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Rallying against proposed increases to tuition and fees, University of California student activists are planning massive on-campus protests this week. Today, students on campuses all over the state are staging demonstrations. Tomorrow, many will take buses to San Francisco to demonstrate at the UC Board of Regents meeting. UCLA student Nader Nasr has created a petition on Change.org that has close to 900 signatures.

What’s behind this campaign? A request from the University of California to the Board of Regents to increase tuition for students another eight percent (fees increased 32 percent last year) to more than $11,000. Similar tuition increases for students in the Cal State education system are also in the works. Tuition (also called “fees”) doesn’t cover the other costs of room, board and books that families pay for higher education (UC Berkeley has the second-highest cost for room and board of any institutions, public or private, the Los Angeles Times editorial board has reported).

Although the increases would also come with increases in financial aid packages, students who don’t qualify for financial aid, yet still can’t afford the high price of college, will fall deeper into debt, and therefore having to claim free legal advice to cover any fees they may have along the way..

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Former Vice President Al Gore is throwing his hat into the ring to call attention to another pressing problem: the need for quality math, science, technology and engineering education.

At noon EST this Wednesday, he’ll join astronaut Sally Ride, Jamie and Adam from the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters and inventor Dean Kamen in a live webcast for students, encouraging them to think more about science and how it fits into life post-graduation. The virtual “town hall” will also connect students with kids in other countries to compare notes on how science is perceived and taught around the world.

When it comes to science knowledge, U.S. students aren’t at the top of the class. A 2006 study found that American students were 21st out of 30 in science literacy among developed countries. (They were 25th out of 30 in math literacy.)

The need for better science and math education is something President Obama has been stressing lately. He recently announced a new nonprofit initiative called Change the Equation. Part of the group’s goals, CEO Linda Rosen says, is to fix current misunderstandings about the importance of understanding math and science.

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In this advertisement for early education, there’s no finger paint or graham crackers in sight. Instead there’s a businessman, wearing a suit and tie and staring into the camera. He’s asking you: “Are you ready to be a Champion for Children?”

In Oklahoma, the business community is advocating for something most people associate with story time, naps and ABCs. What is it? Early education, which research shows leads to a host of positive gains including narrowing the achievement gap, reducing drop-out rates and — oh yes – building a more qualified workforce.

It’s the workforce angle that’s being highlighted with the new ‘OKCEOs’ program — which stands for Oklahoma Champions for Early Opportunities. OKCEOs is an effort to get business leaders involved in something you’d generally think of as a strictly non-business endeavor. The move to train advocates for early childhood education is spearheaded by the Oklahoma Business Roundtable, Smart Start Oklahoma and Potts Family Foundation.

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Chief Illiniwek, the dancing, headdress-wearing mascot for the University of Illinois, was officially retired in 2007 in response to pressure from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). But more than three years later, his ghost remains on campus.

Although the “chief” no longer officially dances at sporting events and spirit rallies, no new mascot has been named. Students stage unofficial “chief” rallies. And Illinois remains the home of the “Fighting Illini.” This lack of a new mascot is creating an atmosphere of racial tension on campus, argues a coalition of 19 student and community organizations. The group, called Students for a United Illinois, is lobbying university leaders to name a new mascot and retire the inflammatory dancing mascot in spirit as well as in name.

A YouTube video of the former mascot’s performance shows a costumed gymnast jumping, dancing and leading Illinois fans in a crossed-arm greeting. It’s a performance that many groups, including the National Congress of American Indians, have decried as offensive, caricatured and misleading.

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For six weeks, a group of Chicago moms sat down to stand up for their children. In Pilsen, a largely Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago’s South Side, moms occupied for 43 days a rundown, one-story field house in their fight to have a library for the children of Whittier Elementary.

It was a David vs. Goliath story: A group of parents going to bat for their children against Chicago Public Schools, which had planned to destroy the field house and create a field, not a library. Despite intimidation by the police, fears about retaliation and frustration at bureaucratic inertia, the parents of Whittier prevailed: In late October, the head of CPS announced that Whittier students would get a library after all.

The moms’ struggle — they had been advocating for a library for seven years before they resorted to staging a sit-in – captured attention nationwide as the group used Facebook and other social networking tools to spread the word. More than 500 Change.org members joined in, sending letters to Chicago officials expressing their support.

But is the story over? Not at all, say the moms in the group. In their meetings with Chicago Public Schools, no specific plans were made about where the library would go, when it would be built and what, exactly, the fate would be of the rundown field house where the sit-in took place. CPS will lease the field house to the moms for $1 a year — it’s currently being used as an informal afterschool location and library after hundreds of donated books poured in.

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What teenager would spend their Friday and Saturday nights under parental supervision? Well, they have to, if they want to hang out at many U.S. malls. Over the past 15 years, it has become increasingly popular for malls to institute “youth escort policies.”

These policies generally require that on Friday and Saturday evenings, people 17 and younger must be with an adult 21 or over. Anyone not following these rules risks getting kicked out of the mall.

