ARLINGTON, Va. (TheStreet) — Think back to the last time you applied for a credit card. If youre like most people, you probably didnt read the fine print. Who has the time, let alone the patience, to wade through all that tiny, dense text, right?

Single-sex education is ineffective, misguided and may actually increase gender stereotyping, a paper to be published Friday asserts.

The report, “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” to be published in Science magazine by eight social scientists who are founders of the nonprofit American Council for CoEducational Schooling, is likely to ignite a new round of debate and legal wrangling about the effects of single-sex education.

It asserts that “sex-segregated education is deeply misguided and often justified by weak, cherry-picked or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence.”

But the strongest argument against single-sex education, the article said, is that it reduces boys’ and girls’ opportunities to work together, and reinforces sex stereotypes. “Boys who spend more time with other boys become increasingly aggressive,” the article said. “Similarly, girls who spend more time with other girls become more sex-typed.”

The authors are psychologists and neuroscientists from several universities who have researched and written on sex differences and sex roles. The Science article is not based on new research, but rather is a review of existing research and writing.

The lead author, Diane F. Halpern, is a past president of the American Psychological Association who holds a chair in psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California. She is an expert witness in litigation in which the American Civil Liberties Union is challenging single-sex classes — which have been suspended — at a school in Vermilion Parish, La.

Arguing that no scientific evidence supports the idea that single-sex schooling results in better academic outcomes, the article calls on the Education Department to rescind its 2006 regulations weakening the Title IX prohibition against sex discrimination in education. Under those rules, single-sex classes may be permitted as long as they are voluntary, students have a substantially equal coeducational option and the school reasonably believes separation will produce better academic outcomes.

Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, said it was reviewing the research.  “There are case studies that have been done that show some benefit of single-sex, but like lots of other educational research, it’s mixed,” she said.  “When you’re talking about separating students, treating them differently, you want to do it in a way that’s constitutional, and you want to make sure that there is adequate justification. We certainly want to safeguard against stereotyping.”

The article comes at a time when single-sex education is on the rise. There were only two single-sex public schools in the mid-1990s; today, there are more than 500 public schools in 40 states that offer some single-sex academic classes or, more rarely, are entirely single sex.

Many of them began separating the sexes because of a belief that boys and girls should be taught differently that grew out of popular books, speeches and workshops by Michael Gurian, Leonard Sax and others.

Dr. Sax, executive director of the National Association of Single Sex Public Education, was singled out for criticism in the Science article, for his teachings that boys respond better to energetic, confrontational classrooms while girls need a gentler touch.

“A loud, cold classroom where you toss balls around, like Dr. Sax thinks boys should have, might be great for some boys, and for some girls, but for some boys, it would be living hell,” Dr. Halpern said in an interview. She said that while girls are better readers and get better grades, and boys are more likely to have reading disabilities, that does not mean that educators should use the group average to design different classrooms. “It’s simply not true that boys and girls learn differently,” she said. “Advocates for single-sex education don’t like the parallel with racial segregation, but the parallels are there. We used to believe that the races learned differently, too.”

Dr. Sax criticized the article on many counts, and said it did not fairly reflect his current views. He vehemently rejected the comparison to racial segregation, and the use of the term “sex segregation.” Legally, race is a suspect category, while sex is not.

“We are not asserting that every child should be in a single-sex classroom, we are simply saying that there should be a choice,” Dr. Sax said in an interview.

The authors of the article, though, say that because there is no good scientific research backing such a choice, the government cannot lawfully offer single-sex education in public schools.

The article cites a review commissioned by the Education Department, comparing single-sex and coed outcomes, concluding that, “as in previous reviews,” the results are equivocal.

The article also said that research in other countries, and data from the Program for International Student Assessment, also found little overall difference between single-sex and coed academic outcomes.

