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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 admissionsfueled by a demographic surge in the number of teenagershas
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
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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

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