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Summarizes the types of electronic learning initiatives used in the U.S. Number of public school teachers in each state; Students per Network and Internet connected computers; Electronic rate funding of the schools.

Focuses on school dropouts in the United States. Definition of a dropout; Need for more accurate dropout reports; Reporting of dropout rates; Methods for measuring school dropouts.

Reports the efforts of states in setting academic expectations for proficiency improvement of students and schools in the United States. Establishment of technical procedure to determine the passing score; Improvement on test scores of schools; Accountability of students and teachers for academic performance. INSETS: Higher Standards and Poverty.;What Is Low Performing?;What Is Proficient?.

Focuses on school transitions. Pivotal points in a child's educational career; Difficulties faced by students from less affluent families; Tendency of fading academic gains by the third grade; Information on the transition from elementary school to middle school. INSET: Ingredients for Successful Transitions.

The article discusses the growing number of students from low-income families in public schools, particularly in the Southern U.S. where over half of the students come from poor families. It includes a list of needs faced by poor children, including special education and English-language instruction. The article also presents trends showing a nationwide increase in number of low-income children, particularly in the Western U.S., and challenges the students bring to No Child Left Behind policies.

Deals with the technical writing ability of students in the United States. Reliability problems in writing; Biggest problems in technical writing; Action taken by the Educational Testing Service concerning the technical writing problems of students.

This article reports that schools in the U.S. struggled to help students come to grips with the country's war with Iraq. Schools and other support agencies responded with many offers of counseling for anxious students and families with loved ones overseas. Most of the students had been discussing some aspect of the U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf in their classes since last fall. Educators said that the outbreak of war presented a unique opportunity for students to discuss fundamental issues that might otherwise remain abstractions. Margaret Dawson, president of the National Association of School Psychologists, said that talking about the crisis can also help dispel any misconception a student may harbor.

A report created by the American Institutes for Research found that many middle school students across the world are performing below average in mathematics and science. The U.S. uses the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to assess student achievement; details of the test are provided. The report results have some officials thinking that the standards set forth in the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act are too high while others think that the test is an adequate measurement.

The article reports on a survey related to restructuring of high schools in the U.S. The 1,000-plus students in the researchers' study were surveyed twice, once in 10th grade and again as seniors. Of the 660 schools in the study sample, the smallest tended to be in rural and suburban areas. These schools enrolled mostly white students. The largest schools, most often located in urban areas and in some suburbs, enrolled higher-than-average numbers of poor and minority students. The researchers tried to put all of the schools on a more equal footing by matching students on 98 different characteristics. To measure students' academic progress, the researchers looked at test scores in mathematics.

This article presents information on the academic performances of boys in the U.S. Kenneth E. Wallace, a suburban Chicago educator, first noticed that boys were lagging behind girls academically. In some ways, the gender patterns now generating worries are not new. Looking at test data on more than 8,000 students at all levels of schooling, Stephen M. Camarata and Richard Woodcock of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, discovered that boys have lower processing speeds than girls beginning in elementary school. The congressionally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress also tests nationally representative samples of students in mathematics. On those tests, boys have had a razor-thin lead over girls at all three age levels since 1992.

The article reports that Delaware enjoys the status of being one of the earliest states to adopt teaching standards. Educators at Lulu M. Ross Elementary School in Milford, Delaware, have plastered charts tracking its educational progress to a wall in the main lobby. Among other statistics, the charts illustrate the percentages of 3rd and 5th graders passing state math and reading tests and document the narrowing academic gaps between lower-achieving African American and Hispanic students and their white peers.

The article discusses the efforts of the U.S. White House in encouraging students to take Advanced Placement (AP) test. The percentage of high school seniors passing an AP test has increased in every state over the past five years. Overall, the proportion of public school students nationwide who achieved a passing mark of 3 or better on at least one AP exam before graduating rose from 10 percent to 14 percent in 2005, according to the study unveiled last week by the College Board. Several states have taken steps to promote AP in recent years, such as helping students cover the $82 cost per exam and training high school instructors to teach the courses. The AP program allows students to receive college credit for earning a passing score on any one of 35 different courses and exams covering 20 different subjects.

The article informs that a rigorous study of 38 U.S. schools that are using the "Success for All," improvement program has found that students read better after two years in the program and outpace students in regular classrooms by up to half a school year. But the long-awaited study, which was posted online last week, is as notable for its research design as it is for its results. Paid for with nearly $7 million in federal and private funds, the study heralds what federal education officials and other experts hope will be a new generation of large-scale experiments that use randomized research designs to give educators and policymakers clearer answers on what works in schools.

