Melbourne (Australia) independent schools often advertize their high academic standards, quality curriculum, and competent and caring teaching staff. American public schools should highlight their own strengths by aggressively marketing their college-bound to vocational curricula, their expert and caring faculty, and their disciplined environment.…

Summarizes the data on math and science preparation and the results of the ACT Mathematics and Science Reasoning test for the nation's public high school graduating class of 1994. Highlights how the probability of student success in university science and math courses is affected. A rigorous high school program remains a significant precondition…

Administrators should offer preparatory courses for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Testing Program (ACT) because most students are not well prepared to take college entrance exams. Principals can improve a high school's test-prep program by ensuring teachers' familiarity with the tests and choosing a test…

Discusses Scottish secondary curriculum, focusing on the "Scottish Higher" college preparatory classes and Scottish Vocational Education Council (SCOTVEC) modules. The SCOTVEC modules lead to a vocationally oriented qualification called the National Certificate, rather than the academically oriented Highers credentials. Issues include…

Given only correlation coefficient, one cannot infer causality. This lesson has been lost on Secretary of Education Richard Riley, who recently intoned that "taking rigorous mathematics courses ... early in secondary schools is a gateway to college and future employment." Students taking such classes have probably already been identified…

The sometimes poor performance of Career and Technical Education (CTE) concentrators on a state-mandated proficiency test is a major concern of CTE educators. This study examined whether (a) there are performance differences on state-mandated 11th-grade math and reading tests between CTE and non-CTE students with similar proficiency scores in the…

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…

An ever-increasing proportion of high school students in the United States today aspire to graduate from college. Yet statistics indicate that the percentage of college students receiving bachelor's degrees has remained relatively constant over the past 25 years, that it now takes on average 6 years to get a four-year college degree, and that…

This paper examines the broad concept of college readiness, the research on advanced placement courses in high schools, and recommends that a statewide effort is needed to increase college readiness, college acclimation, college persistence, and college graduation rates. This effort needs to include a shared vision and the inclusion of multiple…

This chapter examines recent attempts to promote students' transitions into postsecondary education. In particular, it focuses on the evolution of career and technical education (CTE) to promote student transition by coupling more rigorous academic preparation with CTE programs.

The purpose of this study was to examine the success of an alternate admission option for academically underprepared students. This study compared relevant enrollment, academic, and graduation data at various critical points in the academic careers of alternate admission option students with data from students who entered the college through…

The ability to handle proof is the focus of a number of well-documented complaints regarding students' difficulties in encountering degree-level mathematics. However, in addition to observing that proof is currently marginalised in the UK pre-university mathematics curriculum with a consequent skills deficit for the new undergraduate mathematics…

The performance of Hawaii's students on the College Entrance Examination Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was assessed in the course of a reanalysis of data presented in a 1985 article by E. B. Page and H. Feifs. Separate analyses were conducted on the verbal and math scores used as criterion variables. The predictor variables included the…

This study tested the hypothesis that the academic development services offered by the University of California (UC) through the Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP) result in more students completing the UC preparatory coursework, the first hurdle to being eligible to apply and be admitted to UC. The study analyzed the course-taking behavior of…

The Task Force on Enhancing Access for African-American Males was charged with the task of finding programs that were successful in enhancing opportunities for African American men to enroll in higher education. Using data from a variety of sources, the subcommittee on Programs of Excellence identified seven programs in Georgia and eight national…