While some studies have found better outcomes from single-sex schools, the article said, the purported advantages disappear when outcomes are corrected for pre-existing differences. For example, Chicago’s Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, a school whose high college admissions rates were praised this year by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was subsequently criticized by the scholar Diane Ravitch as having test results that were actually lower than average on basic skills.

“This is very much a live issue, and I think it’s snowballing,” said Galen Sherwin, a staff lawyer for the Women’s Rights Project of the A.C.L.U., who is handling the Louisiana case. “I see news stories every single week about new proposals, usually based on the idea that boys and girls learn differently. Often it’s people who have attended training programs by Sax or Gurian, saying these programs will cater to boys’ and girls’ specific learning styles.”

  Much of the impetus for single-sex public schooling came from popular books like Mary Pipher’s “Reviving Ophelia” and, especially, a 1992 report by the American Association of University Women, “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” But by 1998, when the association issued another report,  saying that single-sex schooling was not the solution to problems of gender equity, the pendulum had swung, with boys’ difficulties in school receiving more attention, in part because of books like Dr. Sax’s “Why Gender Matters” and Mr. Gurian’s “The Wonder of Boys.”

Japanese return cash recovered after tsunami

In a testament to Japans culture of honesty, finders have turned in $78 million to authorities and some have waived their right to the money even when the rightful owners cannot be found.

LANSING, Mich. –
Social services groups and state officials are scrambling to prevent thousands of low-income Michigan residents from having their heat cut off after a state-run program that helped pay overdue utility bills for the poor lost its source of funds.

A state appeals court in July struck down the financing system used by Michigans Low Income and Energy Efficiency Fund, and the state Legislature has not enacted a new one. With the program now running out of money as winter approaches, state officials are working to tide over needy families at least until Nov. 1, when they will be protected from a utility shut-off by state law.

SAN DIEGO — Up the stairs from the Chicken of the Sea offices in the northern reaches of this city, two brothers and about three dozen of their employees mine databases in a fledgling effort to help Americans retire a little sooner and manage their money a little better.

Bucks

How to Rate 401(k) Plans and Investment Advisers

If you have found Brightscope’s work wanting (or inspiring), please tell us in the comments below

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Your Money

Ron Lieber writes the Your Money column, which appears in The Times on Saturdays.

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In 2009, Mike and Ryan Alfred, now 30 and 28 years old, introduced a rating for most of the big 401(k) plans and gave poor scores to many of them. In Act 2, the brothers and their company, BrightScope, put the names and disciplinary records of thousands of stockbrokers and investment advisers up on the Web where anyone could find them.

While the data provides plenty of utility for consumers, BrightScope aims to make money by selling detailed reports to retirement plan administrators, mutual fund companies and investment advisers.

And for their trouble, the brothers have been called all sorts of names in industry publications. Their tactics, according to the complainers, hold investment advisers “hostage” and feel like “extortion.” They’re a front, perhaps, for plaintiffs lawyers. Or they are simply “sinister.”

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because the same thing happened when Morningstar turned unflattering spotlights on the mutual fund industry, and when Zagat, TripAdvisor and Yelp started ranking various businesses.

Those four companies have proved their legitimacy, or at least their staying power. And now the brothers Alfred face a similar test: Are they just a couple of punk kids who will flame out, or will their efforts help us all have more money sooner than we might otherwise?

THE BEGINNING BrightScope began not with the Alfred brothers but with their co-founder, Dan Weeks. While the brothers are all steely-eyed intensity, Mr. Weeks, 51, is way out on the jolly spectrum. That demeanor has been a big help, given all of the feathers BrightScope has ruffled.

In 2007, Mr. Weeks was an engineering manager at Hewlett-Packard struggling to understand his 401(k) plan. He built a Flash application to sort out his risk tolerance and fund choices and showed it to his real estate lawyer, who happens to be the father of the Alfred brothers.

