A marathon: Stricken teen's family told to expect long recovery
Writer: JUDY JENKINS
3/30/2006 Henderson Gleaner

Mark and Nora Hobson are spending their days waiting for their youngest child to awaken.

"I see little things, but that could be wishful thinking," says Mrs. Hobson of daughter Rachel, 19, who was diagnosed with viral encephalitis March 2.

Rachel, a Henderson Community College nursing student, has been in a coma for a month now and two weeks ago was transferred from St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington to the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

The first two weeks of the coma were medically induced in order to give her inflamed brain time to rest and heal. But no medical inducement has taken place since then and yet Rachel remains comatose.

Mrs. Hobson said in a telephone interview this week that doctors tell her and her husband "We have to give it time ... She's doing OK, but just isn't waking up yet. She's hanging in there." She said Rachel is expected to make a full recovery. "That's the hope and faith we're holding onto."

In her Intensive Care Unit room, her parents read to her, play her favorite country music, and make sure the TV is tuned to "American Idol," which Rachel loves to watch. They talk to the teen, who was an award winning athlete at Henderson County High, and Mrs. Hobson occasionally runs "my lotion under her nose" because that scent is so familiar to Rachel.

Mrs. Hobson has noticed that when she reads to her, "She becomes very calm and very still. I believe she hears, but her brain won't let her respond yet. Maybe when all this is said and done she'll say, 'Hey, I remember you saying this...'"

The family, which includes Rachel's older siblings Sarah Hobson Kasten and David, doesn't yet know what type of virus caused her encephalitis. "Everything keeps coming back negative," said Mrs. Hobson, who added that the results of one viral test aren't yet known.

The Hobsons have heard from so many local residents, and also from concerned strangers as far away as England. A woman there contacted them about her spouse's experience with encephalitis.

One e-mail was from a Georgia registered nurse whose 7-year-old son was diagnosed with viral encephalitis in late December, 2004.

Like Rachel, he had earlier had an upper respiratory infection. After he was rushed to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, he lay in a coma for a month. On Jan. 30, 2005, the little boy had an MRI that indicated he was "catastrophically neurologically impaired."

But the child proved that description wrong, and by the fall of 2005 was able to start first grade with the rest of his class. His mother told the Hobsons, "The residual effects are so slight that they are barely noticeable... He is living a very normal life."

She contacted them, she explained, because, "I would like to offer some hope to your family...If I can give you any advice, it would be this: Consider Rachel's recovery a marathon instead of a sprint...Continue with your prayers because as I found through our ordeal, God is the ultimate healer."

Mrs. Hobson said the family has received dozens of cards from Henderson and other places, and they truly help.

"Mark and I are both homesick, but it is comforting to know that everybody is thinking about us and praying for us.

"You never know how much a kind word or prayer means to people in a situation like ours."

An account has been established to help the family with expenses related to Rachel's care. That account is: Rachel Hobson Benefit Fund; Ohio Valley National Bank; P.O. Box 5; Henderson, Ky., 42419.

A regular update on Rachel's condition can be found at the website www.carepages.com. Rachel's carepages' name is rachelupdates.

The family can be contacted via e-mail at rachelhobsonupdates@insightbb.com

Cards and letters can be sent in care of: David Hobson; 3429 Windy Knoll Drive; Lexington, Ky., 40515.

Higher education group forms
Writer: Joy Campbell
3/30/2006 Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer

A 17-member committee that includes representatives from private and public colleges as well as government, economic development and nonprofit agencies has been formed to lead the charge to increase higher education opportunities and participation in the Owensboro region.

The group will hold its first meeting today, said David Searles, a former business executive and government official who will coordinate the group's activities.

"I have consumed a great deal of higher education, and I know what a difference it can make in people's lives," Searles said.

He earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale University and a doctorate degree from the University of Kentucky.

The group's coordinator said he also brings an objective view to the table since he doesn't have close ties to any local college or university.

Searles came to Owensboro 18 years ago to work with Field Packing Co. He and his wife, Mary Searles, have been involved in a variety of community activities.

He has served as deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and as deputy director of the Peace Corps. Prior to those government roles, his experience was "a mix of business and government with a heavy international flavor."

A starting point for the new group likely will be the Chance Report, a higher education research document commissioned by the Owensboro Citizens Committee on Education.

"I think it's the right place to begin," Searles said. "How long we stay on that agenda or develop our own is unknown."

Statistics from 2000 cited in the Chance Report show that Daviess County ranks 18th among all counties in the number of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher, with 18.6 percent of the 25-34 age group earning degrees.

The county ranks last in that category when compared to counties where there is a four-year public institution.

Daviess County has an undergraduate participation rate of 3.89 percent, ranking next to last among eight peer counties. At the graduate/professional degree level, local residents' participation level is .53 percent -- last in the peer group.

Those and other higher education and economic indicators identified in the study suggest suboptimal performance for Daviess County.

Searles expects to have general discussion on the report's findings and recommendations when the group meets today.

"I'm assuming there will be a lot of individual opinions and no consensus yet," Searles said. "It would be wrong to hasten a consensus; you never know what you may pass up."

Forrest Roberts, a local attorney who led the higher education research project, will serve on the committee.

Roberts said she sees the group's focus as one of guiding the community's higher education goals.

Other members include the leaders of the local colleges, the mayor, the judge-executive, and presidents of the chamber and economic development groups.

"I'm impressed with the names on the list; they have great experience in the community," Searles said.

Group Members

-- David Searles, group coordinator; former business executive and government official.

-- Jackie Addington, president, Owensboro Community & Technical College.

-- Rodney Berry, president, Public Life Foundation of Owensboro.

-- Sr. Vivian Bowles, president, Brescia University.

-- Nick Brake, president, Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corporation.

-- Marilyn Brookman, executive director, Western Kentucky University-Owensboro Campus.

-- Malcolm Bryant, real estate and property manager.

-- Bob Darrell, former Kentucky Wesleyan College English professor and business consultant.

-- Marianne Smith Edge, president of MSE and Associates, a nutrition management consulting company, and co-chairwoman of the Citizens Committee on Education.

-- Mike Fiorella, attorney with Sullivan, Mountjoy, Stainback and Miller.

-- Anne Cairns Federlein, president, Kentucky Wesleyan College.

-- Reid Haire, Daviess County judge-executive.

-- Esther Jansing, former member, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education.

-- Ed Riney, president of LinGate Hospitality.

-- Forrest Roberts, attorney and co-chairwoman of the Citizens Committee on Education.

-- Tom Watson, mayor of Owensboro.

-- Jody Wassmer, president, Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce.

Mayfield mourns historian Barton
Writer: Bill Bartleman
3/30/2006 Paducah Sun

MAYFIELD, Ky. -- He's remembered as an "icon," a "treasure" and "beloved by everyone."

Lon Carter Barton, a retired Mayfield teacher and renowned local and Civil War historian, was found dead in his 150-year-old home on Tuesday after failing to show up for a Mayfield Rotary Club meeting on Monday.

Mayor Arthur Byrn said Barton, 80, apparently suffered a stroke on Sunday night or Monday. Funeral arrangements were incomplete at Byrn Funeral Home.

"It is a tragic loss; he was truly an icon in this community," the mayor said. "The wealth of knowledge he had about Graves County, local history and the Civil War will be irreplaceable."

Byrn said Barton was a gentle man who loved his community, its youth and the education system.

"He was an institution, a regional treasure," said Don Sparks, former superintendent of Mayfield city schools where Barton taught for three decades. "No one knew more about history, especially Civil War history, than Lon Carter Barton.

"He had a Southern way of expressing himself that was very unusual," Sparks continued, explaining that he always talked slowly but deliberately. "He was a beloved person. I don't know of anyone who would ever say an unkind word about him."

Barton tried to find ways to transfer his zeal for history to the thousands of students he taught over the years.

"I wanted to motivate them, do something to get them stirred up, to generate their interest," Barton said in an interview in 1998. "I decided that kids -- and I think it's still true -- are more interested in local history than anything else because they can relate to it better."

He told the story about a student who was a little overzealous in tracking down a history assignment. Barton challenged one of his classes to find the grave of the first Mayfield settler. Anyone who could report the inscription on the tombstone would get five extra points in their course grade.

The next morning, Barton said an excited student stopped him in the school parking lot, opened his trunk and displayed the tombstone of John Anderson, the first settler.

Barton told the boy he appreciated his enthusiasm, but the tombstone had better be back in place by 3 p.m. if he wanted his five points. The student got the points.

