EDUCATION

Altruism Meets a Weak Job Market
Public-service agencies like Teach for America are seeing a surge in applications from college graduates amid a worsening job market. There's another impulse behind this generation's embrace of nontraditional postgraduate employment: a simple desire to change the world. Read more

Financial Security for College Grads
Parents and students alike aren't only stressed about how they're going to pay for college. They want to know what the student should be doing now to make sure they can afford to pay the bills after college, writes Terri Cullen. Read more

New SAT is A) Better, B) Same, C) Longer?
The writing section added to the SAT in 2005 has done very little to improve the exam's overall ability to predict how students will do in college, according to research released by the test's owner. Read more

Can a Test Steer You to the Ideal Career?
Vendors of career tests, which assess one's interests and abilities and link them with potential occupations, see a rising demand for them. But they're only a starting point for the tough self-exploration needed to find or revitalize one's livelihood. Read more

High School's Worst Year?

The increasing competitiveness of college admissions—fueled by a demographic surge in the number of teenagers—has made junior year a crucible of academic pressure for many students aiming for elite colleges. How 11th grade became such a grind. Read more

Yellow Buses Put Schools in the Red
School administrators nationwide are budgeting rising fuel costs for buses into the school year. But the price of running these vehicles has a direct impact beyond the bus, including cutbacks on ordering new textbooks. Read more

Learning (and Succeeding) on Jump Street
In Washington, D.C., a school in a tough neighborhood
demands much and gets much from students. Read more

Candidates Split on Education
Obama attacked as a failure the No Child Left Behind law, a key plank of McCain's education platform. Read more

School Districts Get Tough
As Home Foreclosures Rise
Some school districts, hoping to control costs and prevent overcrowding, are intensifying efforts to make sure students actually live where they are registered. One reason for the crackdown is the rise in home foreclosures, which may prod parents into faking addresses to keep their children at their current schools, some in the field say. Read more

No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite
Critics of the federal No Child Left Behind law, including Democratic presidential candidates vowing to overhaul or end it, have often accused it of being too harsh. It punishes weak schools instead of supporting them, as Sen. Barack Obama puts it. But when it comes to the worst-performing schools, the 2001 law hasn't shown much bite. Read more

How the Brain Learns to Read
Neuroscientists studying reading disorders have begun to wonder whether the actual character of the text itself may shape the brain. Studies suggest that schoolchildren who are dyslexic in one language may not be in another. Read more

Texas Mother Finds Meaning as Mentor
After Pat Rosenberg's two daughters headed off to college, she found new purpose in mentoring a teenager who, by his own account, was drifting toward a life of crime in his tough inner-city neighborhood. Read more

Write Stuff Shown by More in Grades 8, 12
The nation's eighth- and 12th-graders are making solid gains in writing, but the proportion performing at the highest levels has barely budged, according to the results of a key national achievement test. Read more .............................................................................................................................................................

PERSONAL FINANCE
Setting Priorities: Our Money, Our Selves
One of the messages all parents send to their kids -- sometimes on purpose, sometimes blindly -- is about personal priorities. And one of the main ways we do it is through money. How we spend money, save money and give away money say a lot about who we are, and who we want our children to be. Read more

When Two Incomes Become One
With a second child on the way, a father in D.C. decides to take a career break and slash the family budget. He explains how he's making it work.. Read more
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BOOKS

Can U Read Kant?
To Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, the present is a good time to be young only if you don't mind a tendency toward empty-headedness. In "The Dumbest Generation," he argues that cultural and technological forces, far from opening up an exciting new world of learning and thinking, have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy. Read more

Politics May Never Be the Same
In "Millennial Makeover," Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais believe that a young generation could spark a political realignment, which may have already revolutionized campaign and fund-raising techniques for years to come. Read more
Excerpt

A Graphic Novelist's Personal Portrait
Toufic El Rassi's graphic novel "Arab in America" tackles fear, anger and history in the personal portrait of daily life for someone born in Lebanon and raised in the U.S. Read more
Arab in America: See more pages from the book. PDF