Mr. Weeks’s lawyer suggested that he show the tool to his entrepreneurial sons, and the three began brainstorming over glasses of Maker’s Mark. “We had been thinking a lot about 401(k) plans, but we still couldn’t search and find out how good one plan was,” Mike Alfred said. “So we decided to build a rating.” Mike now serves as chief executive of BrightScope, while his brother Ryan is president. Mr. Weeks is chief operating officer.

The Alfred brothers weren’t exactly coming at this cold. Mike had traded stocks as a Stanford undergraduate and Ryan completed finance internships during his summers at Harvard. They both worked for their father when he was in the insurance industry, and the brothers also operated their own investment advisory business.

But they were not 401(k) experts. Still, the three raised some money from angel investors in the San Diego area, and the brothers flew to Washington to see how easy it would be to extract filings about companies’ 401(k) plans from the Labor Department. It took them several hours to print just 20 company reports.

That pace wouldn’t do, so the brothers began flooding the Labor Department with Freedom of Information Act requests, asking for hard drives full of 401(k) filings. “They said ours was one of the most onerous they had ever received,” Ryan Alfred said, smirking ever so slightly.

At the same time, the brothers e-mailed anyone they could think of who might persuade the Labor Department to make all the information available electronically. After about nine months of pestering, they succeeded. “We were so obnoxious, we were like mosquitoes” Mike Alfred said. “They had to kill us eventually.”

(Jason Surbey, a Labor Department spokesman, said that BrightScope wasn’t the only company asking for the information.)

THE 401(K) PRODUCTS BrightScope soon published scores of consumer ratings, and it eventually added 403(b) retirement plan rankings, too, for nonprofit groups. Eventually, it became clear that its data had even more value to two other groups.

First, the company created Spyglass, a service for retirement plan consultants who want to help smaller employers. It allows someone making a pitch to know just how high the target client’s fees are and how poorly the mutual funds in its plan have been performing.

Meanwhile, the biggest moneymaker for BrightScope in the next year or so will probably be something called Beacon. Here, BrightScope provides data to the fund companies showing which employer retirement plans own their funds, which ones don’t and which employers own competitor funds that haven’t been performing well.

Half a dozen BrightScope employees spend all day sorting through the data that flows in from the Labor Department. Those six are in a room of about 35 people, including programmers, sales people and others, probably more than local fire codes allow.

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  Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty gives the thumbs up as he prepares to deliver his budget in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa June 6, 2011.Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters

MARSEILLE, France — World financial leaders say a consensus can be reached to resolve Europe’s debt crisis and lessen the threat of another global recession.

But for now, that remains a work in progress.

Following talks Friday between Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers in the French seaport of Marseille, French Finance Minister Francois Baroin told reporters: &"There is no one silver bullet for all countries.&"

Baroin acknowledged the &"heightened tensions in financial markets&" as concerns over a possible debt default in Greece grow.

&"We met at a time of new challenges to global economic recovery, with significant challenges to growth, fiscal deficits and sovereign debt stemming from past accumulated imbalances,&" he said.

&"There are now clear signs of a slowdown in global growth. We are committed to a strong and co-ordinated international response to these challenges.&"

Among the biggest immediate concerns is the sad state of Greece’s finances. As talks continued Friday, the markets recoiled as the prospect of dealing with the Greek debt appeared to fade.

Earlier on Friday, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty suggested that Greece might opt out of the 17-nation eurozone if the country fails to resolve its crippling debt crisis.

&"No doubt it’s a possibility,&" Flaherty told reporters.

But he said &"it’s necessary for the Greek government to stay the course. . . . Portugal, Ireland are going through difficult times, as well, but they are weathering the storm. That will be difficult in some countries like Greece. But there’s no choice.

&"The alternative is probably that they leave the euro. . . . Given those two choices, I would assume that the Greek government would continue with their consolidation plan.&"

Flaherty admitted Greece’s membership in the euro is &"actually none of my business.