"Lon was an excellent teacher," said Berry Craig, a former student who teaches history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College. "You can always tell the good teachers by the number of students who came back to visit after graduation. He was always entertaining former students."

Craig said Barton will leave a legacy through his writing. "Too often, local history is poorly written, but he was a great writer," Craig said. "But still, his passion for Graves County and Kentucky history can't be replaced."

Barton also was an avid fan of Mayfield High School football. "He was a real patriot of the football team," Craig said. "Our biggest rivalry was with Paducah Tilghman, and it used to be tradition that before each game, the Mayfield and Paducah cheerleaders would eat dinner together. He didn't like that, and in his own way protested, considering it consorting with the enemy."

Barton was a 1949 graduate of Murray State University with a major in history and minor in journalism. He taught in Tennessee for a short time before accepting a job as a substitute teacher in his hometown of Mayfield.

After serving in the U.S. Army in 1952 and '53 during the Korean War, he returned to Graves County and taught at Sedalia and Lowes before heading to Mayfield High School, where he taught history and journalism for 30 years. He retired in 1988.

Barton also help run a family-owned clothing store for men on the court square and served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1958 to '66.

While teaching was his love, his passion was history. In 1956 he was one of the founders of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society and remained an active member until his death. He continued to write about history for several publications, and contributed to the Kentucky Encyclopedia that was published in 1992.

The Mayfield City Council passed a resolution designating him as the town's official historian.

His love for the Civil War was evident in the home where he died. It was built 150 years ago on the southwest corner of the courthouse square. His grandparents, Lon and Sally Carter, bought the home in 1897 and a year later moved the house two blocks south to what is now South 7th Street so they could develop a row of businesses.

The home was named "Twin Oaks" because it was placed behind two huge oak trees, one of which was destroyed by ice and snow five years ago. The other tree was removed later because it was diseased and Barton feared it would fall on the house.

For visitors, Twin Oaks served as a veritable museum of local, state and American history, and included Civil War memorabilia.

Barton once told a reporter that his fascination with the Civil War began when he heard stories about it from his grandmother Carter, whose father was a Confederate soldier.

He also had a love for the old Class D Kitty League baseball that operated in the tri-state region sporadically from 1903 until 1955. His father was a member of the board of Mayfield's team, first known as the Browns and then the Clothiers.

Barton was an expert on the history of the league and players who went on the major leagues.

OCTC summit to have Czech, Japanese guests - Teleconference will link 12 cities Wednesday
Writer: Keith Lawrence
3/30/2006 Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer

Wednesday's Kentucky State Summit on Citizen Diplomacy at Owensboro Community & Technical College is attracting an international lineup.

Now, Bill West, executive director of Owensboro Sister Cities, is hoping for a good local turnout for the session from 1 to 4 p.m. in Blandford Hall

The statewide teleconference, involving Owensboro and 11 other cities, will discuss international economic development and tourism along with how communities can be "more engaged in global awareness" and "strengthen global education."

West said he's hoping for a turnout of 150 to 400 people.

"But that will be the second week of the Owensboro schools' spring break," he said. "I'm not sure how many people will be out of town."

West said 10 political and economic development leaders from the Olomouc region of the Czech Republic will be visiting the community next week and are scheduled to participate in the summit.

Olomouc is Owensboro's sister city.

West said a Japanese trade representative from Nashville is also scheduled to be in Owensboro to participate.

The commercial attaché from the Czech embassy in Washington, D.C., will be in town on Tuesday, West said, to meet with area officials at the Green River Area Development District offices and to attend the Owensboro City Commission meeting.

But the attaché will be leaving town Tuesday morning and won't be able to participate in the summit, West said.

The Kentucky summit is part of a national summit sponsored by the Coalition for Citizen Diplomacy, a national campaign to increase America's involvement with the rest of the world.

A national summit is scheduled for July 12-14 in Washington, D.C. It coincides with the 50th anniversary conference of Sister Cities International.

The Owensboro summit will discuss ways to improve international business and tourism as well as ways to improve education and global awareness locally, West said.

Two appointments annouced for HCC board
3/30/2006 Henderson Gleaner

Gov. Ernie Fletcher's office on Wednesday announced the appointment of John S. Wilkey and the reappointment of Gian Hall MIller to the Henderson Community College Board of Directors.

Wilkey, an investment representative for Edward Jones and Company, succeeds Billy Richardson, whose term had expired. Wilkey received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Texas Tech University and is a member of Junior Achievement and the Henderson Rotary Club. He is married to Patricia Wilkey.

Miller, co-owner of Scott Industries, Inc. with her husband T. Scott Miller, received her associate's degree from HCC and her bachelor's and master's degrees from Western Kentucky University.

She serves on a number of local boards, including Riverview School and Henderson County High School Youth Services.

Members of the HCC board are selected from a list of three names submitted to the governor by the HCC Nominating Commission.

Women's History Month: Red Cross, women's history go hand-in-hand
Writer: SHANNON BROWN
3/30/2006 Elizabethtown News-Enterprise

As Women's History Month ends, we need to remember that March also is American Red Cross Month. You may ask how the month of March can be used to honor both women and the Red Cross. Simply put, there would be no American Red Cross without the monumental work of two often overlooked women -- Clara Barton and Jane Delano.

Clara Barton was not the kind of woman we usually imagine when we hear the words "organizer" or "founder." Barton was a petite woman who was more at home on a quiet farm in Massachusetts than in the political world of 19th century Washington, D.C. Her humanitarian service began when she was 11 years old, when she nursed her brother back to health after a nearly fatal farming accident. Her first profession was teaching, which she pursued for 18 years after moving to Washington. As many of us have done, Barton changed careers in mid-life. Her second career was created by a mixture of war and chance.

In April 1861, during the Civil War, the 6th Massachusetts Regiment before arriving in the nation's capital had lost its baggage, which included badly needed bandages and other medical supplies. Barton organized the effort to replace these necessities by tearing sheets into bandages. After the Battle of Bull Run, Barton expanded her war-time efforts to gather supplies through newspaper ads. The response was so great that a distribution agency had to be created to handle the donations.

Thanks to the war, Barton had found her voice. She was one of many speakers for the rights of newly freed slaves and the suffrage movement. The once-shy woman lobbied congressmen and members of the president's cabinet to create the American Red Cross. She was the organization's first president and served for 23 years and gained support from financial giants such as John D. Rockefeller.

Barton's work inspired Jane Delano, a young nurse from New York. Delano followed Barton's lead and became the founder of the Red Cross Nursing Service. Delano died on a battlefield in France as a nurse in service during World War I.

In 1943 another Delano -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- declared March American Red Cross Month. During World War II, the Red Cross provided essential services to the armed forces and their dependents.

American Red Cross Month not only is to remember the contributions of great women like Barton and Delano, but also to acknowledge the continuing need for volunteers to one of our nation's greatest nonprofit organizations. A virtual army of 1 million volunteers comes to the aid of victims whose lives are shattered by 70,000 disasters each year, ranging from house fires to hurricanes. When not responding to disasters, the American Red Cross provides training in CPR, lifeguard skills and babysitter safety. The Red Cross continues to serve the armed forces as it did under the leadership of Barton through the Armed Forces Emergency Services, which connects service members with family members in times of emergency.

During Red Cross Month, join the efforts of this charitable army. No action is too small -- give blood, work at a blood drive, learn CPR, learn to teach CPR, answer phones, become a disaster volunteer or donate time or money. March may be Women's History Month, but it should not become American Red Cross History Month. Keep the Red Cross in our present and our future by contacting your local chapter on the many ways you can volunteer.

Shannon Brown is a first-year biology instructor at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. She received her master's degree from Eastern Kentucky University. She serves as faculty adviser for the Biology Club and is an active Red Cross volunteer.

Column: New perspective on crisis among black men recalls an old one
Writer: Betty Bayé
3/30/2006 Louisville Courier-Journal

I remember when Malcolm X was the chief spokesman in New York City for Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam.

He would walk the streets day and night, exhorting black men to dress neatly, respect women, forego drugs, alcohol and tobacco, be responsible for their families, eat healthfully, read, value education and stay out of jail.

And Malcolm X was one to talk. He'd been a hustler, a pimp, a womanizer and a thief for most of his life until he, like many others, discovered the Nation of Islam in jail.

