Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

Fact: United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. Fact: United States has 25% of the world’s prison population Fact: Recidivism is extremely high and prison has become a revolving door Fact: There is very little ‘correction’ in correctional facilities, and few opportunities to improve yourself Knowing this, why are we afraid of trying something different such as what this next article is about? “Prison U.” “New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to bring professors back into prisons 20 years after Congress and one of his predecessors cut funding for inmate higher education.” “Congress and the Clinton administration ended Pell Grant funding for prisoners in 1994, effectively cutting off funds for most college education in prisons. New York followed suit a year later and made sure its inmates couldn’t get funding from the state’s Tuition Assistance Program either.”   “Now, Cuomo has proposed a plan -- draw...

Sometimes some things are so interesting that I have to share more than just one. On the K12 side, I was very pleased to see this article because it is something that I truly believe in, as do many teachers; but yet school policies do not always allow this to happen. “Suspensions Should Be Last Resort” “U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced their new guidelines at Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, which is a shining example of a public school that has seen marked student improvement since it changed its discipline practices and implemented other reforms to improve student achievement.” “Every school must create climates where everyone feels safe and respected and where every child has the opportunity to succeed. Schools should be safe, welcoming, and respectful, with meaningful professional development, wraparound services to meet children's health and social service needs, and alternatives to suspensions....

I thought these two stories today were both worth sharing: “Risk Management” “The U.S. Education Department needs to do more to ensure the billions of dollars it offers in financial aid aren’t wasted on students who fraudulently enroll in distance education programs, the department's Office of Inspector General has concluded in a critical new report .” “The OIG audited eight distance education providers between 2009 and 2011 to assess how each college or university complied with Title IV of the Higher Education Act, which governs federal student grant, loan and work-study programs. Despite the Education Department’s efforts in recent years to curb cases of fraud where students enroll in courses to exploit those financial aid programs -- schemes known as fraud rings -- the audit found the institutions struggle to verify students’ identities and track their attendance and academic engagement.” ““The 8 schools disbursed nearly $222 million to more than 42,00...

Protect our defenders: stop rape in the military “AP Investigation Exposes Dysfunctional Military Justice System” “Washington DC – On Sunday, the Associated Press released a new report revealing in shocking detail the military’s flawed and insufficient handling of over 1,000 sex crimes that were reported by service members stationed in Japan between 2005 and 2013. The investigation reveals “a pattern of random and inconsistent judgments” that confirm the urgent need for fundamental reform of the broken military justice system. The story points directly to cases where commanders refused to move forward to courts-martial even after an Article 32 preliminary hearing produced a recommendation to prosecute.” “Just one example of the persistent and pervasive attitudes towards these cases as shown in the report is the case of Protect Our Defenders Advocacy Committee Member Stacey Thompson. After joining the Marines at age 17, Thompson was stationed in Okinawa, Japan...

I have always been an advocate for paying attention to the big players in the higher education market because what happens there has an effect on all the rest of the industry; especially in the non-traditional market. “Induced to Fail?” “A group of former Excelsior College students have sued the institution over its online associate degree program in nursing, claiming the self-paced, competency-based curriculum clashes with an expensive and "subjective" clinical exam.”   “In the complaint, filed in a federal district court in New York, 17 former students in Excelsior’s associate degree program in nursing from 11 different states say the college sold them “ 
 an 
 ‘educational’ 
 program 
 that 
 was 
 devoid 
 of 
 any 
 education, 
 and 
 ... an 
 ‘objective’ 
 test, 
 which 
 was 
 anything 
 but 
 objective.” The students, many of whom have decades of experience in the medical field, are suing Excelsior for breach of contract and ...

 I am just going to end the week by saying its Friday and 80 degrees where I live! No complaining about that here:)) Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

Schools are prime targets for cyber criminals because they are ripe with so much information. “Hackers Make Off With 300,000 Personnel Records at U. of Maryland” ““A sophisticated computer-security attack” on the University of Maryland on Tuesday gave hackers access to more than 300,000 records of students, faculty and staff members, and others who have been issued university IDs on two of the system’s campuses since 1998.” “According to a letter by Wallace D. Loh, the system’s president, experts are trying “to determine how our sophisticated, multilayered security defenses were bypassed,” and a criminal investigation is under way.” “Brian D. Voss, the university’s vice president for information technology, told The Washington Post that the attackers got into the database, “made a Xerox of it, and took off.”” “The hackers “picked through several locks to get to this data,” he said, suggesting they had a “very significant understanding” of how the database w...

 I grew up playing many sports, I enjoyed it because they were fun (the exercise did not hurt either). I choose not to play in college because frankly there were not enough hours in the day. “Northwestern U. Quarterback Makes Case for Players’ Union” “Northwestern University's quarterback testified on Tuesday before the National Labor Relations Board as part of his team's high-profile push to form the first labor union in college sports.”   “Seated at the witness stand in a federal building in Chicago, Kain Colter, who just completed his senior season, detailed the demands of big-time sports, including football obligations that he said can eat up more than 50 hours a week. "It's a job, there is no way around it—it's a job," he said, according to the Associated Press .”   “A lawyer representing the university, Alex Barbour, disputed that players are employees, saying that...