&"I don’t suggest to my European colleagues about precise steps to take.&"

The minister acknowledged there is &"hesitancy&" among some countries to meet the &"carefully calibrated&" goals for fiscal consolidation reached at previous international summits — cutting deficits in half by 2013 and improving the debt-to-GDP ratio by 2016.

&"That’s what we all agreed to (at the G20 meeting in Toronto),&" he said. &"We can’t change the goal of fiscal consolidation.&"

On the other hand, he noted some decisions may be made for less than purely economic reasons. There are &"political choices that have to be made . . . choices that may affect their chances for re-election.&"

Earlier on Friday, Flaherty played down what might be accomplished by the G7, which groups Canada with the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy.

&"I don’t expect any dramatic results here,&" he said.

Flaherty, who has warned his G7 counterparts not to ease up on their deficit-cutting efforts in an effort to avoid double-dip downturns in their economies, said little about U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposal for a $450-billion U.S. plan aimed at creating new jobs.

In a speech to Congress Thursday night, Obama appealed to lawmakers to back his plan, intended to encourage employers to create new jobs and help spur the country’s faltering economy by cutting payroll taxes for workers and employers, providing tax breaks for companies that hire new workers and funding repairs to transportation infrastructure.

Flaherty said Friday the elements of the U.S. plan are similar to Canada’s stimulus program launched in January 2009, namely infrastructure spending, tax breaks and hiring incentives.

&"I wish the Americans well in their program,&" he said. &"The key is to create jobs now.&"

U.S. Treasury Secretary William Geithner was among the authorities meeting separately in Marseille on Friday.

Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, said financial reform &"remain(s) a key element of the G7 strategy, as well it should to ensure the crisis of 2008-09 doesn’t repeat itself.

&"Sovereign tax cuts don’t seem to be a reasonable strategy, considering the massive deficit governments currently face,&" he said. &"Countries with fiscal flexibility should use it to boost growth, while those facing potentially unsustainable situations or lack market access should focus on lowering their deficit/debt.&"

Earlier this week, the Bank of Canada — headed by governor Mark Carney — kept its key lending rate on hold at a near-record low one per cent, where it has been for the past year, due to a &"diminishing&" need to raise borrowing costs against the backdrop of a slowing global economy that has also cut Canada’s growth outlook.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has forecast that growth in the G7 economies will slow to 0.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2011.

While the Canadian economy contracted 0.4 per cent in the second quarter of this year, the Bank of Canada said in statement this week that &"growth will resume in the second half of this year.&"

The central bank has also forecast economic growth in Canada of 2.9 per cent in 2011 and 2.6 per cent in 2012.

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* Three-month dollar Libor touches fresh 13-month highs

* Risk premiums rise despite less liquidity fears

* Central bank move not seen solving euro zone debt woes

* Traders await political solution to a political problem
(Updates US action; changes dateline, previous LONDON)

By Richard Leong

NEW YORK, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Key lending rates crept up on
Friday after a coordinated move among central banks to pump
dollars into European banks did little to dispel worries about
the euro zone debt crisis.

Investors and traders are holding out hopes for aggressive
measures from European policy-makers to come up with a firewall
for European banks in case debt-laden Greece defaults.

On Friday, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told EU
finance ministers they should end loose talk about a euro zone
break-up and work more closely with the European Central Bank
to tackle the debt crisis. For details, see [ID:nL3E7KG0KC]

There is a high degree of nervousness and a low degree of
confidence in European financials, said Stephen Wood, chief
market strategist at Russell Investments in New York, which
manages $163 billion worldwide.

Persistent jitters over the soundness of French banks due
to their exposure to Italy and Greece hammered the shares of
BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) and Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA).
[ID:nL5E7KG2GU]

On Wednesday, Moodys Investors Service downgraded Credit
Agricole and Societe Generale (SOGN.PA), citing increased
concerns about their funding and liquidity profiles in light of
worsening refinancing conditions. It left the ratings of the
biggest French bank BNP on review for downgrade.

