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Registered sex offenders are getting jobs in schools as teachers, administrators, volunteers and contractors, despite state laws that prohibit them from contact with children, a government watchdog report says.

And school officials in some states enable misconduct to continue by ignoring red flags during hiring or by covering up the firing of sexual offenders, according to the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The report, obtained by USA TODAY, is based on a review of 15 cases in 11 states over the last decade involving people with histories of sexual misconduct working in public or private schools. Of those, 11 offenders had previously targeted children, and six abused more children in their new positions.

About 35 states have laws restricting offenders from schools, and most states require criminal history checks, though specifics vary widely, the report found. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who requested the investigation, urged states to strengthen laws or pass a law if they don’t have them.

“These children were put in this unsafe position because adults in charge of their well-being failed to do their job,” says Miller, outgoing chair of the House education committee. “Parents have a right to believe that their children are safe” in schools.

An Education Department study estimates that millions of kids in kindergarten through 12th grade are victims of sexual misconduct by a school employee at some point. The GAO report also notes most sexual abuse of children goes unreported. In one study it cites, 232 child molesters admitted to molesting a total of 17,000 victims, often without ever being caught.

How offenders slipped through the cracks:

• A teacher/coach who was forced to resign from an Ohio school because of inappropriate contact with girls was hired by a neighboring district, where he was eventually convicted for sexual battery against a sixth-grade girl. The superintendent at his first school had called him an “outstanding teacher” in a recommendation letter.

• Several Louisiana schools hired a registered sex offender, whose Texas teaching certificate had been revoked, without doing a criminal history check. A warrant is out for his arrest on charges of engaging in sexual conversations with a student at one school.

• An Arizona public school skipped the required criminal history check even though the applicant disclosed he had committed a dangerous crime against a child. He was later convicted for having sexual contact with a girl.

• In three cases, schools failed to ask about troubling application responses. For example, a California charter school hired an administrator who had left blank a question about previous felony convictions; he had been convicted of a felony sex offense against a minor.

When questioned by investigators about why such lapses occur, officials typically said the time and costs associated with background checks made it hard to monitor applicants. Fear of lawsuits also was a factor.

Charol Shakeshaft, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who researches the topic, said school personnel aren’t trained in how to recognize and deal with such misconduct. “Parents, teachers, students and administrators don’t really know how to handle it. Districts don’t think it’s a high probability. So people just don’t learn what they’re supposed to do and what the procedures are. There is hardly any education done on this.”

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Article extracted from usatoday.com

United States students are continuing to trail behind their peers in a pack of higher performing nations, according to results from a key international assessment.

Scores from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment to be released Tuesday show 15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.

Those scores are all higher than those from 2003 and 2006, but far behind the highest scoring countries, including South Korea, Finland and Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China and Canada.

“This is an absolute wake-up call for America,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The results are extraordinarily challenging to us and we have to deal with the brutal truth. We have to get much more serious about investing in education.”

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The PISA exam is one of a handful of tests that compare educational levels across nations, and is considered to be the most comprehensive. The test focuses on how well students are able to apply their knowledge in math, reading and science to real-life situations. Some 470,000 students took the test in 2009 in 65 countries and educational systems, from poor, underdeveloped nations to the most wealthy.

Student performance on international assessments is considered especially relevant as today’s high school graduates enter a global job market, where highly skilled workers are in increasing demand.

The United States’ mediocre scores on the PISA exam have repeatedly been highlighted by the Obama administration and others pushing for education reform. A number of countries have made significant improvements in recent years, while the U.S. has made only incremental advancements.

Between 1995 and 2008, for example, the United States slipped from ranking second in college graduation rates to 13th, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Paris-based organization that develops and administers the PISA exam. Of 34 OECD countries, only 8 have a lower high school graduation rate.

Responding to the grim figures, President Obama has set a goal for the U.S. to have the highest proportion of students graduating from college in 2020.

“We live in a globally competitive knowledge based economy, and our children today are at a competitive disadvantage with children from other countries,” Duncan said. “That is absolutely unfair to our children and that puts our country’s long term economic prosperity absolutely at risk.”

The impact of improving math, reading and science scores could be radical: A recent OECD study with Stanford University projected that if the U.S. boosted its average PISA scores by 25 points over the next 20 years, there would be a gain of $41 trillion in the U.S. economy over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010.

The 2009 exam had an extra focus on reading, and looked at how factors such as family background, equity of resources, and governance influence educational outcomes.

The top performers in reading were South Korea, Finland, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.

The gap between the highest performing countries and the United States is stark — students in Shanghai, for example, had an average score of 556 points in reading, 56 points higher than the 500-point average reached by United States students. Shanghai students also posted the highest score in math, with an average of 600 points, 113 points higher than the 487 point U.S. average.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria cited ongoing evaluations, an emphasis on the importance of education, and a curriculum that is relevant to everyday life as reasons for the Chinese success.

“They don’t only produce children who know the matters by heart,” Gurria said. “They’re educated to understand and face the challenges of real life.”

He noted that the Chinese scores were strong in all three subject areas.

“That speaks about who is going to be leading tomorrow,” Gurria said.

The Shanghai and Hong Kong results are certainly unrepresentative of China as a whole — additional results from other regions will be release next year, but Andreas Schleicher, head of the Indicators and Analysis Division at the OECD said he didn’t expect much variation.

