Both Barnes & Noble Inc. and Amazon are challenging Apple Inc. and its dominant _ and much more expensive _ iPad for a piece of the holiday pie. The Nook Tablet arrives just weeks after Amazon.com released its Kindle Fire tablet, which sells for $199. Barnes & Noble said its device offers more memory and longer battery life.

The book seller cut the prices on its existing e-readers. The Nook Color is now $199, down from $239, and the Nook Simple Touch black-and-white reader, which has no browser, is now $99, down from $139. The Nook Tablet will be in stores and shipped to customers on Nov. 17. Like the Nook Color, it has a 7-inch color touchscreen.

Unlike Amazon, Barnes & Noble doesn’t offer streaming services, but the Nook includes preloaded apps from Hulu and Netflix Inc. that allow users to subscribe to stream movies and TV shows.

Morningstar Analyst Peter Wahlstrom said the tablet appears to be a solid device.

“At $249, it gives Barnes & Noble customers or potential customers enough to think hard about which device they want,” he said.

Since introducing its first Nook in 2009, Barnes & Noble has spent heavily on its e-book readers and e-bookstore. As people change the way they read, the New York-based company also faces tough competition from discounters and online retailers in the market for traditional books. Barnes & Noble has struggled to turn a profit, and its much smaller rival, Borders Group Inc., sought bankruptcy protection and then liquidated its assets this year.

In its most recent quarter, Barnes & Noble did report a narrower loss than a year earlier as its revenue edged up 2 percent to $1.42 billion.

The Nook Tablet weighs less than a pound, has a battery that enables nine hours of video watching and comes with 16 gigabytes of memory and an SD slot to add more.

Another selling point: free customer service at the more than 700 Barnes & Noble stores, CEO William Lynch said.

If you bought a Kindle and had a question about it, Lynch asked, “Where would you go, Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle?”

Apple’s iPad, now the king of tablets, starts at $499 for a bare-bones version and runs as much as $829.

Analysts at Gartner Inc. predict that three of every four tablets sold this year will be an iPad. Apple has sold nearly 29 million since they first came out in April 2010. Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com Inc. generally do not release sales figures.

The Nook Tablet will be sold online, in Barnes & Noble stores and by a variety of other retailers, including Target, Best Buy, Staples and Fry’s.

Shares of Barnes & Noble Inc. shares ended the day down 22 cents at $11.39 and were unchanged after hours.

The district, the nation’s second-largest, agreed to remedy the disparities through a variety of measures, including a complete overhaul of its English-learning program and improving resources such as computers and library books to schools with predominantly black student bodies.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who unveiled the agreement at a news conference at LAUSD headquarters, said it would help ensure that every student in the nation’s second largest school district would receive the same academic opportunities “regardless of race or national origin.”

Noting that these issues are “incredibly complex and politically charged,” Duncan said he was encouraged by the district’s sense of urgency and willingness to voluntarily remedy the disparities without an order.

“Though we still have a long way to go before we see that English learner students and African-American students are consistently getting what they need to perform up to their fullest potential, I’m confident today’s agreement will help address the causes of concern that prompted our review,” he said.

Duncan stopped short of saying that students’ civil rights were violated and did not reveal detailed results of the investigation, just the terms of the agreement. But the Education Department said in a statement that it will monitor the district’s compliance with the agreement until educational codes are met.

The agreement was the result of a “compliance review” by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which was concerned about wide achievement gaps between the district’s lowest performing student groups and other students.

Only 5 percent of high school English language learners ranked as proficient in either English or math; for black students, 32 percent ranked as proficient in English and 9 percent in math, according to the district’s 2009-10 report card.

The overall district average was 37 percent proficient in English and 17 percent in math.

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy said the district did not dispute that disparities exist and worked to hammer out a solution with federal officials. The district will be studying how to fund the measures as plans for specific areas are developed.

The district’s English-language learning program has long been criticized for allowing non-native speakers to remain in English-learning programs for years, sometimes throughout their school careers, never meeting the criteria to move into mainstream classes. Students often fall behind grade level and end up dropping out.

