Art of the Environment

Barry Benepe: Mr. Greenmarket
Jane Jacobs Medalist

Barry Benepe is proud to be a born-and-bred New Yorker. The son of a linen importer, he grew up on Gramercy Park, walking daily under the Third Avenue El to attend Friends Seminary on Stuyvesant Square.

In 1966, Barry organized demonstrations to have Central Park Drive closed to traffic on weekends. Galvanized by the success of their campaign, Barry and his cohorts founded Transportation Alternatives, a group that promotes city cycling and advocates greater use of public transportation and car-free parks. Many in the group see themselves carrying out the legacy of Jane Jacobs, who wrote scathingly about Americans’ dependence on cars, and stated, “Are we building cities for people or for cars?”

It is the Greenmarket program, however, that has been Barry’s greatest passion for the past thirty years. Following his work for developers who were buying up farmland in Orange County, NY, in the early 1970s, he was inspired to combine his experience in working on his family’s truck farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland as a child with his expertise in planning. His goal was to marry the economic needs of struggling farmers upstate with the desire of city residents for fresh and affordable produce. Barry enlisted the help of a fellow planner, Bob Lewis, and the two obtained the sponsorship of the Council on the Environment of NYC to start Greenmarket.

Here's a recent video interview with Barry Benepe and the full article on Future of New York.org

Michelle Rhee: End of the Road?

Rhee is likely to head for the door

By Bill Turque
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Washington Post

Their long-awaited meeting is set for next week. But when Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and mayor-apparent Vincent C. Gray do finally sit down, it is increasingly likely that the discussion will focus on the terms of her disengagement from the D.C. school system rather than how she might stay.

Rhee moved her departure closer to certainty Wednesday night with an A-list audience at the Newseum after the red-carpet premiere of "Waiting for 'Superman,'" the documentary that casts her as a tart-tongued heroine of the national education reform movement. At a panel discussion that followed the film, Rhee portrayed Gray's Democratic primary victory over Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on Tuesday as a catastrophe.

"Yesterday's election results were devastating, devastating," Rhee said. "Not for me, because I'll be fine, and not even for Fenty, because he'll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C." Gray campaign spokeswoman Traci Hughes said in a statement Thursday that it was "unfortunate that the children have been thrown into the middle of the political fray."
Find the complete story on Washington Post.com

Here's a preview of the upcoming film "Waiting for Superman" on school reform by the director of "An Inconvenient Truth.





Read "How Rhee Tackles Class Room Challenge" by Amanda Ripley, Nov 2008 - Time Magazine

MacFound in the Classroom

MacArthur & IMLS Announce Plans to Create 30 New Learning Labs at Libraries and Museums Across the Country

September 16, 2010

Digital Media & Learning


(Washington, DC) — In support of President Obama's "Educate to Innovate" call to action, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) today announced plans to create 30 new youth learning labs in libraries and museums across the country. Inspired by an innovative new teen space at the Chicago Public Library called YOUmedia and innovations in science and technology centers, these labs will help young people become makers and creators of content, rather than just consumers of it. These labs will be based on new research about how young people learn today.

"Our success as a nation depends on strengthening America's role as the world's engine of discovery and innovation," said President Obama. "I applaud the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and their partners, for lending their resources, expertise, and their enthusiasm to the task of strengthening America's leadership in the 21st century by improving education in science, technology, engineering and math."

YOUmedia Program Builds On Success

"With digital media, learning takes place anywhere, anytime. So we must break free of the old-fashioned notion that schools are the only places for learning and provide young people with engaging and diverse opportunities beyond the classroom,” said Robert Gallucci, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “YOUmedia is an excellent example of 21st Century learning. Bringing the model to other cities will mark an important step in motivating young people to learn and preparing them for a globally competitive workforce.”

With $4 million in funding MacArthur and IMLS will begin a planning process to launch a national competition to create 30 new learning labs across the country. 

For the full story, see MacFound.org

Poverty in America

Recession Raises Poverty Rate to a 15-Year High

By ERIK ECKHOLM

New York Times.com

Published: September 16, 2010

The percentage of Americans struggling below the poverty line in 2009 was the highest it has been in 15 years, the Census Bureau reported Thursday, and interviews with poverty experts and aid groups said the increase appeared to be continuing this year.

With the country in its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty in 2009, with the total reaching 44 million, or one in seven residents. Millions more were surviving only because of expanded unemployment insurance and other assistance.

And the numbers could have climbed higher: One way embattled Americans have gotten by is sharing homes with siblings, parents or even nonrelatives, sometimes resulting in overused couches and frayed nerves but holding down the rise in the national poverty rate, according to the report.

