‘Welcome School’ Eases Post-Katrina Placements
Lesli A Maxwell, Education Week
The RSD opened the Welcome School on Nov. 5 in a large, beige building in an industrial section of central New Orleans that overlooks Interstate 10. Conceived as a program to offer students in 6th through 12th grades support services and placement in one of the 34 schools that the RSD is operating this school year, the school handled roughly 100 students in its first eight days. Some of them had just returned to the city, more than two years after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.

California Weighs Preschool ELL Standards
Mary Ann Zehr, Education Week
Proposal aims to better prepare English-learners at early classroom levels.

New York Grades Set Off Debate on Judging Schools
Elissa Gootman and Jennifer Medina, The New York Times
Not long after Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced plans last year to give grades of A through F to schools, principals at some of New York City’s coveted specialized high schools grew concerned. With the city looking to reward gains among the lowest-achieving students, how would the elite schools be judged?

Giving New Meaning to ‘Program for Parents’
Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
As two-year institutions have increasingly become a destination of choice for traditional age students, a small but growing number of the colleges have begun developing “parent” programs of a different sort: initiatives (of the type much more common at four-year colleges) to help the families of students both understand how to support their children, and draw boundaries so that students can make their way on their own.

Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department
Patricia Cohen, The New York Times
Psychoanalysis and its ideas about the unconscious mind have spread to every nook and cranny of the culture from Salinger to “South Park,” from Fellini to foreign policy. Yet if you want to learn about psychoanalysis at the nation’s top universities, one of the last places to look may be the psychology department.

New Study Calls for 'Paradigm Shift' in Social-Science Graduate Education
By Richard Byrne
Doctoral education in the social sciences requires a "paradigm shift" that takes into account significant changes in the job market and uncertain early career prospects, according to a new study that tracked the experiences of recent Ph.D.'s in six social-science disciplines.

Canada and India Discuss Closer Higher-Education Ties
Karen Birchard, The Chronicle of Higher Education
India could become the next China for Canadian international higher education, according to senior Canadian and Indian educators who met in a landmark forum here on Sunday.

Israel's Latest Conflict: Paying for Higher Education
Matthew Kalman, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Today Israel's higher-education system is in crisis, brought to a standstill twice this year alone by student and faculty strikes over tuition, salaries, and controversial government reform programs.

China to overtake US as top PSE player
BBC News
 One definition of global superpower might be the prestige and quality of a country's educational system. BBC news predicts that China will surpass the US and Britain, in the size and ranking of its institutions. China already has the largest PSE system in the world, awarding more university degrees than the US and India combined. University participation rates have surged from 10% of young people in 1999 to 21% in 2006, and Chinese PhD's have risen from just 5,000 a few years ago, to approaching 50,000. Three Chinese universities are ranked in the top 100 globally.

Make the CUT
Carleton University Press Release
"Make the CUT" (College University Transition) is a program offered by Carleton University and Algonquin College designed to help students with learning disabilities or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder make a successful transition into higher education.  The program is run collaboratively by centres for students with disabilities at both institutions and school boards in the Ottawa area.

Embattled principal leaves Bishop's
Aaron Derfel, The Montreal Gazette
Facing mounting pressure from students and faculty, Bishop's University principal Robert Poupart stepped down yesterday, a year and a half before the end of his term.

Nova Scotia to lower student loan interest
Joey Coleman and Erin Millar, Macleans.ca
The Nova Scotia government promised to reduce student loan interest by two per cent in a throne speech delivered Thursday.

Native dropout rate to cost economy billions, new study suggests
Chinta Puxley, The Globe and Mail
Canada stands to lose billions over the next decade in lost productivity and labour growth because almost one in two aboriginal youths doesn't graduate from high school, a study being released Monday suggests.

Canada Starts a 'Branding' Campaign to Help Universities Recruit More Foreign Students
Karen Birchard, The Chronicle of Higher Ed
Canada will soon have something the country's internationally-focused educators have long sought: a national marketing strategy to help them recruit more students from abroad.

Short cut to find vocation
Justine Ferrari, The Australian
STUDENTS failing to make the grade at school should be encouraged to leave for the workforce and undertake training on the job rather than struggle through an extra year or two in the classroom. Researcher with the Melbourne Institute and the Australian Council for Educational Research, Gary Marks, says a push for all students to complete Year 12 assumes all young people would be better off if they completed school.

Party heads back to class
The Sydney Morning Herald
Kevin Rudd’s first action as prime minister-elect yesterday was to send all Labor MPs back to school. He instructed all Labor MPs to visit at least two schools in their electorates over the next two days to gather ideas about how Labor could enact his plans for an "education revolution".

State-by-State Report Details U.S. Failings on Access and Degree Completion
National Center for Higher Education Management Systems
Most American states are falling behind other industrialized nations in terms of the proportion of their adults who hold a college degree, according to a state-by-state report being released today by several U.S. higher-education groups. And the gaps, the report says, are expected to widen.

GED® Testing Program Statistical Report
The GED Testing Service
Adults who take the General Educational Development Test, or GED, in states that require practice tests or other forms of preparation pass at higher rates than test takers in other states, according this new report.

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.