For the 2009-2010 school year, only 14.4 percent of English learners were reclassified as fluent.

Under the agreement, the district agreed to completely revamp its nearly 200,000-student English-learning program by next school year, with special emphasis on high school students who have not been deemed proficient in English in order to take courses needed for graduation. The district has the highest number of English-learning students in the nation.

English-learners will receive grade-level courses, teachers will be trained to handle multiple English-proficiency levels and special-education teachers will receive English-instructional materials.

The program will also include a component aimed at black students aimed at boosting their “academic language proficiency” starting in elementary grades.

The investigation also found black students are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs but overrepresented in suspensions and disciplinary actions. Schools with predominantly black populations also lack technology and library resources.

The district agreed to remedy those disparities with fairer evaluation of gifted and talented programs and disciplinary actions, and allocating more computers and increasing library book collections.

A school-based community pilot program will be launched in an African-American neighborhood to provide health and social services, he said. No details were revealed.

Warren Fletcher, president of teachers union United Teachers Los Angeles, praised the Education Department for shining a light on longstanding disparities, but noted that the district has laid off more than 1,200 teachers and closed libraries in many schools.

“It’s very general,” he said of the agreement. “We have to see how those services are going to be provided.”

Parent Irma Munoz, who has had three children go through the district’s English learner program, said the program needed to be overhauled. Her children were put in classes with English speaking teachers who they could not understand, she said.

“It’s a bad program,” she said.

He said that recent research suggests that the top reason why people leave their jobs is because of a poor relationship with their immediate supervisors. Conflict, both at work and at home, can actually be an opportunity to resolve long-standing issues and help people lead more fulfilling and productive lives. The secret is understanding the five keys to conflict and how to move them forward toward the final step – resolution.

“The key to managing conflict isn’t just about pushing them to resolution, but also to learn how to have nicer conflicts,” said Scudder, CEO of Personal Strengths USA and co-author of Have a Nice Conflict: A Story of Finding Success and Satisfaction in the Most Unlikely Places (www.haveaniceconflict.com). “As one set of conflicts is resolved, others will take their place, so it’s important to learn how to make conflicts productive and positive experiences, instead of allowing them to distract us from our goals and disrupt our lives.”

Scudder’s five keys to conflict include:

• Anticipate - Anticipating conflict starts with knowing who you’re dealing with. Then ask yourself how various people might view the same situation differently. When two or more people see things differently, there is the potential for conflict. If you can figure that out, you have a good shot at steering clear of it.

• Prevent - Preventing conflict is really all about the deliberate, appropriate use of behavior in your relationships. A well-chosen behavior on your part can prevent conflict with another person. But you need to prevent conflict in yourself sometimes too, and that might have more to do with choosing your perceptions than choosing your behaviors.

• Identify – There are three basic approaches in conflict: rising to the challenge, cautiously withdrawing, or wanting to keep the peace. When you can identify these approaches in yourself or others, you are empowered to handle the situation more productively.

• Manage - Managing conflict has two components: managing yourself and managing the relationship. Managing conflict is about creating the conditions and empowering them to manage themselves out of the emotional state of conflict.  It’s also about managing yourself out. Managing yourself in conflict can be as easy as taking some time to see things differently.

• Resolve - To create movement toward resolution we need to show the other person a path back to feeling good about themselves. When they feel good about themselves, they are less likely to feel threatened and are free to move toward a compromise and resolution.

“Unresolved or poorly managed conflict costs companies is ways they can’t even calculate,” he added. “Lost institutional memory, low productivity, bad morale, high turnover all cost real companies real dollars. On the other hand, well-managed conflict can not only prevent all those losses, but it can also promote higher productivity and a stronger bottom line. So, the end result will not only be fewer conflicts, but also nicer ones with positive results.”

Morgan Freeman: Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Imagine a world without wildlife. Life in its simplest form gone, due to human consumption — that’s the world Morgan Freeman wants you to picture.

“We are not aware that as people, we are eliminating habitats and killing off other creatures in other for us to have more room, to grow more food, for more of us,” says Freeman. “If we continue the way we are going — eliminating habitat and other forms of life, we are going to be eliminating ourselves.”

