American higher education is suffering from a dropout pandemic. About 30% of freshmen at four-year colleges don't return for their sophomore year, according to a 2010 report by the American Institutes for Research. Such a high failure rate threatens to make a mockery of President Obama's goal for the US to have the highest proportion of college…

Provides an imaginary tour of a typical high school of the 1990's, where we find libraries without books, halls without lockers, stadiums without bleachers, teachers without unions, and an almost nonexistent dropout problem. Most of these "advances" are attributed to high costs and computerization progress. (MLH)

Describes the efforts of a North Carolina high school principal to adapt another school's computer network system to a reading comprehension improvement project in his school. Recounts administrative networking applications at Muskogee (Oklahoma) Public Schools and offers tips for choosing and evaluating computer networks. (MLH)

Student retention is an important issue in distance education. In the literature of higher education literature, however, information on student retention in online courses is incomplete. Few empirical studies have been conducted. Many articles reference the issue and then provide descriptions of best practices to address retention. Seldom,…

Given the difficulties and uncertainties of education reform, asking "what works" may be making simple and commonplace what is nearly always a messy and unfinished business. But the work of the International Youth Foundation's partners in 49 countries does reveal a common message of successful reform efforts: put young people at the…

The Transition Instructional Program was designed to provide transition services to a culturally insulated group of dropout, migrant, bilingual youth of ethnic minority origin, a significant number of whom were adjudicated, handicapped, or limited English speaking. The project utilized experiential instructional techniques to promote the subjects'…

This executive summary describes an evaluation study of a program which provided transition services to a culturally insulated group of dropout, migrant, bilingual youth of ethnic minority origin, a significant number of whom were adjudicated, handicapped, or limited English speaking. The project utilized experiential instructional techniques to…

This book discusses how best to instruct students, reviewing and evaluating the many educational reforms and innovations that have been proposed and employed over the past century and comparing achievement rates resulting from traditional, teacher-centered approaches with those resulting from progressive, student-centered methods. Findings…