Category: VOA Education Report

For years, the Catholic Church in America has struggled to find new clergy. The average age of priests and nuns is seventy and rising. But some Catholic orders are having more success than others. The Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia are mainly a teaching order. They are based at a convent in Nashville, Tennessee. And …

Songs teach language. Consider a song like “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega. An American teaching English overseas once told us that students love that song.Recently we asked people on the Special English Facebook page to suggest other songs that English learners might like. Noemi Nito wrote: I’m one of those English students who love “Tom’s …

Today we remember a man who was considered one of the best teachers in the United States. Jaime Alfonso Escalante was born in nineteen thirty in La Paz, Bolivia. Both his parents were teachers. He taught math and science in his home country for twelve years. In the nineteen sixties, Jaime Escalante and his wife …

In recent years, Bill Gates has given financial support to improve American education. In two thousand nine, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Measures of Effective Teaching project. The project tests new ways to recognize what makes a good teacher. Its goal is to help educators and policymakers identify and support good teaching.The …

The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is a two-hour test that compares the performance of fifteen-year-olds. In the latest test, the countries with the best readers were South Korea and Finland. But students in Shanghai, China, scored the highest of all in reading, mathematics and science. The next strongest results were in Hong …

Each year, George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, presents a jazz concert. Around one thousand two hundred people attended this year’s concert in October. Yet when the program first started, the student musicians played to an almost empty theater. Ed Weiner was one of the few people in the audience when the school held the …

Most American schools have boys and girls in the same classroom. But a public high school in the small, rural town of Boonsboro, Maryland, offers a special program. Top students in the ninth and tenth grades can attend single-sex classes for math, science, English and social studies. The aim is to help teenagers keep their …

Americans celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday on November twenty-fifth. They gathered with family and friends to share a meal. Some celebrated the holiday by telling what they are most thankful for. This holiday season, a group of student-athletes in Woodburn, Oregon has given its community something to be thankful for. The Woodburn High School boys soccer …

In November, the Institute of International Education in New York published its yearly report on international students in the United States. The report says more than six hundred ninety thousand attended American colleges and universities during the last academic year. That number was a record high. It was an increase of three percent from the …

Twenty-five-year-old Rick Aggeler says he discovered early in life that music is magic. He says: “Music made me feel like anything was possible.”At the age of seven, a medical condition required him to have a brain operation. It also prevented him from playing sports. So his mother suggested that he learn to play drums instead.He …

On November second, the United States held congressional and state elections in a year defined by voter dissatisfaction. Democrats tried to excite their party’s base of support in an effort to limit Republican gains. That base includes young people. Two years ago, two-thirds of voters under thirty voted for Barack Obama. The president urged them …

A program in the eastern United States invites young people into a prison to try to scare them away from prison. The goal is to teach them to avoid bad choices and bad influences that could put them behind bars for life. Students can take a tour of the prison, in school groups or by …

Michelle Rhee had never led a school system before she came to the public schools in Washington, D.C. in two thousand seven. By the end of the following year she was on the cover of Time. The magazine recognized her as a national leader in education reform. And now Ms. Rhee appears in the film …

Last week, we talked about the conflict between sleepy teenagers and early morning classes. Many people commented on our website and Facebook page. For example, Damla Ece in Turkey wrote: I agree with the idea of starting lessons later so teenagers can feel better in the morning. But sleeping more than seven hours can be …

Surveys of American teenagers find that about half of them do not get enough sleep on school nights. They get an average of sixty to ninety minutes less than experts say they need. One reason for this deficit is biology. Experts say teens are biologically programmed to go to sleep later and wake up later …

Americans talk a lot about illegal immigration but not as much about legal immigration. Legal immigrants who want to become citizens must learn English and show a knowledge of American history and government. They must also pay a fee and meet other requirements. Immigrants may take citizenship classes to help them prepare for the naturalization …

Next year, the Peace Corps will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Peace Corps volunteers are Americans who teach and work on projects in developing countries. The United States created the Peace Corps during the cold war with the Soviet Union. Today, technology has changed how the volunteers do their work and stay connected with friends and …

In the United States, about six out of ten students in graduate schools are women. The same is true of today’s young adults who already have a degree beyond college. As a result, the Census Bureau expects that more women than men will hold professions such as doctors, lawyers and professors. Men had faster growth …

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Education Report. No one likes to make mistakes. But a new study says organizations learn more from their failures than their successes, and keep that knowledge longer. One of the researchers was Vinit Desai, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. He worked …

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Education Report. Not everyone who teaches in a college or university is a professor. Many are instructors or lecturers. In fact, not even all professors are full professors. Many of them are assistant or associate professors or adjunct professors. So what do all of these different academic …