The Oscar®-winning actor, who lends his familiar baritone to the nature documentary “Born to be Wild,” is extremely passionate about preserving the planet.

“I get lots of calls to do narrations and once in a while, a project comes along that resonates and when that happens, you go with it,” he says.

A visually immersive documentary about two women from different continents united by one mission, “Born to be Wild 3D” transports moviegoers through the lush rainforests of Borneo and across the rugged Kenyan Savannah. Stunningly captured in IMAX® 3D, by cinematographer David Douglas, it follows primatologist Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas and Dr. Dame Daphne M. Sheldrick, as they rescue, rehabilitate and return elephants and orangutans back to the wild.

Their mission is simply saving endangered species, one life at a time.

Directed by David Lickley, written and produced by Drew Fellman, the idea for the film began germinating 17 years ago when Fellman took a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia. He visited the Tanjung Puting National Park in central Borneo, where Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas had been raising orphaned orangutans. Fellman was later showed a piece from “60 Minutes” about another inspiring woman, Dame Daphne M. Sheldrick, and the orphaned wild elephants her foundation raises in Kenya.

Both stories struck an emotional chord for Fellman and he knew that the stories of these two women and the animals to which they have devoted their lives would make an incredible film.

“They are heroes of the earth in the truest sense,” he states. “And this movie is a story about two great ladies who have made it their life’s work to save these orphans.”

With his authoritative voice, Freeman, who won an Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby,” was the perfect choice for Fellman and Lickley to narrate the film.

“We asked him if he could do it,” affirms Fellman. “He cares very deeply about environmental issues and wanted to get involved once we asked.”

For Freeman, who lent his voice to the Oscar®-winning documentary “March of the Penguins,” the idea of getting involved in an extremely worthwhile project struck a chord.

“I think everything about this film is outstanding,” says Freeman. “It highlights a couple of ladies, whose courage and dedication really should be trumpeted. It also brings to light, the necessity of preservation of other forms of life and their habitat. We are turning everything on the planet into food for humans. In the long run, it’s going to be detrimental to us and we have to realize that.”

Rated G, “Born to be Wild 3D” is a presentation of Warner Bros. Pictures and IMAX Filmed Entertainment and opens exclusively in IMAX on April 8.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, approximately 75 percent of all employees steal from work in some way. What’s worse is that about 30 percent of all corporate bankruptcies are a direct result of employee theft. The National Retail Security Survey in 2009 said you can also subtract a whopping $15.9 billion each year just from retailers who suffer from employee theft.

With the problem so widespread, many companies simply factor those losses into their yearly projections, and then hope it’s not worse by year’s end. But Denis Collins, author of Essentials of Business Ethics (www.business-ethics.edgewood.edu), believes there is another alternative — simply hire better.

“Although it may seem complex, one hedge against employee theft and fraud is to redesign the hiring process to help screen for employees who suffer from ‘selective integrity,’” said Collins, a former business manager and tenured college professor who holds a PhD in business environment and public policy. “After an employer fires someone for theft, the natural question they ask is, ‘How’d we even hire that guy?’ Well, by changing your hiring practices, you can screen out people who are more likely to steal, and reduce the number of times you ever have to ask yourself that question again.”

Collins’ tips for managers who screen new job candidates include:

• Obey Legal Ground Rules — While there are many questions the law forbids you to ask job candidates to eliminate discrimination, there are still many questions you can ask.

• Use Ethics-Based Interview Questions — Too many interviewers gloss over questions that test an individual’s character. Ask the candidate how he or she responded at a previous job to someone stealing, engaging in sexual harassment, or cutting corners at the cost of high ethical standards. Ask them if a superior ever requested that they do something unethical and, if so, how did they react. Even those who are dishonest with their answers can reveal how they feel about ethics in general.

• Review Behavioral Information — Behavioral information can be gathered about job candidates through resumes, reference checks, background checks and some basic integrity tests that quiz candidates through “what would you do” style situations. Three standard integrity tests come from the Reid Report, the Stanton Survey and the Personnel Selection Inventory (PSI), which are easily found with a Google search if you don’t already have access to them.