If the Nation of Islam's message of thrift, personal responsibility, entrepreneurship and general non-riotous living had prevailed, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be confronted with today's depressing findings that 72 percent of young black men are high school dropouts, that six in 10 of those dropouts have been incarcerated by their mid-30s, and that tens of thousands of young black males who lacked physical, emotional and financial access to their biological fathers are repeating the cycle.

But in the '60s, as now, it was the dysfunctional black males who got most of the public's attention. Could it be because, for all his braggadocio, a dysfunctional black man is more easily managed?

Give him enough dope, and he can't take his place on the battlefield for civil rights and social justice. Incarcerate him, and society gets a twofer -- another black man out of sight and another black body to support the vast, job-creating enterprise that is the criminal justice system.

Meanwhile, the rap on black women is that they're complicit in black male dysfunctionality. That's because, more often than not, black women defend their men and boys, even when it's obvious that they're wrong.

Of black women, it's often said that they "raise their daughters and love their sons."

New findings suggest that a large segment of young black males are as uninspired by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as they are by Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas. They look at all such men, liberal or conservative, as accommodationists in a rotten system which they want no part of.

Related to this, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, in Sunday's New York Times and in a National Public Radio interview, challenged his fellow social scientists to "get behind the stereotypes" and to stop offering the "standard explanatory fare" that "fails to answer the important questions" of why large numbers of young black males, despite opportunities to do better, remain poorly educated, chronically unemployed, imprisoned, uninvolved in their children's lives and so murderous that they kill one another at a rate nine times higher than white youths.

"Why have academics been so allergic to cultural explanations?" Patterson asked.

Why aren't the academics paying attention to "how these young black men view their world ... their fundamental ideas, notions of masculinity and the street culture as an alternative to education"?

As Patterson sees it, holding "someone responsible for his behavior is not to exclude any recognition of the environmental factors that may have induced the problematic behaviors in the first place."

He also argues that cultural patterns "are often easier to change than the economic factors favored by policy analysts."

In other words, black males tagged as dysfunctional are not powerless to change their behavior, and the nagging question is why so many choose not to do so.

I'd like to know that myself. The question is worthy of research by the social scientists, but also of soul-searching and frank talk among black boys and men and the black girls and women who love them.

Which leads me back to where I started. When I reflect on what it was about the Nation of Islam that energized so many African Americans, I am convinced that its teachings reaffirmed what black elders used to say all the time: No matter the low esteem in which they were held by others, black people weren't obliged to prove the haters right.

Or, as those old black people would say, "We are God's children, and God don't make no junk."

Kentucky River dams to be rebuilt, repaired - PLANS COVER THREE DAMS, TWO LOCKS
Writers: John Stamper, Jack Brammer And Andy Mead
3/30/2006 Lexington Herald-Leader

FRANKFORT - In a stunning reversal of fortunes, state legislative leaders yesterday announced a $55 million plan to rebuild three Kentucky River dams and two locks.

The decision, worked out in a conference committee, has long-range implications for water supply, boating and tourism in Central Kentucky.

It also means increases in the water bills for virtually everyone who lives near the Kentucky River's main stem -- about $15 a year for the average home.

"This is the best thing that will ever happen to Central Kentucky," said Senate Minority Leader Ed Worley, D-Richmond.

"There will be no economic development, there will be no residential development in the future if we don't have a permanent water supply."

Just a few days ago, money for Dam 9, which holds the water supply for more than 600,000 people, including all of Lexington, appeared to be in doubt. And it was the only part of the old river navigation system that seemed to have even a slight chance to get funding.

But legislative leaders emerged after hours of meetings with Steve Reeder, executive director of the Kentucky River Authority, to lay out this plan:

* Replace the 103-year-old Dam No. 9 at Valley View, which is crumbling. Work in the $17.5 million replacement could begin this summer.

* Replace Dam 10 at Fort Boonesborough State Park, with a moveable crest dam that would hold 6 more feet of water. Six years ago, at the urging of then U.S. Rep. (now Gov.) Ernie Fletcher, Congress authorized $24 million for No. 10. The total cost, with state money making up the difference, is expected to be $32 million.

* Replace Dam 3 near Monterey in Owen County for $13.5 million. No one now withdraws water from the pool behind this dam. But either the Bluegrass Water Supply Commission or Kentucky American Water is expected to build a regional water treatment plant in the pool.

* Put a lock in the new Dam 3, and replace the lock in Dam 4 at Frankfort, which will allow boats from Frankfort to reach the Ohio River and beyond. The locks are expected to cost $5 million each. A lock is a chamber that allows boats to move between the different water levels on either side of the dam.

Reeder said the Fletcher administration and Frankfort and Franklin County officials have been working on developing the riverfront "and they want those locks operational for economic development."

Pat Hancock, a co-founder of a group called the Kentucky River Valley Association, said the lock news "is the best thing I've heard all day."

There are 15 dams on the Kentucky, but only the locks in Nos. 1 through 4 were operating last summer, and 3 was opened only a few times for fear that it could not be closed again.

For years, the river authority has been placing concrete walls across locks that were in poor condition because it couldn't afford to repair or replace them.

About two-thirds of the overall $55 million plan will come from the estimated 800,000 people who live between Irvine and Frankfort and who depend on water from the Kentucky's main stem. That's more than a fourth of the state's population.

The average home now pays about 30 cents a month to the Kentucky River Authority. That will go to about $1.60 a month.

The fee increase would have been more, but legislative leaders agreed to put in $17.5 million in general fund dollars.

"For the average user at home it will be ... about $15 a year to guarantee a water supply so they can water their lawn and wash their car and won't have to turn it off," said Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville.

Reporters asked legislators if the fee increases could be attacked as being a tax increase.

"The users of the watershed are in jeopardy of no water," said Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield.

Reeder said he went into the conference committee to argue for the "emergency" at Dam 9, and was amazed when legislators kept asking him for more information on repairing more of the lock and dam system.

"I never dreamed this would happen," Reeder said. "This is the biggest non-partisan thing I've seen in more than 10 years."

MSU students observe, help out at local schools
Writer: TONYA S. GRACE
3/30/2006 Hopkinsville New Era

Dymond Gatlin wasn't sure exactly what the word "invert" meant until she got the help she needed from a visitor to her classroom.

Without quite giving away the answer, Murray State University sophomore Shannyn Bourdon helped the young girl figure out that inverting something was the same thing as turning it over.

Ten-year-old Gatlin said she appreciates the efforts of folks like Bourdon, an MSU education student who was observing Cindy Campbell's classroom on Tuesday at Belmont Elementary School.

Bourdon and Lindsey Barnett, who also spent the morning with Campbell's students, were among about 130 MSU education students who visited local schools to observe teachers at work in their classrooms. The students were completing requirements for a special education class at the college, and assistant MSU professor Eric Umstead noted that observing schools in Christian County has been beneficial for his students because it exposes them to youth from a variety of backgrounds and with varying needs that have to be addressed in the classroom.

"We realized the students in (MSU's) College of Education didn't get to see a diverse population," said Umstead, as he explained that schools in the counties where MSU students normally complete their practicums don't have a wide diversity of academic, racial and cultural backgrounds.

"What we wanted is to give our education students a much better picture of the reality of education," he continued.

Umstead said the arrangement between the Christian County school system and MSU has been ongoing for about five years, and MSU also has a similar arrangement with schools in Paducah.

MSU students visit McCracken County in the fall and Christian County each spring, and Umstead noted that the main thing students learn from their visits is that, yes, they will be working with youngsters who have a variety of backgrounds.

He pointed out, for example, that some of his students consider special education and think special education students will be isolated in their own private classrooms or that they will come with their own assistants who will accompany them in class.

But in reality, Umstead said, his students learn that they themselves will become special education teachers.

"After this observation, they realize there are goung to be a variety of student abilities and they're going to have to address them differently," the assistant professor said.

During their morning at local schools, Umstead's students were encouraged to observe how the youngsters learn and how they interact with each other in class, and they were to discuss their findings later as a group.

In addition to Belmont, the MSU students also visited classrooms at Christian County High and Middle schools, Hopkinsville High and Middle schools, the Civitan Educational Complex, North Drive Middle School and at Holiday, Indian Hills, Millbrooke, Morningside and Sinking Fork elementary schools.

Bourdon said she had observed at another elementary classroom prior to her local visit, and she noted that the opportunity to visit the classes is helping her decide whether she wants to work with preschool-age youth or elementary students.

On Tuesday, Bourdon said she also was learning about the preparation that teachers "have to go through" to manage their classrooms, and the young woman noted that it was not as easy as it looks.

