"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) FY 2011 Spending Discussions Continue: Pressure Mounts as April 8 Deadline Approaches and Possibility of Government Shutdown…

The missionary zeal of community colleges in the 1960s is still needed to meet the challenges they still face today: helping underserved and underprepared students succeed, and offering a strong general education curriculum that provides the foundation and framework for later academic and professional success. Even as economic, social, and…

The coming five to ten years will drop community colleges into a lot of hot water. The question is this: Will community colleges sense the danger and jump out, or will they simply try to acclimate and get cooked? The theses of this article are that: (1) current trends in the external environment of community colleges constitute such an…

Each year, "Diverse: Issues In Higher Education" publishes lists of the Top 100 producers of associate, bachelor's and graduate degrees awarded to minority students based on research conducted by Dr. Victor M. H. Borden, professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University Bloomington. This article presents lists of the top…

In this study, the authors describe and evaluate the impact of increased access to residential treatment added to traditional drug court services in Orange County, California, with a goal of increasing program retention, successful completion, and graduation rates for a high-risk drug offender population participating in drug court between January…

While the calm waters metaphor might explain the changes navigated by Australian agricultural education through most of its history, the last 20 or so years have been very turbulent. Now, the new millennium sees agricultural education in both Australia and the Western world facing a different and less certain future. This paper analyses some of…

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the integration of a manufacturing case study to a freshman level mechanical engineering course at The University of Toledo. The approach to integrate this case study into the class was completed via weekly assignments analyzing the case, small group discussion, and weekly group discussion.…

Increasingly, college graduation is seen as a necessary step toward achieving the American Dream. However, large disparities exist in graduation rates. For many families, the current family income is not enough to finance college. Therefore, many young adults have to rely on education loans, which may be difficult to repay, leaving them strapped…

In 2008, almost 40% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students enrolled in the Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotion at The University of Sydney failed to complete the course. Although this was not considered unusual when compared to previous years, the decision was made to investigate why so many students struggled to meet the…

This research explored the perceptions of high school principals and teachers on the implementation of professional learning communities (PLCs) in their schools. These perceptions were surveyed using the Professional Learning Communities Assessment-Revised (PLCA-R). Data results were examined for areas of agreement and disagreement between the…

This paper was a keynote address at the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) conference held in Canberra in April 2012. The author notes that industry is arguably the key stakeholder in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector, but is not a single actor nor a disinterested consumer of…

The White House will soon unveil a final version of its "college scorecard"--an online tool giving college-bound students and their families a hype-free snapshot of reliable information about any U.S. campus: real costs, graduation rates, student debt statistics, and earning potential of graduates. The college scorecard is a good idea…

"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) Four More Years: Obama Wins Re-election, Plans to Continue Education Reforms Through Race to the Top, NCLB Waivers;…

With tax revenues beginning to rebound in most states and endowments on the rebound at many private and public institutions, colleges and universities are growing more hopeful about their financial outlook and instituting new strategies to take advantage of the opportunities. Yet as the economic recovery has slowed in the past few months,…

In 1999, under federal government legislation, Mi'kmaw communities in Nova Scotia won the right to manage the education of their children for the first time in a century. With support from Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, an education authority that provides central services, local Mi'kmaw schools deliver language immersion courses, culturally-appropriate…