VOA慢速英语009.Education Report

VOA慢速英语009.Education Report 001.Some US Students Learn Mandarin With China's Help This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Some schools in the United States and other countries offer Chinese language classes with government support from China. (CLASSROOM SOUND) Saint Mary's School is a private college preparatory school in Medford, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest. CARLY IRVINE: "Wo jiao Carly." Carly Irvine is in her fourth year of learning Mandarin. CARLY IRVINE: "Since China and America are working so closely and our relationship is growing more and more, I think it will be very important in the future to know Chinese." Saint Mary's also teaches Spanish, German and Latin. It added Mandarin in two thousand five. Two years ago, it became the first school in the country to join the Confucius Classroom program. The program pays about half the costs of a teacher sent to a school in the United States. China's Education Ministry also provides books and other materials. Saint Mary's principal, Frank Phillips, says knowing Chinese will help students in a world where China is quickly gaining economic power. But he admits to concerns in his local community. FRANK PHILLIPS: "The question I always get is, 'Is this a gigantic propaganda move, is this an evil Communist plot on the part of China?' That's the number one kind of lingering Cold War suspicion about this program. From what I can detect, having been involved in it for two years, I see none of that." In fact, the program has won the support of his local representative in the state legislature. Dennis Richardson says he has concerns about human rights in China. But he is among several lawmakers who have been pushing for more Chinese language education in public schools in Oregon. DENNIS RICHARDSON: "We can do more good setting an example and being friends and business associates than we can by ostracizing them." Zheng Ling, a teacher at Saint Mary's, came from China in two thousand eight. ZHENG LING: "People do not know much about China, especially the latest development. So I think this is a chance for them to know more about China, what China is really like. It's quite different from what it was twenty years ago." The Confucius Classroom program is in about forty countries, including more than fifty American schools and universities. A recent report said more schools in the United States are teaching Chinese and Arabic, although the numbers are still low. But it said foreign language teaching in public elementary and middle schools dropped sharply in recent years. Fewer schools teach French, German, Russian or Japanese. There are language teacher shortages. But some schools say a federal law that only measures progress in math and reading has hurt language teaching. The federal government paid for the survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics. 002.Education Report - Students' Writing and the Web: Motivator or OMG? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Web browsers first appeared on computers in the early nineteen nineties. Since then, the Internet has greatly changed the way people communicate. But some teachers think the changes are not all for the better. Eleanor Johnson is an English professor at Columbia University in New York. ELEANOR JOHNSON: "I think that text messaging has made students believe that it's far more acceptable than it actually is to just make screamingly atrocious spelling and grammatical errors." She says her students over the past several years have increasingly used less formal English in their writing. She says words and phrases like "guy" and "you know" now appear in research papers. And she now has to talk about another problem in class, she says -- incorrect word use. For example, a student says "preclude" instead of "precede" when talking about one event coming before another. It sounds like precede but it means prevent. Professor Johnson suspects a strong link between the rise of instant and casual communication online and an increase in writing mistakes. But she admits there may not be much scientific evidence, at least not yet. David Crystal is a British linguist who has written more than one hundred books, including the book "Language and the Internet." He says the actively changing nature of the Internet makes it difficult to stay current in studying its effects. But he believes its influence on language is small. DAVID CRYSTAL: "The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven't existed in the past." Erin Jansen is founder of Netlingo, an online dictionary of Internet and text messaging terms. She says the new technology has not changed existing language but has greatly added to the vocabulary. "Basically it's a freedom of expression," she says. And what about teachers who find these new kinds of mistakes in spelling and grammar in their students' work. What is her message to them? ERIN JANSEN: "I always advocate, don't get angry or upset about that, get creative. If it's helping the kids write more or communicate more in their first draft, that's great. That's what teachers and educators want, is to get kids communicating." But Erin Jansen and David Crystal agree with Eleanor Johnson on at least one thing. Teachers need to make sure students understand the uses and rules of language. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Lawan Davis, with reporting by Rachel Abrams. We want to know what you have to say about the effects of the Internet on language and writing. Post your comments at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Bob Doughty. 003. Getting Schools Not Just to Go Green but Teach It, Too This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Charter schools operate with public money but without many of the rules that govern traditional public schools. In the United States the rules for charter schools differ from state to state. But in general these schools have greater freedom to decide what to teach and how to teach it. A charter school might be independent or connected to the local public school system. It might be started by teachers, parents, community groups or, in some cases, a profit-making business. The "charter" is a performance contract. It establishes the goals of the school and other details like how student performance will be measured. Forty-seven million students attend traditional public schools. But more than a million students attend charter schools. And now a group of charter schools have formed the Green Charter Schools Network. The idea is to have environmentally friendly school buildings but to also go further than that. The schools teach students to become involved in community issues that affect them and the environment. For example, young children grow crops in a school garden and learn about healthy eating. Older students help recycle waste from the cafeteria. And local schools share what they grow in community gardens with people in need. Jim McGrath is president of the Green Charter Schools Network. He says there are about two hundred "green" charter schools across the United States. He says the plan is to also include traditional public schools as well as private schools. JIM McGRATH: "The most important thing is that every one of us -- every child, every adult -- has a responsibility that their action, every action we make has an effect on the earth that we live in. And that our natural resources are not inexhaustible. And that if we want a positive earth for future generations, we all need to make commitments to be change agents so that we don't destruct our natural resources." The Green Charter Schools Network holds its first national conference this October in Minnesota. It will include companies and organizations like Waste Management and the United States Green Building Council. Supporters of green schools say their goal is to expand the movement across the country. 004.A Military Education at West Point This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Today we answer a question from Brazil. Claudio Messias Gentil wants to know about the United States Military Academy at West Point. West Point is a college for future Army officers. It has more than four thousand students, called cadets. The school is located about eighty kilometers north of New York City. West Point is the oldest continuously occupied military post in the United States. General George Washington built a fort there during the Revolutionary War to protect the Hudson River from the British. He moved his headquarters to West Point in seventeen seventy-nine in the middle of the war. In eighteen hundred and two, President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation to establish the military academy. The education centered on civil engineering. West Point graduates designed many roads, bridges, harbors and railways for the young nation. Today, math and science are still a large part of the education. But cadets can choose from almost fifty areas of study. If cadets major in the humanities, they must have an engineering minor. Not all the young men and women at West Point are American. This year, fifty-eight are from other countries. Up to sixty cadets can be international students. International students are nominated by their governments. They must satisfy physical and educational requirements and do well on the Test of English as a Foreign Language. After graduation, they return home to serve in their nation's armed forces. Other services besides the Army also accept foreign students at their academies. Major Joe Sowers, a West Point public affairs officer, says information is available through American embassies. He says the presence of international students at West Point serves a purpose for the Army. JOE SOWERS: "Cultural understanding, cultural awareness is essential for a modern-day officer. Now because we have cadets from Panama and cadets from African countries, that doesn't necessarily increase your knowledge on how to interact in Iraq or Afghanistan. At least not specifics, anyway. But you've begun the process of understanding that the world is bigger than your hometown and West Point and the United States of America. But I think the big payoff is at the individual cadet level, establishing relationships with those who come from much, much different backgrounds." 005. John Dewey, 1859-1952: Educator and 'America's Philosopher' This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We have a question from China. Feng Tianqiang says "I want to know something about John Dewey." John Dewey was an influential thinker and educator. The New York Times once called him "America's philosopher." Larry Hickman is director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He was not surprised that the question came from China. LARRY HICKMAN: "I just returned from two weeks of meetings in Beijing in December. And among the conversations I had with my Chinese colleagues was the very close relationship between Dewey's ideas and those of Confucius. I also worked with a group of lay Buddhists who like Dewey's work very much because it is very comfortable with some of the ideas of Mahayana Buddhism." Dewey described his ideas in books including "Democracy and Education," "The School and Society" and "How We Think." LARRY HICKMAN: "Dewey was perhaps the best known philosopher, educator and public intellectual of the twentieth century. He was active in many fields, including education, philosophy, psychology and also humanistic and humanitarian affairs. He was an important influence in the founding of the American Association of University Professors and the American Civil Liberties Union." He was also influential in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, though he himself was white. John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, in eighteen fifty-nine. He was influenced by the scientific work of Charles Darwin. He was also influenced by the work done with immigrant English learners in Chicago by Jane Addams. She was a social worker and the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And Dewey was influenced by observing his own children. At the University of Chicago, he founded the Laboratory School. Chemistry courses have labs. Why not a place to experiment with education? But Dewey would likely have disagreed with many current practices in American education, like the wide use of standardized testing. LARRY HICKMAN: "He thought that testing had its place, but that testing should be more like medical tests. That is, they should be testing for individual needs, interests, abilities, and not to compare one student to another. As Dewey put it, the relation of the abilities of one student to another is none of the teacher's business." John Dewey died in nineteen fifty-two. But Dewey scholar Larry Hickman says his ideas are still being taught in education schools. In fact, last year was his one hundred fiftieth birthday, so it was a busy year for Dewey studies. Celebrations took place not only in the United States, but also at two universities in Beijing and in Croatia, Italy and Poland. 006. Letting Religion Into the Classroom, but Setting Limits This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Public schools in the United States have to be neutral about religion, even though they close for holidays like Christmas. The Constitution separates religion from government. Researcher Charles Haynes explains what it says. CHARLES HAYNES: "'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... ' Those sixteen words provide the framework for how we deal with religion in our public schools." Those words are part of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression and other rights. Charles Haynes is a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a group that studies free expression issues. In the last generation or so, different groups have encouraged public schools to celebrate diversity and cultural differences. At the same time, courts have ruled against any publicly supported celebrations of one religion over another. Charles Haynes thinks the schools are generally doing a good job. CHARLES HAYNES: "So public schools now I think understand that their role is to expose students to learning about different religions in a fair way, an objective way. Their role is to protect the religious liberty rights of students; if they want to express their faith, they may do so. But school officials under the First Amendment may not take sides in religion." Hollie Jones teaches six year olds at a public school in Loudon County, Virginia. Each December, she has her students make posters about their own celebrations at home and present them to the class. The posters are discussed and then shown on the walls at the school. And what celebrations have been represented? HOLLIE JONES: "Four years looking back, we've had some students will do Hanukkah, some Kwanzaa, some Christmas. Some we've had in the past do the Chinese New Year. This year I had a student whose father was from Iceland, and he did the Icelandic Elf School, and talked about all the different elves that are represented and their names and their meanings." Some children come from families with more than one religion. HOLLIE JONES: " I have had many students who come from a blended culture family who perhaps the mother celebrated Hanukkah and the father celebrated a different holiday, and so they really do both within their home." Hollie Jones says the children always ask lots of questions about the traditions of other families. HOLLIE JONES: "And it's really interesting because for many children, especially in first grade, they are very unaware that these different things go on in other homes. So it's not necessarily imposing other religions on them, but just kind of creating a sense of awareness in celebration of how different and diverse just within our classroom we are." And Charles Haynes says that is one of the purposes of public education in America. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. You can find transcripts and podcasts of our reports, and you can post comments, at 51voa.com. And you can find us on Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember. 007. Some Advice on Choosing a College This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Last week, we told you that the number of foreign students in the United States had reached an all-time high. More than six hundred seventy-one thousand foreign students attended an American college or university during the last school year. So says the latest report from the Institute of International Education. Many international students choose large schools. But a growing number of them are attending smaller ones. Douglas Bennett is the president of Earlham College, a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana, that actively seeks foreign students. DOUGLAS BENNETT: "We're a small college, just twelve hundred students. But about fifteen percent of our undergraduates come from homes outside the United States, which is astronomically high for an American college or university." Doug Bennett has written several articles aimed at helping students choose a college that best fits their needs. He says one of the important things to consider is the size of a school. He says Earlham College is small for a reason. DOUGLAS BENNETT: "We aren't that small because we couldn't be bigger. We're that small because we think we educate much more effectively and much more powerfully because we stay small. It stretches everyone more. It draws everyone into more different kinds of activities." Of course, there are also good arguments for attending a larger school. Many big schools are widely recognized. And in some cases that might lead to more job interviews than a degree from a lesser known college. Larger schools also have more money, which can mean more resources for education, recreation and research. In addition to size, Douglas Bennett says there are other important things to consider. For example: Which programs at the school are the strongest? Some schools have stronger programs in the sciences. Others are stronger in the liberal arts. Also, what do the school's top students go on to do after they graduate? What kinds of activities are offered that might add to the educational experience? Are there sports teams? What about a radio station or newspaper? Something else to consider is the kinds of services that a school offers for international students. But Earlham College President Douglas Bennett says one choice tops all others. DOUGLAS BENNETT: "The most important choice you make in going to college is who you choose to be yourself. If you're prepared to bring your best self to college, then it hardly matters where you go to college. On the other hand, if you choose not to be very motivated, not to be very responsible, not to be prepared to work very hard, it doesn't matter where you go; you probably won't get a good education." 008. Number of Foreign Students in US Hits New High This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A new report says the number of foreign students in the United States reached a record high in two thousand eight. More than six hundred seventy thousand international students attended an American college or university last year. That was eight percent higher than the year before, the largest percentage increase since nineteen eighty. The "Open Doors" report is published by the Institute of International Education, with support from the State Department. It says the number of international students last year was almost fifteen percent higher than the last record setting year, two thousand two. In all, seven of the ten top countries sent more students last year, just as the economic downturn was worsening. For the eighth year, India remained the leader in sending students to the United States. More than one hundred thousand students from India attended American schools last year. That was nine percent more than the year before. China again sent the second largest number, more than ninety-eight thousand, an increase of twenty-one percent. The biggest increases were in Chinese undergraduate students. South Korea was third. The number of South Korean students increased nine percent to seventy-five thousand. Canada was the only non-Asian country in the top five. It rose two percent to fourth place. Almost thirty thousand Canadian students enrolled for the school year that began last autumn. Japan fell to fifth place. The number of Japanese students in the United States decreased for the fourth year, to just over twenty-nine thousand. Taiwan also sent fewer students, and the number from Mexico was nearly unchanged. The University of Southern California in Los Angeles once again had the highest number of foreign students. The "Open Doors" report says nearly seven thousand five hundred attended U.S.C. last year. New York University and Columbia University, both in New York City, were second and third. The other schools in the top five were the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Business and management was again the most popular area of study for international students. The next most popular subjects are engineering, math and computer scienc. 009. US Colleges Set Enrollment Record This is the VOA Special English Education Report. College enrollment has reached an all-time high in the United States. About forty percent of all eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds -- or almost eleven and a half million -- were in school in October of last year. A new report says both numbers are record highs. Richard Fry at the Pew Research Center points to a number of reasons. RICHARD FRY: "The number of young adults that have finished high school is also now at a record all-time high. Almost eighty-five percent of America's young adults have finished high school. That means they're college eligible. So part of the reason college enrollments are at an all-time high is because the pool of youth that's eligible to go to college is also at an all-time high." Another reason for the enrollment increase: the recession. The unemployment rate reached a twenty-six year high in October. The economic downturn has hit young adults especially hard. Richard Fry says their job-holding rate is almost at the lowest point in nearly fifty years. In a poor job market, many people turn to higher education, especially at two-year colleges. These schools, known as community colleges, have had the greatest enrollment increase. They offer professional training and traditionally cost a lot less than programs at four-year schools. But experts say the recession has not cut enrollment in four-year programs, even with their higher -- sometimes much higher -- costs. The Chronicle of Higher Education says at least fifty-eight private colleges now charge fifty thousand dollars or more a year. Lately there have been accusations that some private, competitive liberal arts colleges are trying to avoid being seen as "too female." Critics say that as a result these schools are discriminating against women and admitting less qualified men. In August the United States Commission on Civil Rights opened an investigation. Spokeswoman Lenore Ostrowsky says the purpose is to identify if discrimination is taking place in schools. But she adds that there may be lots of reasons why more women apply to colleges, and why colleges admit more women. The Census Bureau says fifty-four percent of full time students at two- and four-year colleges last year were female. Federal law bars sex discrimination at any school that receives federal money. Most schools do in one way or another. However, the law does not bar sex discrimination in admissions at private undergraduate schools, only public ones. The commission does not have enforcement powers, but it can suggest changes in the law. A report could take six months to a year. 010. Bringing Young People Together by Video This is the VOA Special English Education Report. An American nonprofit organization helps young people around the world to understand important issues, and each other. The Global Nomads Group organizes educational videoconferences. Students and speakers discuss subjects like AIDS, world religions, nuclear weapons, immigration, climate change and politics. For example, students from at least eight schools in Ghana talked with American students about the election and inauguration of President Obama. The Ghanaians took part from a distance learning center in Accra. Live coverage from Washington "brought the energy from the streets to the classrooms," said a story in Modern Ghana News. The Global Nomads Group, or G.N.G., was started in nineteen ninety-eight by four university students. They wanted other young people to become more informed about the world. Programs have been held in more than forty countries. The group says at least ten thousand students take part each year. Shirley Herrin teaches high school in Magnolia, Texas. She says her school is not using the programs this year because of budget cuts. But she tells us in an e-mail: "A live conference feed was 100% better than a textbook. Magnolia is a small town and for many of my students this was an opportunity to travel around the world." One thing her students discovered is that they liked the same music and activities as many other young people around the world. The Global Nomads Group charges for programs, but says it tries to help schools with limited resources. In one program, students in Rwanda and at several American high schools asked each other questions. These included questions from Rwandan students about subjects like drug use, H.I.V./AIDS and girls in school who get pregnant. An American boy asked about ethnic groups in Rwanda. BOY: "The Tutsi and the Hutu, I am wondering what you guys see as the differences between those two tribes?" GIRL: "This is Alene speaking. There is actually no difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis. First of all they are not two different tribes. We are one people. They are just ethnicities ... " At the end of the videoconference, the Rwandan teacher made an announcement. TEACHER: "In our culture we never say goodbye, and we are going to entertain you. Thank you." 011. High School Exchange Students in US Share Their Thoughts This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Twenty-six thousand foreign exchange students are in American high schools this year. A few days ago, we asked four teenagers who arrived in August to discuss their experience so far. All but one are attending public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, outside Washington. Johanna is from Germany. JOHANNA: "The biggest difference for me is the relationship to the teachers. Because here the teachers are more friends, and in Germany they are more like parents and strict and stuff like that." Another difference? In American high schools, the students are usually the ones who change rooms. Johanna and Daniel come from schools where the teachers change classrooms. DANIEL: "In Austria, it's more like you have all classes together with the same group of people. And so you are really good friends with like all the people you're in class with, because you know them since like four years and you have all classes together with them." Hande from Turkey is living with a host family in Denver, Colorado. She says students in Turkish schools have less choice. HANDE: "You cannot choose your own classes. And you don't have the right to drop out of one of them." She says Turkish schools are also more formal. HANDE: "When a teacher comes into the class you have to stand up and greet the teacher. He or she says good morning or good afternoon or something like that and you all, as a class, you answer. We don't do this in class here." How does the education compare? Hande is in three Advanced Placement classes, which are meant to prepare students for college. HANDE: "A.P. courses are really hard and they really force you to learn and are really good. But the regular classes, their level is lower than in Turkey." Rosa is from a country where high school is five years, not four like in America. ROSA: "In Italy we go to school only during the morning and just like for lessons. And Italian schools [don't] have like other activities. And whatever we want to do, it's outside the school or on our own or like private school or association outside." On the other hand, she says, having to go elsewhere for activities is not necessarily a bad thing. ROSA: "We in Italy, or in Europe, I think, we have a more free environment, if I can say this, because we are in touch with a lot of different things that are outside the school. It's like an American school could be a protective box." And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. To learn more about high school exchange programs, go to 51voa.com. You can also find us on YouTube and Twitter at VOA Learning English. I'm Bob Doughty. High School Exchanges in U.S. The State Department recognizes about 100 sponsoring organizations for its Secondary School Student Exchange Visitor Program. These organizations are responsible for supervising the students and placing them with host families. Safety activists say parents should be careful in choosing a sponsoring organization. Students should never leave their home country without knowing who their host family will be. Something else to know is how the organization investigates families that want to host exchange students. Students in the exchange program must be 15 to 18 1/2 years old. They must have no more than 11 years of education (12, if the student went to kindergarten) and a good record in school. They must also speak English well. And they must agree to accept the rules of the exchange program and their host family. 012. Write or Wrong: The Death of Handwriting? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In this age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. We asked a literacy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Steve Graham says he has been hearing about the death of handwriting for the past fifteen years. So is it still being taught? STEVE GRAHAM: "If the results of a survey we had published this year are accurate, it is being taught by about ninety percent of teachers in grades one to three." Ninety percent of teachers also say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. Professor Graham says one study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. STEVE GRAHAM: "And then when you look at how it's taught, you have some teachers who are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for ten, fifteen minutes a day, and then other teachers who basically teach it for sixty to seventy minutes a day -- which really for handwriting is pretty much death." Many adults remember learning that way -- by copying letters over and over again. Today's thinking is that short periods of practice are better. Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write. Professor Graham says handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency -- writing without having to think about it. The professor says fluency continues to develop up until high school. But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one-fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important anymore because of computers and voice recognition programs. But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt says word processing is rarely done in elementary school, especially in the early years. STEVE GRAHAM: "Even with high school teachers, we find that less than fifty percent of assignments are done via word processing or with word processing. And, in fact, if we added in taking notes and doing tests in class, most of the writing done in school is done by hand." American children traditionally first learn to print, then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we learned from a spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the SAT college admission test. More than seventy-five percent of students choose to print their essay on the test rather than write in cursive. 013. College Guide Aims to Help Students Avoid a 'Thin Education' This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A new college guide in the United States compares educational requirements in seven subjects. These include math, science, writing and United States history or government. The other subjects are economics, foreign language and literature. The free online guide is from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The council is a nonprofit group that supports liberal arts education. Its president, Anne Neal, says these areas of knowledge are needed to succeed in a twenty-first century society and an increasingly connected world. Yet she told VOA's Faiza Elmasry it was surprising how many students can graduate with, in her words, a "thin education." Forty-two of the one hundred colleges and universities surveyed received the lowest marks. This meant they required two or fewer of the seven subjects. Five schools received a top grade for requiring six subjects. These were Brooklyn College in New York City, Texas A&M, the University of Texas-Austin, West Point and the University of Arkansas. Robert Costrell is a professor of education reform and economics at the University of Arkansas. He says many, if not all, of the top American colleges once had a core curriculum -- a set of courses required for all students. But over the years, many have dropped these requirements. Or they have "watered them down," Professor Costrell says, into what became known as distribution requirements. This system lets a student choose from a number of different courses to satisfy a requirement. ROBERT COSTRELL: "And in many cases these courses went too far, I would say, towards the fluffy treatment of serious material, and students could satisfy their requirement by taking such courses." Professor Costrell says schools should not only re-examine what they teach. They should also measure what students have learned -- for example, through some form of examinations or papers. A new report this week from the College Board showed that college prices continue to rise. But Anne Neal from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni says higher prices do not guarantee a better general education. In fact, the group found that the higher the tuition, the more likely that students have to develop their own general education. The college guide is on the Web at whatwilltheylearn.com. Anne Neal says her group is surveying more colleges. The hope, she says, is to discover what college graduates have really learned, and how ready they are to compete in the global marketplace. 014. 'Ghost' and 'Guest' Authors Still a Concern for Medical Journals This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Last week, we discussed one problem for medical journals: the question of authorship. You would think that all the scientists who took part in a research study would be listed as authors. But that is not always the case. Sometimes there are honorary authors and ghost authors. Honorary authors, also called guest authors, receive credit in a published study but had little to do with designing it or writing the article. Ghost authors work on studies but are not credited. Sometimes they are paid by drug companies to place articles in journals to support the company's products. One example was described last month at a meeting of international medical journal editors in Vancouver, Canada. Three researchers at the University of California at San Francisco presented information about a drug company's marketing campaign that included placing research articles in medical journals. In the nineteen nineties, the drug company Parke Davis paid another company, Medical Education Systems, to produce journal articles in support of one of its drugs. Medical Education Systems worked with authors chosen by Parke Davis to research, develop and write articles for publication. Editors of the journals that published the studies did not know about the companies' involvement. Another study presented at the meeting was done by editors at the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers questioned authors of nine hundred articles published last year in six top medical journals. They found that twenty-one percent of the papers published in those journals had honorary authors. Eight percent had ghost authors. Two percent had both. They compared this to a similar study in nineteen ninety-six. It found that nineteen percent of articles had honorary authors, twelve percent had ghost authors and two percent had both. The researchers noted the drop in the percentage of ghost authors from twelve percent to eight percent. Annette Flanagin and Joe Wislar said they were pleased about the decrease but had hoped it would be larger. Some researchers and editors say changes must be made to stop such false author claims. Some have called for journals to identify ghostwritten articles and ban their authors from future publication. 015. Authors of Medical Studies Not Always Who They Seem This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Medical journals are an important part of continuing education for doctors and other health providers. Journals say they do their best to publish high quality studies by trusted authors. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors says: "An 'author' is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study ... " In other words, someone who did much of the work. Credit is to be based on three conditions. The first involves designing the study and gathering and analyzing the data. The second involves preparing the article. And the third involves final approval of the version to be published. Readers may have no way to know who did what when studies list several authors. And not all studies list all their authors. The Public Library of Science, or PLoS, is a nonprofit organization based in California. Its journals are available free online. The editors of PLoS Medicine ask authors if anyone from a company or public relations agency suggested or paid for their article. They also ask if a professional writer helped with the article and to what extent. And they ask if the article is similar to articles published in other journals. By asking these questions, the editors try to guard against the use of ghost authors. A ghost author is someone who had a lot to do with an article but is not given credit. Drug companies have been known to pay researchers to place articles in journals to support their products. Not all ghost authors, though, are paid. And there may be nothing scientifically wrong with a study involving paid authors who are not identified. But journal editors say everyone who worked on a study needs to take responsibility. Another issue is the honorary author. Unlike a ghost author, an honorary author gets credit in the article but had little if anything to do with it. Authors sometimes add a well-known name to increase the chances that an article will be published. For example, the person may be the head of the university department that did the study. The chief editor of PLoS Medicine says honorary authors are a more common problem than ghost authors. Virginia Barbour says the pressure in higher education to get published may be responsible for some of this. But she says any kind of dishonesty can shake people's faith in the medical profession. We'll have more on this subject next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 016. Stanley Kaplan: Remembering a Test Prep Pioneer This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Here is a question for a college admissions test. Who was Stanley Kaplan? Did he A) start a test preparation company, B) start the test preparation industry, or C) die last month at age ninety? The correct answer is D) all of the above. Stanley Kaplan was an educator and private tutor. In the nineteen forties, he began preparing students for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now just called the SAT. His parents were European immigrants who did not go to college, and he himself was rejected from medical school. He thought all Americans should have an equal chance at the best colleges, not just children of wealthy families. These days, more students go to college. Yet wealthier families are the ones best able to pay for test preparation. Many programs cost up to one thousand dollars or more, though some are available for poor families. Parents may hate the whole idea, but they feel nervous seeing others doing it. Then, after college, there are graduate admissions tests to prepare for. How much do American spend on this largely unsupervised industry? At least one billion dollars a year, estimates David Hawkins at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The research company Outsell puts the amount at two and a half billion. The two biggest providers in the United States -- Kaplan and Princeton Review -- both operate in more than twenty countries. Thirty years ago, the Federal Trade Commission found that Stanley Kaplan's program could raise SAT scores -- but only by about twenty-five points. The association for college admission counseling recently found a thirty-point increase with Kaplan and other programs. Still, the group says this is not enough to make a difference for most students. It might help some get into a top college, but only if they have above-average scores in the first place. The report suggested saving money by considering "less costly forms" of test preparation. Now, more about our story last week on President Obama's nationally broadcast speech to students. We noted that many conservatives raised objections before the speech. But in nineteen ninety-one, Democrats accused President George H.W. Bush of using the last such speech for political purposes. Then as now, Democrats led Congress. They demanded an investigation. It found no misuse of public money to support the speech. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 017. Facing America's High Dropout R This is the VOA Special English Education Report.Less than sixty percent of students now entering four-year American colleges are likely to graduate. The completion rate is lower than for almost any other wealthy country, and worst for poor and minority students. A new book about America's public universities explores the complex causes of the high dropout rate. The book is called "Crossing the Finish Line." President Obama wants the United States to again have the world's highest percentage of college graduates by two thousand twenty. But to finish college, children first have to reach the starting line by getting there. On Tuesday the president gave a nationally broadcast speech to students about the importance of staying in school. He spoke on the first day of classes at a high school in Virginia. He talked about personal responsibility, and used himself as an example of someone who overcame difficulties. BARACK OBAMA: "My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in." But he told students that problems in their own lives should not stop them from learning. BARACK OBAMA: "That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying." This was not the first presidential speech to students. Ronald Reagan spoke from the White House in nineteen eighty-eight. And George H.W. Bush spoke from a school in Washington in nineteen ninety-one. But many conservatives criticized plans for the speech. Some called it "socialized education" or federal interference in local schools. Others feared it would be too political. Some schools decided not to show the speech. But the White House released the text on Monday, and that calmed a lot of critics. On Sunday, on the CBS program "Face the Nation," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said thirty percent of students do not graduate from high school. He called the dropout rate "staggering." It represents more than a million students every year who entered ninth grade but do not complete twelfth grade. The education secretary called the objections to the president's speech "silly." But he also said one of the activities suggested for students "wasn't worded quite correctly." It related to the goal of increasing college graduation rates. It suggested that students "Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." But after conservatives objected, the activity was changed to writing about personal goals. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 018. Going Digital: The Future of College Textbooks? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. The average college student in America spent an estimated seven hundred dollars on textbooks last year. The National Association of College Stores reported more than five billion dollars in sales of textbooks and course materials.Association spokesman Charles Schmidt says electronic textbooks now represent just two to three percent of sales. But he says that is expected to reach ten to fifteen percent by two thousand twelve. Online versions are now available for many of the most popular college textbooks. E-textbooks can cost half the price of a new print textbook. But students usually lose access after the end of the term. And the books cannot be placed on more than one device, so they are not easy to share. So what do students think of e-textbooks? Administrators at Northwest Missouri State University wanted to find out. Earlier this year they tested them with five hundred students in twenty classes. The university is unusual. It not only provides laptop computers to all seven thousand of its full-time students. It does not require students to buy their textbooks either. They rent them to save money. The school aims to save even more by moving to e-textbooks. The students in the survey reported that downloading the books from the Internet was easy. They liked the idea of carrying lighter backpacks. And fifty-six percent said they were better able to find information. But most found that using e-textbooks did not change their study habits. And sixty percent felt they read more when they were reading on paper. In all, almost half the students said they still liked physical textbooks better. But the survey found that cost could be a big influence. Fifty-five percent said they would choose e-textbooks if using them meant their textbook rental fee would not increase. Roger Von Holzen heads the Center for Information Technology in Education at Northwest Missouri State. He tells us that administrators are disappointed with the e-textbooks now available because the majority are not interactive. He thinks growth will come when more digital books include video, activities, games and other ways to interact with the information. The technology is improving. But for now, most of the books are just words on a screen. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. What do you think of e-textbooks? Share your thoughts at voaspecialenglish.com, where you can also find our reports. I'm Steve Ember. 019. In New Jersey, a Summer Jobs Program With a Bigger Purpose This is the VOA Special English Education Report. The United States has lost almost seven million jobs since the recession began in December of two thousand seven. The good news: the central bank says economic activity appears to be "leveling out." The bad news: no one knows when the job market will recover. These days, if a job is available, young people often have to compete with more experienced workers. The situation is worst for those with the least education. About thirty percent of workers age sixteen to twenty-four with less than a high school diploma were unemployed last month. That was more than three times the national unemployment rate. The Labor Department says even among high school graduates, twenty-one percent of those with no college were jobless. The federal stimulus spending includes money to pay for jobs for needy young people. One such program in the state of New Jersey is giving some young people their first experience with the world of work. Counselors at the One-Stop Career Center in Hackensack have found jobs for a few hundred young people this summer. The jobs are twenty hours a week through this month. The pay is seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour -- the federal minimum wage. Those chosen must come from poor families and must also face at least one barrier to getting a job. For example, they must have left school or been in trouble with the law. Sixteen-year-old Nahdir Gonzalez left school last year. NAHDIR GONZALEZ: "I want a job because I don't want to get in any trouble, I want to stay away from the streets, keep my head on my shoulders, stay on the right path so I can be successful in life." The director of the program is Salvatore Mastroeni, a former principal of a high school. SALVATORE MASTROENI: "There's going to be next steps for you after you leave this program. Hopefully, in September or October we might be able to begin either a GED program for you, connecting you then with a college, with a transition program for career pathways." Many colleges and employers will accept what is known as a GED as the equivalent of a high school diploma. Salvatore Mastroeni often drives from Hackensack to nearby Englewood. There, he has placed young workers in the recreation department and other local government jobs. SALVATORE MASTROENI: "Mayor's office, schools, any public entity where youngsters can gain workforce readiness skills." Twenty-year-old Desirae Somerville is working in a school office and also helping out at the recreation center. DESIRAE SOMERVILLE: "They have me down at Liberty School, working with other children. We're fixing up the classrooms, painting and doing inventory." REPORTER: "What would you be doing this summer now if it weren't for this job? DESIRAE SOMERVILLE: "I'd probably be home now sleeping, or looking for another job." And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. I'm Steve Ember. 020. The Life of a School Nurse? Busy This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Last week, we discussed a new study of injuries in physical education classes in American schools. The number of students taken to hospitals increased one and a half times from nineteen ninety-seven to two thousand seven. Few injuries were serious. Then why treat them at emergency rooms? One possible reason: a shortage of school nurses. Amy Garcia agrees with that. She is the executive director of the National Association of School Nurses. She says federal guidelines call for one nurse for every seven hundred fifty healthy students. In reality, she says, the number is more like one for every one thousand one hundred. Every state is different. The association says Vermont has one nurse for every two hundred seventy-five students. In Utah, which has a bigger population, each nurse is responsible for almost five thousand students. The recession may have reduced a national nursing shortage; health care is one industry that has kept hiring. But experts predict that the shortage will grow again. Another problem for schools is limited budgets. Nurses often have to split their time at different schools. And not all schools employ registered nurses. An R.N. must have at least a two-year nursing degree. The Labor Department says registered nurses earned an average of sixty-five thousand dollars last year. Amy Garcia says school nurses earn an average of forty-two thousand dollars. But some earn half that and are on the same pay system as cleaning people. Pat Lewis is a school nurse in Beaumont, Texas. She and one assistant care for about nine hundred children ages four to eleven. She says many times the school nurse is the first one to bring health problems to the attention of parents. Right now, as schools prepare to begin a new year, one concern is the H1N1 virus, often called swine flu. Last week, federal officials announced their latest guidelines for schools. These urge local officials to balance to risk of flu in their communities with the problems that school dismissals could cause. The hope is to keep schools open. But if any schools do have to close, then the hope is to keep children learning -- for example, through phone calls or over the Internet. Schools could also be used as places to give flu vaccinations. Federal health officials said they expect a vaccine for the H1N1 flu to be available by the middle of October. 021. More Physical Education, but Also More Injuries in Class This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Too much eating. Too many unhealthy foods. Too many advertisements for food. Too little activity. Different explanations are offered for America's weight problem -- a problem increasingly shared by other countries. Almost one-fifth of American children and teenagers are overweight. Schools have been urged to increase physical education, an important tool for public health. And many have. Yet now comes a study showing an increase in the number of injuries in "phys ed" class. Injuries increased one hundred fifty percent between nineteen ninety-seven and two thousand seven. The study involved injuries treated in hospital emergency departments. Only two percent were serious. The researchers did not try to identify the causes of the increase, but they have some theories. Lara McKenzie from Ohio State University was the lead researcher. She says one possibility is a decrease in the number of school nurses during the period they studied. For example, a two thousand four study showed that the number of school nurses nationally failed to meet federal guidelines. Schools without a nurse on duty may be more likely to send an injured child to a hospital. Another possible reason for more injuries is a change in the traditional idea of physical education. This "New P.E." expands the kinds of sports that are taught. But activities that some schools offer now, like rock climbing walls and skateboarding, can also expand the risks, says Cheryl Richardson. She is with the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. Also, she says not all states require P.E. teachers to be specially trained. Untrained teachers could be less likely to recognize unsafe conditions. Cheryl Richardson also points to one of the study's findings -- that injuries are often the result of contact with a person or a structure. This tells her that the teachers were not giving each student enough space to move around safely. Six activities produced seventy percent of all injuries: running, basketball, football, volleyball, soccer and gymnastics. The study appeared online this week in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The researchers say larger class sizes are another possible reason for the increase in injuries. Larger classes can mean less supervision. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education says twenty to thirty students in a P.E. class should be the limit. 022. US States Will Compete for School Reform Aid This is the VOA Special English Education Report. The Obama administration is launching a national competition called Race to the Top. States will compete for more than four billion dollars in grants to support the best plans for improving schools. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the details last week. BARACK OBAMA: "This competition will not be based on politics or ideology or the preferences of a particular interest group. Instead, it will be based on a simple principle: whether a state is ready to do what works. We will use the best evidence available to determine whether a state can meet a few key benchmarks for reform. And states that outperform the rest will be rewarded with a grant." The president wants the United States to regain the world's highest college graduation rates, especially in math and science. His target is two thousand twenty. But he says the education system is "falling short" and "countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow." The United States is one of thirty countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD has the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. Every three years PISA measures the performance of fifteen-year-olds. In two thousand six, the United States had lower scores in mathematics than twenty-three of the other twenty-nine OECD countries. Sixteen countries did better in science. The Race to the Top competition will look for states and local school systems with effective reforms in four areas. One area is meeting international standards for preparing students for college and jobs. Another is developing better ways to hire, keep and reward effective teachers and school leaders. A third area is building data systems that not only measure student success, but also inform teachers how to improve. President Obama supports linking teacher pay to student performance. Teachers unions have resisted that idea. States that want to take part in the Race to the Top cannot have rules that bar performance-based pay for teachers. That requirement could make it difficult for several states to receive money from the fund. Among them are California and New York. Finally, to win grants, states must show they are improving the lowest performing schools. The Education Department will award the first grants early next year. States will get two chances to win. Also, the department plans to award almost six billion dollars through other federal programs in the coming months to support reform efforts. 023. Studying in the US: Reviewing the Steps This is the VOA Special English Education Report. For ten months, we have talking about coming to study in the United States. This week, we complete that series and repeat some of the advice. Decide what kind of school interests you: Big or small, city or rural, public or private, two-year or four-year? Two-year colleges, also known as community colleges, have not always gotten a lot of respect. Yet they are the largest part of the American higher education system. They often serve older and part-time students and those needing special help. But other students begin at a community college to save money, then finish at a four-year college or university. On Tuesday, President Obama announced a plan to invest twelve billion dollars in community colleges over the next ten years. The goal is to help an additional five million students earn degrees or certificates. The president said jobs requiring at least an associate degree are expected to grow twice as fast in the coming years as jobs requiring no college experience. To help with your college search, try to attend education fairs and visit an Education USA Advising Center. You can find the nearest one at educationusa.state.gov. Also visit school Web sites and sites where students share their experiences, like CollegeClickTV and zinch.com. Apply to at least three schools. Make sure they are accredited. To do that, go to chea.org -- c-h-e-a dot o-r-g. As soon as you are accepted, make an appointment for a visa interview at an American embassy or consulate. The State Department says it is working to reduce visa delays that have affected foreign science students and researchers over the past year. Financial aid can be limited for international students. To reduce costs, you might look into online classes or a foreign campus of an American school. During our Foreign Student Series we also talked about student life in the United States and programs to help international students. For example, writing centers can help teach the rules of American academic writing. All the reports in our series -- including programs on admissions tests -- can be found at 51voa.com. Thanks to everyone who sent us questions. If you have a question, we might answer it in a future program. Click on Contact Us or write to special@voanews.com. Be sure to include your name and country. 024. Education Report - Studying in the US: The Job Market This is the VOA Special English Education Report. In America, May and June are the traditional months for graduations. A listener in China, Jack Hoo from Jiangsu province, wants to know how American college graduates find jobs. Right now the answer is: not very easily. The National Association of Colleges and Employers collects information on the college job market. NACE's latest survey in March found that employers expected to hire twenty-two percent fewer graduates this year than last. Most blamed the recession. The most recent student survey showed that just one-fifth of those who looked for jobs before graduation have one by now. This is compared to half of students who had looked for a job by this time two years ago. But one difference: fewer of this year's graduates have started to search for jobs. Still, NACE found no big increase in graduates who plan to stay in school and avoid the job market. About twenty-seven percent said they plan to go to graduate school, compared to about twenty-four percent a year ago. Engineering and accounting graduates were more likely to have started their job search already and to have accepted a job. These are among the best paid professions for people with just a college degree. On average, engineering majors expect to start at about sixty-two thousand dollars a year. Accounting majors expect about forty-five thousand. So how can students increase their chances for a job? Mimi Collins at NACE says the most effective tool is a school's career counseling center. Counselors can help students with job applications and preparing for interviews. They also let students know about job openings and events like job recruitment fairs. They can also help first-year students decide what to study. Another way to look for a job is to do an internship. This is when a student gets experience in a position that may or may not be paid. The latest NACE survey found that seventy-three percent of graduates who did get jobs had completed an internship. The group reported in March that employers expected to increase hourly wage offers for college interns by five percent from last year. But, because of the economy, employers reduced the number of internships available by twenty-one percent. 