Anxiety about more bad news from Europe over the weekend
spurred safehaven buying of US Treasury bills, pushing their
rates below zero on Friday.

While central banks show willingness to help European
banks, there have been no signs of progress among euro zone
officials to deal with solvency problems threatening the
17-nation block, analysts said.

You have a political problem with an economic outcome.
Ultimately you need a political solution, Wood said.

In the wholesale lending market, the London interbank
offered rate for three-month dollars USD3MFSR= touched a
fresh 13-month high at 0.35133 percent. It has risen nearly 10
basis points since late July.

Libor is a benchmark for more than $350 trillion worth of
financial products worldwide.

Libor for three-month euros EUR3MFSR= climbed to 1.48375
percent, matching its highest level in two weeks. For more on
Fridays Libor fixings, see [ID:nEAP000028]

While the benchmark interbank rate continued to climb, the
borrowing rate for dollars in the foreign exchange market
stabilized. Some dollar-strapped banks have turned to the
currency market because money market funds and other
traditional investors curtailed lending to them due to their
exposure to peripheral European countries.

The cost of raising three-month dollars through the cross
currency basis swap market EURCBS3M=ICAP last stood minus
89.5 basis points, flat on the day. It fell sharply on Thursday
after the central banks dollar loan announcement. It touched
the most expensive level in a year at minus 125 basis points
earlier this week.

HIGH ANXIETY

Major central banks around the world said on Thursday they
would cooperate to offer banks access to three-month dollar
loans [ID:nL5E7KF3RA] — removing a key source of money markets
stress built over recent weeks.

The move failed to stop the rise in Libor, but kept fears
about funding problems among euro zone banks from escalating,
analysts said.

Still risk premiums in the dollar loan market generally
rose on the day after they fell briefly in earlier trading.

It just alleviated some of the immediate concerns about
dollar funding. I dont know if its going to have a tremendous
long-term effect, said Alex Manzara, vice president at TJM
Futures in Chicago.

The spread between three-month dollar Libor and the
overnight indexed swap rate on three-month dollars
USD3MOIS=RR was 29.6 basis points — its widest level since
late July 2010 — from 29.4 basis points late Thursday.

Another gauge of investor jitters — the spread between
three-month Libor and three-month Treasury bill rate US3MT=RR
– rose 1 basis point to 35 basis points.

Manzara said another reason for the rise in three-month
Libor was the level of September eurodollar futures EDU1
which will expire on Monday.

The Sept. eurodollar contract last traded at 99.6475,
implying a three-month Libor of 0.3525 percent, which is only a
tad above Fridays fixing level.

We are getting the final convergence right now between
cash and futures, Manzara said.
(Additional reporting by William James in London; Editing by
Andrew Hay)

–>

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. doesnt mind if people hate him. Hes going to be who he is, not ashamed of his wealth of talent and cash. He will readily remind you of both.

Mayweathers nickname, Money, is more than a moniker; its his lifestyle.

He lives in a 22,000-square-foot Las Vegas mansion. He drives custom Rolls Royces and Maybachs. He hangs out with celebrities like 50 Cent. He once flaunted his fortune by burning a $100 bill in a nightclub.

For Saturdays fight against WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz, he will probably earn more than $30 million, depending on pay-per-view sales. And Mayweather is one of the kings of pay-per-view sales. His 2007 fight against Oscar De La Hoya had 2.5 million buys at $55 each (in the United States).

Hes made a (bad) name for himself, with a reason.

He showed up on the scene not as a big puncher, not as a knockout artist, not as a guy who is going to excite fans that way but as a great pure boxer who felt he was being underappreciated, said Max Kellerman, an HBO boxing analyst and CNN contributor. And the louder he started to talk, the more attention he would get.

Kellerman compared it to being cast in an action movie.

The role of the good guy was already taken, so he took the role of the bad guy, he said.

