The intercollegiate sports system fosters an environment in which eligibility for sports participation takes priority over educational objectives. One outcome of the athletic-academic conflict is the low graduation rate of intercollegiate football players. Analysis of graduation rates of various universities reveals a regional pattern of academic…

The article analyzes three policy options in the competency testing of handicapped students: (1) requiring the handicapped to pass a competency test; (2) exempting the handicapped from such tests if their Individualized Education Plan requirements are met; and (3) development of differential competency standards for these students. (Author/DB)

University administrators and accreditation bodies must reexamine the notion that everyone who graduates must complete the same requirements. There is now a different student body, and changes in the delivery of general courses must be considered. (JOW)

Almost every U.S. high school uses six- or seven-period schedule, requiring students to cope daily with numerous teachers, sets of class rules, and homework assignments. If students and teachers worked with fewer classes and fewer people each day, they could focus more time and energy on improving instruction and increasing learning. Article…

American education is stuck on well-intentioned, deeply traditional, but flawed ideas about teaching and learning. Failure to acknowledge a school's synergistic quality either paralyzes faculty or smothers changes already introduced. Pretending that serious restructuring can be done without honest confrontation is a cruel illusion. (MLH)

Describes a model for the delivery of programs and services for recruiting, retaining, and graduating African-American students. Notes that piecemeal programs neither increase the enrollment of African-American students nor slow their rate of attrition. (DM)

In a 1992 survey, responses from 296 of 533 Illinois high school administrators indicated that increased state graduation and college entrance requirements influenced declining vocational education enrollments; and districts that have restructured vocational offerings (e.g., through tech prep or school-to-work transition initiatives) have been…

Texas takes test security seriously. Joe Lucio, the Texas Ranger of testing, investigates security breaches of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills--a mandatory, high-stakes examination. Students cheat mainly on the test required for graduation. Educators cheat by helping test-takers. Lucio's low-key, persistent investigative style usually…

Investigates the relationship between family structure and 4-year college enrollment and completion. Uses 1980 High School and Beyond Sophomore cohort and its subsequent followup surveys. Finds that family-income differences can explain much of the differences in college attendance and completion rates between students from disrupted families and…

Differences in how states calculate AYP (adequate yearly progress) abound. Does that make one state better than another? Worse? Or is each state doing its best to be "normal"? States make decisions based on the information at hand, and then they move ahead, trying to make the best of those decisions. Under the No Child Left Behind Act,…

College sports is a numbers game, full of so many calculations--batting averages, free-throw percentages, BCS and RPI scores--that keeping them all straight can be a full-time job for a sports program. Now, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has put a new number on the table, and it has captured the attention of every athletic director,…

An increasingly important performance measure for university administrators is mean time to graduation at the department level. In this study, the authors examined whether a student's major is a significant variable in predicting time to graduate. If students in one major take much longer to graduate than do those in another major, administrators…

While nearly half of all school districts have adopted middle schools, there is little quantitative evidence of the efficacy of this educational structure. We estimate the impact of moving from a junior high school system, where students stay in elementary school longer, to a middle school system for on-time high school completion. This is a…

Latinos/as in the United States are the fastest growing segment of the population. In light of this fact, many education researchers and practitioners have turned their attention towards efforts designed to develop an understanding of the Latino/a educational experience. Unfortunately, the research reveals that Latino youth have excessively low…

A historical perspective on high-stakes testing suggests that tests required for high school graduation will have mixed results for the putative value of high school diplomas. Graduation requirements are not likely to settle the general cultural confusion in the United States about the purpose of secondary education or a high school diploma. (SLD)