The Lakelands Park Middle School student got his first atlas at age four and hasn’t taken his eyes off of it since.

“It's not just something I can read for five minutes and that's it,” he said.

Now, at 13-years-old, Rusak says memorizing the globe isn’t homework. It’s his hobby.

“It's just interesting to discover all these new places,” he said.

Many of these places, most people have never even heard of.

“We have the river Nester which is on the border of Ukraine and Maldova,” Rusak said.

A recent poll conducted by National Geographic found 47 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 34 couldn’t identify India on a world map. Six out of ten of those polled didn’t know where Iraq was either, and about half failed to find Mississippi on a map of their own country - findings that make Rusak quite the anomaly.

National Geographic Bee Director Mary Lee Elden says thats what the competition is all about.

“I think these kids have a bigger view of the world, but we can all of us just learn a little bit more,” she said.

“Even if we could inspire other people just to learn their areas, their countries, their counties ... to know more about the world in which they live, then they can make better decisions down the road,” Elden said.

Rusak said buying a globe helped him discover his life goals. When asked what he wanted to be when grows up, he replied, "well most likely, maybe a meteorologist. I’m also interested in science.”

"Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek will host the finals as students compete for a chance to win scholarship money, a trip to the Galapagos Islands and the chance to represent the U.S. at the World Championship in Russia in 2013.

The finals will be televised on National Geographic Channel and later on public broadcast stations.

The settlement between the school district's employee unions and the Board of Education on Monday would give employees an average raise of about 3.4 percent.

The salary increases are part of the school system's $2.1 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Employees hired before Feb. 1, 2012 would receive a salary increase in July.

Those no longer eligible for step increases would get a 2 percent raise.

The proposal must be ratified by the unions.

The school board is scheduled to make a final vote June 14.

Other area school districts are also are trying to negotiate some form of compensation increase in the coming year.

For a group of 50 Montgomery County high school students, that’s exactly what they’ve had this year.

Today in Silver Spring, Maryland came the final exam -- the “SEAL Team Fitness Challenge.”

This was no pop quiz. These high school students, from four Montgomery County high schools, have prepared for months for today’s test.

Since February the students have trained three times a week – many times with the assistance of US Navy Seals at their training session. The initiative is part of a community outreach program to inspire young students to set and meet goals.

The students had to complete a tough physical course – a 500 yard swim under 12:30, a round of pushups, sit-ups and pull-ups and then finish a 1.5 mile run under 11 minutes.

“It was pretty tough but I was able to push through and finish,” High School Junior Davit Girma said after the challenge at the Montgomery County Recreation Center in Silver Spring, Maryland today.

But the training was mental as well. SEAL teams held seminars and speeches to inspire and teach students about their signature SEAL mental toughness.

The SEAL teams said over the course of the training they could see growth in the students, beyond just a better fitness level.

“At first they seemed somewhat timid and apprehensive and now I see they are a little more aggressive, a little more confident little bit more motivated today,” Senior SEAL Chief Joseph Jones, one of the group’s trainers said today. “Personally I feel that high school kids are at a transition point in their life so they are going to have to know how to be mentally tough.”

The teenagers are chosen as part of Montgomery County’s Recreation Sports Academy from high risk neighborhoods but also from homes where adult supervision after school is less likely. The hope is that being outside exercising will fill up that afternoon time with something positive.

“Instead of like going home to play video games you get active, you help your body out and become healthier,” challenge finisher and high school Junior Rodolfo Sanchez said today, “It was tough but I feel good.”

“We’ve been able to encourage leadership, teambuilding, mental toughness, goal setting, visualization, it’s a lot of the unique aspects that Navy seals bring in addition to physical fitness,” Jose Segura, Recreational specialist in Montgomery County says of the program, “the character development, the growth that you see within them – the maturity a lot of these students have grown as they have never been exposed to anything like this when they have been challenged.”

And in the sea of men at today’s challenge, there was one lone woman.

Women aren’t yet allowed to join the US Army’s SEAL teams. While women can serve in the US Special Forces as information specialists and civil affairs specialists, the 1994 combat exclusion policy precluded women from being assigned to ground combat units.

