Project Tomorrow, a non-profit known for its Speak Up National Research Project, and Blackboard have collaborated on a new report related to pre-service teacher education. Entitled “Learning in the 21st Century: Digital Experiences and Expectations of Tomorrow’s Teachers, this document offers key findings that should guide teacher preparation programs. As noted on the Project Tomorrow web site, “Tomorrow’s teachers may have the keys to finally unlock the potential of technology…

For the past 10 years, the New Media Consortium has been the global leader in documenting new and emerging trends for higher education, K12 institutions, and museums. Through a series of reports generated by the NMC and international advisory boards of thought leaders,  tools and trends are identified in across three adoption benchmarks,  or horizons.  For this year’s higher education report issued in conjunction with Educause, six emerging technologies are…

This First Look report from the National Center for Education Statistics presents the number of high school completers, the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), and the dropout data for grades 9-12 for U.S. public schools in school year 2009-10. Selected findings include an AFGR of 78.2%, a percentage point or greater increase in the AFGR for 38 states.

This Delta Cost Project brief highlights recent trends in athletic and academic spending at U.S. public Division I colleges and universities between 2005 and 2010, which show, for example, that athletic departments spend far more per athlete than institutions spend to educate the average student—typically three to six times as much. In addition, while successful athletic performance does appear to boost applications at winning colleges and universities, the effects usually…

Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) is the result of a feasibility study from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) designed to assess the possibility of developing international measures of learning outcomes in higher ed. Volume one in a series, this report covers measurement design and implementation.

This publication from the National Center for Education Statistics (U.S.) provides projections for key education data on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2021. For the 50 states and the…

This WestEd report describes the importance of acceleration, explains how it raises completion rates for community colleges, and highlights the key principles of successful acceleration models, including: Helping students avoid developmental education whenever possible Revising the developmental education curriculum to shorten the sequence, align it with transfer-level and career technical coursework, and make it more rigorous  Providing additional student supports that are integrated with coursework Providing remediation simultaneously with courses…

This WestEd report outlines some of the major issues that community colleges are discussing or experimenting with that are related to the creation of more structured student pathways toward degree completion, including: Mandating intake processes that provide education and career counseling, inform students about programs that are related to their interests, and help students explore and develop education goals, career goals, and a degree plan Balancing flexibility and prescription in…