Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest provides a rationale for an integrated language arts curriculum. The digest first defines integrating the language arts curriculum as providing natural learning situations in which reading, writing, speaking, and listening can be developed together for real purposes and…

This digest examines the spread of mentoring in the United States, obstacles to realizing the potential of mentoring as a vehicle of reform, needed research, and selected issues of policy and practice. While the education community understands that mentors have a positive effect on teacher retention, the question of what mentors should do, what…

Public service in higher education is an important function of American colleges and universities. The nature and purposes of higher education can be revealed through three popular metaphors--ivory tower, social service station, and culture mart. It can best be fulfilled through ideas of value, social criticism, social problem solving, or social…

Student attrition is a major problem for American colleges and universities because an increasing number of enrollees fit the demographic and socioeconomic profile of "high-risk" students, who consist in general of minorities, the academically disadvantaged, the disabled, and those of low socioeconomic status. Declining enrollments leave…

This digest summarizes issues raised in a research report on fund raising in higher education. The following questions are addressed: What are the changes and trends since the early days of educational fund raising? What are the implications? What is known about spending? What is known about donor behavior? What are the major ethical issues? What…

This brief report summarizes a longer document with the same title. It reviews how college faculty are increasingly collaborating to do much of their work. It notes that the two principal forms of collaboration, teaching and research, are often distinctive arrangements depending on the field of study, institutional environment, and task…

In June 1994, the Texas Center for Educational Technology (TCET) posted a survey on several educational listservs and conference groups on the Internet requesting comments, observations, and opinions from educators having experience with telephones in classrooms. Most of the respondents agreed on the need to equip K-12 classrooms with modern…

Poor, minority, and low ability students suffer most from the general lack of sustained opportunity to study mathematics in American public schools. Studies indicate that preschool and kindergarten students show only minor social class or racial differences in mathematical thinking and that differences in mathematical performance among older…