Background/Context: Although prior research shows that the nature and extent of private tutoring practices vary significantly from country to country, differences between Eastern and Western countries in terms of their cultural and institutional aspects of private tutoring choice have not been closely examined. We need to bridge the gap by…

Ensuring that young Black men are afforded equal educational opportunities, access, and outcomes in education remains the most pressing challenge of modern schooling. Critical to overcoming this challenge is a focus on engineering pathways to design for school-based initiatives which draw more comprehensively from research and the prevailing…

This paper describes a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation in which graduate and advanced undergraduate students from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines partnered with local science and mathematics middle school teachers in a large, urban school district serving mostly low-income minority…

Financing higher education requires political leaders, policymakers, and educators to address broad public policy questions, including ascertaining: the levels of state funding to colleges and universities that are necessary to maintain the economic and social well-being of the American people; the tuition levels that are appropriate given the…

The paper reports on a practicum project to assess the training needs of paraprofessionals and to develop a training program to meet those needs. The first section of the paper is a literature review, which revealed few studies that have addressed the efficacy of paraprofessinals, though research that has been done indicates that paraprofessionals…

This report reviews the U.S. Department of Education's Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) Program. First authorized by Public Law 93-380, the Education Amendments of 1974, this program awards grants and contracts to eligible recipients for interventions to: (1) provide educational equity for women; (2) help educational institutions meet the…

In the summer of 1995, 371 establishments in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, were surveyed regarding their opinions of the quality of the local work force. The purpose of the study was to provide evaluation data for planning and curriculum development at the secondary and post-secondary school levels. Forty-three percent of the employers responded.…

This paper examines itinerancy, particularly educational itinerancy, and the appropriateness of various labels applied to the life style of members of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. Guild members and their families travel from town to town providing agricultural and equestrian shows. An ongoing study is examining the effectiveness of a…

This paper examines whether the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, a magnet school in its second year of operation, has improved equity of opportunities for Maine students to participate in advanced mathematics and science courses. Data on per pupil expenditures, state aid to school districts, and course offerings were obtained from the…

Pathways from Poverty is a public policy education and research initiative organized by the Rural Sociological Society's Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty and the four regional rural development centers. This publication focuses on project efforts in the Northeast and includes three sections. The first section describes the Pathways from…

In its present form, distance education overcomes the situational (geographic and/or time) barriers to education faced by consumers because of their family and work responsibilities. Disadvantaged adults often experience additional dispositional (attitude) and cultural barriers that are not well addressed by distance programs. Making distance…

The career aspirations and the factors influencing career decisions were investigated for a group of extremely precocious females to determine why some enter math/science careers and others do not. Using the multiple-case study approach, 15 mathematically precocious females' career paths were characterized. These females had scored before age 13…

This guide offers information to North Dakota students with disabilities who are entering postsecondary education from high school. It presents a timeline of steps that need to be taken each year of high school to prepare for postsecondary education and lists items to be included in a personal transition file. A self-awareness checklist assesses…

Although the World Conference on Education for All, held in March 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, fostered international consensus on educational goals and raised expectations, obstacles to successful achievement of education for all (EFA) must be identified. This paper describes the five most important obstacles--political factors, economic/financial…

The underparticipation of women in the fields of science and engineering is a matter of record; the understanding that something might be done to bring qualified women into productive careers as researchers, teachers, and practitioners of science and engineering prompted the National Research Council (NRC) in 1990 to establish the Committee on…