The share of residents in poverty climbed to 14.3 percent in 2009, the highest level recorded since 1994. The rise was steepest for children, with one in five affected, the bureau said.

The report provides the most detailed picture yet of the impact of the recession and unemployment on incomes, especially at the bottom of the scale. It also indicated that the temporary increases in aid provided in last year’s stimulus bill eased the burdens on millions of families.

For a single adult in 2009, the poverty line was $10,830 in pretax cash income; for a family of four, $22,050.

Given the depth of the recession, some economists had expected an even larger jump in the poor.

“A lot of people would have been worse off if they didn’t have someone to move in with,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin.

For the complete story, go to: New York Times.com

$100 million to Human Rights Watch

Challenge Grant From Open Society Foundations to Expand Global Presence

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
(New York) – George Soros, philanthropist and financier, today announced a challenge grant of $100 million over 10 years to Human Rights Watch. The grant from his Open Society Foundations, the largest that he has ever made to a nongovernmental organization, will be used to expand and deepen Human Rights Watch’s global presence to more effectively protect and promote human rights around the world.

The grant challenges Human Rights Watch, which accepts no government funding, to raise an additional $100 million in private contributions to match the gift. Human Rights Watch hopes that the combination of the grant and the matching funds to be raised, as well as additional fundraising, will enable it to implement a strategic plan for becoming a truly global organization. The plan will require Human Rights Watch to increase its annual budget from $48 million to $80 million within five years.

“Human Rights Watch is one of the most effective organizations I support,” said Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations. “Human rights underpin our greatest aspirations: they’re at the heart of open societies.”

For more on George Soros, see NY Times.com

War Games

Illustration by Mark Weaver 

Story By CHRIS SUELLENTROP 

Published by NY Times: September 8, 2010

Unless you regard something like “Iron Man” as a film about Afghanistan, the movies inspired by America’s contemporary wars have consistently been box-office flops. Even “The Hurt Locker” grossed only $16 million in theaters. Video games that evoke our current conflicts, on the other hand, are blockbusters — during the past three years, they have become the most popular fictional depictions of America’s current wars. Last year’s best-selling game was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which opens in Afghanistan; it was a sequel to a multimillion-selling 2007 game that features an American invasion of a nameless Middle Eastern country. Modern Warfare 2 has made “Avatar”-like profits for its studio, Activision. On the day the game was published in November, it sold nearly five million copies in North America and Britain, racking up $310 million in sales in 24 hours. By January of this year, the game’s worldwide sales added up to $1 billion.

For years, earlier installments of the Call of Duty franchise and other military shooters — the video-game industry’s term for these games about warfare — were, like cable-TV miniseries produced by Tom Hanks, always about World War II. But the Modern Warfare series has demonstrated that players have an appetite for games that purport to connect them to the wars their college roommates, or their sons, might be fighting in. Both Modern Warfare games are set in a mythical near-future, but the weapons — Predator drones, AC-130 gunships, nukes — clearly conjure Afghanistan and Iraq, as do the games’ good guys (Americans, British) and bad guys (terrorists). The appeal of this quasi-fictional setting is one reason that Modern Warfare 2 now sits alongside titles from more-famous franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario on the lists of the top-selling video games ever made.

No doubt as a result, in June, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video-game industry’s annual trade show in Los Angeles, it sometimes seemed as if every studio was introducing a game about a war against an enemy who might conceivably be regarded as part of the Axis of Evil. In one game scheduled for release next year, the North Koreans will mount a land invasion of the United States. In another, American troops are sent into an improbably menacing Dubai.  

For the complete story, see New York Times.com

Joyner Gets Black Colleges On-line

photo by Donna McWilliam, AP Photo

Tom Joyner Venture Will Help Black Colleges Start Online Programs 

By Goldie Blumenstyk

September 2, 2010 l Chronicle of Higher Education

Tom Joyner, one of the country's most-visible philanthropic supporters of historically black colleges and universities, has founded a company to help those institutions develop distance-education programs—with a particular focus on allowing them to compete against for-profit colleges in enrolling minority students.

Mr. Joyner regularly highlights black colleges on his nationally syndicated radio broadcast,The Tom Joyner Morning Show, and has donated tens of millions of dollars to students of HBCU's through his Tom Joyner Foundation.

For-profit and online colleges attract "incredible numbers of African-American students" said Mr. Joyner's son, Thomas Jr., who stepped down as president of the foundation to become president of the new company, HBCUsOnline. "A lot of those enrollments are his listeners," the younger Mr. Joyner said in an interview on Thursday, and he believes many of those potential students would be better served by HBCU's, which have "a stronger legacy and history."