The article reports that a new Texas study punctures the commonly held notion that high levels of teacher turnover in poor, urban schools result from an exodus of the profession's "best and brightest." The study, scheduled to be posted online this week by the Cambridge, Massachusetts based National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit research organization, draws on data on thousands of teachers and 4th through 8th grade students in an unidentified big-city Texas district that researchers call "Lone Star." Rather than measure teachers' quality by whether they had passed certification exams or had earned advanced degrees, the researchers looked at the test-score gains students made from year to year on state mathematics tests to determine which teachers were effective.

The article reports on graduation dropout rates. The best way to get a handle on slippery dropout and graduation rates across the nation, a federal task force has concluded, is for states and federal statisticians to work together in devising data-collection systems that can track individual students throughout their high school years. But federal officials and independent experts said last week that the task force is placing a tall order on states and the National Center for Education Statistics. Though student-level longitudinal tracking systems may be considered a gold standard for measuring education progress, fewer than a dozen states have such systems in place, experts said. INSET: Task Force Recommendations.

This article focuses on a study conducted by researchers at Boston College, as of January 28, 2004, according to which three decades of mounting academic and testing requirements are snagging growing numbers of students in the 9th grade. The bulge is the name education researchers give to the percentage increase in students in the 9th grade over the number who were enrolled in 8th grade. Such changes, together with more recent declines in high school graduation rates, signal a real national emergency. John Robert Warren, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, said other factors besides the movement for academic standards and high-stakes testing might explain the growing 9th grade bottleneck and sliding graduation rates.

Research has been an acquired taste for David S. Lustick, who came to Michigan State University in East Lancing, Michigan, to earn his Doctor of Philosophy degree after teaching high school science for 15 years. Lustick says, "I came with the understanding I was going to become a teacher of teachers. Over the course of the program here, I became very intrigued by the whole process of research." Lustick's intellectual journey is typical of many education researchers learning their trade at large, public universities. Like Lustick, many students come to such programs as former practitioners, says David F. Labaree, a Stanford University professor who is writing a book on education schools.

Reports on views of researchers in some U.S. states about consequences of student test scores and their impact on students. Opinion held by researchers from Arizona State University in Tempe about the issue; Speculation about the effectiveness of high school exit exams in increasing academic achievements; Comments of researchers from Stanford University in California regarding benefits of raising test scores.

Reports that a panel of scholars from education and other fields was scheduled to call for a national campaign to close the achievement gap that separates students of different race. Race of students that remain underrepresented among the best and brightest students in the United States; Conclusion of a report from the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement; Factors that play a role in perpetuating the gap that separates racial and ethnic groups.

The article reports on the effort of schools to combat drug abuse in the U.S. Cheerleaders and athletes at the Phineas Banning High School in Los Angeles, California are required to undergo drug testing. Hawkins school officials are requiring drug tests for students involved in any extracurricular activities.

The article presents information on an educational experiment conducted at Matthew Henson Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland. Educators at the school placed these Pupils in the class because they felt the boys needed the influence of a positive male role model-to keep them from ending up like so many of the young men in this West Baltimore. Though highly controversial, the notion of separating out black males for special attention in school is not new. The idea has gained greater currency this school year, however, as a growing number of urban school districts have moved to create special academies or schools tailored to black or Hispanic male students.

The article reports that students and educators of the U.S. are taking crash courses related to the Persian Gulf. This is one of the effects of a possible war between the U.S. and Iraq. This was noted in many schools including those in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Chicago. In New York City, students of many public and private high schools decided to conduct an anti-war demonstration.

The article reports on the efforts of school officials in Cabell County, West Virginia to develop an AIDS policy that would protect the classroom and the identity of an afflicted child. It discusses the debate over how to handle students with AIDS. Assistant superintendent Herbert Varney comments on the public's right to know and the individual's right to privacy.

The article focuses on the findings of a research regarding the role of class size in proper education of students. The research conducted by Douglas Ready, an academician reveals that the result of reducing class size varies with the contexts in which they are based. Ready compares the varying effects of class-size reduction in several states in the U.S., including California, and Florida. He concludes that students from poor families are likelier to benefit from smaller classes.

The article reports that according to researchers, students who will leave school without graduating send predictable signals to the community. The researchers observe that students' sudden decision for dropout is not caused by a single factor. It has been found out that test scores and poor grades are significant and compatible part of the mix. They are not certainly the only factors of which affect the student dropout. It has been found out that being retained between the 1st and 8th grades makes a student four times more likely to drop out than a schoolmate who was never withheld.

The article discusses the landmark Coleman Report would show if the numbers were reanalyzed using more sophisticated statistical techniques. According to Geoffrey D. Borman, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the results would be markedly different. Borman got the idea to reanalyze the report's findings when he began work as an associate research scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Contrary to the findings of the original report, Borman concluded that school factors matter a lot in determining how students fare academically. The researchers for the reanalysis found they could attribute up to 40 percent of the variation in achievement differences between students to such factors, rather than to differences in students' family backgrounds, such as how educated their parents were or how many books were in their homes.