The latest of these ”youth escort policies” will be implemented at the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, New York, due to the perception that large groups of youth “drive away customers.” What’s wrong with banning some people but not others? Besides the obvious civil rights violation, this practice drives a wedge between young and old.

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Joel Klein, the controversial chancellor of New York City schools has just resigned. Rumors are flying about the reason behind his departure. Already a replacement has been named: Cathie Black, a media mogul whose most recent job has been as chairwoman of Hearst magazines.

For lots of people this has raised the question, What kind of person should be running an urban school system like New York’s? Should it be a corporate leader, or an educator? In Chicago, where the CEO of the public schools has resigned, the teachers are calling for an educator at the helm. They argue that a business leader has not understood the complexities of teaching and learning, and an experienced educator is needed now that there is an opportunity for a change.

In New York City, the same arguments have been made. One of the main concerns raised about Joel Klein was that he did not listen to teachers and parents enough. Some perceived him as treating New York City schools like his own corporation. Some parents are rejoicing over Klein’s departure. Some teachers are too. His most well-known mistake with the teachers was around school closures, which he would do without opportunity for public comment. Finally teachers sued, and won, a case against the city to keep schools slated to close open.

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Trapped in bureaucratic red tape, a Washington D.C. nonprofit is in financial trouble through no fault of its own. What’s at stake? A safe place to go after school for some of the District’s neediest children. It’s a story of broken promises and bureaucratic inertia, and it needs to be solved.

City Gate, a nonprofit, faith-based organization, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary of bringing aid to some of the District’s neediest citizens. But what they’re not celebrating is a $60,000 payment promised to them from city money — that has still not been paid to them.

This summer, City Gate was promised $60,000 in funds from D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) to run a summer day camp at the Merrick Center, a new community center with a sparkling gym and computer lab located near public housing in Ward 8, a low-income ward in D.C.’s southeast quadrant. City Gate’s summer day camp fed kids breakfast, lunch and dinner. The funds were to be filtered through a large grant OSSE gave to another nonprofit called Youth Engaged for Success (YES).

But at the end of the summer, founder Rev. Lynn Bergfalk got some terrible news, he told D.C.’s The Fight Back radio program recently.

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Children today spend as much time consuming media as they do sleeping, so it’s probably not surprising that children find it easier to identify the image of Ronald McDonald than Jesus.

Research has shown that children can identify child-oriented brands by the age of three, but that doesn’t mean they’re equipped with the ability to analyze advertisements.

Corporate advertisers are finding new and intrusive methods to influence children to buy their products, which, like McDonald’s food, is often damaging to their health and mental well-being. Our cash-strapped public schools have become an increasingly tempting target for advertisers, especially the peddlers of unhealthy sugary foods.

Most recently, the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood disclosed a disturbing partnership between Scholastic Inc., a global book publisher known for education materials, and SunnyD, the purveyor of the sugary orange-like drink that’s loaded with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The SunnyD Book Spree encourages teachers and parents to have their students collect SunnyD labels in order to exchange them for up to 20 free books. In the Scholastic web site’s tips for parents, it encourages them to organize SunnyD parties to spur label collections, start SunnyD Book Spree groups on Facebook and post SunnyD fliers at grocery stores and local libraries.

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Does the name Lauren Myracle ring a bell? If so, you might be one of the 4,000+ Change.org members who told Scholastic Books last October to stop excluding Myracle’s book at their school book fairs. Her book Luv Ya Bunches features two moms raising a child; Scholastic initially chose to keep the book out of their popular school book fairs for that reason, but after pressure from Change.org members and other online advocates, they reversed their decision.

Myracle, an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author who writes for children and young adults, stuck to her guns and took a stand against censorship last year. The majorly-influential publisher Scholastic initially asked her to change her plotline, replacing a gay couple in her book with a heterosexual couple. When she refused, Scholastic decided to pull her book from book fairs.

Myracle is being honored later this month by the National Coalition Against Censorship as the “Most Censored Author In 2009.” Her books have been praised for dealing with serious topics with relatable characters and realistic language, and her popularity as a writer shows that she connects with kids, teens and tweens. Her books ttyl, ttfn and l8r, g8r are written in instant message conversations by girls who are dealing with puberty, body image issues and their own sexuality. Those dangerous, dangerous topics put that series at #1 on the American Library Association’s top ten most frequently challenged books list of 2009. It’s sad when educators and parents seek to control and limit information instead of helping children and teens get to the knowledge they need. Props to Myracle for standing strong and refusing to change the couple she wrote about in Luv Ya Bunches.

As Change.org Women’s Rights editor Alex DiBranco pointed out recently, the best way to fight censorship and to support banned books is to read, read, read — and Myracle’s continuing popularity means readers are doing just that. Another thing you can do is to support the National Coalition Against Censorship — read their newsletters, follow their blog and let the Change.org community know if you hear about censorship in schools near you.

Photo credit: Carmichael Library via Flickr