Bourdon said she did not know if she would be teaching herself in a classroom with a diverse group of students. Originally from Illinois, she grew up in a community with few minorities, although she has visited schools recently where educators are concerned about the academic gap existing among their students.

"Paducah told us they do address minorities," she noted recently. "And they are trying to (lessen) the academic gap."

Bourdon described her visit with Belmont Elementary School as fun, and she said she enjoyed working with the fourth-graders in Campbell's class and helping them with their worksheets about recipes and measurements.

Campbell noted that it makes her own students feel a little bit special to have the MSU students in their classroom. Her youngsters enjoy working with the older students, she noted, while the MSU students learn what teaching is about.

"I think it's really good for the ones that are studying about teaching to come in and observe," she said. "It gives them a really good picture of what teaching is about."

Panel looks at Kentucky, global economy - New relationships, innovation called key issues
Writer: Scott Sloan
3/30/2006 Lexington Herald-Leader

Reaching out to forge new relationships and fostering innovation were preached as two ideas to carry Kentucky's economy forward during a luncheon yesterday of area business people.

Five prominent panelists spoke to about two dozen business people about the implications of competing in the global economy.

The mayors of Richmond, Versailles and Winchester spoke about their recent trips overseas.

"It's really about building relationships," said Versailles Mayor Fred Siegelman.

Winchester Mayor Dodd Dixon emphasized the importance of simply raising awareness.

"I was talking to an industrialist in Germany and they didn't have a clue where Kentucky was. You could give them a map, and they couldn't find us. And we expect these people, who have no concept about where Kentucky is ... to discover this wonderful place that we call home without any promotion whatsoever. That's the most insane thought that we could ever possibly have," he said.

During their trips overseas, the mayors met with executives at various companies that have facilities in this area.

"We just want to reach out and be there 'en masse.' We think it makes a difference," said Richmond Mayor Connie Lawson.

But reaching out to recruit and retain companies is only one part of a sound economic development strategy, said panelist Kris Kimel, president of the Kentucky Science & Technology Corp.

"We are not going to recruit ourselves to prosperity in this state," Kimel said. "That's a piece of it ... but by and large, because of the shift in this knowledge economy, our economy's going to be driven in the future ... by how good a job we do at creating the kinds of knowledge and entrepreneurs that can grow those companies."

Kimel also discounted the importance of boasting about Kentucky's low costs.

"We have historically competed on the basis of price. Come here: cheaper land, cheaper labor, utilities, etc. That's still a piece of it, don't get me wrong. But increasingly we're finding that at least in the ... companies that are growth-oriented ... which will be, must be the future of this state, you're competing on the basis of knowledge and innovation," he said.

The panel discussion, "Kentucky: Spanning the Globe," was part of an ongoing series leading up to the Kentucky World Trade Center's World Trade Day in Lexington on June 7.

Students to show off technological skills
3/30/2006 Kentucky Enquirer (Covington)

Students from all of Covington's schools will demonstrate their technological know-how during Thursday's "Expanding Horizons - Tech Fair '06" from 3:30 to 6 p.m. at Two Rivers Middle School, 525 Scott St.

More than 50 student showcases will be on exhibit during the event.

Every grade level - kindergarten through senior year in high school - will be represented in the annual technology exhibit.

Pupils who participate in the Student Technology Leadership Program at the schools will staff interactive booths that will allow visitors to create lapel buttons, business cards and photos.

Another presentation will focus on Internet safety.

Top projects in the event will be recognized in an awards ceremony at 5:30 p.m.

Surgery center under way - Doctors, hospital team up in new building venture
Writer: Matt Rennels
3/30/2006 Hopkinsville New Era

Officials of Jennie Stuart Medical Center and a group of doctors were set to break ground today for an outpatient surgery center on the Eagle Way bypass.

The 16,000-square-foot, $6.5 million facility will be built across from the Heritage Christian Academy. It's expected to be finished by December.

A joint venture between JSMC and several physicians across town, those involved say the center will bring their patients to the next level of medical care.

"This is bringing things into the 21st century," said orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Bealle, one of six surgeons involved. "It should be about as good as anything you can find anywhere."

He added that the patient and family will appreciate the convenience, getting them in and out within the same day and probably even within the hour. They will not hold patients overnight at the new facility. If necessary, they will be transported over to JSMC.

"You don't get bogged down as you might at a hospital," he said. And Bealle is excited because he and the other physicians won't be as bogged down, either.

"It's a nice place for me to be able to work," Bealle said. "As a surgeon here in the area it is a real blessing."

The center will always have a limit of six surgeons -- from general to orthopedic and ophthalmology -- who will practice at the center. None will have an office in the building although there are plans to build a medical park around it, where physicians are already planning to relocate.

One physician looking to relocate is ophthalmologist Harold Calvert, who will be medical director of the ambulatory center.

Calvert, who estimates that 99 percent of his cases are outpatient, is especially anticipating the change.

"It has been long overdue," Calvert said, pointing out that usually a city the size of Hopkinsville has one or two already.

He will be able to perform no shot/no stitch cataract surgery, eye lid, and Lasik surgery in the freestanding out patient center -- one of its biggest strengths in itself, he said. Efforts will be 100 percent directed toward out patient, a feature he said a hospital is not capable of.

Several people involved said this will keep Hopkinsville up to speed with neighboring cities.

"It's going to get us to where we compete with Nashville and Clarksville," Calvert said. "We will be able to offer everything they do."

This is JSMC's first ground-up constructed building away from its main facility on 18th St. A few years back they built an express lab in the Indian Hills Shopping Center.

Eric Lee, vice president for development operations at the hospital, has been pleased with the physicians' cooperation.

"It is a trend in the community where physicians take a more active role," Lee said.

"We feel very positive about it," he said. "This will be a very successful project."

The IRS wants you ...... to file your taxes electronically
Reasons vary why many Kentuckians still mail in their federal tax forms the old-fashioned way.
Writer: Joe Walker
3/30/2006 Paducah Sun

For the nearly 450,000 Kentuckians who used software to prepare their federal income taxes last year but mailed their returns the old-fashioned way, the Internal Revenue Service has a suggestion.

"Hit the send button," IRS spokeswoman Pat Brummer said. "If you're buying the software, go ahead and electronically file."

Last season, 1.4 million of Kentucky's 1.7 million taxpayers used software to prepare their federal returns, but only 996,000 filed electronically, she said. "What we're saying is if we had all those other software users filing, Kentucky would be pretty close to 90 percent electronic filing."

Brummer said reasons vary for not filing electronically.

"Some people are concerned about security, but the e-filing system is 20 years old, and we've never had a security breach," she said. "Obviously security is the number-one priority, and we know people have to trust the system to use it."

Taxpayers or their preparers pay for the software, but some preparers charge extra for e-filing, which may explain why some returns continue to be mailed, Brummer said. According to irs.gov, 70 percent of preparers offer free e-filing.

As of Friday, 911,000 Kentuckians had filed their federal returns. Of those, 755,987 had e-filed, 177,297 from home computers.

The IRS encourages electronic filing because it is accurate and fast:

Mistakes are flagged and must be corrected before an electronic return is accepted. Brummer said the error rate for e-filed returns is less than 0.5 percent, compared with 21 percent for paper returns. Nearly half the mistakes on paper returns are caused by leaving out a Social Security number, she said.

An e-mail is sent within 48 hours confirming that a return has been accepted. If a bank account and routing number are provided, a refund is directly deposited in as few as 10 days. That compares with a six- to eight-week refund lag when filing by mail.

Nationwide last year, 68.5 million individual returns -- more than half -- were filed electronically, 11.3 percent more than in the previous year. Many were e-filed by tax professionals, but about 17 million came directly from home computers, up 17 percent over the prior year, the IRS says.

So far this season, as compared with the same time last year:

68 percent of all returns have been e-filed, up from 66 percent.

Of more than 50 million e-filed returns, 14 million have been from home computers, up from 12 million.

69 percent of all refunds have been direct-deposited, up from 65 percent.

The IRS Web site, irs.gov, has received 90 million visits, up from 84 million.

They won't let it slide - NKU engineers try driving a stake in hillside erosion
3/30/2006 Kentucky Post (Covington)

If you sawed down some trees, whacked them into posts and pounded them into the ground, what would happen?

Folks at Big Bone Lick State Park and Northern Kentucky University are hoping they will sprout and grow and stabilize a hillside prone to landslides.

"It's an innovative technique," said Scott Fennell, senior engineer of NKU's Center for Applied Ecology.