025. Education Report - Studying in the US: A Free Year at a Community College This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Two-year colleges in the United States are also known as community colleges. Students earn an associate degree. Or they can train for a job for a year or two and get a certificate. Community colleges are less costly than other schools. Some international students can even get a year of education for free. The United States government and the colleges pay the costs in a program called the Community College Initiative. Six countries took part during the first two years: Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey. Now those countries are joined by Cuba, Ghana and most of Central America. Local Fulbright committees generally nominate the students. The program provides job training for people who otherwise could not attend college. They learn skills their countries need, like agriculture and health care. Vocational school teachers and administrators from Egypt can also receive professional development through the program. The program began two years ago with eighty-four students and six colleges. State Department officials say more than five hundred students will attend thirty-seven community colleges this fall. Where students are placed depends on what they want to study. The program is also a chance to learn about America and its people. And it gives colleges a way to expand their diversity. The students live in dormitories or apartments or with local families. Carol Stax-Brown is an administrator of the program for a group called Community Colleges for International Development. She says they look for people who have had some work experience, speak some English and want to experience another culture. The program includes English classes in the summer before school starts for those who need them. Carol Stax-Brown says colleges in some countries might accept credits from the program. But this is not a way to immediately transfer to four-year colleges and universities in other countries, including the United States. Students cannot return to the United States for two years after they finish their year of study. A Web page is being developed for information on the Community College Initiative. For now, students from countries in the program should contact their local Fulbright committee or United States embassy. 026. Education Report - Studying in the US: Getting a Military Education This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we talk about military education programs in the United States. There are public and private colleges and universities that offer military educations. But international students can also attend the nation's five service academies. Three of these come under the Defense Department. The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, prepares officers for the Army. The Air Force Academy is located at Colorado Springs, Colorado. And the Naval Academy is in Annapolis, Maryland; it prepares officers for the Navy and the Marine Corps. Nominees for these academies must be seventeen to twenty-three years old, unmarried and with no children. Candidates are usually nominated by members of Congress. International candidates are nominated by their home governments, which pay for their education. Each government has its own requirements for military service after students graduate. Americans who attend these four-year colleges must serve at least five years of active duty. The Defense Department chooses more than one hundred countries every year and invites them to nominate students to the academies. As many as sixty foreign students may attend each school at any one time. For example, the next class at the Naval Academy will include eighteen foreign students, four of them female. This will bring the total number of foreign students at the Naval Academy to fifty- three. Tim Disher, head of international programs, says those interested should contact the agency that includes their own naval department. Plus, all of the academies have admissions information on their Web sites. International students can also attend the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, and the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. The Coast Guard Academy can have thirty-five international students at any one time; the Merchant Marine Academy, thirty. These schools have their own entrance requirements. The Coast Guard Academy says interested students should contact the defense attache at their local United States embassy. Foreign students interested in the Merchant Marine Academy must request application forms directly from the admissions office. 027. Education Report - Studying in the US: A Lesson in Personal Finance, Part 2 This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We continue now with our discussion of personal finance for students. A study in the United States found that eighty-four percent of undergraduates last year had at least one credit card. Half had four or more. Borrowers who do not pay their card debt in full each month have to pay interest on whatever balance remains. Student loan company Sallie Mae did the study. In a time of economic downturn, it says, college students are depending on credit cards more than ever. It says many seem to use them to live beyond their means -- to spend more than they have. More than three-fourths had to pay finance charges last year because they carried a balance. The average balance was more than three thousand dollars. Last Friday, President Obama signed into law a credit card reform bill. It includes protections for people under the age of twenty-one. To get a credit card, they will need a parent or other adult over twenty-one to accept joint responsibility. Or they will need to show they can repay their debts independently. Colleges will have to make public any agreements with credit card marketers. And credit card companies may not offer gifts on or near a campus to persuade students. Also, schools are urged to consider limiting the number of places on campus where companies can market credit cards. And they are urged to offer credit card and debt education and counseling sessions to all new students. The new measures from Congress take effect in February. Getting a credit card can already be difficult for international students. College advisers say those who want one might consider arriving with one from home. Debit cards withdraw money directly from a bank account. But advisers say these can also be difficult sometimes for foreign students to get. A good source of advice about local banking is a school's international student office. At Penn State, for example, adviser Pat Coleman says they have worked with local banks to make banking easier for international students. Students are generally advised to budget around one to two thousand dollars for expenses for a school year in the United States. 028. Education Report - Studying in the US: A Lesson in Personal Finance This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A question from the teacher. Susanna Wesson writes: "I teach English to French students of engineering who benefit very much from your Foreign Student Series. Could you do a program on money, banking and shopping for students in the U.S.?" Many colleges and universities in the United States have guidelines for what they consider reasonable budgets for personal spending. Senem Bakar is the assistant director of International Student Services at American University in Washington, D.C. She suggests that students budget at least one thousand three hundred dollars for a nine-month school year. This will help pay for things like transportation, telephone bills, supplies and entertainment. Paul Butler is the financial manager in the Office of International Services at Indiana University Bloomington. He says the advice there is to have at least two thousand four hundred dollars for twelve months in the United States. Indiana and many other schools also offer advice on ways to manage spending and save money. For example, for entertainment, look for free concerts or museums. Want to go to a movie? Prices are usually lower in the daytime than at night. American University advises students to check newspaper advertisements for sales and to use money-saving coupons. If a product is "on sale," that means it is being offered for a limited time at a reduced price. Senem Bakar says students learn that in the United States you can find almost everything on sale somewhere. Also, many banks offer special services for students, like free checking accounts, including a debit card. Debit cards can be used almost anywhere credit cards are accepted. Millions of Americans now use a debit card or credit card, instead of paper money or checks, to make most of their purchases. With a credit card, you are borrowing money every time you use it. Debit cards are different. They are linked directly to a checking account so you are paying with your own money. Debit cards, also known as check cards, do not have interest charges. But users are charged if they try to spend more than the amount available in their account. These fees can be costly even if you overspend by just a few cents. 029. Education Report - Studying at an American University, Just Not in the US This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our series on American higher education, we discuss programs that are available in the Middle East. We talked last week about Michigan State University which opened a campus in August in the United Arab Emirates. MSU Dubai offers undergraduate degrees in areas including business, engineering, education and telecommunications. It also offers some graduate programs. This October, Michigan State plans to open a pre-college program -- the MSU Dubai Academy. The aim is to help foreign students prepare to attend an American school. Other American universities with campuses in the Middle East include Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth. They have campuses in Qatar. New York University plans to open a campus in Abu Dhabi in two thousand ten. But the worldwide economic downturn is affecting the plans of some schools. For example, earlier this year Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania suspended its plans to open a campus in Abu Dhabi. And George Mason University in Virginia is closing its campus in Ras Al Khaimah, another of the United Arab Emirates. One reason is the recession. But the campus Web site says that several issues made it impossible for the university to offer the same quality education as in the United States. University Provost Peter Stearns tells us that the effort failed largely because of a dispute with their local partner in the campus. The disagreement involved the operating budget and academic control. The George Mason campus opened in two thousand six. But student numbers have been disappointing. Peter Stearns says the campus had between two hundred fifty and three hundred students this year. He says more than fifty of them hope to attend the home campus in Fairfax, Virginia, in September. And he says George Mason will remain involved in education in the Middle East as an adviser to the American University in Dubai. The Harvard Medical School Dubai Center was launched in two thousand four. It offers professional development and postgraduate training but no degree programs. Harvard says it has no plans for a campus, but wants to help Dubai develop its Academic Medical Center. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. 030. Education Report - Studying in the US: Growing Interest in Agriculture? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. In the United States, the area of study with the fewest international students is agriculture. The number was about nine thousand during the last school year. More than ten times as many studied business or engineering.But the crop of foreign students in agriculture and natural resources was twenty percent bigger than the year before. The Institute of International Education in New York says that was the biggest increase of any area of study. So this week in our Foreign Student Series we look at agriculture programs in the United States. About one hundred colleges and universities began as public agricultural schools and continue to teach agriculture. These are known as land-grant schools. In eighteen sixty-two, Congress passed legislation that gave thousands of hectares to each state. States were to sell the land and use the money to establish colleges to teach agriculture, engineering and military science. A congressman from Vermont, Justin Smith Morrill, wrote the legislation. The state of Michigan already had an agricultural college. But that college was the first to officially agree to receive support under the Morrill Act. It grew into what is now Michigan State University in East Lansing. Today, Michigan State has more than forty thousand students. More than four thousand of them are international students. They come from one hundred twenty-five countries. The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University offers sixty programs of study. Richard Brandenburg is the associate dean for graduate programs. He says foreign agriculture students this year are from countries including Japan, the Netherlands, Rwanda, El Salvador, Turkey, Sri Lanka and India. In all, the college has four hundred thirty-three foreign students in East Lansing. It also has eleven students at a campus in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The only agriculture program currently offered in Dubai is construction management. Michigan State opened its Dubai campus in August. It has only about fifty students now, but the university says it has received about ninety applications for admission this fall. We'll talk more about foreign campuses of American universities next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our series is online at 51voa.com. I'm Bob Doughty. 