• Test Personality Traits — The traits that govern whether an employee is more or less inclined to be dishonest include conscientiousness, organizational citizenship behavior, and social dominance. For the first two, you want to see high scores — not so much on the last one. Again, personality tests are widely available to test these traits.

• Other Tests — Some of the most revealing tests are the obvious ones — alcohol tests, drug tests and even polygraph tests, when permitted by law. Many candidates may object to these as employment requirements, but in a world in which seven percent of our entire economy goes up in smoke from employee theft and fraud, companies should not feel shy about drawing a line in the sand. While those who refuse to take those tests may not have anything to hide, it’s clear that those who agree to those tests have nothing to hide.

“Fraud and malfeasance at the highest levels of some of the country’s largest companies contributed to the 2008 to 2010 recession, and have been a willing assistant in keeping our economy down,” Collins added. “It would be interesting if we could have turned the clocks back and run those executives through an ethics-oriented hiring process, and perhaps eliminated some of the fraud and theft that helped level our economy. Short of that, all we can do is pave the way for a better future by taking some very basic steps to help weed out the unethical and dishonest from our nation’s talent pool.”

About Dr. Denis Collins

Professor Denis Collins is Professor of Business at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. He is responsible for Social Responsibility and Business Ethics components in the school’s Business Programs, and a SIFE Sam Walton Fellow. He received a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh in 1990, a Masters of Arts in Philosophy from Bowling Green State University in 1987, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Montclair State College in 1977. Professor Collins currently serves on the Editorial Board of Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society, Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Academic Ethics. He has served on the Board of Governance for the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management and the International Association for Business and Society.

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Jail cell

Since Kelley Williams-Bolar (see  photo) was sentenced to jail for 10 days on Jan. 19 and fined $30,000 for enrolling her daughter in an out-of-district school, the tale has taken on a life of its own.

Her story has sparked rallies, petitions and a robust national dialogue about educational equity. But it is more than an illustration of the egregious economic, geographic and racial inequities in public education. Williams-Bolar has become the poster parent for the growing issue of parental involvement and choice.

Williams-Bolar’s story stands in stark contrast to the popular but wildly inaccurate narrative of low-income parents of color being uninterested in–and stubborn obstacles to–their children’s education.

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that low-income and minority parents strongly value education and higher achievement. The question is, what can engaged parents, such as Williams-Bolar, do right now as the arduous reform process moves along?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) includes some parental-involvement policies focused on school-parent compacts and parent-teacher conferences. Yet many parents find these tools inadequate, and they are using more dramatic options.

Case in point: Two months ago, African-American and Latino parents at McKinley Middle School in Compton, Calif., pulled what is called the parent-trigger option. This law forces districts to make radical changes at a school that has failed to meet its benchmarks for four years when at least 51 percent of parents sign a petition for reform. McKinley had 61 percent parental support to turn the school into a charter school.

Last year, California was the first state to enact a law in which parents can choose the level and type of reform that they want: converting to a charter school, replacing the principal and staff, rebudgeting or even closing the school. Six other states have proposed similar policies since then. The federal government should take note.

Congress must soon reauthorize of the ESEA, enabling them a chance to update the law. That process provides Congress and the administration a clear opportunity to review existing parental-involvement provisions in the law.

Currently, states must set aside a portion of their funds for family-engagement activities, and the Department of Education has proposed increasing that amount.

Funding is important, but parents have spoken loud and clear: We need a better national conversation with new ideas for parental involvement.

Stories like Williams-Bolar’s are more common than most people would think. And cases like that of McKinley–parents using dramatic, effective policies–should be more common. Both cases–examples of nonaffluent parents of color taking their children’s education into their own hands–demonstrate two key principles that are instructive for education reform.

First, the process of designing policies around parental involvement should start with the assumption that all parents are invested in their children’s learning and safety. Low-income and minority parents are often fierce advocates for their children’s education and should be treated as such.

Second, parents who feel that there are no other options will go to extreme measures to change their situation.

