American Students

The number of minority students enrolling at the Naval Academy has increased steadily in recent years, a trend that college officials attribute to renewed efforts to recruit in urban areas. But the numbers fall below diversity goals, particularly for African-Americans, who make up less than 7 percent of the incoming class. The Class of 2012 that enrolled at the Annapolis military college this month includes 351 minority students - 28 percent - making it the most diverse freshman class in more than a decade, academy officials reported yesterday.

Perched on her skates, Justise Fleming watched intently as her instructor spun around on the ice with ease. Then the determined 7-year-old from Patterson Park dug her right toe pick into the ice, reached back and swiveled in place. As her spin slowed she wobbled a bit like a tightrope walker on the high wire. But a sly smile of accomplishment spread across her face. A few feet away, 14 other girls tried the same two-foot spin. Most succeeded, but several plopped down hard. A few shrieks pierced the cold air of the Dominic Mimi DiPietro Family Skating Center in Patterson Park.

Reacting partly to concerns surrounding the investigation of a Korean-American student slain four years ago, U.S. Civil Rights Commission advisers are planning a study to determine whether Korean-Americans face racial discrimination in Baltimore.The commission's Maryland Advisory Committee, made up of volunteers who have scheduled a hearing on the issue Sept. 29, will be asking for public comments "relating to administration of justice as it applies to Korean Americans," said committee chairman Chester Wickwire.

Anne Arundel County schools have not made sufficient progress in eliminating racial bias from its student disciplinary practices, according to a civil rights complaint filed by the NAACP. The complaint, filed with the civil rights office of the U.S. Department of Education on Friday, alleges that the numbers of African-American students referred for discipline and suspended have hardly changed since a similar complaint in 2004. That complaint led to an improvement plan agreed to in 2005 by the NAACP and the school system.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Barely three decades ago, the fight for ethnic studies on American college campuses began. Black students with big afro hairdos and dashiki shirts staged sit-ins pressuring universities to embrace curriculum diversity by offering courses that reflected their culture and heritage.A lot has changed since then. Afro-American studies have been enthusiastically accepted and supported, with some universities, including Yale and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, offering graduate degrees in the discipline.

The Class of 1952 from Robert Moton School in Westminster, once Carroll County's only school for black students, celebrates its 50th reunion today with an investment in the future. Ten of the original 18 members of the class plan to attend the annual dinner sponsored by Friends of Robert Moton School, and they are donating $1,100 to a scholarship fund established 30 years ago for the county's African-American students. The organization has raised nearly $70,000, money that has helped pay college tuition for about 100 students.

THE GOOD NEWS emerging last week from an analysis of national test scores in the 1990s is that the states are making real progress in mathematics - so much progress, in fact, that reading scores are starting to look anemic by comparison. Trend lines in the National Assessment of Educational Progress tell the tale. Between 1990 and 1996, the average student achievement scores in eighth-grade math improved in 28 of 32 states, and none declined. Meanwhile, in fourth-grade reading from 1992 to 1998, only seven of 32 states improved their scores, and scores in four states declined.

IN THE BEGINNING God created Adam from the dust. How was I created? In 1660, Charles II was named king of England. What was I doing? In 1993, "The Bell Curve" supported the theory that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. Where do I fall on that curve?The questions, who, what, where, when, why, how, lead my life. As a black man, as a Gilman student, I can tell you what was happening in Europe in 1660, but I haven't the slightest clue what my own people were doing in Africa at the time.

The sounds of a flute playing Native American songs filled Kathy Plitt's classroom at Park Elementary School on Friday as her third-graders celebrated the cultures of the Pueblos, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Sioux they have been studying for the last six weeks."

As city schools CEO Andrés Alonso steps aside, he's turning the system over to a close adviser he's trusted during some of his administration's most trying moments. Alonso's chief of staff, Tisha Edwards, will lead the system through the 2014 school year as the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners searches for a permanent replacement. During a news conference Monday at school headquarters, Alonso called her an "extraordinary leader" who has been "a part of every moment of crisis and every moment of celebration.