So today, high school student Mercy Nuhu had something to prove just to herself.

“It make me feel different, not special per se but it makes me feel that I am tough enough,” Nuhu, a challenger course finisher said.

Grant Lattin, who represented the Occoquan district, said in his resignation letter that he was leaving the position on Thursday "for personal reasons."

School system spokeswoman Irene Cromer says no further information about Lattin's resignation will be released.

Lattin has nine children. His youngest child currently attends Woodbridge High School, which five of his other children attended.

Lattin taught fifth grade at Antietam Elementary School from 1998 to 2001. He also served more than 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1995.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Betty White comes to Washington to see the wildlife - not the donkeys and elephants on Capitol Hill, but the animals in the National Zoo.

After a stop at the Smithsonian on Thursday, White will visit the zoo Friday to indulge her passion: animal watching. She's looking forward to viewing the fertility-challenged pandas and a harmonica-playing elephant, among other animals.

"My interest in animals started in the womb," the 90-year-old actress told The Associated Press. "I think my mother's and father's started in the same place. They were animal nuts long before I came along."

When White was young, her family had pet Pekingese - an "unappreciated little toy dog" that is incredibly intelligent, she said.

During the Depression, her father starting building radios to make some extra money. But most people couldn't afford to buy radios, she said, so her father would trade them - usually for more dogs. At one point, they wound up with 11 dogs in the house.

"Now the radios didn't eat, but the dogs did," White said. "It was not really his best business venture."

Even at 90, White continues to keep a busy schedule. Her NBC show "Off Their Rockers" about seniors playing pranks on young people was just renewed for another season. She also has a TV Land sitcom, "Hot in Cleveland."

White lives in Brentwood, Calif., with her golden retriever named Pontiac, who used to be a guide dog.

"I like to think of it as the Indian chief and not the car," she said of her pet's namesake. "As a matter of fact, when the car company went out of business, I sat him down and I said, 'Oh Pontiac, it wasn't anything you did, sweetie.'"

In Washington, White will visit a sold-out crowd Thursday at the Smithsonian Associates, an educational division of the museum complex. And she will sign copies of her book, "Betty and Friends: My Life at the Zoo."

It's a mostly picture book compiled over the years with facts about animals. Since 1974, White has served as a trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. So she gives readers a tour of animals at the Los Angeles Zoo and many other leading zoos across the country.

She closes her book with parting shots of a giraffe's behind, followed by a bear's behind.

When White has a chance to visit a zoo, she said she likes to stay for a long time and watch the animals relax. She wrote her book to let people know about all the good zoos do.

"So many people say, 'Oh, I hate zoos. I want all the animals to be back in their natural habitat,'" she said. "Well, you know what we've done to their natural habitat.

"Without zoos, we would have lost already so many species."

White says she's fascinated by nearly every creature, even snakes, and has a hard time naming favorites. She does love elephants, bears and poodles, though, to name a few.

On Friday, the Smithsonian's National Zoo will roll out the red carpet to give White a look at their research efforts behind the scenes. She will also sign copies of her book.

Zookeepers plan to show her the Asian elephants up close, including Shanthi who plays harmonica with her trunk, as well as the popular pandas, the great apes and the Panamanian golden frog. The zoo is leading an effort to fight a fast-spreading fungus blamed for wiping out dozens of amphibian species.

Zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said the scientists and animal keepers are excited to host White.

"It's very personal for us because she's beloved by millions," she said. "For my colleagues to know that someone who actually cares about them and cares about their work conserving species is coming here ... We're really honored, quite frankly."

Meeting in Arlington on Thursday, Tech's Board of Visitors approved the increase, which translates to an annual cost of $10,923. That's up from $10,509 from the just-completed academic year The Roanoke Times reports that room and board will also rise.

Tech's Board of Visitors considered three tuition and fee options, and decided to go with the mid-range increase.

Even so, President Charles Steger said his administration will have to cut or restructure the university's $1 billion-plus operating budget to reflect the 3.9 percent increase.

Public higher education officials have been pressed by Gov. Bob McDonnell to hold down in-state tuition increases for the 2012-13 academic year.

