This booklet is addressed to parents and guardians of incoming high school students, discussing what many researchers consider the most important year of high school, perhaps the most important year of school so far. Freshman year will set the stage for whether a student graduates and whether he or she will be ready for college. Citing years of…

This paper assesses how policies and institutions affect private returns to invest in tertiary human capital, the ability of individuals to finance this investment and the institutional characteristics of tertiary education systems. Focusing on core tertiary education services, the paper presents new measures of private returns to tertiary…

This report presents a summary of a number of outcomes-oriented studies dealing with dual enrollment (acceleration). (Contains 1 graph.)

"A Blueprint for Excellence", New Jersey's long-range plan for higher education, adopted in 2003, aims to make the state stronger, more competitive, and a better place for all to live, work, and go to school. This document reports progress-to-date in achieving plan objectives: enrollment and the number of degrees awarded have increased,…

This Winter 2007 quarterly newsletter from the Community College League of California includes: (1) Incumbents: Some Win, Some Lose in November Trustee Elections; (2) Voters Approve $2 Billion in Bonds; (3) Photos from the "Together We Can" conference; (4) Report, Media Criticize Transfer, Completion Rates and Colleges; (5) District…

While most counselor education programs offer training or coursework in multicultural counseling at the pre-service level, it is unclear to what extent school counselors continue to pursue professional development in multicultural counseling after obtaining state certification or licensure. This manuscript presents a discussion on the state…

In 1996, the State University of New York at New Paltz developed the Supplemental Writing Workshop Program for its basic writing students in response to public pressure to discontinue the offering of so-called remedial writing courses at four-year institutions. Our primary purpose in this article is to describe the design of the SWW Program, which…

Recently, a local reporter asked the author, a district curriculum and instruction director, if No Child Left Behind (NCLB) did more good than bad. According to her, there is no good in spending a disproportionate amount of time and money on reporting when the money and her time could be spent in classrooms. Nor is it a good thing to make…

Using rigorous qualitative research methodology, twenty-four college students receiving their undergraduate degrees in three years were interviewed. Following analysis of the semi-structured interview transcripts and coding, themes emerged, indicating that these students possessed self-discipline, self-motivation, and drive. Overall, the results…

Undergraduate enrollments have grown sixfold in the last half-century and continue to boom; today more than 80 percent of high-school graduates go to college within approximately eight years of graduation. One might expect those accomplishments to be celebrated, but the expansion of higher education has been accompanied by ambivalence, anxiety,…

The Student Transitions Project (STP) is a collaborative effort of British Columbia's (BC's) Ministries of Education and Advanced Education and Labour Market Development and BC's public post-secondary institutions. STP research is helping school districts, post-secondary institutions and the Ministries of Education and Advanced Education and…

In this article, we review the empirical evidence on the impact of education vouchers on student achievement, and briefly discuss the evidence from other forms of school choice. The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero.…

This survey updates the efforts of all 50 states to align their high school standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability systems with the demands of college and work. Thirty-two states have voluntarily joined the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network and are working to close the expectations gap that has left many young…

There is a persistent concern over mismatches between the degrees awarded by universities and the needs of the job market. Although there are shortages of graduates in some fields, many university graduates have difficulty finding jobs that make good use of their education. This has been discussed in newspaper articles, in education and business…

Surveys of sign language programs in institutions of higher education in the United States, conducted in 1994 and 2004, are compared to reveal changes over time. Data are presented concerning the institutional environment of programs, program administrators, and instructors. Institutions examined in 2004 were on average 5 years older than those…