The report also notes that the GDP per capita in Shanghai is well below the OECD average — highlighting another finding of the study: Low national income does not necessarily signify poor educational performance. South Korea, another top performer, also has a GDP below the OECD average.

“While national income and educational achievement are still related, PISA shows that two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results,” Gurria said. “This shows that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly education countries is now out of date.”

The United States spends more per student, on average, than other countries. In the 2009 PISA study, only Luxembourg spent more per student. The report notes that countries like Estonia and Poland perform at about the same level as the United States, while spending less than half the amount per student.

“I think we have to invest in reform, not in the status quo,” Duncan said.

The PISA study does not look to draw cause-and-effect relationships, but does highlight some findings about what the top performing countries tend to have in common.

Schleicher noted that some of the top systems are centralized, while others are very decentralized. There was also much variation in class sizes, with some of the best performers finding success in putting quality teachers in larger classes. But in each case, teachers are subject to evaluations and have a high standing in society. Also, schools have a degree of autonomy in determining their curriculum — but are also held accountable.

“In other words, autonomy without accountability would be a very bad outcome,” he said.

He said many of the things the United States is doing, such as developing common academic standards and smarter assessment systems, are important, positive changes.

“What we have seen from other countries doing similar things is those initiatives do pay off in the longer term,” Schleicher said.

The study found that the best school systems were also the most equitable, meaning students from disadvantaged backgrounds were just as likely to do well academically. In the U.S., 17% of the variation in student performance was found to be related to a pupil’s background — compared to 9%, for example, in Canada.

The report notes that Canadian 15-year-olds, on average, perform more than one school year ahead in math than 15-year-olds in the United States, and more than a half year ahead in reading and science. Canada, like the U.S., has a decentralized education system.

“Canada’s experiences raise questions about why the United States has so far not equaled the performance of it northern neighbour,” the report states.

Mexico had the lowest reading score among OECD member countries, with an average of 425 points — the equivalent of more than two school years behind the highest member score. Among all 2009 participants, there was a gap of 242 points between the highest and lowest reading scores — equal to more than six years of schooling.

Mexico was commended for reducing the number of low performers in reading, and for improving math scores.

Gurria said the report’s overall message is that, “Even in this crisis and even with the expenditure cuts, keep on supporting the education but also look at what successful systems have in common. They all can be very different but they have in common a number of features that can really make for better systems.”

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Article extracted from usatoday.com

Joseph Wiseman, an actor who played the sinister scientist and title character of Dr. No in the first James Bond feature film, has died. He was 91.

Wiseman, who had been in declining health, died Monday at his home in Manhattan, his daughter, Martha Graham Wiseman, told The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

A screen and stage actor, Wiseman’s film credits include “Detective Story” (1951) and “The Unforgiven” (1960). He also had guest roles on television shows “Law & Order,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” “The Twilight Zone” and “The Untouchables,” according to The New York Times.

He is likely best known, however, for his villainous role in “Dr. No,” the first in a long string of James Bond movies. The 1962 film introduced Sean Connery as James Bond and also starred Ursula Andress.

Wiseman was born in Montreal on May 15, 1918. He moved to the United States with his family when he was a boy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Wiseman started acting when he was a teenager, getting his start in summer stock.

In 1938, he was given a small part in his first Broadway play, Robert E. Sherwood’s “Abe Lincoln in Illinois.”

Wiseman’s other Broadway credits include “Joan of Lorraine” (1946), “Antony and Cleopatra” (1947), “Detective Story” (1949); and most recently in the stage adaptation of Abby Mann’s film “Judgment at Nuremberg” (2001). Hard money training

After a string of real celebrity deaths last week, the Internet and online social networks killed a few more stars.

Despite what you may have read, Jeff Goldblum, Natalie Portman, George Clooney, Britney Spears, Harrison Ford and Rick Astley are alive.

Fake news of their deaths flew across the Internet — particularly on online social networks like Twitter and Facebook — after Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon were reported dead.

The situation is calling attention to the changing state of the news media: As information online moves faster and comes from more sources, it’s more difficult to verify what’s true and what may be shockingly false.

Some have downplayed the situation, saying the rumors are not harmful. Others find the situation offensive in light of the actual deaths last week.

Internet-savvy readers can tell the difference between fake news and real information that has been verified by a trusted blogger or mainstream news reporter, said Gabriel Snyder, managing editor at Gawker, a celebrity news and gossip blog not associated with the rumors.

Pop star Britney Spears was among those falsely claimed to be dead recently.

John Travolta, still in mourning over the death of his teenage son earlier this year, issued a rare public statement urging fans to see his latest movie, “The Taking of Pelham 123,” which he filmed last year.

“I promise, you won’t be disappointed,” said Travolta, who plays a deranged ex-inmate who takes hostages on a New York subway.

Travolta did not join co-star Denzel Washington in the promotional tour for the movie — which hits theaters Friday — because he said his family needed “additional time to reconcile our loss.”

His son Jett, 16, was found unconscious on January 2 while on vacation with his family in the Bahamas. The teen was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, local police said.

Washington, who plays a subway train dispatcher forced to face down Travolta’s character, said he talked to the actor about three weeks ago.