are two petitions for you to sign in defense of your child. MoveOn.org and Badass Teachers Association for a DOJ Investigation.
    Since Pearson is a foreign corporation (UK and Hong Kong connections) with Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child. | Reclaim Reform:

    Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms - Working In These Times

    Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms - Working In These Times:

    Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms

    New York teachers and parents took to the streets last week in protest of an education budget they say furthers free market education reforms. (United Federation of Teachers / Instagram)  


    Last week, New York City teachers took to the streets in massive numbers to protest New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo, who has made no secret of his disdain for public school teachers, fired another salvo at public education with his 2015-2016 budget, which includes lifting the city’s charter school cap, tying teachers’ pay and retention to students’ test performance, and putting low performing schools into the hands of outside operators. In response, thousands of teachers and parents protested across almost 200 city schools.
    On March 12, teachers, parents, and students around New York City took part in the Protect Our Schools action. According to Chalkbeat New York, planning began back in January, when Cuomo spelled out his reforms. A proposed $1.1 billion in additional funding could be rescinded by Cuomo, who is asking the state legislature to approve his education reforms. If legislators do not approve the budget, the funding increase drops by almost two-thirds, to $377 million. The demands were issued after Cuomo released a report that argued 91 New York City schools and 178 schools statewide were “failing.”
    Teachers say the standardized tests are not just as a threat to their profession but also to public education as a whole. The tests serve as a gateway to all of Cuomo’s other reforms, including the opening of more charter schools, as students’ test results will play a large part in determining their fate.
    Some parents stated they feared the loss of a well-rounded education as teachers began to teach to the test to keep their jobs.
    “There is too much focus and too much stress on testing,” Brooklyn Public School 200 PTA President Concetta Aloi told the New York Daily News. “All the parents think too much time is spent on preparing kids for tests instead of learning the curriculum.”
    The organization Class Size Matters said, in helping plan the protests, they wanted to prevent the state from taking over their schools.
     “We don’t want the state to determine which schools and teachers are failing, which would enable more school closures and stake takeovers,” their protest flier stated.
    Many see Cuomo’s education reforms as part of a larger plan to privatize public education, in which the opening of charter schools plays a key role. Some of Cuomo’s biggest donors are strong supporters of charter schools. And the governor has routinely sided with Eva Moskovitz, founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, in her battles with New York Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms - Working In These Times:

    What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place? - Pacific Standard

    What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place? - Pacific Standard:

    What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place?


    That’s the conclusion of a growing number of researchers who argue that 30 years of test scores have not measured a decline in public schools, but are rather a metric of the country’s child poverty and the broadening divide of income inequality.
    It’s been just over 30 years since war was declared on America’s public schools. The opening salvo came with 1983’s A Nation at Risk, the Ronald Reagan-era Department of Education report that alleged that lax schools and ineffective teachers constituted a dire threat to national security.
    Yet three decades later, and in spite the opening of a second front comprised of school vouchers, a 2.57-million student charter school network, and a classroom culture tied to test preparation, the nation’s education outcomes have barely budged, and rather than narrowing the education gap, the chasm between rich and poor appears only to be significantly widening.
    But what if it turned out that education reform, with its teacher-blaming assumptions, got it all wrong in the first place? That’s the conclusion being drawn by a growing number of researchers who, armed with a mountain of fresh evidence, argue that 30 years of test scores have not measured a decline in America’s public schools, but are rather a metric of the country’s child poverty—the worst among developed nations—and the broadening divide of income inequality.

    "The most striking takeaway, was that the students that need the least in this country, who are already coming in with every possible privilege and advantage, are getting the most resources."

    It represented a fundamental misreading, claim the husband and wife research team of professors Gary Orfield and Patricia Gandara. The pair, who investigate education inequities for the University of California-Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project, say this represents a tragic distraction from addressing the real roots of educational inequality.
    "The Reagan revolution basically said, 'No, we don’t have to worry about any of those things,'" Orfield explained to Capital & Main. "'[It said] it’s all the schools' fault, and inside the schools it's the teachers' fault and the teachers' organizations. And if we just beat up on them, we can eliminate all the gaps and so forth. And if they don't do it, we'll just privatize everything. ... And we don’t even have to measure that, because we know that's true.'"
    One area of agreement for both sides in this battle is that quality education remains crucial to both achieving economic security and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. More education typically leads to better jobs and more pay—a fact that has become increasingly critical due to the loss of middle class-manufacturing jobs to globalization—and it directly correlates to better-life outcomes for children. Added to that are the considerable social costs of educational deficits, including an incarceration rate of one in every 10 young male high school dropouts landing in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates.
    For California, the implications couldn’t be more profound. In sheer numbers, the state leads the nation in its share of students from low-income, predominantly immigrant families, and claims the largest percentage of English learners. It also consistently lags far behind comparable states in K-12 per-student spending—it was ranked 44th as recently as 2012-13, though that is expected to change, thanks to a boost in base funding from Proposition 30. The state is ranked 48th when it comes to adults with high school diplomas, beating out only Mississippi and Texas.
    It is facts like these that recently led the Social Science Research Council to place California at the top of its educational inequality index in December’s Portrait of California: 2014-15 report. Using its own 10-point scale based on such factors as preschool enrollment and high school graduation rates, the report measured a dizzying eight-and-a-half point spread between Santa Clara County’s gilded Silicon Valley and the educational sub-basement of Los Angeles neighborhoods like Huntington Park City, Florence-Graham, and Walnut Park.
    How that plays out on the ground is the day-to-day reality of the frontline What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place? - Pacific Standard:

    Which groups are over- or under-represented in regular DC public schools and the DC charter schools? | GFBrandenburg's Blog

    Which groups are over- or under-represented in regular DC public schools and the DC charter schools? | GFBrandenburg's Blog:



    Which groups are over- or under-represented in regular DC public schools and the DC charter schools?

    I’ve been taking a careful look at where various groups of students in Washington DC are enrolled, using various official DCPS and OSSE documents, to see which groups are under- or over-represented in my city’s regular public schools and charter schools.
    Here is the bottom line:

    Black students are over-represented in the charter schools, but every other single group I calculated (special education students, English-language learners, students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, Hispanic students, students deemed officially At Risk, white or Asian students, multiracial students and even students who got ‘proficient’ or ‘advanced’ on the DC-CAS) are over-represented in the regular DC public schools.

    I will present my results below in the form of circle graphs, and I made it so that the area of each circle is proportional to the total number of students in each group. I also showed where the division line between the public school population and the charter school population would be if the subgroup’s population was split evenly among the two school systems. If you want to take a closer look at any of the graph, merely click on it.

    All Publicly-Funded DC Students

    First, the overall student population. As you can see, the regular DC public schools enrolled 57.2% of all publicly-funded students last year, while the charter schools enrolled 42.8%, and the total population was 76,659 students.
    pie chart all students dc 2014 dcps vs charter

    African-American students

    Next, let’s look at where Black (African-American) students are enrolled. You may be surprised to find that they are over-represented in the DC charter schools, and under-represented in the regular DC public schools. They are the ONLY group to be divided in that manner.The dotted circle represents the entire population of publicly-funded students; last year, Black students represented 71.6% of that entire enrollment, or 54.894 students. Only 52.7% of those (Black) students were enrolled in the regular DC public schools, which is a smaller percentage than the Which groups are over- or under-represented in regular DC public schools and the DC charter schools? | GFBrandenburg's Blog:

    Is Education Reform Worth the Demise of Neighborhood Schools?

    Is Education Reform Worth the Demise of Neighborhood Schools?:

    Is Education Reform Worth the Demise of Neighborhood Schools?

    Some worry the benefits of a better education don’t outweigh the new problems it brings.


    A couple of years ago, an Arkansas legislator named Reginald Murdock began paying attention to the school buses that plied the highways around his state. Some of them seemed to be on the road for a disturbingly long time, subjecting their student riders to extended periods each day when they couldn’t do much except sit.
    Murdock introduced a bill that called for a study of just how much time Arkansas kids were spending on buses. The results came back last summer, and they startled a lot of people. The median-length trip to public school -- one-way -- was 47 minutes. The average pupil was on board for more than an hour and a half in the course of a normal day. At the outer edge of the survey, there were children who recorded daily bus travel times of 5 hours and 34 minutes round-trip. The problem existed not only in remote rural counties but also in the urbanized area around Little Rock, where kids were riding long distances to magnet schools. Solving it would require money for extra buses and additional drivers that the state educational system had shown no willingness to provide.
    Most of us think of pupil busing -- when we think of it at all -- as a desegregation issue from the 1970s and 1980s that has largely receded into the background. But in the current century, busing has generated serious new concerns that school officials are largely powerless to defuse. One of them is travel time. Another one is cost.
    In 2011, families in Indiana’s Franklin Township sued their local government because it had stopped providing students with free bus transportation back and forth to school. The township said its budget, battered by spending cutbacks in the aftermath of the Great Recession, couldn’t handle the expense. A Superior Court judge sided with the township, but an appeals court reversed the verdict and the matter is now before the Indiana Supreme Court.
    The township has gone back to providing the service, under direction from the state legislature, and the plaintiffs have opted to home-school their children, but the dispute remains alive. Meanwhile, the National Center for Education Statistics has reported that in 2008-2009, the last school year for which data are available, it cost $871 on average for a school district to offer free bus service for one student for one year. For a sprawling district covering far-flung communities, that can amount to millions of dollars.
    Several districts around the country find themselves in a predicament similar to the one in Franklin Township. At least 12 states allow school systems to make up budget shortfalls by charging for pupil transportation. The public schools in Colorado’s Is Education Reform Worth the Demise of Neighborhood Schools?: