The statistics are staggering: Only 7 percent of black eighth-graders perform at grade level in math, there is a 33-percent chance that a black boy born in 2001 will go to prison and 60 percent of black, male, high-school dropouts have spent time in prison.

New management by an outside company may help some of Philadelphia's failing schools make the grade. A recent study by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government professor Paul Peterson and Harvard graduate student Matt Chingos shows that students in schools managed by for-profit companies performed better in math than those in regular public schools.

Money was a major factor when international students are considering whether to apply to colleges abroad. It was for Ana Tere del Toro, a high school senior from Mexico. School is considerably cheaper at home, there are more scholarship opportunities and the applicant pool is less competitive.

Next time you feel the urge to just grab a Starbucks latte on your way to class, Chris Bosch wants you to rethink skipping breakfast. Last night in Harrison College House, a group of personal trainers including Bosch, an associate director of Penn Recreation, discussed the best workout programs for a variety of desired results and how students can develop exercise programs for their own lifestyle and goals.

In the past few months, President Barack Obama's administration has brought morality to the table of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. And yesterday, the Penn Democrats brought the topic to the attention of professors and students on campus. Penn Democrats sponsored and organized a BYOL - "Bring Your Own Lunch" - panel discussion in the Ben Franklin Room of Houston Hall with Political Science professors Rogers Smith, Michael Horowitz, Nancy Hirschmann and Alex Weisiger.

Opponents of the proposed Campus Inn extended-stay hotel project at 40th and Pine streets will have to wait a little longer to make their case. Their appeal of a Historical Commission decision allowing the project to move forward was scheduled to be heard yesterday before the Department of Licenses & Inspections Review Board.

From historical notions of beauty to the racial segregation at Woody's, colorful conversation flew last night at the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center. As part of the Office of Health Education's Body Image Week, Queer People of Color hosted an event last night called "Who's Sexy: Plastic Surgery & Race," which focused on how issues of body image vary across races and sexuality.

Theft Feb. 13 - A woman unaffiliated with the University reported at about 6 a.m. that an unknown suspect removed her unattended watch from a room at Presbyterian Hospital. Feb. 15 - Penn student Iris Braunstein, 19, of the 3800 bloc of Locust Walk, was arrested at about 10:45 a.

Is Twitter a way to stay in contact with your buddies or a manifestation of the human poetic narrative? This question and others came up for discussion as Kelly Writers House Fellow Robert Coover concluded his two-day introduction to the Penn community with an interview yesterday at KWH.

At first glance, cosmology - or the study of the universe - and particle physics - the study of subatomic particles and the forces affecting them - have little in common due to size differences. However, the Physics and Astronomy Department has undertaken a new program to allow cosmologists and particle physicists to assist each other in solving some of physics' thorniest problems.

Penn is taking its initiative to help the environment beyond the dining halls to the food trucks on campus. The Undergraduate Assembly is working with the Penn Environmental Group to encourage food trucks to use environmentally friendly containers rather than Styrofoam.

The person sitting nearby in the library promising to keep an eye on a laptop during a Mark's Café break may not be as trustworthy as he seems - and the Undergraduate Assembly is trying to make students more aware of that. In efforts to combat a jump in laptop theft on campus over the last few years, the UA recently unveiled a pilot laptop-lock program in Van Pelt Library.

President Barack Obama's stimulus plan may provide funds for the Philadelphia Police Department to hire additional officers. The bill, which was signed into law last week, allocates $1 billion nationally for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services of the U.

While Penn students are expected to be proficient in English, no such requirement is made for their parents. To help with this dilemma, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions has been attempting to make the entire admissions process easier for prospective students' parents who are not fluent in English by providing admissions and financial-aid information in Spanish, one of the most common native languages for international students.

"For most, leadership is an acquired skill," said Michael Useem, director of the Wharton Leadership Center, during the preceptorial he hosted with University President Amy Gutmann yesterday. The preceptorial, entitled "Essence of Leadership," took place at 4:30 p.

Though the state of the economy will likely increase requests for financial aid, most private colleges and universities, including Penn, are committed to maintaining their financial-aid policies and initiatives. The schools that have pledged to maintain financial-aid initiatives have been counteracting reduced budgets by pulling funds from other areas, which has resulted in firing administration and faculty members, cutting programs and freezing faculty

One-third of U.S. university nursing programs did not integrate international health into their curricula as recently as 2007, according to Wipada Kunaviktikul, but the School of Nursing is not one of them. The Nursing School kicked off its third-annual Global Health Reflections Week yesterday with a presentation by Kunaviktikul, a research fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.