The bad guy persona has been helped by troubles outside the ring. He has feuded with his father, most recently on the HBO documentary series 24/7, where the two almost came to blows during a break in a training session. Junior and Senior crassly insulted each other, and the younger Mayweather denigrated his father as a trainer (his uncle Roger has held that position — except during a suspension — since Junior fired Senior) and then demanded that the eldest Mayweather get the F out of the gym.

After he was isolated in a dressing room, Money continued to rant.

Roger Mayweather made the Mayweather name (as a two-time world champion) … and I took it to the next level. And when its all said and done, there are only two (bleepin) Mayweathers that count: Roger Mayweather and Floyd Mayweather. And (motherbleeper), Im not no junior, Junior says at the end of the five-minute argument and tirade.

The problems dont end with family squabbles. Mayweather is also the defendant in six court cases, HBO reported (HBO, like CNN, is owned by Time Warner). The boxer says that hes innocent and that people are just trying to cash in and get money from a rich target.

One of the people suing him is Manny Pacquiao, widely considered the best fighter of any size.

The boxing public wants — demands — that the two fight before they get too old and their marvelous skills erode. But Mayweather wants 33-year-old Pacquiao to take a Olympic-style random drug test, which Mayweather says he does before every fight. The Pacquiao camp said no and sued when they thought Mayweather was calling their fighter a drug cheat.

So instead, Mayweather fights Ortiz, who is 24, 10 years his junior. Oddsmakers clearly favor Mayweather, who is 41-0 and a five-time world champion. Boxing experts clearly favor Money, too.

But as Kellerman and others point out, the likely result will come after some struggle. Ortiz is a bigger fighter and a hard puncher who, unlike most boxers, leads with his right hand.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency Sues Banks
Friday, September 02, 2011

TOM HUDSON: Uncle Sam is taking on the nation`s biggest bankers over securities
backed by bad mortgages. The Federal Housing and Finance Agency which
oversees mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sued 17 banks late
today. Among those banks targeted, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup
(NYSE: C), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Goldman Sachs. Joining us now is
our Washington bureau chief Darren Gersh and he joins us from our
Washington bureau. Darren, what is this central allegation here that the
Federal agency is making against these big banks?

DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Well Tom, it`s
very interesting. Basically the Federal regulator that`s suing these banks
as an investor and they`re saying the banks when they (INAUDIBLE) go with
these complicated mortgage-backed securities basically they didn`t follow
underwriting procedures and essentially lied to investors about the ability
of these borrowers to repay their loans. Very interesting detail in here is
that some of these suits allege that the banks hired due diligence firms to
make sure that these loans were OK and then ignored their advice. If
that`s true, that`s very damaging.

HUDSON: Very damaging. It`s not the first time the banks have been
alleged to have behaved improperly when it came to handing out these
mortgages. But I want to ask first about any possible remedies here as they
try to negotiate a settlement, perhaps.

GERSH: You know Tom, when I was adding up the amount of money
involved and how much the Federal regulators want back, I thought my
calculator was going to catch on fire. They`re asking for $188 billion.
Then they want some damages, which would be hard to get. One very important
thing — the Federal regulators, the Federal Housing Finance
Administration, has hired plaintiffs` lawyers. These are private firms,
very skilled in security lawsuits, very aggressive. They`re serious.

HUDSON: This comes at a time when the Obama administration is likely
to try to put more pressure on banks to ease some of those underwater
mortgages. We may hear more of that on Thursday with the president`s
speech. Darren, we appreciate the insights into this big lawsuit here
announced late today, from Washington this evening, our bureau chief, is
Darren Gersh.

GERSH: Thank you.

FBI Solyndra raid: misuse of federal loans?

FBI Solyndra raid believed to be related to more than $500 million in federal loans the solar firm received before filing for bankruptcy. FBI: Solyndra investigation is being carried out jointly with Energy Department.

By

Kevin Freking,Associated Press /
September 9, 2011