The article reports on the commendable efforts of the researchers in New Zealand to narrow achievement gap among Maori students. In an effort to erase such disparities, a group of New Zealand researchers decided to seek solutions from Maori students themselves. The stories they got back led to a long-term research project that is starting to produce notable achievement gains for Maori and non-Maori students alike. These efforts led to the creation of preschool programs aimed at immersing Maori children in their native tongue and cultural traditions at an early age.

The article presents information on the issue of Advanced Placement (AP) courses in the United States. AP courses in 20 different subjects are getting popularity. Amid fears that America is falling behind the rest of the world in those subjects, President George W. Bush has called for tripling the number of students who take AP math and science exams. The proposal stems from studies showing that the United States' AP calculus students rank first in the world. But another study doubts on whether AP is the solution to the problem of academic gap.

The article reports on a research study conducted by researcher Douglas J. Mac Iver and his colleagues which reveals that Philadelphia students attending public middle schools managed by outside groups donot outscore other schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The study was released at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, a Washington-based group representing 25,000 scholars. The findings are important because they come as policymakers are increasingly turning to outside groups to manage troubled public schools. Paul G. Vallas, the chief executive officer of the Philadelphia district, voiced support for the performance of schools run by outside providers.

The article cites a study conducted by researcher Dan D. Goldhaber which reveals that students whose teachers score high on state licensing exams learn more mathematics over the course of a school year than peers taught by teachers with low scores. The findings provide important evidence that teacher-licensing exams may be meeting their purpose in screening out ineffective teachers. Some experts argue for raising the bars that would-be teachers have to cross to enter the field, while others argue for creating alternative routes into the profession to make it easier for talented professionals from other fields to enter the classroom.

The article reports that the policymakers, researchers, and philanthropists in California announced plans for a $2.6 million research venture to examine the state's school finance and governance systems and recommend ways leaders can leverage their resources to improve student achievement.

The article focuses on a controversy related to the statistics shown for educational developments in the U.S. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education said that foreign students have accounted for an increasing proportion of graduate and undergraduate degrees awarded in the United States in science and engineering. A distinguished panel of scientists and business leaders said that contemporary warnings about the educational problem facing the U.S. economy are being met with some skepticism. China and India, with their many highly skilled but modestly paid workers, are viewed, in particular, as growing threats to the dominant economic status of the United States.

The article focuses on aspects of the Advanced Placement (AP) programs. A spate of new and not-yet-published studies on the program suggest that it may take more than increasing the numbers of students in AP classes and adding more teachers to produce measurable learning gains for young people. Operated by the New York City-based College Board, the Advanced Placement program offers a way for students to earn college credit for taking college-level courses in high school. Nationwide, more than 1.5 million students take one or more AP courses in 20 different subjects.

This article presents information on teacher training methods. In over five years of study, Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and his colleagues at the Stanford University-based foundation have identified pedagogies to characterize training programs for doctors, members of the clergy, engineers, and possibly nurses. When Mr. Shulman failed to find trademark practices for the preparation of teachers, he dropped education from the mix. Teacher education students can go to the archives, which are being collected on a Web site, to watch the work of teaching from start to finish, from hearing teachers discuss how they developed particular lesson plans, to watching those lessons being taught, to seeing the work students produced as a result.

This article reports that establishing a new, more equitable system of paying for schools was the dominant legislative issue in 2005 for the Show Me State. The new formula, approved in May, sets a minimum per-pupil funding level from all sources of $6,117. The plan attempts to shift Missouri away from a school funding system based largely on property wealth and tax levies to one that centers more on schools' actual costs. Lawmakers had hoped their action would stave off a legal challenge from districts across the state, which have long complained that the old system led to disparities. The new aid system is not intended to take effect until next year. Legislators said it would increase state aid to K-12 schools by nearly $1 billion over seven years.

This article presents information on a pair of recent reports, which suggests that high school graduation rates may be worse than they appear in the South and across the United States. The Education Trust report, released on June 23, 2005, contends that states in all regions of the country calculate graduation rates in ways that understate dropout problems. The report also criticizes states for setting low targets for improving graduation rates under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and the federal government for letting them does so. Falling graduation rates in many Southern states may threaten the region's progress in improving student test scores, access to preschool, and other advances.

The article informs that two years ago, a pair of Stanford University researchers published a study suggesting that students' math scores were rising faster in states that had put stronger pressure on schools and students to raise academic achievement than existed in states with weaker school accountability programs. But last week, the researchers presented new findings suggesting that, over the long run, the achievement picture for those states may be a bit more complicated. For their new study, researchers Martin Carnoy and Susanna Loeb tracked students in all 50 states over a longer period of time and added data from federal tests in reading as well as math.

