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A letter
from the President
Track II Diplomacy:
Can "Unofficial" Talks Avert Disaster?
The National
Library of South Africa
Nonprofit
Journalism: Removing the Pressure of the Bottom Line
New Immigrants
in New Places: America's Growing "Global Interior"
Career and
Technology Education: It's Not Just "Vocational Education" Anymore
Recent Events
Foundation
Roundup
The Back Page
Also in this issue:
A Conversation
with Harold Saunders
The U.S.
and North Korea: A Track II Meeting Brings Results
Immigration
Legislation: Solutions for a Broken System
Book Reviews
Enterprising
Journalism Interns Summer in the City
2005 Andrew
Carnegie Medals of Philanthropy
High-bandwidth site
Past Issues:
#10: Spring 2005
#9: Fall 2004
#8: Spring 2004
#7: Fall 2003
#6: Spring 2003
#5: Fall 2002
#4: Spring 2002
#3: Fall 2001
#2: Spring 2001
#1: Summer 2000
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Foundation Roundup
Aging Baby Boomers Concerned About Future Health and Financial
Security
A new report by the Commonwealth Foundation asserts that almost seven-in-ten
(69 percent) of all Americans between the ages of 50 and 70 support the
idea of paying one percent of their wage earnings to a Medicare health
account to help pay for long-term care services or uncovered health care
expenses when they retire.
The report, Will You Still Need Me? The Health and Financial Security
of Older Americans, is based on a survey of older adults about their health
and financial concerns. The study found that a majority worried that their
retirement income and savings will be inadequate for living and health
care costs after they quit working. Almost half (48 percent) of older
Americans have retirement savings of less than $50,000. Nearly two-in-five
(38 percent) have retirement savings of less than $25,000.
The study also found that a strong majority of those from age 50 to 64
would like to participate in Medicare before they turn 65. Among wage
earners between 50 and 64 years of age with incomes between $25,000 and
$39,000, 31 percent indicated they were uninsured or had been without
coverage at some point since turning fifty.
For more information, go to www.cmwf.org.
Database of Public School Information Now Available Online
A new web site -- SchoolMatters.com
-- provides free statistical data and analyses about public schools, districts
and state education systems. It includes information about student achievement
at the national and state levels and financial data for every school district
along with student demographics such as class size and teacher qualifications.
The online database, the largest searchable collection of public education
performance, was developed in response to the education community's need
for an impartial and transparent analysis of American educational data.
By making the information publicly available, educators and policymakers
will be able to identify and track promising trends in school reform as
well as compare state and national data. Equally important, parents will
be able to compare information about local school districts with demographically
similar school districts across the country.
SchoolMatters.com is a program of the National Education Data Partnership
(NEDP), a collaborative effort of the Council of Chief State School Officers,
Standard & Poors' School Evaluation Services and the Center for Educational
Leadership and Technology Corporation. NEDP is supported by The Broad
and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations.
For more information, go to www.SchoolMatters.com.
Diversity Within the Academy Continues to be an Issue
According to a recent report from The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship
Foundation called Diversity and the Ph.D., African Americans and Hispanics
remain significantly underrepresented in the highest echelons of the academic
community.
While the two groups combined account for 32 percent of all American citizens
in the typical age range of Ph.D. candidates (25-40), only 11 percent
received doctoral degrees in 2003, the most recent year for which figures
were available.
The latest information comes from a study of nationwide programs that
seek to recruit and retain students of color in American doctoral programs.
Researchers identified critical impediments to the success of these programs,
including recent court challenges to affirmative action, reduced fellowship
support and limited communication between the programs.
"We still have a great expertise gap in the United States," noted Robert
Weisbuch, past president of Woodrow Wilson and a contributor to the report.
"Our next generation of college students will include dramatically more
students of color, but their teachers will remain overwhelmingly white."
The study was created through the foundation's Responsive Ph.D. initiative
and received support from the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation. In fall 2005, the Responsive Ph.D., a consortium of
20 national research universities, will release an overarching report
on best practices and innovations in doctoral education that was supported
by the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Henry Luce Foundation, Pew Charitable
Trusts and Carnegie Corporation. For more information, go to www.woodrow.org.
Election Experts Offer Recommendations for Voting Reform
A working group of election law scholars and voting reform experts has
released a series of practical recommendations for election reform in
a report called Balancing Access and Integrity: The Report of the Century
Foundation Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform.
The report, presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the National Association
of Secretaries of State, is intended to help state legislators and election
officials improve voting procedures in time for the 2006 and 2008 elections.
The goal of the working group is to ensure accuracy and integrity in the
voting process and to guarantee that all eligible voters will be able
to cast ballots and have their votes counted.