"If we have success, we'll make the information available to others."

The $40,000 project is part of $1.6 million in restoration work that NKU is doing to improve creeks and land adjacent to streams at Big Bone, a popular park in southwest Boone County.

The innovative effort - called "live dormant pole plantings" - is being done on a 100-by-250-foot hillside where a landslide has threatened to send sediment into Big Bone Creek.

The land is part of 27 acres that the park acquired several years ago. The land once was a trailer park and contained a couple of ponds that were recently drained because the man-made earthen dams that contained the water were giving way.

Sediment from the ponds and soil from the eroding dams were placed on the hillside. A subsequent landslide, and the possibility of more, necessitated stabilizing the hillside.

"A conventional way would be to terrace the hillside and put in compacted fill and drainage," said Fennell. "That would be very disruptive to the terrain and expensive."

So it was decided to plant poles.

"There is a little bit of information about this and we learned about it from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," said Fennell. "Certain species of trees will root and live from cuttings made when the tree is dormant. The most well known is willow.

"But using large poles from different species is much less common."

Developers gave NKU permission to cut down trees that were destined to be cleared from area sites, including Drees' Harmony housing subdivision and Fischer's Orleans housing subdivision, both in Boone County, and the Cote Brilliante shopping center project in Newport.

Most of the 620 trees cut last month were black locust, but there also were cottonwood, sycamore, red maple, box elder, black willow, catalpa and American elm.

Trees selected had trunk diameters between 3 and 8 inches, and they were cut into poles from 10 to 14 feet long. The poles were soaked for a week in Big Bone Creek.

"That improves their survivability," said Fennell.

The poles were then pounded into the ground by a huge shovel of an earth moving machine. About two feet of each pole was left above ground.

"Our hope is they will start growing trees on their own," said Fennell. "We'll begin to know if it works sometime in late spring when we hope they start getting some sprouts and leafing out.

"We'll also be checking for long-term survivability. We're going to monitor the poles over the years and collect data.

"I have a pretty high degree of confidence that they will take root and grow. Even if they don't, there still will be a benefit because the poles will help pin the soil in place and help stabilize the hillside."

Jonathan Barker, a naturalist at Big Bone, is predicting success.

"I'm not saying all the poles will sprout and grow, but I'm optimistic a good percentage will," he said. "I think it's a neat thing to be doing. It's definitely an innovative way to try to reinforce the hillside."

Barker is impressed with all the work NKU has done to improve Big Bone.

"They've been doing tremendous things, and people are going to be enjoying their work for decades to come," he said. "What we have now is just a shadow of the show that's going to be here at Big Bone.

"I just can't say enough good things about NKU's work at the park. They're always coming up with innovative ways to do things, and the results are just fantastic."

The money for the work comes from the Northern Kentucky Stream Corridor Restoration Fund, which is managed by the NKU Center for Applied Ecology.

Developers, highway departments, airports and others who alter streams with construction projects are required to put money into the fund for stream restoration.

The NKU Center for Applied Ecology has been involved in more than 140 environmental projects in the area, including stream and wetland assessments, restoration and monitoring.

The center, which specializes in ecology, botany, biology, engineering and geography, works with industries, local communities, governments and other entities to solve environmental and ecological problems.

Training session focuses on preserving historic district
Writer: DANETTA BARKER
3/30/2006 Maysville Ledger Independent

Historic buildings are the heart of Maysville's charm. From turrets to gargoyles to Spanish design, the buildings that make up Maysville's historic district are examples of 19th Century architecture at its finest.

To help property owners preserve the unique structures, the city of Maysville and the Kentucky Heritage Council have scheduled a training session for April 11 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Conference Center. The public is invited to the session and those who wish to attend should RSVP by calling 606-564-9419 and ask for Lisa Dunbar. There is an $8 fee which includes a boxed lunch.

Director of Tourism Duff Giffen said the session is designed to help property owners address issues from store fronts to tax credits.

"This is a great opportunity for local property owners who have historic buildings downtown to learn more about preservation techniques," Giffen said. "We want to open this session up to the public, including Main Street managers and Renaissance directors and property owners."

Mark Dennen from the KHC will address several issues, including tax credits, the National Register of Historical Places, architectural tradition, store front design, facade design and masonry cleaning and repair.

Giffen said many property owners in town are working on buildings. Myles Brown Jewelry owner Mary Ethel Campbell has applied for and received one of the city's facade grants.

"I am going to paint and replace the awning," Campbell said. "I have replaced it twice since 1980 when I bought the building."

Patrons of the shop need not worry, Campbell plans to get another black and white striped awning which has become a signature of the store.

In the 26 years she has owned the building, Campbell has painted exteriors and interiors of the two-story building.

For the grant process, she had to do a little research on the building which was once a grocery store and a bar.

"It was a saloon in the 1870s," Campbell said. "It was owned by Mrs. Thomas Gurney and Anthony Weiand was the bartender. By 1897 Weiand and Robert R. Frost had become proprietors of the bar."

Campbell has operated the jewelry store since 1980 when she purchased the building from Myles Brown who opened the store there in 1960.

Giffen said owners such as Campbell can benefit from the Kentucky Heritage Council's wealth of information.

"This is a great time to take advantage of everything the council has to offer," Giffen said.

Two to vie in Poetry Out Loud contest
Writer: Tom O'Neill
3/30/2006 Kentucky Post (Covington)

Stand and deliver - and do it with flair. Poetry deserves nothing less.

That will be the focus for two Simon Kenton High School juniors on Thursday when they compete in Frankfort for a chance to take their dramatic poetry recitations to the nation's capital.

Danielle DeMuro and Tawni Koch are two of only 20 statewide selected for the National Endowment for the Arts' Poetry Out Loud competition.

The event, to be held at 10 a.m. Thursday on the Frankfort campus of Kentucky State University, is sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council.

The goal of the contest is to encourage students to better appreciate great works of poetry through performance and memorization

The Simon Kenton team is the only one from Northern Kentucky to make it to the state competition.

Koch, an alternate on the team, is standing in for senior Jaron Kucera, who is not able to attend Thursday's event.

The team's other alternates is senior Jarod Smith.

The quartet advanced in competition with other students in the Kenton County school district. Judges for the district competition were teachers David Elzey, Christine Hoerlein, Dawn Brown and Daniel Skidmore. Teacher coordinators for the contest were Laura Medley-Schneider and Heather Mastin.

DeMuro and Koch will recite two classics: "Jabberwocky" from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There," published in 1872, and Stephen Crane's "War is Kind", published in 1899.

The winners of Thursday's event will represent Kentucky at the national competition in May.

The judges of Thursday finals come from Kentucky's best literary circles: Ken Jones, chairman of the Northern Kentucky University Theatre Department, state poet laureate Sena Jeter Naslund and poet Frank X. Walker.

"Poetry Out Loud has been a wonderful opportunity to engage Kentucky high school students with great poetry and the literary arts," said Kentucky Arts Council Executive Director Lori Meadows.

27% of schools fail to meet No Child Left Behind standards
3/30/2006 USA TODAY

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than a fourth of the nation's schools failed to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Law last year, according to preliminary numbers reported to the Department of Education.

About half the states increased the number of schools making "adequate yearly progress" in improving student test scores in math and reading in the 2004-05 school year. Overall, 27% of the schools failed to show adequate improvement, up one percentage point from the year before.

"This is just one piece of data we look at," said Chad Colby, a spokesman for the Department of Education. These numbers alone don't signify a trend in how schools are doing, he said Wednesday. "This isn't a trend indicator in proficiency."

Schools receiving federal poverty aid can be sanctioned for not making "adequate yearly progress" two years in a row, with administrators and teachers eventually being replaced.

To meet goals, schools must show overall improvement, plus gains by minority students, poor students, students with limited English skills and students with disabilities.

States are required to get increasing percentages of students proficient in math and reading, with all students being proficient by 2013-14.

However, states are given flexibility in designing tests, and many have made it easier to meet federal requirements.

The result is an uneven measurement from state to state, said Joel Packer, a lobbyist for the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union.

"Each state has its own standards, each state has its own tests, each state has its own definition of what it means to be proficient," Packer said.

Oklahoma led the country in 2004-05 with 97% of its schools making adequate progress. It was followed closely by Rhode Island, Iowa, Montana and New Hampshire.

Florida was at the bottom, with only 28% of its school meeting the requirements. Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina rounded out the bottom five states.