Federal and state governments must design policies that provide options for these parents to be active, productive and powerful agents of change. They deserve better than being stuck between a rock and a hard place. They deserve a voice.

Theodora Chang is an education-policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. Erica Williams, selected for The Root 100 in 2010, is the deputy director of the center’s Progress 2050 project, which develops new ideas for an increasingly diverse America.

LA judge limits seniority-based teacher layoffs

The decision was the outcome of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in February, charging that inner-city students’ right to a quality education was being violated by a last-hired, first-fired layoff policy.

“This is a historic decision for the state of California,” said John Deasy, deputy superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District. “The court stood and lifted up the voice of youth. That voice was loud and clear.”

The ruling by Superior Court Judge William Highberger approved a settlement between the ACLU, the state and LAUSD in which the district agreed to shield 45 of its lowest performing schools from layoffs and to ensure that the redistribution of those layoffs will not be sent to a school that will experience greater than the district average of layoffs for that year.

It also calls for an incentive plan to attract and retain teachers and principals at the struggling schools.

“This settlement is about giving our most disadvantaged children a fighting chance at their schools,” said Mark Rosenbaum, ACLU-SC chief counsel.

Teachers union United Teachers Los Angeles will appeal the ruling because it is unfair to pass on layoffs to teachers who have earned their jobs and skills, said Vice President Julie Washington.

“What it is really saying is that experience in teaching has no value,” she said. “We feel that this remedy, if allowed to go through, will actually exacerbate the problem.”

The union was supported by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, who filed a brief opposing the settlement on Friday noting it “could have far reaching, unintended consequences throughout the state.”

The agreement could harm the instruction quality at the 45 schools because it maintains inexperienced teachers there instead of seeking ways to bring more experienced “arguably more effective teachers,” said Torlakson, who was elected last year with the endorsement of the statewide union California Teachers Association.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a long-standing proponent of school reform, said he was confident that Highberger’s decision would stand and called on the union to collaborate on reform initiatives.

“No one is saying seniority shouldn’t be a factor,” he said at a news conference. “But in what successful system, when isn’t performance taken into account at all? This isn’t a radical notion.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of students at three troubled middle schools in south and central Los Angeles, which have traditionally had high turnover of teachers and administrators.

Because of that turnover, a large portion of their staffs are recent graduates who expressed a desire to work in urban schools. However, layoffs over the past two years meant that the untenured teachers were the first to receive pink slips.

More than half of the teaching staffs at Edwin Markham, John H. Liechty and Samuel Gompers middle schools lost their jobs. At Liechty, 72 percent of the teachers received layoff notices; at Markham, the layoffs included almost the entire English department along with every 8th grade history teacher.

Students were taught by a revolving-door succession of substitutes who served as little more than babysitters, the lawsuit said. One substitute gave each student a C because she simply didn’t know what grade to give them, the suit said.

In contrast, schools in more affluent areas of the district, where staffing is traditionally much more stable, lost far fewer teachers.

“Students fighting for their education, that’s what it was all about,” said Nick Melvoin, a teacher laid off from Markham Middle School last year. “This sends a message far outside the city that these kids matter.”

The case came down to socioeconomic equality, said Michelle Fine, a social psychologist at City University of New York, during a three-day hearing on the settlement that took place this week.

“We have policies that have distributed pain and burden in a way that low-income schools have for generations paid a price,” she said.

But Washington said the settlement does not attack the root causes of high turnover at these schools, including creating safe, clean working conditions so teachers don’t leave. “My members have been screaming and hollering about this full issue for many years,” she said.

UC Board of Regents committee endorses single-score holistic review

Holistic review – the admissions method currently used by UC Berkeley and UCLA as well as most highly selective universities – consists of a thorough, individualized review of each applicant, in which an application reviewer or reader takes into consideration a wide range of academic and nonacademic achievements, in the context of the opportunities available to each student, that results in a single score.

The full Board of Regents will take up the resolution on Thursday.

UC President Mark G. Yudof said he brought the resolution and implementation plan to the Board of Regents because he strongly believes holistic review represents a best practice in admissions that needs to be adopted by all UC campuses.

