TAKEN FROM,”THE FALL OF AMERICA,”BY THE MOST HONORABLE ELIJAH MUHAMMAD(T.L.M.O.G),pg.92,”THE PLAGUE OF ALLAH(GOD) AGAINST THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF AMERICA IS SOMETHING THAT THE PHILOSOPHERS AND SCIENTISTS SHOULD LOOK INTO,AS THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA’S EDUCATION IS THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR WISDOM TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE.
THERE ARE MANY WHO LOOK ON THE DESTRUCTION WITHOUT TAKING A SECOND THOUGHT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA’S EDUCATION. EDUCATION IS A GUIDE FOR THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND MAINTAIN A CIVILIZED LIFE. IT IS EDUCATION THAT CIVILIZES US. NOW TO SEE THE CITIZENS OF AMERICA REBELLING AGAINST THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS SOMETHING THAT THE WISE OF THE WISE SHOULD TAKE THOUGHT OF.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE COME TO THE POINT WHERE THEY HATE THEIR OWN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.THIS MEANS THAT THEY ARE NOW HATING AND DESTROYING THEIR CIVILIZATION BECAUSE IT IS EDUCATION THAT CIVILIZES THE PEOPLE.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NO LONGER WANT THEIR EDUCATION AND THEY ARE DESTROYING THE VERY HOUSES THAT HOUSE THEIR TEXT BOOKS OF EDUCATION. THEY ARE REBELLING AGAINST THEIR TEACHERS WHO TEACH EDUCATION. THEY ARE FIGHTING THEIR TEACHERS AND THEN SET THEIR HOUSES ON FIRE–SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.THIS MEANS AS I HAVE SAID ABOVE , THAT THEY ARE DESTROYING THEIR OWN CIVILIZATION.”By ROBERT TOMSHO
Only about a quarter of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college, according to a report on the exam that shows little improvement over results from the 2008 graduating class.

The Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT said 23% of this year’s high school graduates had scores that indicated they were ready for college in all four ACT subject areas, or had at least a 75% chance of earning a grade of C or better in entry-level courses. Last year, a similar ACT analysis found that 22% of the class of 2008 was college-ready.

“We’re not making the progress we need to be making,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on boosting high-school graduation rates. “The only way you improve these numbers and get them higher is by improving your secondary schools.”

About 1.48 million of the 3.3 million members of the high school class of 2009 took the ACT, typically in their junior year. ACT said its report was based on comparing students’ ACT test scores in English, reading, math and science with the grades they earned in related courses during their first year in college.

The report comes as budget concerns are forcing many state universities to cut back on slots for new students and raise admission standards. Many are also eliminating remedial courses, making it tougher for unprepared students to stay in school.

Observers said the report is likely to intensify calls for Congress to stress high-school improvement when it debates reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind law, perhaps as early as this year. Passed in 2001, the law’s primary emphasis so far has been on boosting achievement in the lower grades.

Among single subject areas, the level of preparedness was worst in science, where only 28% of students were ready for college-level biology. Another problem was math, where 42% were deemed prepared for college algebra.

Some education experts said that even a slight improvement in combined college readiness rate, to 23%, is a good sign, given that five states now require all students — not just those planning to attend college — to take the ACT.

Journal Community
Vote: How would you grade the U.S. secondary education system? “It’s an achievement,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based nonpartisan research group focused on No Child Left Behind, the federal government’s primary law covering public schools. “They are including many more lower-achieving students than ever before.”

“I think we are moving in the right direction,” said Cyndie Schmeiser, president of ACT’s education division, who noted that 70% of 2009 graduates took a college-prep curriculum in high school, up from 56% in 2005.

High school students from Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Wyoming are all required to take the ACT, previously a test generally limited to college aspirants. Combined, they accounted for a little less than 25% of the 2009 graduates who took the test.

Recent studies have shown that while younger students have made some progress in recent years, boosting results at the high school level has been difficult. A Department of Education report in April on the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress — a key federal test — found that U.S. high school students haven’t made any significant progress in reading or math for nearly four decades.

Looking Back at Student Preparedness
Journal coverage of past debates over student preparedness:

College-Bound Students Face Tougher Entrance Tests as Applicants Increase (Sept. 9, 1959)Entrance Tests Stir Debate as Applicants for College Increase (March 6, 1964)College Entrance Test: Biased and Burdensome or a Real Opportunity? (Sept. 5, 1972)Biggest Testing Service Faces Critical Scrutiny as Its Influence Grows (Feb. 28, 1978)The troubles are also reflected in results from the 2009 ACT, which is graded on a 1-to-36 point scale. Students averaged 21.1 points this year, flat compared with 2008 and only 0.2 points higher than in 2005.

ACT said about 40% of 2009 test-takers were unable to use the correct adverb or adjective to form a sentence, or couldn’t use the correct preposition in a phrase. The same proportion couldn’t solve multi-step math problems involving percentages and fractions.

Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, an antitesting advocacy group, said the class of ’09 was in the 5th grade when the NCLB law passed. “No Child promised to improve college readiness,” he said. “The data show, in fact, that scores have been stagnant that achievement gaps are essentially unchanged.”

In a bid to improve college and high school graduation rates, President Barack Obama is offering states, public schools and colleges additional federal funds to launch new initiatives.

Write to Robert Tomsho at rob.tomsho@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
The president of the Alliance for Excellent Education is Bob Wise. A previous version of this article incorrectly identified him as Bob White.”