Ross Wiener, policy director at the Education Trust, a Washington research and advocacy group, said states can do better if they address funding and teacher inequities. Wiener said too many poor school districts get less money and less qualified teachers than wealthier districts.

"We have not taken a lot of steps that could dramatically improve student achievement," Wiener said.

Colleges pushed to prove worth - Standardized testing at the university level?
Writer: Patrick Kerkstra
3/28/2006 Philadelphia Inquirer

For at least half a century, leaders of the nation's colleges and universities have been touting U.S. higher education as by far the best in the world.

Now, pressure is building to prove it.

In not just conservative political circles but also the business community and the tuition-paying ranks of parents, a new and unmistakably skeptical view of the ivory tower has emerged. With it have come increasing calls for a way to hold colleges and universities accountable for the quality of education delivered to more than 17 million students.

The most controversial method - one being seriously considered by a Bush Administration commission - is standardized testing.

It is already getting a trial run with small groups of students at more than 100 institutions nationwide, including Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. Given to college freshmen and seniors, the essay-based exam is supposed to measure critical thinking and communications skills.

Even that limited experimentation alarms many academics, who contend that the wildly diverse programs and missions of nearly 4,000 institutions of higher learning - from the Ivies to community colleges - make standardized testing worthless.

"Every university is different. That's the great strength of our system," said Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University. "There's no national test that Penn State students could take that's going to help us educate them better or make us more accountable."

That argument has not swayed policymakers and business leaders worried that university systems in Asia and Europe are closing in fast, notably in engineering and science.

"Underlying all this is a growing suspicion that American higher education may not be as good as it ought to be, or as it thinks it is," said Robert Zemsky, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Zemsky is one of 19 members on the federal commission that will make recommendations this fall on the "future of higher education" to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

The panel, which held a public comment session in Seattle last month and a second one last week in Boston, put testing at the top of its agenda soon after it was created last September. The chairman, Houston investment manager Charles Miller, is a leading proponent of standardized collegiate exams.

"The pressures for accountability are everywhere," Miller, a former Bush-appointed leader of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, said in a recent interview. "Evidence of the need to improve student learning is pretty clear."

He offered a litany of examples: "softening curricula," "grade inflation," and insufficient literacy skills in half of all four-year college graduates, as detailed in a study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts released in January. Meanwhile, annual tuition hikes are outpacing inflation.

To his critic's ears, Miller's case for collegiate testing has a familiar ring. They say similar arguments were used to turn the No Child Left Behind program into a federal fiat, mandating extensive testing in secondary and elementary grades. Miller, in fact, helped design a K-12 testing system in Texas for then-Gov. Bush that became the model for the federal program.

Miller dismissed the comparison. The states, not Washington, should take the lead on collegiate testing by requiring it at public universities, he said. Once the big state systems prove its value, he predicted, testing will be swept by market demand into private schools.

Also, unlike No Child Left Behind, federal funding would not be tied to test results, he said.

Money, however, is undeniably part of the issue. When the commission was formed, Spellings noted that the federal government provides a third of all higher-education funding and has a right to "maximize" its investment.

"We're missing valuable information on how the system works today," she said, "and what can be improved."

That baffles some ivory tower habitues who see higher education as too preoccupied with self-examination and ranking.

"There is no enterprise in America that I know of that assesses itself so carefully and so frequently," said Penn State's Spanier, calling it "both a science and an obsession."

He cited the arduous reviews that faculty members endure to make tenure, the accreditation process, the student-satisfaction surveys, and the monitoring of graduates' efforts to get jobs.

Better known to the public are the college comparisons made by popular publications such as U.S. News & World Report. Those rankings are based on such factors as faculty-to-student ratios, SAT scores, and alumni giving. But they say little, if anything, about how well students are learning in the classroom.

Can standardized testing fill in the blanks?

That's what Lehigh University wanted to find out when it administered a standardized exam known as the Collegiate Learning Assessment for the first time last fall to about 100 randomly selected freshmen, according to Carl Moses, deputy provost for academic affairs.

Lehigh is the only Pennsylvania school to acknowledge experimenting with the assessment; none in New Jersey is known to be trying it. Most of the pilot schools are in states where college testing has become a prominent policy debate, such as Texas, New York and California.

The exam is made up of two 90-minute writing exercises. In one, students are given an opinionated statement and asked to compose an essay supporting or disputing it. The second is a real-life "performance task," such as producing a memo from newspaper clips and documents.

The test was developed by two think tanks, the Rand Corporation and the Council for Aid to Education. They employ graduate students to grade the task portion, but a software program called "e-rater" scores the essays. The same program is used to assess writing samples in the entrance exams for both business and graduate schools.

At Lehigh, it's too early to know whether the test has value, Moses said.

Skeptics wonder whether any test can accurately determine how much of student performance is the result of the classroom experience. That question leads to others: What about students who transfer? Or those who won't take seriously an exam with no bearing on grades or graduation?

On the horizon, many academics see testing leading to homogenization of college curricula, akin to the teaching-to-the-test effect that No Child Left Behind is accused of having on secondary and elementary education.

"If we wanted a standardized curriculum for higher education," Spanier said, "we might as well move to China or Russia, where there's a ministry of education prescribing what we do."

Yet even among testing's critics are some who suggest that the academy helped bring the unwanted scrutiny on itself.

"I wish it was not necessary to have this debate," said Temple University president David Adamany, known for imposing new academic rigor on the school. "But I don't believe most universities have done a very good job identifying measures of student performance and monitoring to make sure performance is strong."

The solution is not standardized testing, many academics say, but assessments that gauge each student's mastery of a discipline. For instance, a "capstone" course, or a senior-year research paper, or a portfolio of work covering a college career.

Trudy Banta, a professor of higher education at Indiana University and an assessment expert, said that such assignments - combined with satisfaction surveys and scores on graduate and professional school exams - are better indicators of student achievement.

"We all love simple, easy answers," she said. "But this isn't a simple, easy issue."

Ready, Set, Write

The Collegiate Learning Assessment, a new standardized exam, is supposed to measure college students' communication and reasoning skills. It consists of two 90-minute writing tests. On one, students are presented with an opinionated statement, or "prompt," and asked to respond in an essay. On the other, they are given a real-life task, such as writing a memo based on documentation provided.

Sample Writing Prompt

Public figures such as actors, politicians and athletes should expect people to be interested in their private lives. When they seek a public role, they should expect that they will lose at least some of their privacy.

Sample Performance Task

You are the assistant to Pat Williams, the president of DynaTech, a company that makes precision electronic instruments and navigational equipment. Sally Evans, a member of DynaTech's sales force, recommended that DynaTech buy a small private plane (a SwiftAir 235) that she and other members of the sales force could use to visit customers. Pat was about to approve the purchase when there was an accident involving a SwiftAir 235.

You are provided with the following documentation:

1. Newspaper articles about the accident

2. Federal accident report on in-flight breakups in single-engine planes

3. Pat's e-mail to you and Sally's e-mail to Pat

4. Charts on SwiftAir's performance characteristics

5. Amateur Pilot article comparing SwiftAir 235 to similar planes

6. Pictures and description of SwiftAir Models 180 and 235

Please prepare a memo that addresses several questions, including what data support or refute the claim that the type of wing on the SwiftAir 235 leads to more in-flight breakups, what other factors might have contributed to the accident and should be taken into account, and your overall recommendation about whether DynaTech should purchase the plane.

SOURCE: Council for Aid to Education

House Leaders Bring Reauthorization Bill to the Floor, but Avoid Debate on Most of Its Contents
Writer: STEPHEN BURD
3/30/2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives finally brought long-awaited legislation reauthorizing the Higher Education Act to the House floor Wednesday, but avoided substantive debate on the bill's most controversial provisions -- including measures to curb tuition increases and to loosen restrictions on for-profit colleges.

The act, due to expire on March 31, governs most federal student-aid programs. A final vote on the bill is expected today.

After taking up the bill, the House overwhelmingly rejected -- by a vote of 306 to 120 -- a last-minute amendment that would have required colleges that receive federal financing for their foreign-language and area-studies programs to tell the government about any contributions or gifts they have received.

The proposal, which was sponsored by Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, had caught college leaders and lobbyists by surprise, and they scrambled to build opposition to it.

In a speech on the House floor, Mr. Burton said that his proposal would provide the government with more information on large financial donations that colleges with area-studies programs have received from "Middle Eastern interests."

"Money from the Middle East has been coming into our universities in large amounts to try to indoctrinate young American students into taking a different position than our government has taken in fighting the war against terror," Mr. Burton stated. "We ought to know where this money is coming from."