“Holistic review as practiced at Berkeley and UCLA begins with the thorough individualized ‘full file review’ employed by the nation’s most selective colleges and universities,” Yudof said.  “But it improves upon these approaches in that it relies on a wealth of data about students’ schools and personal circumstances and their performance relative to peers who have experienced similar opportunities or challenges.  I believe this is appropriate for UC, given our large number of applicants who are from very socioeconomically diverse backgrounds.”

The resolution asks Yudof, in consultation with the Academic Senate, to ensure that all qualified UC applicants receive an individualized holistic review of their applications.

But it also allows flexibility for campuses that can demonstrate that alternate approaches employed at those campuses are equally effective in achieving the goal of UC Regents’ Policy on Undergraduate Admissions to “seek out and enroll, on each [campus], a student body that demonstrates high academic achievement or exceptional personal talent, and that encompasses the broad diversity of backgrounds . . . characteristic of California . . . .”

In addition to strengthening the admissions process, the adoption of a single admissions approach at all UC campuses will provide greater consistency and efficiency across campuses.

For example, all campuses will have access to common statistical profiles of applicants that put all their quantitative data, such as GPAs and admission tests scores, in the context of the high schools they attended, including the high schools’ Academic Performance Index (API) ranking, average admission tests scores and the students’ class rank, among many others.

Chivas Writing Contest

“From the beginning, this contest has focused on motivating students to become better writers,” said Nadia Gonzalez, Senior Manager of Community Affairs for Chivas USA. “Our club has always taken great pride in giving back, and we’re excited to hear new ideas on the subject from the future leaders of our community.”

Ten overall winners will be selected and awarded the grand prize that includes four tickets to the 2011 Chivas USA home opener, 4 tickets to Disneyland Resort, Chivas USA autographed merchandise, and a special Fox Deportes gift pack.

The rules for the contest are as follows:

• Student must be enrolled in 6^th, 7^th or 8^th grade and attend a school in Southern California.
• Only one entry per student will be accepted.
• Entries are to be 400 words or less.
• All entries must be submitted on an 8 ½ x 11 writing paper.
• Essay must be typed.
• Essay must be the sole work of the student.

Participants of the 2011 “Imagine More. Be More!” Essay Challenge will have until Friday, February 11, 2011 to submit their essays.  Additional details on the contest can be found at www.cdchivasusa.com/essay.

The UC system’s governing Board of Regents on Monday approved a plan raising the minimum retirement age for most employees hired after July 1, 2013 from 50 to 55.

The measure also ups the age at which UC employees can start receiving pension benefits from 60 to 65 and gradually increases how much retirees must pay for health care benefits.

UC officials say the changes are needed to address a $21 billion shortfall in its retiree health and pension programs.

The university system still must negotiate the plan with its employee unions.

The deal, which was announced Thursday, also requires the state to send letters to every public school district and charter school operator in the state explaining the settlement and encouraging them to review their fees, said David Sapp, an attorney for the ACLU of Southern California.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the state in September, saying the fees violated the state constitutional guarantee of free and equal public education.

“This is a historic settlement that puts an end once and for all to the pay-to-learn system,” Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel of the ACLU of Southern California, said in a statement. “This agreement means all students have an equal opportunity to achieve their dreams irrespective of their families’ financial circumstances. “

The state agreed to seek new laws that would broaden annual state audits to include determining whether schools charged illegal fees. The laws also would permit parents to complain about illegal fees and to be reimbursed.

Those laws are expected to pass handily and the settlement should be implemented before the next school year begins in August, Sapp said.

State Controller John Chiang said his office will provide the audits needed to enforce the settlement, which still needs final approval from a judge in Los Angeles.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was named in the lawsuit, said Thursday that he was proud of the settlement.

“Every California student has the right to not only a quality public education, but a free public education. Our state has promised that to our students,” he said in a statement.

School districts didn’t formally oppose the lawsuit, Sapp said.

“You can’t oppose what the constitution requires,” he said.

There was no reliable information on how many California school districts were charging fees, but a random search of high school websites found at least 40, Sapp said.