A new survey from Amazon.com deems Alexandria the most well-read city in the United States, based on sales of books, magazines and newspapers in both print and Kindle formats since last June. It's the second time Amazon has conducted this survey.

This year's survey sees a flip-flop at the top, with Alexandria finishing ahead of Cambridge, Mass. Last year, the city that's the home of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came out at #1 while Alexandria slid in at #2.

Alexandria's neighbor, Arlington, came in at #7 on the list, and Washington D.C. taps in at #9. Cambridge, Berkeley, Calif., Ann Arbor, Mich. and Boulder, Colo. round out the top five. The biggest distinction between Alexandria and the top five is seemingly the lack of a major college or university within the city limits.

Richmond also makes the list at #20.

Amazon's deeper dig into their data also shows that Virginia tops their list of most books and literature purchased from the romance genre.

The full top 20 is as follows:

1) Alexandria
2) Cambridge, Mass.
3) Berkeley, Calif.
4) Ann Arbor, Mich.
5) Boulder, Colo.
6) Miami
7) Arlington
8) Gainesville, Fla.
9) Washington, D.C.
10) Salt Lake City
11) Pittsburgh
12) Knoxville, Tenn.
13) Seattle
14) Orlando
15) Columbia, S.C.
16) Bellevue, Wash.
17) Cincinnati
18) St. Louis
19) Atlanta
20) Richmond, Va.

Mrs. Obama addressed a crowd of about 15,000, including more than 1,200 graduates of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, one of the state university system's historically black schools.

In 1960, four of the school's students put their careers and lives on the line by sitting down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter a few miles away, asked to be served coffee and were refused. They returned day after day in greater numbers, and others across the South followed their example, until the company eventually was forced to end separate treatment for black and white customers.

North Carolina is considered a battleground state in the presidential election and the first lady's visit was expected to generate goodwill within a core Democratic Party constituency as President Barack Obama seeks re-election this fall.

Mrs. Obama steered clear of references to politics and her husband's re-election bid, though the audience cheered when the first lady told graduates: "We have the responsibility to protect the ground that has already been won, because it can just as easily be lost."

President Obama has visited North Carolina more than a dozen times, including four since June. Most recently he blasted Republicans about student loan debt during a visit two weeks ago to the University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill. The Democratic National Convention will be in Charlotte this September.

Obama's likely Republican opponent for the White House, Mitt Romney, visited a Charlotte manufacturing plant on Friday to blame Obama for the slow pace of economic recovery. It was Romney's second visit to the city in a month.

Obama carried North Carolina over John McCain in 2008, with 95 percent of black voters supporting the Democratic nominee, according to exit polls. Whether they can deliver another win for Obama, as the state continues to grapple with unemployment rates that hover above the national average, remains to be seen.

North Carolina voters this week approved amending the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Obama followed the next day by becoming the first president to express support for same-sex marriage.

Mrs. Obama's Greensboro address was the second of three spring commencement addresses for the first lady. She spoke at Virginia Tech on Friday and also is scheduled to speak June 17 at Oregon State, where her brother, Craig Robinson, is the men's basketball coach.

They say their advisors miscalculated their credits.

The students say since they came to the Art Institute of Washington, their advisors told them which classes to take, and that they were on track to graduate. Then just weeks before graduation, they got the devastating news.

Ramon Williams, 26, wants to make movies based on the Bible. He currently works part-time at ABC7 News while completing his bachelors degree at the Art Institute of Washington.

"It was just something I didn't even know I loved doing, and now it has become my dream," Williams says. "If I don't complete this quarter, it throws off the plans that I have for my own life."

But six weeks before graduation he says the for-profit school told him he was six credits short and he would have to stay an additional semester. At a cost of $2,500.

Delisia Harris says she's gone through the same thing. And Harris and Williams say dozens of other students have as well.

"To hear that kind of news, it's like a wrecking ball into your whole entire world. It's just ridiculous," Williams says.

Part of the problem stems from a recent curricular review that made some classes worth fewer credits than in years past.

Art Institute officials declined to be interviewed on camera, but in a statement the school wrote, "The Art Institute of Washington is unaware of any student not on track to graduate this quarter due to revised credit hour requirements...(The Institute) encourages any student who may have concerns to contact their academic advisors or academic department chairperson directly."