031. Education Report - Studying in the US: Writing College Papers This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Today in our Foreign Student Series we discuss writing college papers. Writing a term paper, research paper or essay for a college class is a kind of academic writing. Academic writing among professionals is a way to create new knowledge. A professor assigns students to write a paper. The students examine an issue, review what is already known, think about what they have learned and come to some conclusion. This means that each student-writer must present information and also take a position. The student might support an idea, question it or even disprove it. Or the writer could show how the subject may be understood better or in a different way than it has been. And the student must support the position with evidence. Cultural differences may interfere when international students try to write this way. Writing teachers say students in many countries have learned to write beautiful descriptions about something without ever stating the main idea. American college students are expected to state their main idea at the beginning of the paper. In other cultures, paragraphs may be organized to build toward the main idea, which is revealed at the end. But in the United States, the main idea of each paragraph should be in the first sentence. Another difference is about writing style. Other cultures may use lots of descriptive words. But American English values short, strong sentences. Teachers at the writing center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana work with students to improve their writing. Graduate tutor Lars Soderlund says non-native English speakers generally have some trouble with English grammar. He says their sentences may be too long. Or they incorrectly use articles such as "a", "an" and "the." He also says non-native speakers generally use too much emotional language and give too many details before getting to the main idea. The associate director of the writing center, Tammi Conard-Salvo, says international students should look online for materials that explain the kind of writing they will be required to do. They should ask their professors for help. Most colleges have a writing center where they can get free individual help with their work. 032. Education Report - Studying in the US: Beware of Essay Mills This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We continue our discussion of plagiarism. Last week, we said colleges and universities in the United States define plagiarism as representing another person's work as your own. It is considered a kind of cheating. Professors at American colleges have tried many ways to stop student plagiarism. Some use online detection services. They also may discuss plagiarism with their students at the start of every term. Some require their students to turn in early versions of term papers, research papers and essays they are writing. This makes it more difficult for students to buy papers from companies that some call "plagiarism mills" or "essay mills." A recent report in The Chronicle of Higher Education described such businesses. Many can be found on the Internet. They sell newly written papers on many subjects. The cost depends on the difficulty of the subject and how soon the paper is needed. The cost could be from twenty to forty dollars a page. Such companies say their writers have advanced degrees, and will target the papers to any educational level. Investigators say the writers may be working in countries like India, Nigeria or Indonesia and are poorly paid. Most of these companies say their work should only be used as models and should not be turned in as a finished work. But students do it anyway. Some students claim that they order such papers as a way to organize their research. But many also say they do not have enough time to do the work themselves and are under great pressure to do well in school. University of Notre Dame anthropology professor Susan Blum wrote about this in a new book, "My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture." She writes that academic cheating is a result of communication failure between students and professors. And she says international students must be sure they know the rules of the college they are attending. Plagiarism may also be a problem in other countries. A recent e-mail to us from Iran described an incident in an English class. Students were supposed to research tourist places in Iran. But one student copied information from a book. The student changed "China" to "Iran" but forgot to change the names of the places. When the teacher asked about his research, he said: "One of the most beautiful tourist places in Iran is Shanghai." And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Barbara Klein. 033. Education Report - Studying in the US: How to Avoid Being Accused of Plagiarism This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Plagiarism is the act of representing another person's words or ideas as your own. The offense may be as small as a sentence copied from a book. Or it may be as extensive as a whole paper copied -- or bought -- from somebody else. Intellectual dishonesty is nothing new. The only difference now is that the Internet has made it much simpler to steal other people's work. Yet the same technology that makes it easy to find information to copy also makes it easier to identify plagiarism. Teachers can use online services that compare papers to thousands of others to search for copied work. The teacher gets a report on any passages that are similar enough to suspect plagiarism. These services are widely used. Turnitin.com, for example, says it is used in more than one hundred countries and examines more than one hundred thirty thousand papers a day. Professional writers who plagiarize can be taken to civil court and ordered to pay damages. In schools, the punishment for cheating could be a failing grade on the paper or in the course. Some schools expel plagiarists for a term; others, for a full academic year. Some degrees have even been withdrawn after a school later found that a student had plagiarized. Accidental plagiarism can sometimes result from cultural differences. At Indiana University in Bloomington, sixty percent of students who use the Office of Writing Tutorial Services are non-native English speakers. The director, Joanne Vogt, says some have no idea that copying from published works is considered wrong. She says students from China, for example, may think they are insulting readers if they credit other sources. They believe that educated readers should already know where the information came from. The more you give credit, the less you risk accusations of plagiarism. Any sentences taken directly from a source should appear inside quotation marks. And even if you put those sentences into your own words, you should still give credit to where you got the information. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. More about plagiarism next week. 034. Education Report - Studying in the US: Coming to Terms with Academic Titles This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Not all college teachers are full professors. Many are assistant or adjunct professors. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we discuss academic titles in American higher education. Adjunct professor Charles Varani teaching at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon, in October of 2005 Professors usually have doctorate degrees. But college students may be taught by instructors who have not completed their doctorate degrees. After that, the instructor could become an assistant professor. Assistant professors do not have tenure. A professor with tenure cannot be easily dismissed. Such appointments are permanent. Those hired with the understanding they will seek tenure are said to be "on the tenure track." Assistant professor is the first job on this path. Assistant professors have five to seven years to get tenure. They must teach, carry out research and publish their findings. Other professors then study the work. If tenure is denied, the person usually has a year to find another job. An assistant professor who receives tenure becomes an associate professor and may later be appointed a full professor. Professors on the tenure track teach classes, advise students and carry out research. They also serve on committees and take part in community activities. Other teachers are not expected to do all this. They are not on a tenure track. They are called adjuncts. An adjunct professor is hired to teach for a limited time, usually one semester. Adjunct professors may have a doctorate. But they receive lower pay than those on the tenure track and have no job security. The American Association of University Professors says sixty-eight percent of all teacher appointments at American colleges today are adjuncts. College officials say one reason is low budgets. Another is having the freedom to change teachers as courses become more or less popular. They also say part-time adjuncts can provide real world experience for their students. But the AAUP and other college officials say too many adjuncts mean lower educational quality. They say adjuncts do not have the time or support to help students outside class. And they say fewer tenure track positions mean fewer people to work with students, create new courses and serve on committees. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Shirley Griffith. 035. Education Report - Studying in the US: Alcohol on Campus This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Most American colleges and universities take a spring break. Students might go home to their families -- or spend a week partying on a warm beach with no parents around. That is the popular image, at least.In the United States, the legal age to drink alcohol is twenty-one -- one of the highest in the world. Americans debate whether it should be lowered, or whether young drinkers would only drink more. In parts of Europe, the legal drinking age for beer, and sometimes hard liquor, is sixteen. Yet France may raise the age limit for beer and wine sales to eighteen, the same as for hard liquor there. Rules on alcohol differ from college to college in the United States. Many schools require all first-year students to take an alcohol prevention and education program, often given online. Some have a "zero tolerance" policy where alcohol is banned from all buildings. Parents are informed of violations and students may be suspended. At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, permission is needed to serve alcohol at any event on campus. But alcohol is banned in first-year dorms -- where most students are under twenty-one anyway. Susan Davis, a university lawyer, says campus police and local police report underage drinking violations to administrators. The university judicial committee decides punishment on a case by case basis. For example, the committee might suspend or expel a student. It might require an alcohol education program. Or it might just give a warning. Jon Zug is a prosecutor in Albemarle County, where the university is located. He says international students would face the same punishment as American citizens for underage drinking in Virginia. That includes a fine of five hundred dollars or fifty hours of community service. But first offenders might be given a chance to complete an alcohol education program instead. Schools have to report legal violations by international students to the Department of Homeland Security. International adviser Richard Tanson at the University of Virginia says even minor violations stay on a student's permanent immigration record. He says international students should know that this can affect them in the future if they try to re-enter the United States. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 036. Education Report - Studying in the US: Where To Live? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. March Madness is the name for the busy championship season in American college basketball. But March also means another kind of madness -- the nervous wait for admissions letters from colleges and universities.This week in our Foreign Student Series, we jump ahead to the subject of where to live. Housing policies differ from school to school. Some schools have limited housing or none at all. Dormitory buildings might house a small number of students or many hundreds. Some dorms have suites. A suite has several bedrooms, a common area and a bathroom. Other dorms have rooms along a common hallway. Two, three or four students might share a room. Males and females often live on different floors of the same building. Or they might live on the same floor, or in some cases even share a suite if permitted. But single-sex housing is usually also available. Different groups and organizations such as fraternities and sororities might have their own houses where their members live. And there is often housing for married students. Some dorms are nice, others are not so nice. But many students say they like the chance to make friends and be near their classes. Cost is another consideration. Dorms can cost less than off-campus housing. But school-owned housing can also cost more, though the price may include meals. Here are some questions to ask before making a decision: How much privacy can a student expect? Will the school provide a single room if a student requests one? Will the school provide a special diet if a student needs one? And are any dorms open all year so international students can have a place to stay during long vacations? Kirsten Kennedy, housing director at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, says all first-year undergraduates there have to live in a dorm. After that, they are free to seek other housing. Students can apply to become resident assistants after living in the dorms for a year. International students can also apply to become resident assistants after a year in the dorms. Working as a resident assistant in student housing is one way to help finance an education. At many schools, RAs earn money as well as get their room and meals for free or at a reduced price. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 037. Studying in the US: Helping Foreign Students Feel at Home This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Being a new student in school can be a little scary. Being a new student in a new country can be even scarier. A college or university's international student office is a good place to start getting to know the school and the country. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we talk about support services for international students in the United States. Our example is the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. U.S.C. has had the most international students of any American college or university for the past seven years. So says the Institution of International Education in New York. U.S.C.'s Office of International Services says the number of students this year is about seven thousand five hundred. The University of Southern California has more than thirty-five thousand students total. The Office of International Services helps explain student life at the university. It also organizes programs to help foreign students feel more at ease in their new surroundings. For example, there are trips to explore the Los Angeles area. Most American colleges and universities have a similar office that helps international students. These offices look for ways to get students involved in school life and make American friends. Their job is not always easy. International students often want to spend their free time with friends from their own country or group. India, China, South Korea, Japan and Canada sent the most students to the United States during the last school year. Next came Taiwan, Mexico, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Thailand. The office at U.S.C. also assists family members who come to the United States with international students. The family members can take English classes and go on trips to places like museums. The Office of International Services also organizes other activities. For example, a State of the World Seminar takes place each semester. A group of international students and a professor discuss current social and political issues and take questions from the audience. The most recent seminar, held earlier this month, dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our series on studying in the United States will continue next week. Earlier reports are at 51voa.com. Click on Foreign Student Series. You can write comments and read what other people are saying. I'm Steve Ember. 