This article focuses on researchers comparing Florida testing, NCLB and critics comparing Pan study. Student test scores rose faster under Florida's high-stakes testing program than they did under the federal program that was partly modeled after it, a study concludes. The study, which was presented by Harvard University researchers at a British economics conference compares academic gains Florida elementary school students made in one year under the state's A+ Accountability Plan with those that came a year later as requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act kicked in across the state.

This article focuses on an international study, which suggests that rigid tracking of students into different classes by their academic ability provides little or no payoff for improving a nation's overall academic achievement. This fact was revealed in a report published online by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The article reports that amid a sea of teenagers in baggy pants, denim jackets, and white T-shirts, it is easy to pick out the students from Baltimore Talent Development High School. What really sets them apart, though, are the words underneath the school name. They read: "A Partnership with Johns Hopkins University." For most universities, running a public school is as foreign an enterprise as operating a gas station. For Johns Hopkins, the attraction in getting more deeply involved in school operations was a chance to help shape a school from scratch and use it to try out its own nationally known program for educational improvement.

This article focuses on a new federal study, drawing on data from five states, and found that the charter school students there were less likely to meet state achievement targets than children in regular public schools. The study also found that charter schools, across the nation, were increasingly more likely to serve minority and low-income students than traditional public schools. However, they were less likely to serve students in special education. Part of a broad examination of charter schools called for by Congress in 1998, the study is at least the fourth report this fall to stoke a growing national debate over whether such schools on the whole improve achievement.

This article reports that an annual state-by-state report card issued last week by the American Legislative Exchange Council attempts to make the case that more money, more teachers, and other educational "inputs" may not translate to bigger learning gains for students. The new report is the 11th by the council, a Washington-based group that advocates free enterprise and limited government growth. The report notes, for instance, that of the 10 states that increased their per-pupil expenditures the most over the past decade, only two, New Hampshire and Vermont, rank in the top 10 in terms of their students' overall academic achievement.

This article focuses on a report by a group of experts on gifted education that makes an impassioned plea for schools to allow exceptionally bright children to skip grades, start school early, or take other steps to push ahead their learning. They range from relatively rare practices, such as grade skipping, to more popular strategies such as Advanced Placement courses for high school students. Speaking for regular educators, Paul D. Houston, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, based in Arlington, said the report's perception of the situation may be fairly accurate. In the federal education law's quest to raise the achievement levels of the nation's lowest-performing students, the law ignores the needs of top academic performers.

A national report suggesting that charter school students lag behind their counterparts in regular public schools touched off a late summer tempest among proponents and critics of charter schools. Enrolling 800,000 plus children in 38 states, charter schools are public schools that operate outside bounds of school district authority— often in exchange for guarantees of improved academic achievement. They found that 4th graders attending charter schools performed about half a year behind students in other public schools in reading and mathematics.

A method known as "weighted school funding" has reduced financial inequities among public schools in Houston and Cincinnati, according to a report by researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle. Districts traditionally allocate money to schools based on total enrollment rather than the specific needs of students, the study notes. Under weighted funding plans, schools get more money for students who cost more to educate, such as those with disabilities, in poverty or with limited English proficiency. One historically well financed school in Houston lost 34 percent of its overall budget.

A new study suggests that another way to spur students to give more complex thought to social issues may be simply to involve them in discussions with students of another race. Published this month in the journal "Psychological Science," the study is based on an experiment involving 357 students on three university campuses. It found that White students wrote in greater complexity about social issues after taking part in small discussion groups that included at least one African American student, more so, at least, than when these discussions occurred in all White groups.

The article presents information related to the feeling of insecurity by the adolescents in the schools of the U.S. The nation's middle schools have far to go to dispel their reputations as an educational "Bermuda Triangle," as indicated according to a report released last week in a prestigious journal. Researchers from the RAND Corp. portray the middle school years, typically spanning grades 6-8, as a time when American adolescents feel unsafe, socially isolated and academically unchallenged.

This article presents information on the meeting of Campbell Collaboration, an international research group, which was held in the U.S. as of February 25, 2004. More than 250 practitioners and researchers from 16-plus countries came to the U.S. to hear about studies on teenage-pregnancy prevention, justice and anti-crime programs, peer-assisted learning, block scheduling, after-school programs and other interventions. The study of Susan Goerlich Zief, a doctoral student at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania talked about after-school programs and focused only on randomized controlled trials. Researchers concluded that after-school programs may be a wash when it comes to improving students' grades or reducing the number of hours they spend unsupervised.

This article focuses on narrowing the racial and ethnic gaps in achievement among students of schools in the U.S. Based on data collected from 32 schools in the San Francisco Bay area, the study by the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative is unusual because it compares schools that are shrinking the achievement gaps separating white and Asian-American students from their lower-scoring black or Latino peers with schools that are not. Most studies of gap closing schools so far have dwelled on the success stories.