On its Web site, the company promises to provide an online version of the supportive environment that HBCU's try to foster on their campuses, and it makes some oblique and not-so-oblique references to criticisms that have been raised recently about the costs and recruiting tactics of for-profit colleges. "This program goes beyond simply enrolling you in classes and saddling you with debt, but offers you ongoing support systems from registration to graduation," the site proclaims.

In other sections, the site links to a Frontline documentary, "College Inc.," that criticized for-profit colleges, and warns, "Your investment in your online education is a serious decision. Don't be pressured into the wrong choice."

About 43 percent of the students at for-profit colleges are members of minority groups, and the University of Phoenix now leads all institutions in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded to African-Americans.

For more on this story, go to The Chronicle of Higher Education.com

Hands-On Learning at High Tech High

Students prepare for the real world through technology-enabled projects.

A biotechnology student uses a gazelle leg to study form and function in nature. Credit: David Julian

by Grace Rubenstein

On June 27, 2009, High Tech High biotech teacher Jay Vavra and several of his students returned to Tanzania to hold a bushmeat-identification workshop to help local wildlife-protection officials fight poaching. For more information, go to the group's Web site, High Tech High African Bushmeat Expedition, and read the expedition journal. (Watch a trailer for Students of Consequence, the students' award-winning documentary about their 2008 expedition.)

As I navigated her busy classroom with a microphone this fall, sophomore Maya Walden paused in researching the root causes of genocide to ask what I planned to do with my recordings. I explained that I would use editing software to meld the best clips into a soundtrack for an audio slide show, to appear online.

"Oh," she said. "We could probably do that for you." (And they did. Check out their work.)

The episode reflects not only the confidence and abilities of one good student but also the entire attitude of High Tech High. The San Diego charter school exists to prepare students -- all kinds of students -- to be savvy, creative, quick-thinking adults and professionals in a modern world. It has scrapped a lot of what's arbitrary and outdated about traditional schooling -- classroom design, divisions between subjects, independence (read: isolation) from the community, and assessments that only one teacher ever sees. (Watch a series of videos about High Tech High.)

Instead, the textbook-free school fosters personalized project learning with pervasive connections to the community. Any visitor can see the evidence in the students' engagement and the eye-popping projects that adorn almost every corner and wall -- many of which the teens have exhibited to local businesspeople, not just teachers. As the school's name implies, technology enables many of the projects students create. And teachers routinely craft lessons that blend subjects, reflecting how interwoven they truly are.

On all fronts, the teaching and learning experience here is keenly attuned to the demands of today's world, not the industrial world that existed a hundred years ago when the American school model came into being.

For more on this story, see Edutopia.org

Online Campus Promotion

For the Chancellor of a New Online Campus, Every Workday Is About Branding

By Michael Sewall

For Allison C. Barber, being chancellor of Indiana's newest university doesn't involve living in an institution-owned house, mingling with students on the quad, or working out of a large administration building. Her job, she says, is as much about building a brand as it is about academics.

The institution she leads, WGU Indiana, exists online, run out of several cubicles in an office building in Indianapolis. Its mission is to meet the learning needs of adults in a state that ranks 44th in the nation in the share of people older than 25 with postsecondary educations.

Indiana's governor, Mitchell E. Daniels, a Republican, proposed the effort after he joined the Board of Trustees of Western Governors University this year. WGU Indiana is the first state-specific subsidiary of Western Governors, a private, nonprofit institution established in 1997 by 19 governors to provide an inexpensive, flexible college opportunity for underserved groups.

When he signed the executive order creating WGU Indiana on June 11, the governor said the institution "meets a very urgent and specific need" by offering an alternative "for adults who want to pursue a college degree with all the other demands in their lives."

Ms. Barber, 46, faces an upward climb. Of the 20,000 students enrolled in Western Governors nationally, fewer than 300 were from Indiana.

But she thinks the new institution can meet the state's needs, along with those of students, by providing training in sought-after skills. Western Governors offers more than 50 accredited undergraduate and master's degree programs in four areas: business, education, information technology, and health care. Because it is competency-based, students don't have to spend time learning things they already know, Ms. Barber said, allowing for a quicker path to a degree. The average time it takes a student to graduate with a bachelor's degree is 30 to 35 months, and tuition is about $6,000 per year. Students also work online with mentors to help manage their time and course work, she said.

For more on this story, see The Chronicle of Higher Education.com