Using responses from a national survey of chief academic officers in public community colleges, identifies previous position holders and the positions to which they moved. Presents findings, which indicated that the greatest percentage of former chief academic officers became president (30 percent), whereas the next largest percentage retired (27…

Data from four social surveys in the Czech Republic reveal that higher education is returning as a strategy for life success, after being discarded for decades due to Communist egalitarian ideology. Economic returns to education have increased but college graduates feel underpaid. However, many people still hold the "socialist" belief…

The secondary school principal, as "artist in residence," establishes a climate for excellence, promotes a vision of continuous improvement, and must confront numerous challenges, including students' earlier puberty and growing diversity. The principalship has acquired more responsibilities without needed incentives to attract…

Examines the inter-related issues of college curricular coherence, student mobility, and transferability of college credits among institutions. Urges agreement on intended outcomes of general education programs and suggests linking such outcomes to transfer agreements. Reports on two states Utah and Georgia which are developing new system-wide…

Reviews contemporary international attrition research in order to examine: the definition of teacher attrition; patterns of attrition; influences upon attrition; the impact of attrition; and strategies used to decrease attrition. The paper concludes that research on teacher attrition requires the development of more comprehensive databases on…

Describes a study conducted to gather information about the number of two-year college students who hold baccalaureate degrees. Finds that, for academic year 1997-98: (1) 12,946 students out of 753,255 already had bachelor's degrees, 2,527 had master's degrees, and 142 had doctoral degrees; and (2) criminal justice development was the most popular…

This article describes a career ladder program for paraeducators in which collaborative efforts of a university, community college, and consortium of school districts addresses the need for preparing teachers of English-language learners. Thirty paraeducators of minority background were supported through the California Paraprofessional Teacher…

This paper analyses the process of secondary school admission in the District of Thanet in the contexts of consumerism and the functioning of the educational marketplace. It examines tensions between consumers and producers, and juxtaposes educational need with individual gain, arguing that the Local Education Authority's policies, the plethora of…

Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school-based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low-performing students face in retaining and attracting high-quality teachers. Most clear are the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence…

This paper focuses on college students' views of the American class system and the extent to which they see it as an open system of contest mobility, in which individual effort and ability determine achievement and social standing, or as a system of sponsorship, in which family connections determine class position. The effects of family class…

Research Findings: This study examines child care centers that improved quality and sustained these improvements over time. Quality was assessed using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales (ECERS). Forty-three centers were visited three times over six years. Centers that substantially improved by Time 2 were not initially rated better than…

This article proposes a funded school-based allowance and savings program targeted at economically disadvantaged students with poor educational outcomes to help poor children develop less present-biased time preference patterns so as to increase student effort and skills acquisition, avoid the pitfalls that pave the path of adolescence and move…

Mountain Valley Elementary's decade-long struggle to improve student performance naturally makes one wonder if an excessive turnover in curriculum leadership has had a significant effect on how the students and teachers perform. As a teacher and Title I facilitator at Mountain Valley for the past 12 years, this author has experienced the…

This paper summarizes the phenomenon of offshore outsourcing and relates it to the history and current state of engineering education and the engineering profession in Europe and the USA. In order to assess the climate affecting employment decisions by and about engineers we have used as sources mostly the serious press, with an emphasis on…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001) is a landmark reform reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965). In its second year of implementation, NCLB is the most ambitious federal effort to raise student achievement in 38 years (Mathews, 2003). Its intent is to close achievement gaps among students who belong to minority…