The Washington, DC-based National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) released a stirring report this May entitled “What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready? The English and Mathematics Required of First Year Community College Students.” The two-year study investigated seven rural, urban and suburban community colleges in different states with student populations ranging from 3,000 to 30,000 in order to determine [...]
Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed in 2001, standardized tests have been a harsh reality for every public school district in the country. The tests are now a national requirement in order to receive federal school funding. They are meant to work toward closing the achievement gap by ensuring high-quality education for all students and providing yearly progress reports. In some [...]
Bedtime stories aren’t just a relaxing way to fall asleep—reading to children actually helps them with literary comprehension in the future. Now, if you bring that same interactive reading style into the classroom, the results are equally impressive. Peer tutoring, or paired reading, has shown to be a very helpful teaching activity in both elementary and upper-level classrooms. During peer tutoring, the teacher [...]
If you’re not a mystery lover or a shelf browser who gives new authors a try, would you purchase a debut mystery novel from an author named Robert Galbraith? Would you even pick it up to browse? What if it turned out that this new author, supposedly a former member of the Royal Military Police, was actually the beloved J. K. Rowling? In [...]
This May the University of Rochester’s translation database Three Percent announced that 413 translated works of fiction and poetry were released in the United States in 2012, an increase from 370 titles the year before. While these small numbers may seem like a drop in the pond compared to the behemoth of American publishing, they point to a growing market for translated, international trade books. This burgeoning sector [...]
Though it was years ago, I still vividly remember my third-grade cursive lessons. They were taught once per day, for an hour or so, and involved wide books full of examples and empty lines for tedious repetitions. After third grade, the decision was up to us: print or cursive, as long as it was legible. While I chose to keep a cursive hybrid, [...]
This past June, Barnes & Noble released its financial report for the fiscal year, and things are not looking particularly bright and sunny for the national book chain. The bookseller reported a net loss of $154.8 million, more than double last year’s net loss. Total sales fell 4.1 percent to $6.84 billion. Although Barnes & Noble’s mainstays such as print books, toys and games have [...]
Summer: time to kick back, put those textbooks away, and push school out of mind. But research has shown that this education avoidance contributes to the loss of previously learned knowledge in students, essentially leaving them unprepared for the upcoming school year. How to combat this brain drain malady? Get online—American Library Association’s (ALA) Great Websites for Kids has one such solution. Since its establishment by the Association [...]
One of the most anticipated moments in a young adult’s life is getting his or her driver’s license. Most teenagers equate having a license with becoming an adult, making it a rite of passage. So if taking drivers’ education classes and tests to get one’s license already seem like a hassle, what if there were also questions on the test to assess financial [...]
In a twenty-first-century economic landscape dependent upon consumer spending yet still feeling the effects of the Great Recession, people, businesses and the government have been drumming up ways to get the nation back on track. While Congress debates deficit spending, the costs of immigration reform, more taxes and tax cuts, one way to encourage consumer spending and thereby spur the economy is simply [...]