AND HERE IS MORE—————————“Ivy-covered walls, Ph.D. economists, and growing demand for education seem to have, so far, offered colleges and universities at least a little protection from the recession and market meltdowns, according to several new analyses of colleges’ financial health.

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University endowments, those big pools of “rainy day funds” that were designed to be so well diversified that they’d protect colleges during bad years, have fallen only about 25 percent in the past 18 months or so. While that has been painful for the colleges, it could have been worse. The U.S. stock market fell by more than 40 percent in the same period.

In all, the average college endowment lost 2.7 percent in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2008, according to Commonfund, an organization that manages many colleges’ endowments. A follow-up survey found endowments lost another 22.5 percent in the five months that ended Dec. 1, 2008.

Most colleges have such small endowments—half have $88 million or less, according to the most recent endowment analysis by the National Association of College and University Business Officers—that changes in their values don’t make a big difference. But the market meltdown is having an impact on wealthy schools like Harvard, which typically take 4 to 5 percent of from their endowments to pay for scholarships, buildings, and other projects. While most colleges are refraining from cutting aid, several have laid off instructors, frozen construction, and cut employees’ pay.

And there are worries that this is only the beginning of a wider recessionary impact on campuses. State governments are starting to enact higher education budget cuts that could mean reduced aid, fewer services, and even fewer classroom seats for students next fall.

The alternative investments that were supposed to protect wealthier university endowments, such as real estate and commodities, have fallen in recent weeks as the U.S. stock market stabilized. Yale, which saw its widely diversified portfolio increase by 1.5 percent in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, last month warned that its endowment had already fallen 25 percent since then.

A few schools, including Tufts, New York University, and Yeshiva University, have recently reported losses due to the Madoff fraud.

Adding all this up, 2009 will be a rough year for colleges, predicts Moody’s, a credit rating agency. While higher education “has been more insulated from economic impact in prior recessions,” this cycle might be different, Moody’s warned recently. Moody’s expects donations, financial aid, and other grants to fall as state governments and philanthropists reel from the downturn. And it warns that the credit crunch is driving college borrowing costs up. Meanwhile, students and parents may finally rebel against annual tuition increases that used to make up for declines in other revenues. Princeton University, for example, recently announced it would raise its costs just 2.9 percent in 2009, its lowest increase in more than 40 years. (Of course, that’s still a big dollar increase. For those who don’t receive any aid next semester, the total sticker cost of attendance—tuition, fees, room, board, books, travel, and laundry—will exceed $50,000.)

“There are a lot of reasons to think this could be a turning point,” says Roger Goodman, editor of the Moody’s report. Expensive colleges, especially, are holding their collective breath to see whether students start voting with their feet and choose cheaper schools this fall, he says. But while 2009 will probably be rough for schools that have overborrowed or scared students off with high prices, the long-term outlook for higher education in general is good, Moody’s believes.

Colleges are likely to be among the beneficiaries of proposed government stimulus spending. And in previous recessions, college enrollment has risen, since college graduates get bigger paychecks and more opportunities.

Many college officials remain cautiously hopeful that universities’ previous protections against economic cycles will buffer them from the worst of this storm. At Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, President Carl E. Zylstra says donations are flat, the endowment has suffered, “and we don’t have as much freedom to raise tuition prices.” But applications and deposits for the fall are rising, he says. “Demand for college will remain strong ….We are not panicking,” he says.”——————————-

“Department of Defense admits to wider surveillance of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell groups

by Michael Rogers

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Defense has released documents that show wider surveillance of student organizations than previously reported, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has reported.

On April 11th PageOneQ reported that the Pentagon had admitted to conducting surveillance of groups protesting the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy for gays and lesbians in the armed forces.

The new FOIA request yielded information about an undercover investigation by the Pentagon on acitivities into student groups protesting the war at State University of New York at Albany (SUNY Albany), William Paterson University in New Jersey, Southern Connecticut State University and the University of California at Berkeley, reports SLDN.

The documents released by the Pentagon on the SUNY Albany protests gave a description of planned activities. “Source received an email from [redacted by DoD] stating a protest was planned against military recruiters at SUNY Albany on 21 April 05. The text of the email is as follows:,” said a report filed with the Department of Defense. Here is the image of the email from the report:

The documents released today indicate that e-mails sent by various student groups were intercepted and monitored by the government and that the government collected reports from seemingly undercover agents who attended at least one student protest at Southern Connecticut State University. None of the reports in the documentation, however, indicated any terrorist activity by the students who were monitored.

In another released document under te Department’s TALON monitoring program is a paraphrasing of an email regarding a planned protest, also at SUNY Albany:

Also included in the report was monitoring of activities at William Patterson College of New Jersey. The report indicated that a protest would take place at the school on April 1, 2005:

“Federal government agencies have no business peeping through the keyholes of Americans who choose to exercise their first amendment rights,” said Servicemembers Legal Defense Network executive director C. Dixon Osburn, in the SLDN Statement. “Americans are guaranteed a fundamental right to free speech and free expression, and our country’s leaders should never be allowed to undermine those freedoms. Surveillance of private citizens must stop,” he added.

The Documents included monitoring of emails from other schools as well. Here is report by the TALON service of a planned protest for April 21, 2005 at the University of California at Berkeley. UC Berkeley is regarded as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, led by Mario Savio.”