"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Must be in the Front Row!: High Schools, Graduation Rates Receive New Attention from Policy Community and World of…

An evaluation is presented on the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector in the Asia Pacific region. Its focus is how human rights in relation to education have been upset by the epidemic. The education sector is urged to develop more initiatives to educate about the epidemic, and to build measures that deal with both immediate and long-term…

This book offers an in-depth understanding of the unique challenges and contributions of urban primary schools. The authors set urban education in the wider social context of structural disadvantage, poverty, oppression and exclusion, and reassert some critical urban educational concerns. Recognizing that practice needs to be informed by theory,…

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) felt it was timely to create an academic forum in which university researchers have the opportunity to engage with their peers and relevant stakeholders and document the impacts of their North-South research collaboration in a peer-reviewed publication. The Association achieved this by…

The numbers are astonishing and unfortunately all too familiar--while four in five high school students expect to complete a college degree, fewer than a third will actually emerge from the high-school-to-college pipeline with a baccalaureate six years after high school graduation. A growing number of parents see a college degree as absolutely…

This book addresses the negative consequences of labeling and separating education for students with "disabilities," the cultural biases inherent in the way that we view children's learning difficulties, the social construction of disability, the commercialization of special education, and related issues. The theme that unifies the chapters is…

The mission of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is to ensure that all students acquire the knowledge, skills and values necessary to live rich and fulfilling lives as responsible, productive and enlightened members of a democratic society. It is the vision of the District of Columbia School System that it will be known as one of the…

This report, more than a year in the making and informed by over 50 interviews with employers, educators, and local and national policymakers, details both the growing problem of disconnected youth in New York City and what it will take to redirect them toward career-track employment and family-supporting incomes. The centerpiece of this study is…

Three components of the teacher shortage are the recruitment challenge, the retention problem, and the demand for teacher quality. Although the teacher shortage problem involves many factors, any solution must address salaries. Rural districts face a threefold disadvantage: teachers are not compensated as well as other rural professionals; rural…

As one of the last nonreservation boarding schools built for American Indian students in the United States, Sherman Institute (Riverside, California) benefited from lessons learned about student health from earlier boarding schools. Excessive student morbidity and mortality at early boarding schools had resulted in a lasting perception of these…

This research analyzes the impact of the Thai government's activities to promote educational opportunities for people of the northern hill tribes. In addition to interviews with government and nongovernmental organization staff, field surveys were conducted in hill tribe villages. The introductory chapter provides background information on the…

Over the last generation, parents have felt more and more intimidated by child care "experts" and have increasingly surrendered their role as the primary educators of their children. On the premise that theories of development, often colored by ideological positions on the family and its function in society, should take a back seat to…

Research shows that small schools and schools within schools can yield positive outcomes for students and improved satisfaction and effectiveness among school staff. Small schools can be less costly than larger ones if judged by expenditure per graduate instead of cost per pupil enrolled. Examination of the policy environments of urban schools in…

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) took groups of national policymakers to visit effective and innovative high schools and to meet with reform-minded leaders as a way to become familiar with the challenges and possibilities of high school redesign. This report summarizes the best practices and policies that were successful in the transformed…

There is limited understanding of the scope and impact of distance learning on postsecondary career and technical education (CTE). Descriptive analysis of questionnaire responses and telephone interviews from 512 community colleges (response rate of 53.3%) sought to determine the following in relation to postsecondary CTE: (1) how prominent is…