In a letter to other lawmakers, Mr. Burton questioned donations that had been made by members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia and by "other Saudi interests" to 10 colleges, including Georgetown University.

In December, Georgetown announced that it had received a $20-million gift from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to expand its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which focuses on promoting interreligious research and dialogue.

Georgetown officials say they never tried to hide the gift, pointing out that they distributed a press release soon after receiving the donation.

Scott Fleming, the assistant vice president for federal relations at Georgetown, also said the university doesn't allow donors "to influence the teaching and research that happens at the institution."

College lobbyists were delighted when the House defeated the measure.

"This was an extraordinarily intrusive and costly proposal," Barry Toiv, director of communications and public affairs at the Association of American Universities, said after the vote was taken. "We thank the House for defeating it so convincingly."

Budget Bill's Long Shadow

Although the House was considering the reauthorization bill, much of Wednesday's debate harked back to another measure: the budget-cutting bill, which Congress approved and President Bush signed into law in February. It slashed about $12-billion from the government-backed student-loan programs at the heart of the reauthorization bill (The Chronicle, February 2).

The earlier legislation, known formally as a "budget-reconciliation bill," achieved its savings by reducing government subsidies to private lenders, raising interest rates on federal loans available for the parents of college students, and requiring most borrowers to pay a 1-percent fee to agencies that guarantee loans. The Republican Congressional leadership pushed the legislation as part of a broader Congressional effort to cut federal spending in order to lower the budget deficit and reduce taxes.

Most of the provisions that were included in the budget-cutting bill had originally been part of the reauthorization bill.

"The higher-education bill was hijacked," said Rep. George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which drafted the reauthorization legislation. "It was hijacked by those in the Republican party that wanted to take the savings from the student-aid accounts and give them to the oil companies, to the energy companies for their tax breaks, to continue to pay for the tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country."

Republican Congressional leaders complained that the Democrats were trying to score political points by continuing to attack the reconciliation bill. "What the other side wants to do is focus on something that took place a few months ago," said Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, the California Republican who is chairman of the House education committee.

House Democrats were particularly upset on Wednesday that the House Rules Committee had, for the most part, refused to allow amendments on the floor that challenged key provisions in the bill. Overall, Democrats and Republicans had filed 117 amendments with the House Rules Committee, but that panel approved only 15 of them, including Mr. Burton's.

Lawmakers, for example, were told that they would not be allowed to offer an amendment that would have rewarded colleges that entered the federal direct-student-loan program by providing them with extra financial-aid dollars for low-income students. Direct lending, which was created by the Clinton administration and the Democratic-led Congress in 1993, provides loans directly to students through their colleges, bypassing the banks and guarantee agencies that make up the guaranteed-loan program.

Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, said that it was unwise for Congressional leaders to allow "only a very limited number of amendments" to be considered. "We should have a much broader debate in regards to the restrictive rule that's before us today," he said.

Republican Congressional leaders responded to the concerns by taking the unusual step of having the Rules Committee meet again late Wednesday afternoon to green-light other amendments for consideration today.

A Database and Privacy Concerns

Meanwhile, the White House said on Wednesday that it strongly supported the reauthorization bill but opposed a provision that would forbid the Education Department to create a "unit record" database to track the educational progress of students.

The main proponents of the database have been researchers at the Education Department and some public-college lobbyists, who argue that such a system would allow the department to measure a college's performance more accurately by generating better information about retention and graduation rates. But critics of the proposal -- including many conservative groups and the House majority leader, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio -- have argued that such a database is unnecessary and would present a grave threat to students' privacy (The Chronicle, May 6, 2005).

In its statement, the administration stated that "more discussion is necessary to better understand how such a system could help evaluate educational interventions and improve postsecondary education for students and families."

The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which has been charged with developing a national strategy on higher education, is considering whether to recommend that the Education Department adopt such a system. The commission is scheduled to present its recommendations to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings by August 1.

Among other things, the reauthorization bill would:

Increase the authorized level of the maximum Pell Grant to $6,000, from $5,800. The figure is a ceiling that appropriators cannot exceed when setting actual grant levels each year. The actual maximum grant is currently $4,050.

Make Pell Grants available to students year-round, rather than only over the nine months of a traditional academic year.

Restrict the period over which a student can receive Pell Grants to 18 semesters.

Place colleges that consistently raise their tuition and other costs of attendance by more than twice the rate of inflation on a government watch list, and require them to provide a detailed accounting of all their costs and expenditures.

Make for-profit colleges eligible for millions of dollars in aid from a variety of federal programs by broadening the federal government's definition of "an institution of higher education" to include proprietary institutions.

Simplify the student-aid application process by allowing low-income students whose families qualify for food stamps, welfare benefits, or free or reduced-price lunches to fill out an "EZ Fafsa," a shortened version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, which the government uses to assess a student's need for financial aid.
During its deliberations, the House education committee approved about a dozen amendments to the bill. The lawmakers agreed to proposals that would:

Direct the Education Department to provide matching grants to colleges for the professional installation of fire-detection devices and other fire-prevention technologies in dormitories and other campus buildings.

Allow the Education Department to provide grants to colleges to set up centers that would provide advice and services to students who are pregnant or who are parents. The centers would provide parenting classes and programs, as well as postpartum counseling and support groups.

Provide up to $5,000 in student-loan forgiveness to individuals who take jobs in government or other public-service fields. To qualify, borrowers would have to remain in their jobs for five consecutive years.

Quick Takes: More Money for Female Athletes at Cincinnati, College Readiness Report, Police Search at U. of Md. Upheld, Spring Break in Wal-Mart
Writer: Scott Jaschik
3/30/2006 Inside Higher Education

The University of Cincinnati is planning to spend $650,000 for the women's rowing team to have a new training site, the Associated Press reported. Female athletes sued the university last year, charging that male athletes received more money and better facilities. University officials denied a link between the suit and the spending plan.

Three higher ed groups have released a new report, "Claiming Common Ground: State Policymaking for Improving College Readiness and Success." The groups are the Institute for Educational Leadership, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research.

A police officer at the University of Maryland at College Park did not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of a then-student when he and other officers entered the student's dormitory room by mistake during a multi-room drug raid in 2002 and briefly detained the student, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled Wednesday. The student had sued the officer and the state of Maryland, but the appeals panel, overturning a lower court ruling, concluded that the officer behaved in a reasonable manner and was protected by qualified immunity.

A Drake Univeristy student spent 41 straight hours of his spring break in a Wal-Mart, hoping for an experience on which to base a magazine article. He's currently enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, the AP reported.

Budget talks snag on education funding - Negotiations slog through fifth day
Writers: Jack Brammer And John Stamper
3/30/2006 Lexington Herald-Leader

FRANKFORT - House and Senate leaders tried to resolve differences in education funding yesterday as their negotiations on a state budget plodded along for the fifth day.

Negotiators broke up last night about 8:30 and are to resume work at 9 a.m. today.

Points of contention include funding of teacher salaries and the Read to Achieve literacy program, said House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green. Kindergarten funding also is an issue.

Richards said last night they were close to reaching a compromise on education funding, but he did not offer specifics.

In their spending plans, the House and Senate provided salary increases for teachers amounting to 2 percent in the first year of the budget and $3,000 in the second year. But the Senate would require teachers to work two extra days.

"Our position is that if we are trying to approach the average compensation for teachers of the surrounding states, we have to approach the average number of instructional days," said Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville. He said the Senate does not want the additional instructional time to be accomplished by adding minutes to school days.

The Kentucky Education Association contends that if days are added to the school calendar, lawmakers should raise teacher pay more.

Williams also expressed concern about the funding of full-day kindergarten. All but 15 school districts have full-day kindergarten, he said.

The House provided bonus funding for the 15 districts. The Senate wants to be sure those districts that have full-day kindergarten receive money as well.

Williams noted that Madison County is one of the 15 without full-day kindergarten.

House budget chairman Harry Moberly Jr, D-Richmond, is from Madison County.

Progress has been made on some issues facing negotiators who are hammering out details of a two-year, $18 billion budget. But much is unresolved.

"It's hard to judge in the fifth inning what the final score is going to be," Richards said.

Gas tax disagreement

The House will not accept a Senate proposal to make permanent an increase in the state's gasoline tax slated to kick in this summer, House leaders said.

"That is out of the question," Moberly said.

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled Senate had approved a budget bill that would lock in the state's current gas tax at 18.5 cents and the 1.2-cent increase that is to occur this summer.