038. Education Report - Studying in the US: High Marks Just for Trying? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we continue our discussion about grades. Would you want a doctor who got high marks in medical school just for trying really, really hard? Apparently many college students would have no problem with that. They believe students are owed a good grade simply because they put a lot of effort into a class. Or at least that is what they told researchers last year at the University of California, Irvine. The researchers asked more than eight hundred undergraduates if they agreed or disagreed with some statements. For example: "If I have completed most of the reading for a class, I deserve a B in that course." And: "A professor should not be annoyed with me if I receive an important call during class." Just sixteen percent thought it was OK to take that phone call. But sixty-six percent agreed that a professor should consider effort and not just the quality of a student's work when deciding grades. And forty percent thought they should get a B, the second highest mark, just because they did most of the reading for class. The findings appeared in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The students were ages eighteen to twenty-five. Some experts are not surprised that students often see no difference between effort and results. Social critics like to say that in children's activities these days, everyone gets an award just for trying, so no one will feel rejected. Or so it may seem. Yet competition to get into the best colleges is fiercer than ever. Students may worry that low grades will keep them out of graduate school or a good job. And there may be another explanation: pressure from parents to get a good return on the family's investment. These days, college can cost more than a house. A former teaching assistant recently wrote to the New York Times about his experience with grade expectations. He would try to explain it this way when students asked for a top grade just for studying hard in chemistry class: What if a baseball player came to spring training and worked harder than all the others, but still could not play well. Would the team accept him anyway, just because he tried so hard? The students would say no. But most of them would still ask for an A. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 039. Education Report - Studying in the US: Grading Grades This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series the subject is grades. Most American colleges and universities use the grading system of A, B, C, D and F. An A is worth four points, a B three points, a C two points and a D one point. Getting a grade like a B-plus or a C-minus adds or subtracts a few tenths of a point. An F is a failing grade worth zero toward a student's grade point average. A small number of colleges -- perhaps about twenty nationally -- reject the traditional grading system. The Evergreen State College, for example, was established in nineteen sixty-seven and has never used letter or number grades. Evergreen State is a public four-year college in the northwestern city of Olympia, Washington. It has more than four thousand students, including twenty-six international students currently. Evergreen State is organized into programs taught by teams of professors. Each program brings together different subjects and extends in length over two or three quarters. Students are required to do a major research project at the end of each program. The professors write detailed evaluations of the students. These are combined with evaluations written by the students themselves. Students also meet with their professors to discuss their work. The director of admissions, Doug Scrima, says employers and graduate schools like these evaluations, called narratives. He says they show more about the quality of students' work than traditional grades do. Most teachers would probably agree that traditional grades are sometimes unfair. But professors at big schools say there is not enough time to write evaluations for each student in large classes. Some classes have hundreds of students. Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a small women's school that does not use grades. Kathleen O'Brien is the chief academic officer. She says letter grades do not effectively document learning or provide good direction to students. She says even at big schools there are classes small enough to give evaluations. But she says the American university system is not organized to accept this kind of change. We will talk more about grades next week. 040. Education Report - Studying in the US: Web Redefines the College Visit This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week, we visit four Web sites where students can learn about higher education in the United States. Cappex.com -- c-a-p-p-e-x -- matches students with colleges and universities. Students create a profile about themselves and their interests. The site then suggests ten to twenty schools. But Cappex President Chris Long says that there are no guarantees of admission. The site is free to students. Cappex sells advertising on the site to schools and companies. CollegeClickTV.com has thirty thousand videos of students answering questions about their schools. GIRL: "I would recommend honestly taking Statistics 263 with Professor Alexander. He's absolutely wonderful, the class is a great class to take and I really enjoy it." SECOND GIRL: "I chose this school because it's in the city and it's really great and the communication school is actually, I think, ranked in the top five?" BOY: "Yeah." SECOND GIRL: "It varies every year but it's ranked really high. And all the colleges. And you get like a really great, well-rounded education. And the kids are really cool. You meet really fun people." BOY: "I came here because I didn't get into NYU." Schools pay CollegeClickTV to come on campus. But founder and president Glenn Pere says schools do not approve or reject any comments. That does not mean the site will use whatever students say; Glenn Pere says they must give reasons for their opinions. Zinch.com has video profiles produced by students themselves. Co-founder Sid Kromenhoek says it is a place where students can show their abilities and talents. The company says more than six hundred colleges pay to use the site to search for students. More than five hundred thousand high school students have profiles on the site. Finally, we come to Unigo.com. Unigo offers college reviews, videos and other content created by students. Features include "unofficial campus tours" and advice for dealing with the recession -- oh, and of course, dating on campus. The free site, supported by ads, has a team of full-time editors. The site was launched to the public last September by a start-up company led by its twenty-six year old founder. Jordan Goldman says the site is starting with two hundred fifty of America's top colleges and will add more. Unigo, Zinch, CollegeClickTV and Cappex are just some of the sites for college searches on the Web. Others include MyCollegeOptions, CheckMyCampus and PrincetonReview. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 041. Education Report - Studying in the US: Four Kinds of Financial Aid This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we look at financial aid that comes in ships. Scholarships, fellowships and assistantships. But first we talk about financial aid of another kind: grants. A grant, unlike a loan, does not have to be repaid. One of our examples this week is the University of Missouri-Columbia, known as Mizzou (pronounced mah-ZOO). Mizzou is a public university with more than one thousand five hundred international students this school year. The total student population is more than thirty thousand. Mizzou has a grant program for international students. The Curator's Grant-in-Aid program is for those who get good grades and take part in university activities. Graduate students who receive a grant get nine free credits to take courses. Undergraduates receive between one thousand and five thousand dollars in support. Students must have attended Mizzou for a year before they can receive a grant. And they must reapply for the awards each semester. Some grants are called scholarships or fellowships. Scholarships are for undergraduates; fellowships are for graduate students. Awards may be based on financial need or on grades, talents or other requirements. The Global Heritage Scholarship at Mizzou, for example, is only for international undergraduates whose mother or father graduated from there. The scholarship pays seven thousand five hundred dollars a year for tuition. Full tuition is currently almost nineteen thousand dollars. Tuition is about the same at another public university, the University of Arizona in Tucson. It offers an undergraduate scholarship for international students who earned high marks in high school. The program is open to all foreign students who have been admitted to the university. Winners receive between two thousand and ten thousand dollars a year to help pay tuition. Seventy international students are currently receiving the scholarship. The University of Arizona has more than two thousand international students this academic year. The school had close to forty thousand students during the fall term. Assistantships are jobs paid with money or free classes. Graduate assistants help professors for about twenty hours a week. They may teach undergraduates, grade papers and tests, and assist with research. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 042. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Becoming a Fulbrighter This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we talk about the Fulbright Program. It sends Americans to study, teach or do research in other countries. And it brings people from other countries to do the same in the United States. Fulbright grants are awarded each year to more than seven thousand people. These are graduate students, scholars, teachers and people in other professions. The United States government pays most of the costs. Foreign governments and schools help share the costs and provide other support. Legislation introduced by Senator William Fulbright established the program after World War Two. Today it operates in more than one hundred fifty countries. Close to three hundred thousand people have taken part since nineteen forty-six. More than half of all Fulbrighters have been foreign students. The Fulbright Program is really a collection of programs. It represents a partnership of government agencies, private organizations and other groups around the world. The Language Teaching Program, for example, brings teachers of English as a foreign language to work at American colleges and universities. Another program gives forty International Science and Technology Awards each year to foreign doctoral students studying science or engineering. The Fulbright Foreign Student Program helps graduate students and young professionals do research and study in the United States for a year or longer. Each year more than three thousand of these awards go to foreign graduate students. The Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange Program offers a true exchange -- meaning two people trade jobs for a time. The countries with the most Fulbrighters in the United States this year are Germany, Pakistan, Chile, Indonesia and Turkey. State Department official Marianne Craven says Fulbrighters not only want to learn, but also to help improve international understanding. You can learn more about the different Fulbright programs by going online to fulbright.state.gov. Or check with a United States embassy or the Fulbright Commission in your country. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 043. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Financial Aid This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We talked last week about employment rules for international students in the United States. Now we move to financial aid, which is often limited for international students. American schools provided aid to almost half of foreign graduate students during the last academic year, but only ten percent of undergraduates. In all, more than sixty percent of international students paid for their education mainly with personal or family money. Twenty-six percent were supported by their American college or university. Foreign students represent a valuable resource, especially when public colleges and universities face budget cuts by states. Foreign students pay the higher prices charged for students from out of state. Not only that, they can help schools increase their ethnic diversity. Some students are supported by their home university or government. A small number receive support from the United States government. Employers, private sponsors and international organizations also help some students pay for school. A list of American colleges and universities that offer financial aid to foreign students can be found at edupass.org -- e-d-u-p-a-s-s dot o-r-g. The Web site also provides information and advice on scholarship programs. Never trust a program that charges for application forms. Another helpful site about American higher education and financial aid is educationusa.state.gov. About half of international students are in graduate school. The Institute of International Education in New York says thirty-one percent during the last academic year were undergraduates. The others were studying English or in training program. In all, the United States has around eighteen million students in higher education. Last year, more than six hundred twenty thousand, or three and a half percent, were international students. The United States, though, has the largest "market share," about twenty percent of all the international students in the world. But even as more and more students come to the United States, more and more are also going to other countries. So experts say the American share is likely to go down in the future. The nearest competitor is Britain, with thirteen percent at last report. Other top countries for international students include France, Germany, Australia, China, Canada and Japan. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 044. