Recounts two homeless teenagers' struggle to stabilize their lives and graduate from high school. To help other heroic, homeless students, high schools should adopt flexible admission criteria, attendance policies, course offerings, and class assignments and provide special education services, transportation vouchers, and emotional support when…

Describes how the Arizona Department of Education's rush to implement the AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) high school graduation exam provoked justifiable protest from parents, students, school officials, and education experts in the state. Argues that, if critics and advocates are unable to work together, it will be Arizona's…

A follow-up survey of 791 liberal arts graduates of the University of Iowa seven years after an initial post-graduation survey investigated whether their perceptions of the value of the general education requirements had changed over time and, if so, how. Results reinforced a 1996 revision of the general education program. (MSE)

The Federal District Court ruled in favor of the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, school board's requirement that, as a condition for graduation, each student must perform 50 hours of unpaid community service. (MLF)

Graduation rates of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I scholarship athletes have shown the first across-the-board decline since the Association began publishing rates in 1990. Much attention this year has focused on male basketball players; only 41% of those who entered college in 1991 graduated within six years. Many leave…

Reports on the development of a learning package for a newly introduced test in Hong Kong, the Graduating Students' Language Proficiency Assessment (GSLPA)-English. Examines reactions of teachers and students to the learning package during piloting of the materials. (Author/VWL)

Studied whether school-to-work programs facilitate postsecondary education by examining records for all applicants (more than 1,000, from 1990 through December 31, 1998) from a single inner-city school district at a comprehensive urban university. Findings suggest that students from career academies have higher academic achievement, less need for…

Reviews and evaluates compensatory and conjunctive standard-setting strategies, presenting and discussing the rationales for each approach. Results of a comparison of the two approaches for a state high school certification writing test provide insight into the problem of choosing either strategy. (SLD)

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Schools, researchers examined the relationship between three state policies (graduation requirements, test score dissemination, and site-based management) and changes in school practices between 1980-93. Results indicate that state policies influenced school practices in policy specific domains,…

A U.S. Department of Education study concluded that the most significant predictor of college completion is not SAT scores or socioeconomic status, but a school curriculum's academic intensity: advanced math, 4 years of English, 2 years of lab science and foreign language, and advanced-placement courses. (MLH)

Second in a two-part series, this article reports the findings of a long-term study of teen parents after graduation from high school. The study examined marital status, financial status, educational aspirations, and parenting attitudes. Concludes that the factor most important to outcomes is to support and strengthen the families of parenting…

A comparison of 46 college students with learning disabilities (LD) who received permission to waive a foreign language (FL) requirement with 21 students with LD who fulfilled the requirement found that more students who had petitioned had a 1.0 standard deviation discrepancy between IQ and achievement and were referred only for FL learning…

Presents statistics describing the progress of blacks in higher education, including: the black-white higher education equality index; statistics measuring the state of racial inequality; statistics on merit-based and need-based student financial aid; and statistics on blacks in higher education (e.g., there were significant increases between…

Highlights findings from a recent study on the issues of students who transfer between community colleges and public universities in Oregon. In general, transfer activity is stable, and the academic performance and graduation rates of community college students are at a similar level as those for students who began their studies at a university.…

While Canadians tend to consider the American system to be overly litigious, they are catching up fast. Their own domestic set of plaintiffs is suing the agents of obesity and pollution, but actions pertaining to education seem to be spiking as well. A few of these cases are trivial. This morning's local newspaper reports that a judge has ruled…