For instance, students were required to pay $30 science lab fees, materials charges for art, shop and vocational classes, and to buy class necessities such as textbooks, workbooks and novels required for English classes, he said.

Two Orange County students mentioned in the lawsuit were unable to buy all their textbooks right away.

“There were assignments that they couldn’t complete and they got lower grades,” Sapp said.

Some students told ACLU attorneys that they were singled out and humiliated in front of the class by teachers who complained that they had not paid fees.

Schools also charged fees or required students to purchase outfits for programs such as cheerleading and chorus, despite a 1984 California Supreme Court ban on charging for extracurricular activities, Sapp said.

The ACLU found that the fees appeared to be most common in affluent school districts where many parents “won’t think twice about paying $50 per workbook,” Sapp said.

Districts have lost tens of millions of dollars in state funding and some may have seen the fees as a way to bolster their limp budgets, he said.

“We understand the difficulty and the challenge,” Sapp said. “But that is not a justification for blatantly violating the law.”

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti ruled against the challenge to Proposition 209, which barred racial, ethnic or gender preferences in public education, employment and contracting.

The plaintiffs argued that the law violated the civil rights of black, Latino and Native American students whose numbers have been reduced at the University of California’s most prestigious campuses, particularly UCLA and UC Berkeley, since the ban passed in 1996.

According to the lawsuit, black, Latino and Native American students make up about one-quarter of the freshmen enrolled at UC’s nine undergraduate campuses even though they comprise nearly half of all public high school graduates.

But the judge sided with Ward Connelly and other affirmative-action opponents who sought the lawsuit’s dismissal. In his ruling, Conti said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already rejected a similar legal challenge to California’s affirmative-action ban.

Connelly, a former UC Regent and Sacramento businessman, called the ruling a “powerful victory for fundamental rights.”

“Everyone is owed a full measure of equal treatment, including applicants to the UC system, and indeed all students,” Connelly said in a statement. “None of us should be classified by race or sex, by government.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the group By Any Means Necessary and 56 California high school and college students.

Yvette Felarca, a national organizer with BAMN, said her group plans to appeal the ruling and seek support from Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, who opposes the affirmative-action ban.

“We’re not going to stop our fight to end the increasing racial inequality and segregation that Proposition 209 has created,” Felarca said. “We cannot have an apartheid-like admissions system in California.”

UC spokesman Steve Montiel said university attorneys were not available for comment Wednesday.

In August, the California Supreme Court also upheld the state’s affirmative action ban, rejecting arguments from the city of San Francisco and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that the law violates federal equality protections.

“High unemployment has forced an increasing number of people to enter or re-enter the job market,” said EEOC Chair Jacqueline A. Berrien.  “As a result, an ever increasing number of job applicants and workers are being exposed to employment screening tools, such as credit checks, that could unfairly exclude them from job opportunities.  Today’s discussion provided important input into our agency’s work to ensure that the workplace is made free of all barriers to equal opportunity.”

The Commission heard from a diverse set of experts. Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) expressed grave concerns that the use of credit histories is mushrooming at the time of economic instability for many Americans, noting that the use of credit histories “create[s] a fundamental ‘Catch-22’ for job applicants,” especially during this period of high unemployment and high foreclosures, both of which have a negative impact on credit.”  She observed, “You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.”  This view was echoed by several of the witnesses.

Sarah Crawford of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever from the National Council of Negro Women explained that the use of credit histories in the employment context can have a disparate impact on a range of protected groups, including people of color, women, and people with disabilities.  While the use of credit checks as employment screens increases, Crawford cited studies that show credit history is a poor predictor of job performance.  Additionally, she pointed out that many credit reports are riddled with errors or incomplete information, a view that was echoed by Wu of the NCLC, making whatever predictive value they might have even less reliable.

Representatives from the business community—Michael Eastman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Christine V. Walters of the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) and Pamela Quigley Devata of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, LLP—told the Commission that the use of credit histories is permissible by law, limited in scope, and predictive in certain situations of reliability.