The Senate wanted to make both increases permanent to finance a $740 million bond issue for road projects. The Democratic-controlled House has tentatively agreed to locking in the rate at 18.5 cents a gallon, but that is contingent on reaching agreement in other areas of the budget, Moberly said.

Lawmakers have only three more legislative days in this year's 60-day session, but they have not scheduled those days. The state Constitution requires that the session not go beyond April 15.

Richards said negotiators hope to complete their work today, allowing the full legislature to vote on a compromise budget bill Saturday.

Lawmakers then would return to Frankfort in mid-April for the final two days to consider any vetoes by Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

Legislators wrestle with school issues - Fate of tech center funding is unknown
Writer: Owen Covington
3/30/2006 Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer

FRANKFORT -- Budget talks Wednesday yielded an agreement to finance the replacement of three failing Kentucky River dams but further exposed differences on education initiatives, including a proposal to extend the school year.

Several Senate and House members of the budget conference committee continued to express frustrations about the group's inability to reach an agreement on major policy issues.

"This is the most frustrating process I've ever been involved in," said Rep. Jeff Hoover, a Jamestown Republican and House minority leader. "I think everyone's still getting along well, but we need to get down to where you need to make some tough decisions."

Senate President David Williams touted an agreement reached in the afternoon for the state to provide $17.5 million in bonds for a $55 million project to replace dams and locks on the Kentucky River that provide water for 800,000 central Kentuckians.

"I think this really has been an uplifting experience for all the folks in there that this came together, and I think this will really give us the impetus to reach an agreement on everything else," said Williams, a Burkesville Republican.

The state's commitment to the project means fee increases for those who draw water from the river will be about a third lower than if the Kentucky River Authority bonded the entire project itself.

"These dams are failing," said Sen. Ed Worley, a Richmond Democrat and Senate minority leader. "There will be no economic development, there will be no residential development in the future if we don't have a permanent water supply."

House Speaker Jody Richards said the committee has yet to agree on many education issues, transportation projects and funding and capital construction projects, three of the main portions of the state's two-year spending plan.

"We've agreed on a lot and had some good discussions that gets us to the point that hopefully we can agree on everything else," said Richards, a Bowling Green Democrat.

The committee is debating whether to couple an extension of the school calendar with proposed increases in teacher salaries, as the Senate has proposed.

Both chambers have agreed to increase teacher salaries by 2 percent during the next school year and then provide a $3,000 across-the-board increase during the second year of the biennium to help bring Kentucky's teacher salaries more in line with surrounding states'.

The Senate wants to link that increase with the addition of two instructional days to the school calendar, which at an average of 175 days a year lags behind those of many neighboring states.

"If we are trying to have the standard that they should be paid the salary of surrounding states, they should work a commensurate amount of time as the surrounding states," Williams said. "It's an equity situation, and that's what we're talking about."

Part of the reluctance to add the two days is because some school districts might spread the equivalent of that time over the rest of the school calendar by adding additional minutes to each day, Richards said.

"If we had that issue solved, that you could actually add two more days, most of the people I know are for that," Richards said. "But does it really help that much to add 15 minutes to a day ...?"

Little is known about the fate of $14.1 million in funding for the second phase of the advanced technology center in Owensboro, which was cut in the Senate version of the budget.

Rep. Tommy Thompson, a Philpot Democrat, said he had heard nothing definitive about the project. He said he was called in to answer questions from the committee about $500,000 in funding to convert a building at the Daviess County Detention Center so it could house juvenile inmates.

"It's very positive that they're talking about it, and we're back in the mix," Thompson said.

The committee broke into smaller groups by political party about 8:30 p.m. to work on issues such as community development and infrastructure projects before calling it a night.

Richards said he was optimistic a compromise budget plan could be agreed upon today, which would mean the chambers would vote on the bill Saturday.

The legislature would then break for 10 working days before reconvening for two days to close out the 60-day session.

"We've had a pretty good day and moved a long way. There are not many decisions (left to be made), but there are still some thorny kinds of things," Richards said. "Things should fall together pretty rapidly tomorrow."

Talks on budget disputes grind on - Lawmakers hoping to finish work tonight
Writers: Tom Loftus and Elisabeth J. Beardsley
3/30/2006 Louisville Courier-Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Battling fatigue and charges of politics, state budget negotiators worked yesterday to resolve contentious differences on education and road funding with no overall breakthrough.

Lawmakers also face a Monday deadline to pass a nearly $18 billion spending plan for the next two years without losing a chance to override any vetoes of particular budget items by Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

The 21 lawmakers on the budget conference committee, working for a fifth straight day, met into the evening.

"People are so, so tired," said House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green.

But Richards said last night that lawmakers hope to finish work on the budget tonight, and to vote on it Saturday.

Under the state constitution, the legislative session must end by midnight April 15. The constitution also gives the governor 10 days after a bill passes -- not including Sundays -- to issue a veto.

That gives lawmakers until midnight Monday to pass a budget and still have time to reconvene to consider overriding any vetoes.

During a break in the talks yesterday, Senate President David Williams accused Democrats of trying to "politicize" the Senate's proposed $740 million road bond issue, which has been a main sticking point.

Williams, R-Burkesville, said Democrats don't want Fletcher or the Republican-controlled Senate to get any credit for building roads, which could then be used in upcoming political campaigns.

Richards denied the charge.

"No, no, no, that's not an issue," he said.

Some House Democrats have said the Senate plan might be more than the state needs for the Louisville bridges project and other state road needs and have objected to how the plan would be funded.

Locks and dams
Budget negotiators agreed last night to fund a $55 million project to rebuild three Kentucky River dams and two locks that provide drinking water to 800,000 people.

Williams said applause broke out in the negotiating room when the deal was reached.

"I think this really has been an uplifting experience for all the folks in there, that this came together, and I think it will really give us impetus to reach an agreement on everything else," Williams said.

The dams and locks are between Frankfort and Irvine and supply water to Frankfort, Lexington, Irvine, Richmond, Georgetown, Winchester and Midway.

Schools
Richards said education has become a big sticking point -- specifically whether to add days to the school year in conjunction with a teacher pay raise, as Fletcher proposed.

The House proposed a salary increase without extra days.

"I think that's the big one," Richards said. "There are some philosophical differences."

Williams said the extra days are an "equity situation" in which teachers should have to work time comparable to their counterparts in surrounding states if they want similar salaries.

Steve Carroll, principal at Jackson County High School, said he was concerned about another education funding issue -- money for highly skilled educators and commonwealth improvement funds. Those are the two supports the state offers low-performing schools to help them improve.

Carroll said those resources have been crucial to helping raise test scores at poor, rural Appalachian schools like his. The Senate cut funding for both programs and put the money into a remedial reading program.

"My concern is we've cut the rewards," said Carroll, referring to school bonuses that were cut from the budget three years ago. "Now we're cutting the resources. What's left except the punitive component?"

Roads
Richards and Rep. Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, who is chairman of the House budget committee, said the House won't go along with the Senate's plan for $740 million in road bonds.

Senate Republicans say their plan is enough to fund two new Louisville bridges for two years and meet other construction priorities.

The House wants to fund about $350 million in bonds.

Moberly said lawmakers have "a big difference of opinion" on how much money must go to the Louisville bridges. He said House negotiators believe the bridges can be funded at less than the $185 million proposed by Fletcher for the next two years -- perhaps about $130 million. "If we do the bridges at a minimum amount, I think we could" fund most other road priorities, he said.

Fletcher and debt
During a brief news conference, Fletcher said he was concerned about how much debt will be in the budget, and he wouldn't rule out vetoing some projects.

"The level of debt that we're incurring per capita is quite high, and we need to go back and take a look at that to make sure we're being fiscally responsible," he said.

Richards and Williams said the concern was premature because the budget isn't finished.

New Horizons winners
3/30/2006 Hazard Herald

The top three New Horizon winners in the staff category at Hazard Community & Technical College are honored by HCTC President/CEO Dr. Jay K. Box. Honored for excellence in performing their jobs are, from left, Brenda Stacy, office of Institutional Research and Planning; Sherry Bettinazzi, Events Coordinator; and Lois Puffer, Academic Affairs Senior Administrative Assistant. "These three are the best of the best," Dr. Box said. "Their contributions to the college are major, although each of these individuals has a job very different from each other," Dr. Box said. "We are a better institution because of what these three accomplish each day." Part of the honor of being named a New Horizon Award recipient includes a professional development stipend to be used to attend a national conference.
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