Williams and Harris say they've already talked with their advisors and they were told nothing could be done.

Williams says he has struggled with whether to speak out about it because he fears retribution. He says he ultimately made the decision because it's the right thing to do.

"I didn't just want to sit back and not say anything, because I think about future students that come in here," he says. "I don't want that to happen to other students."

Now the school has instructed any students with this problem to meet with the dean.

Obama on Friday addressed more than 5,000 graduates and their relatives and friends at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg.

The first lady noted Virginia Tech's resilience in the face of several incidents of campus violence, including the 2007 massacre that left 33 dead.

She tells graduates that they shouldn't let others define the school by the tragedy, but instead emphasize the character and success of its alumni. She also urged the students to invent their own futures and live life on their own terms.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner also spoke at the ceremony. Obama also plans to speak at North Carolina A&T on Saturday and at Oregon State on June 17.

To watch the commencement live on Sunday, May 20, from about 10 a.m. to about noon, click here.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The 101 Day of Hope is a community service initiative started by a group of young professionals in the Washington region about three years ago.

“One of the other organizers sent out a tweet saying it would be great if all of my friends came to my school to help and literally within two weeks we had 100 volunteers,” said Patrice Cameau, organizer.

As part of the day-long service project, volunteers donate time to several schools in the District.

“It's something that our generation wants to do,” Cameau said. “It's just finding the right opportunities to do it.”

“It's a great chance to meet young ladies who otherwise may not meet women who are doing positive things,” said Sharnikya Howard, volunteer.

Maaden Eshete has volunteered with the program since it’s start and says her connection with the youth is what keep her coming back.

“A lot of us see the value of mentorship because we had mentors ourselves,” Eshete said. “Whether it's reading a story, or doing something in the office or the classroom, they are very welcoming and happy to have us there so it's just a feel good moment to be able to come in and feel like you are making an impact on our future leaders in our local community.
Staff members and teachers at the participating schools say they hope their students walk away with the same spirit of service.

Kenneth Newsome, an administrator at Ron Brown Middle School in Northeast, said, “our students will probably get so much out of having that many people come to our school and share a day with us.

When the women descend upon his school Friday for a day of painting, planting and mentoring, Newsome says it “will give them an opportunity to say okay this is something that I need to do and partake in in my community.”

The program's organizer hopes the initiative will impact students for a lifetime.

“We've seen and we've heard from school administrators that those one day interactions really do last thru the week, thru the rest of the school year,” she said.

For more information, visit http://101womenofhope.com/.

"I love space,” he says/ "It's something you discover about."

And at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, the District's only in-school planetarium is helping him and fellow students reach new worlds.

For two decades, the domed-room was a storage unit. When first-year principal Sharon Wells stepped in, she knew she had found a treasure.

"It just made sense to use this is a viable functioning tool for our students and maximize our resources," Wells says.

She and other parents worked hard to clean it up. Wells painted some walls herself. She says her job is to ensure students receive the best education. And if it required her time, then that was okay with her.

Now, students say, they're ready to take on space, and beyond it.

"They stay sitting all day. It's just a good opportunity for them to get up and get out and run,"  Jen Myers, with Fit Kids, said.

Joining thousands of other students nationwide in a flash mob workout, students danced side by side with D.C. pro athletes.

NFL Linebacker and former Washington Redskin Rocky McIntosh said, "I love to dance. Every time I make a play, I'm out there dancing."

The goal of Obama's program is to show children what they can accomplish with exercise and a healthy lifestyle.

Myers added, "It gives the kids a great opportunity to see these players having fun doing what they're doing."

And at Alice Deal, they've made the teachings of the "Let's Move!" campaign a part of the curriculum.

"They know P.E. Is going to be sweating, they know they're getting their heart rate up," Neal Downing, the athletic director at Alice Deal, said.

After all the dancing was done, another mob formed. This time, for autographs.

Google asked students throughout the country that question, as part of a national competition.

They had to respond with a doodle, using Google's logo. And today we learned that one of the finalists is from right here in our area.