Walters of SHRM said that “13 percent of organizations conduct credit checks on all job candidates … [and] another 47 percent … consider credit history … for select jobs,” but for those employers, “credit histories are but one piece of the puzzle.”  It is the experience of SHRM member companies that very few utilize credit histories for every single job opening.  Devata asserted that the use of credit histories is driven, in part, by the need for background information on potential employees in a current environment when it is difficult to obtain any but the most basic information in job references.

However, Dr. Michael Aamodt, an industrial psychologist, said that although there is considerable research that supports the use of credit scores in making consumer decisions, there is little research exploring the implications of using credit checks in the employment context.  Given the potential for discriminatory exclusion, he concluded that it would be wise to use an applicant’s credit history only within the context of a thorough background check.

This meeting is one of several throughout the year that will examine barriers to employment and their potential adverse impact on protected groups.  The statements of all the panelists, along with their biographies, can be found on the EEOC’s website at http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/meetings/10-20-10/index.cfm.  A complete transcript of the testimony will be posted later.

The EEOC enforces the nation’s laws against employment discrimination.  More information is available on the Commission’s website at www.eeoc.gov.

Former Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) Special Representative on Haiti’s Reconstruction and authorized by its government to represent it in appropriate fora, will be the featured speaker at the College of Law, Room RDB 1100, Modesto A. Maidique campus, 11200 Southwest Eighth Street, Miami, Florida. Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact 305-348-6860/271-7246 or africana@fiu.edu

Kids hands reaching for books and pencils

NAIROBI, Kenya  _ Nearly 70 million children around the world are not getting an education despite much progress in the last 10 years, and Haiti and Somalia are the two worst countries in which to be a school-age child, a new report released Monday said.

The global financial crisis has forced poor countries to cut their education budgets by $4.6 billion a year at a time when intensified efforts are needed to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of ensuring a primary school education for every child in the world by 2015, it said.

The report listed 10 countries at the bottom of the education list, all but Haiti are in Africa. In addition to Somalia, the others are Eritrea, Comoros, Ethiopia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Liberia.

It based the rankings on access to basic education, teacher-student ratio and educational provisions for girls.

Even Kenya, considered successful compared to its East African neighbors, had to delay free education to 9.7 million children over the last year due to budgetary constraints, the report said.

The report was produced by Education International, Plan International, Oxfam, Save the Children and VSO.

“Education is now on the brink,” Kailash Satyarthi, president of the Global Campaign for Education which issued the report, told a high-level event in New York on the sidelines of a U.N. summit to promote achievement of the goal.

“Sixty-nine million children _ more than all the primary school-going children in the United States and Europe _ will not be going to school this morning,” he said. “Just $16 billion per year could pay for every child to go to school.”

The report’s “Donor Report Card” gives two countries “A,” the Netherlands and Norway, and four “B,” Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, and Britain. The United States, in 16th place, received a “D” along with France, Germany, New Zealand and others while Greece was at the bottom of the list in 22nd place with an “F.”

Queen Rania of Jordan, a co-founder of the Global Campaign, said summit after summit has failed to persuade leaders to put resources into education.

“Education doesn’t just beat poverty,” Rania said. “It beats disease. It beats inequality, and for girls education is nothing less than a lifesaver, from stigmatism, insecurity and violence.”

World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala announced that its arm that gives grants and soft credits to the world’s 79 poorest countries is pledging an additional $750 million over the next five years, a 40 percent increase in the bank’s basic education spending over the last five years directed at the poorest countries.

The funds will be targeted toward countries that are “off-track” to meet the education goal by 2015, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, she said.

“We know what works so we have absolutely no excuses to scale things up, and that’s what the World Bank is trying to do,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

The U.N. says the number of children not in school has dropped from 106 million in 1999 to 69 million in 2008, which the Global Campaign’s Satyarthi called “huge progress.”

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its classrooms fill over the last decade, though the continent still accounts for almost half of the total of unenrolled children. In 1999, 58 percent of African children were enrolled in primary school. By 2008 the figure was 76 percent.

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said its research shows that spending $1 million helping children age 5 and younger in the most remote and disadvantaged areas would prevent 60 percent more deaths then the current approach, what it called “a stunningly higher return on investment.”

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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this story from the United Nations.