While the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 addressed some
of the issues surrounding the flawed 2000 election, the Century Foundation's
working group found that ambiguities and inconsistencies in election laws
and procedures continue to exist and may cause problems in the future.
With the view that most election reform must be implemented at the state
level, there is little chance of further imminent action from Congress,
and with HAVA mandating that many of the reforms be implemented by the
end of this year, the working group looked at practical ways to solve
the problems that HAVA may have inadvertently created.
The report suggests improvements for each phase of the voting process,
including voter registration, provisional ballots, felon purges and testing
and certification of voting systems. Chief among the recommendations is
the necessity for establishing clear rules and procedures that can be
easily understood by the voters and election workers.
For more information about the election reform recommendations, go to
www.reformelections.org
or www.tcf.org.
| The
Institute of International Education |
Freeman Foundation Gives $1.75 Million for Education in
Tsunami-Affected Regions
The Institute of International Education (IIE), a world leader in international
exchange, received a donation of $l.75 million from the Freeman Foundation
to support rebuilding educational resources in tsunami-affected areas
of Thailand and in Aceh, Indonesia.
In Thailand, IIE/Southeast Asia will work with the Rajaprajanugroh Foundation
and the Somdet Phra Thep's Charity Fund to reconstruct schools destroyed
by the December 2005 tsunami and provide educational services to displaced
students. In Aceh, IIE's partner organization, The Indonesian International
Education Foundation (IIEF) will work with the Sampoerna Foundation to
rebuild schools and to help high school students prepare for the national
university entrance examination.
"Along with the rest of the world, the Freeman Foundation and its trustees
have been immensely shocked and distressed at the havoc and loss of life
in the countries of Southeast Asia that have resulted from this tsunami"
said Houghton Freeman, Chairman of the Freeman Foundation. "As the Freeman
Foundation's main mission is in the educational field, we feel it most
appropriate that we do what we can to help alleviate some of the problems
created in Southeast Thailand and in Aceh's educational sector by this
terrible act of nature."
Sampoerna Foundation Chief Operations Officer Elan Merdy agreed. "We need
to make sure that Aceh's children do not lose their right to a formal
education because of the catastrophe that devastated their land. They
have lost their homes; let us not have them lose their future, too. We
need to work with other domestic and international organizations to restore
Aceh's educational sector."
The Freeman Foundation is a U.S. private philanthropic organization that
aims to improve understanding and to strengthen ties between the United
States and the countries of the Pacific Rim.
For more information, go to www.iie.org.
|
Public Agenda Foreign Affairs |
New Survey Probes America's Foreign Policy Concerns
Public Agenda, a nonprofit organization that conducts nonpartisan public
policy research, has teamed up with Foreign Affairs, one of America's
most influential publications on international relations, to create the
new Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index. The Index will
regularly explore the public's perceptions of America's role in the world
on a wide range of issues. Unlike other surveys, the Index looks past
the ups and downs of daily events and explores the public's underlying
beliefs about America's role in the world, strategies for addressing foreign
policy challenges and key concerns about the direction of U.S. international
relations.
Results from the first Index find Americans worried about issues surrounding
the United States' relationship with the Islamic world. Seventy-five percent
of the country is concerned about losing trust and friendship abroad and
growing hatred of America in Muslim countries; two-thirds feel the world
has a negative view of the United States. More telling, one-in-ten actually
used the word "bully" or "bullying," without prompting, to describe how
America is viewed from abroad.
Asked to rank American security priorities, three-quarters give the United
States a "C" grade or lower in protecting our borders. The report also
mentions another important issue on people's minds--illegal immigration
and the protection of American jobs--and includes a special note that
the latter two problems are nearing a point where the public's concerns
will be too strong to be ignored.
More information about the survey results and meth-odology are available
at www.publicagenda.org
or www.foreignaffairs.org.
| BIO
Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) |
Nonprofit Joins with Biotech Industry to Fight Neglected
Diseases
Right now, less than 10 percent of health funding goes toward finding
cures for the diseases that account for 90 percent of the world's disease
burden. BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), a nonprofit organization
established in 2004, aims to change this by eliminating funding, market
and information barriers that have in the past prevented biotechnology
companies from investing in research for cures.
The new initiative stems from a $5.4 million grant by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation that will help BVGH launch a series of business cases
to assess and build market opportunities for the neglected diseases. Many
biotechnology companies lack the capacity to evaluate developing world
markets. BVGH will fill this void by developing new models for emerging
markets that can be used by the industry. Its first effort will be to
evaluate the market opportunity for tuberculosis vaccines.
BVGH is a nonprofit organization founded in 2004 by the Biotechnology
Industry Organization with support from the Gates and Rockefeller foundations.
It seeks to narrow the gap between biotechnology's great promise and the
unmet health needs of the developing world.
For more information, go to www.bvgh.org.
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