Today 11-year-old Eileen Powell of Alexandria learned that she will represent all of Virginia as a state finalist, in the 2012 Doodle for Google contest.

Powell said if she could go back in time she would go the 1970s because she says we could learn a lot from what people prioritized back then.

"A lot of times today people aren't really focusing on peace or the environment, and so I thought it would be interesting to go back and compare then to now," Powell says.

"This G we decided to cover it green because people were really trying to become better with the environment, and then, I did the disco ball," she says showing her design.

Powell plays three sports and recently won an Alexandria poetry contest. She will travel to New York with the other state finalists.

If she wins, Google will feature her doodle on its homepage for an entire day.

She'll also get a $30,000 college scholarship. And her school, George Mason Elementary, will get $50,000. She hopes to help her school expand its computer lab.

"When I started talking to my friends, I started hyperventilating and they would be like, 'Slow down! I can't hear what you're saying!'"

Google says 114,000 students entered the contest and the company hopes it will encourage creativity in young people.

"We always love to celebrate art and creativity and encourage the young leaders of tomorrow to think big," says Andrew Schulte, Google spokesperson.

And Powell says it certainly worked for her.

"It definitely made you think, it wasn't just something you can go out and do," Powell says.

You can vote for Eileen here.

The winner will be announced May 17th in New York City.

John Harrison says he was fired by the Arlington private school to bring in two younger, less expensive teachers. A decorated Army Vietnam veteran, Harrison told ABC 7 that it had been his dream to be a high school Social Studies teacher after a career as a lawyer.

In the aftermath of the firing, more than 100 students rallied in support of Harrison outside the school's campus. A Facebook group, "DJO Alumni against the firing of Mr. Harrison," already has more than 3,300 supporters. One of them includes the school's immediate past chaplin.

Meanwhile, students tell ABC 7 that there is still a lot of tension on campus and that the school has yet to explain the firing.

In response to the outcry over Harrison's firing, Bishop O'Connell officials said they could not discuss individual personnel matters. In a statement, they said that they understand the difficulty of change, but they acknowledge that change must occur so that the school can flourish.

In the article, the writers say that Highland Elementary School in Silver Spring is among multiple schools nationwide, including several in the Atlanta metro area, that had "statistically improbable" spikes in test scores. It says that Highand is one of 27 schools identified in their investigation that hold "few other credible explanations" on how scores went up so quickly.

"More often than not, something other than student learning was causing those gains," James Wollock, the director of testing and evaluation services at the University of Wisconsin, told the AJC.

On Monday, County Superintendent Joshua Starr called the reporting in the article irresponsible and stereotypical, saying that there are "no shortcuts to this success." Highland won a National Blue Ribbon Award in 2009.

"The underlying message is that schools comprised of mostly African American, Hispanic or poor students cannot achieve at a high level unless they cheat," Starr said in a statement. "We know that is not the case and are disturbed by the inference."

Highland's principal, Scott Stefan, also decried the allegations of cheating at his school.

"(It's a) baseless allegation here at the school," Stefan said.

For parents, including Salvador Villatoro, the accusations also came as a surprise. Two of Villatoro's children graduated from Highland, a school that is mostly made up of minority and poor students.

"The school is a good school," he said. "The teachers...they do an amazing job."

Starr also says that one specific writer, Alan Judd, fails to denote that a drop in reading scores at the school was in part due to the loss of reading instruction staff because of financial strains, and that 95 percent of the 5th graders at Highland had scored proficient or higher for three consecutive years.

"The AJC had its story written long before it visited Highland Elementary, which is unfortunate," Starr said. "But that does not diminish the accomplishments of the school's staff and students."

Highland's Blue Ribbon Award came at the apex of two-year growth in student test scores. The Journal-Constitution says that in 2007, two years after a new principal was hired, 23.5 percent of 5th graders passed reading exams. That number jumped to 79.6 percent the next year and 93.9 percent in 2009. It went back down to 41.7 percent in 2011.

You can read the full article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution here.

Now some students say they support the teachers, but they say their education is suffering because of the pay raise fight.

A few weeks back Frederick County teachers symbolically walked out of school the second their contracted workday ended. Upset by not getting an expected pay raise, after years with no raise, they commenced a work-to-rule protest.

