Alabama Plan Brings Out Cry of Resegregation
SAM DILLON, NT Times
After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools.

Fewer Sodas in School Vending Machines
AP, Education Week
U.S. school vending machines are stocked with fewer high-calorie soft drinks today because some states have banned the sale of sodas on campus and the beverage industry is phasing in healthier drinks, according to an industry report.

Study: Low, High Fliers Gain Less Under NCLB
Debra Viadero, Education Week
A new study of Chicago students suggests that the federal No Child Left Behind Act may indeed be leaving behind students at the far ends of the academic-ability spectrum— the least able students and those who are gifted.

Support Grows for Teacher Bonuses
Michael Alison Chandler, The Washington Post
A movement gaining momentum in Congress and some school systems in the Washington region and beyond would boost pay for exceptional teachers in high-poverty schools, a departure from salary schedules based on seniority and professional degrees that have kept pay in lockstep for decades.

Expanding higher education can boost job chances for early school-leavers too
OECD
More widespread university education means more prosperous economies and provides rich rewards in the labour market for those who graduate.  Furthermore, the job prospects for the less well qualified do not appear to be damaged by the expansion of higher education and may even be improved, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance.

College students not up to speed on U.S. history
DAVE NEWBART, Chicago Sun-Times
When it comes to U.S. history, college students get failing grades.So says a survey that asked students at 50 schools around the country to answer 60 questions about American civics. On average, seniors knew just over half of the correct answers, according to the report, "Failing Our Students, Failing America,'' by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

What about Larry?
David E. Bernstein, LA Times
The regents had invited Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University, to be the keynote speaker at a dinner tonight in Sacramento. They then uninvited him last week after some UC faculty protested that "inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the university community and to the people of California."

The Public (Non-Salary) Advantage
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
When it comes to faculty salaries, there’s little doubt that public higher education is at a real disadvantage these days. Private institutions pay more. According to the most recent salary data from the American Association of University Professors, private pay is more in all sectors of higher education. At doctoral universities, the average for assistant professors at privates is more than the average for associate professors at publics. Full professors at doctoral institutions that are private earn, on average, $30,000 more than those at publics. At baccalaureate institutions, the gap is about $14,000.

 Venezuela leader's school warning
James Ingham, BBC News
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has threatened the country's private schools with closure unless they adopt the government's socialist ideology.

Can Technology Save Africa?
Alexandra Polier, Newsweek
As Africa strives to pull itself out of grinding poverty, countries are looking to technology to give them a leg up in the race for quality education.

English village' opens in Taiwan
Caroline Gluck, BBC News
Every day, 120 students travel by school bus to the Happy English Village in Taoyuan county - about an hour from the capital, Taipei, for English immersion classes. It has been billed as Taiwan's first English language "village" - and it has just opened for business.

Have biz school, will travel
Colin Campbell, Macleans Canada Canada has had its share of nasty diplomatic skirmishes with Iran, from the murder of Iranian-Canadian Zahra Kazemi to the imprisonment of former University of Toronto professor Ramin Jahanbegloo. Yet ugly as those incidents were, they haven't altogether severed Canadian-Iranian relations: consider Carleton University's M.B.A. in Iran program, which offers Iranian students Master of Business Administration degrees in partnership with a university on Iran's Qeshm Island, in the Persian Gulf.

Grit plan for full-day kindergarten praised
Pauline Tam, The Ottawa Citizen
The Ontario Liberals are earning praise for their promise to extend kindergarten to a full day, but drawing fire for a pledge to give $300 a year to all university and college undergraduates.

Teacher failures spell student trouble
Justine Ferrari, The Australian TEENAGERS could be forgiven for misspelling words such as subterranean and miscellaneous, but what about primary school teachers? A spelling test of about 40 Victorian teachers, conducted in April this year, provides no grounds for confidence. Not one of the teachers could correctly spell all 11 words, ranging in difficulty from substitute to adolescence.

Primary school 'sex club' probe over
AAP, The Sydney Morning Herald
Victorian education officials say no further action will be taken against a six-year-old boy accused of running a "sex club" at a Melbourne primary school.

Hospital nurse training 'a waste'
Brendan O'Keefe and Catherine Armitage, The Australian
UNIVERSITIES and health professionals have attacked the federal Government's move to re-introduce hospital-based training for more than 500 nurses, saying it is a waste of money that will further crowd hospital wards.

Degree pedal to the metal
Elizabeth Gosch, The Australian
From next year, engineering students at Murdoch will be able to complete their degree in three calendar years rather than four as the university responds to the global shortage of engineers, largely driven by the West Australian resources boom.

Education at a Glance 2007
The 2007 edition of Education at a Glance enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance. It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems. The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate and at the results achieved. The latter includes indicators on a wide range of outcomes, from comparisons of student’s performance in key subject areas to the impact of education on earnings and on adults’ chances of employment.

Finance 2006 - Financial Reports of Higher Education Providers
Contains financial information including financial performance, financial position and cash flows for higher education providers derived from Australian institutions financial statements for the period ending 31 December 2006.

The Educational Policy Institute is an international non-profit think tank dedicated to the study of educational opportunity. The Week in Review is a weekly publication that highlights the top news stories, reports and statistics related to academic preparation and access and success in the US, Canada, and beyond. The publication also features a commentary written by either President Watson Scott Swail, EdD or Vice-President Alex Usher.

To submit comments, news releases, or submissions, please email Dr. Watson Scott Swail at wswail@educationalpolicy.org or call (757) 430-2200.