Now students say they're the ones suffering.

Amber Hill and her schoolmates at Frederick High say they're most upset and concerned about the after school AP exam reviews they're not getting because the teachers leave 20 minutes after the bell rings.

Lower AP scores could mean missed college credits, they fear.

Gary Brennan is head of the teachers union. He is unapologetic.

He says negotiations with the school board and county commissioners are underway but his people are sticking to their guns until the county pays up.

"And our hope is, this ends as soon as possible," Brennan says.

The students say they wholeheartedly support the teachers but they want everyone to know who is really being hurt.

"You know, I'd like to have a little bit of help and with them leaving so early its impossible to get and I don't know how I'm going to do now," Alison Peters says.

Lightning struck a tree on Norwood School's campus last September and now Jim Calder is carving it into the school's mascot - a blue hawk.

Dick Ewing, head of the school, says it was huge loss when the tree was felled by lightning.

The school turned to Jim Calder, a former electrical engineer known for his woodcarving. He's transforming the charred trunk into a piece of art: An 18-foot carving showcasing the school's mascot.

“I had to take center section of tree out because shattered and burnt to charcoal,” Calder says. “By time I'm finished, (I) will have removed about 2,000 pounds of wood.”

Students at the school are also learning from the master and getting a new perspective on art.

“I never in my life thought it'd be that easy,” says Foster McCune, a 7th grader.

By August, the buses will be driving fewer routes—for some middle school students, that will mean a longer school day to accommodate staggered school schedules.

"We already have to get up early for school! We don't want to have to stay there longer!" said sixth grader Jared Callier of Upper Marlboro.

The new plan will save $5 million per year in busing costs. The county schools already have a six hour and 40 minute day. Adding an extra 40 minutes of class time will extend it to seven hours and 20 minutes.

"There's just not enough time to address some of the remedial needs of some of our students, especially in the areas of math and science,” said school Superintendent Dr. William Hite Jr.

But, Kenneth Haines, President of the Prince George’s County Educators’ Association, says extra class time should help students' weak spots.

“Our problem is that our middle schools are turnaround schools, very low performing schools, and we couldn't justify having shorter instructional days for schools that weren't coming up to state standards,” Haines said.

It will also mean some middle school students will be riding the bus with high school students. And that has some parents at James Madison Middle School wondering if that's really a good idea.

“You just open up a whole can of worms. Older kids picking on younger kids, bullying, it's just not a good idea,” said Upper Marlboro parent Theodore Blunt.

The County hopes older students will act as role models. They say the extra time and shared buses will offer a brand new opportunity for students' development.?

The Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/K2RGE8) reports that McDonnell made the request in a letter sent last week to school presidents and board members.

McDonnell wants tuition hikes to be limited to the increase in the consumer price index.

He says dramatic tuition increases would deter qualified Virginians from getting a college education.

The U.S. Labor Department says the consumer price index rose 0.3 percent in March, compared to 0.4 percent in February.

Inflation has eased since last fall and is expected to stay tame. In 12 months that ended in March, prices rose 2.7 percent.

That's below last year's peak year-over-year rate of 3.9 percent.

Information from: http://www.timesdispatch.com

The students are asking Metro riders to bring their old cellphones and portable electronics to donate on Wednesday morning from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

They will be collecting unused electronics at 15 Metro stations in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. The stations where you can drop off phones are:

• Capital South
• Dupont Circle
• Farragut North
• Farragut West
• Federal Triangle
• Foggy Bottom
• Franconia-Springfield
• Gallery Place-Chinatown
• L'Enfant Plaza
• McPherson Square
• Metro Center
• New Carrollton
• Pentagon City
• Rosslyn
• Union Station

GW is working with the group Hope Phones to recycle used cellphones.

Proceeds will be used to fund health projects for mothers and children in Mali, Malawi and Nepal.

Students also will be promoting a program called Text4Baby that provides health information through text messages for pregnant women and new mothers in Washington.

Online: http://www.gwu.edu/donate-phones/index.html

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs - waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example - and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees.

Opportunities for college graduates vary widely.

While there's strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.

Initially hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends a resume once every two weeks or so.

Bledsoe, currently making just above minimum wage, says he got financial help from his parents to help pay off student loans. He is now mulling whether to go to graduate school, seeing few other options to advance his career. "There is not much out there, it seems," he said.

His situation highlights a widening but little-discussed labor problem. Perhaps more than ever, the choices that young adults make earlier in life - level of schooling, academic field and training, where to attend college, how to pay for it - are having long-lasting financial impact.

"You can make more money on average if you go to college, but it's not true for everybody," says Harvard economist Richard Freeman, noting the growing risk of a debt bubble with total U.S. student loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. "If you're not sure what you're going to be doing, it probably bodes well to take some job, if you can get one, and get a sense first of what you want from college."

Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University who analyzed the numbers, said many people with a bachelor's degree face a double whammy of rising tuition and poor job outcomes. "Simply put, we're failing kids coming out of college," he said, emphasizing that when it comes to jobs, a college major can make all the difference. "We're going to need a lot better job growth and connections to the labor market, otherwise college debt will grow."

By region, the Mountain West was most likely to have young college graduates jobless or underemployed - roughly 3 in 5. It was followed by the more rural southeastern U.S., including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Pacific region, including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, also was high on the list.

On the other end of the scale, the southern U.S., anchored by Texas, was most likely to have young college graduates in higher-skill jobs.

The figures are based on an analysis of 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers and supplemented with material from Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor's degrees who were "underemployed."

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position - teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.

College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely.

In Nevada, where unemployment is the highest in the nation, Class of 2012 college seniors recently expressed feelings ranging from anxiety and fear to cautious optimism about what lies ahead.

With the state's economy languishing in an extended housing bust, a lot of young graduates have shown up at job placement centers in tears. Many have been squeezed out of jobs by more experienced workers, job counselors said, and are now having to explain to prospective employers the time gaps in their resumes.

"It's kind of scary," said Cameron Bawden, 22, who is graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in December with a business degree. His family has warned him for years about the job market, so he has been building his resume by working part time on the Las Vegas Strip as a food runner and doing a marketing internship with a local airline.

Bawden said his friends who have graduated are either unemployed or working along the Vegas Strip in service jobs that don't require degrees. "There are so few jobs and it's a small city," he said. "It's all about who you know."

Any job gains are going mostly to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor's degree holders. By some studies, up to 95 percent of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age.

David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, said a bachelor's degree can have benefits that aren't fully reflected in the government's labor data. He said even for lower-skilled jobs such as waitress or cashier, employers tend to value bachelor's degree-holders more highly than high-school graduates, paying them more for the same work and offering promotions.

In addition, U.S. workers increasingly may need to consider their position in a global economy, where they must compete with educated foreign-born residents for jobs. Longer-term government projections also may fail to consider "degree inflation," a growing ubiquity of bachelor's degrees that could make them more commonplace in lower-wage jobs but inadequate for higher-wage ones.

That future may be now for Kelman Edwards Jr., 24, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who is waiting to see the returns on his college education.

After earning a biology degree last May, the only job he could find was as a construction worker for five months before he quit to focus on finding a job in his academic field. He applied for positions in laboratories but was told they were looking for people with specialized certifications.

"I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field," he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State University. The counselor's main advice: Pursue further education.

"Everyone is always telling you, 'Go to college,'" Edwards said. "But when you graduate, it's kind of an empty cliff."

On Monday, the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities will announce a new Turnaround Arts initiative for eight schools with officials from the White House and U.S. Department of Education.

One of the schools included in the initiative is Savoy Elementary School in Southeast D.C. Savoy was targeted in 2011 for a major, comprehensive turnaround effort, which included a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Artist Chuck Close, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, dancer Damian Woetzel and actress Alfre Woodard also are adopting schools in the two-year program. Organizers selected low-performing, high-poverty elementary and middle schools to participate.

Outside of Savoy, the other schools included in the program are in New Orleans, Denver, Boston, Des Moines, Iowa, Portland, Ore., Bridgeport, Conn., and Lame Deer, Mont.

Each school was receiving a federal School Improvement Grant to help boost achievement.