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Working While Studying in the US This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we discuss rules about getting a job while studying in the United States. International students are permitted to work for the college or university they attend or for a business at the school. But the business must directly provide a service to students. You could work at the bookstore, for example, but not for a construction company that is building something on campus. Also, a foreign student cannot displace an American citizen in a job. International students can work twenty hours a week while attending classes; more during school breaks. You can work until you complete your studies. Foreign students normally cannot take a job that has no connection to their school. But the government may give permission if students are suddenly faced with a situation that is out of their control. Examples include large medical bills, the loss of financial aid or an unexpected change in the financial condition of their source of support. Students must also meet other conditions. They must have attended their American school for at least one year. Government approval is given on a case-by-case basis. Students must re-apply after a year if they want to continue an off-campus job. Foreign students who will be attending graduate school can apply for some jobs before they come to the United States. A good example is a university job like a teaching or research assistantship. Some schools pay their assistants. Others provide free education in return. Many do both. Graduate assistants might teach, give tests, grade work, assist professors with research and hold office hours. Many universities now provide language training to foreign teaching assistants to help them improve their English. Some schools require foreign students to pass an English speaking test before they are permitted to teach. International student offices at schools have to provide information on students each term to the Department of Homeland Security. Students who violate the terms of their visa -- for example, by working off-campus without permission -- could be sent home. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 045. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Paying for School in the US This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Governments are not the only ones having to re-examine their budgets. The financial crisis has many families concerned about how they will pay for college. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we discuss costs for higher education for international students in the United States. Prices differ from school to school, but public colleges and universities usually cost less than private ones. A big state university in the western United States will serve as our example. The University of Colorado at Boulder has one thousand two hundred international students from more than eighty countries. Tina Tan is the director of international student and scholar services. She says international students are paying a total of forty thousand two hundred dollars for this academic year. The university estimates that the cost for next year will increase by four hundred dollars. The university does not offer financial aid to international students. This is generally true of American schools, especially at the undergraduate level. Federal and state financial aid can only go to American citizens. The University of Colorado does, however, offer some help for international students. For example, it guarantees them the same tuition rate for all four years of undergraduate study. And it offers four scholarships for international students with special skills or talents. Tina Tan says the federal government requires international students to show on their applications how they will pay for their first year of school. This evidence is a signed statement from whoever is paying for it, and confirmation from a bank or lawyer. Some colleges might require international students to show that they can pay for all four years. But the University of Colorado requires only evidence of financial support for the first year. Educational advisers say foreign students should keep enough money in a local bank to pay for at least two months of spending. Students have to consider not just tuition but also housing, meals, books and other costs including social activities. Immigration rules restrict employment for international students in the United States. So what kinds of jobs are they permitted to have? That will be our subject next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 046. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Answering Your Questions This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We answer some questions this week in our series on getting into an American college or university. The first question has to do with our recent discussion of English language tests. Vo Ngoc Toan from Vietnam would like to know about the TOEIC-- the Test of English for International Communication. This test is designed to measure skills in English as spoken in the workplace. People may be required to take it if they apply for jobs with companies or other employers. But TOEIC scores are not used for college admission in the United States. The Educational Testing Service administers the TOEIC. It says the test measures the language skills of people working in an international environment. American colleges and universities accept scores from the TOEFL and often the IELTS. If you missed our report on these tests, you can find it at our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Tahir Mahmood from Pakistan asks how to improve his English before taking these kinds of tests. Well, you can start by looking for ways to use English as much as you can. Watch American movies and TV shows and read books in English. Look for English speakers to talk to. The Internet has a lot of free resources for English learners. Visitors to voaspecialenglish.com, for example, can read, listen and watch programs on many different subjects. The United States Department of Education recently launched a free Web site designed to help immigrants learn English. The site is called USA Learns. The address is u-s-a-l-e-a-r-n-s dot o-r-g. Next, a question from Turkey: Hasan Eker asks about getting a postdoctoral position in the United States. This is work generally done by a person who recently earned a PhD, or doctor of philosophy degree. The National Postdoctoral Association in Washington, D.C., has information about international postdocs on its Web site. That address is nationalpostdoc -- all one word -- dot org. And, finally, we have questions from Iran, Afghanistan and Indonesia about how to pay for an education through loans or jobs. There are rules that restrict the kinds of jobs that foreign students can have while studying in the United States. But stay tuned. In the next few weeks, we will discuss financial aid as we talk about the costs of an American education. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 047. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: The Business of the GMAT This is the VOA Special English Education Report. What do you think is the most popular subject of study for international students at colleges and universities in the United States? How many of you thought of engineering? Seventeen percent of foreign students, or one out of six, studied engineering during the last academic year. But the Institute of International Education says twenty percent, or one in five, studied business and management. Which brings us to the subject this week in our Foreign Student Series -- the Graduate Management Admission Test. The GMAT is commonly required for students who want to earn a master of business administration. The GMAT is a computer test that measures reading, mathematics and writing skills. You have to write two essays in sixty minutes. An organization of business schools, the Graduate Management Admission Council, is responsible for the GMAT. Four thousand programs around the world, it says, use the GMAT as an important part of their admissions process. But just as students compete on tests, tests also compete. In fact, the GMAT could offer a good case study for a business class. The council's Web site points out that the Educational Testing Service has recently been marketing its GRE test to graduate schools of business. The council presents reasons why business schools should use the GMAT instead of the Graduate Record Examinations, or GRE. Most importantly, it says the GMAT was designed by business schools for business schools. The GMAT costs two hundred fifty dollars, which is a lot. But the council says that is because the test can be taken almost every day of the year at more than four hundred centers around the world. Almost two hundred of these are outside the United States. Students can learn more about the GMAT at mba.com. Now, another question: Which countries do you think send the most students to the United States for higher education? The Institute of International Education in New York says last year's top five were India, China, South Korea, Japan and Canada. The United States, it says, received a record six hundred twenty-four thousand international students. The number was seven percent higher than the year before. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. 048. Education Report - The New Year Begins With Some Resolutions Now, a VOA Special English holiday program. January first. The beginning of a new year. As far back in history as we can tell, people have celebrated the start of a new year. Today, most people celebrate New Year's Day on January first. People observe the New Year's holiday in many different ways. The idea of admitting mistakes and finishing the business of the old year is found in many cultures. So is the idea of making New Year's resolutions. A resolution is a promise to change or do something different in the coming year. Making New Year's resolutions is a common tradition. We talked to some people in Washington, D.C. and Miami, Florida about their resolutions, hopes and wishes for two thousand nine. ASHLEY: "I'm Ashley Preston. I'm from Canfield, Ohio and I'm twenty-four years old. This year I hope to graduate with my Master's and be healthy and happy." Ashley's friend, Charlotte Cicero from Rochester, New York, is also to graduate this year. Her resolution went a step farther. CHARLOTTE: "I hope to graduate and find a job teaching somewhere." Other people mix wishes small and large. Like Ryan Krysiak, a student at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Viriginia. RYAN: "For the New Year, I want the Eagles to go to the Superbowl and world peace." Some resolutions are about helping others. ELNIE: "I'm Elnie Goodman and I live in Washington, D.C. But I was born in Haiti. In the summer of two thousand nine I would like to lead a humanitarian trip to Haiti." In Miami, Florida, one man hopes a resolution from last year will go better in two thousand nine: GLEN: "My name's Glenn Mitchell. I live in Miami. And personally I have a resolution to do more artwork. And I had the same resolution last year and I wasn't able to." This next woman wishes a little brain power for everybody. PEGGY: "Hi, I'm Peggy. I'm from Grafton, Wisconsin. I'm forty-eight years old. In the New Year, I hope things start to get right again. Everybody's happy, healthy and a little bit smarter, so that things go well." Many people agreed with Miz Rice. Ian McMann of Miami said the election process in the United States in two thousand eight brought a return to hope. Ellen Wade is a forty-two year old businesswoman and student in Waynesboro, Virginia. She expressed similar feelings about the political change. She said she hoped that the new president could help lead the way to better relations among the nations of the world. But many people we spoke to kept their resolutions very simple, like this boy. NOAH: "My name is Noah Goodwin. I live in Arlington, Virginia. I'm twelve years old and I resolve to get a girlfriend this year." Our resolution is to wish all of our listeners a happy, healthy and productive New Year! I'm Mario Ritter for VOA Special English. 049. White Christmas: One of the Best Loved Holiday Songs This is Steve Ember with a VOA Special English holiday program. (MUSIC) Music fills the air. Colorful lights shine brightly in windows. Children and adults open gifts from loved ones and friends. These are all Christmas traditions. Another tradition is snow. Christmas in the northern part of the world comes a few days after the start of winter. In many places, a blanket of clean white snow covers the ground on Christmas Day. This is what is meant by a "White Christmas." Of course, many places do not get snow at Christmas. In fact, they may be very warm this time of year. People who like snow, but live where it is warm, can only dream of having a white Christmas. American songwriter Irving Berlin captured these feelings in his song, "White Christmas." Hundreds of singers and musicians have recorded "White Christmas." But the version most people still know best was sung by Bing Crosby. (MUSIC) Songwriter Irving Berlin was born in Russia in eighteen eighty-eight. He did not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. He was Jewish. But his song celebrates an idea of peace and happiness that anyone, anywhere -- snowy or not -- can enjoy. This is Steve Ember. 050. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: TOEFL or IELTS? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. For the past two weeks, we have talked about the SAT and ACT college admissions tests and the GRE for graduate school. This week in our Foreign Students Series, we move on to English language tests. Most American colleges and universities accept one or both of the two major tests. One is the Test of English as a Foreign Language, known as the TOEFL. The other is the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS. The TOEFL is given in one hundred eighty countries. The competing IELTS is given in one hundred twenty-one countries. One million people each year take the TOEFL, says Tom Ewing, a spokesman for the Educational Testing Service. Same with the IELTS, says Beryl Meiron, the executive director of IELTS International. She says two thousand colleges and universities in the United States now recognize the IELTS. Schools might accept it only for undergraduate or graduate admission or both. The IELTS is a paper test, while the TOEFL is given on paper only in places where a computer test is unavailable. The TOEFL paper test costs one hundred fifty dollars. It tests reading, listening and writing. A separate Test of Spoken English costs one hundred twenty-five dollars. The computer version is called the TOEFL iBT, or Internet-based test. The price is different in each country, but generally falls between one hundred fifty and two hundred dollars. The TOEFL iBT and the IELTS both measure all four language skills -- listening, reading, writing and speaking. But with the IELTS, the speaking test is done separately as a live interview. You speak with an examiner who is certified in ESOL -- English for speakers of other languages. Everyone takes the same speaking and listening tests. But there is a choice of two kinds of reading and writing tests -- either academic or general training. IELTS International says the test measures true-to-life ability to communicate in English for education, immigration and employment. Institutions in Britain and Australia jointly developed it. The cost is different in each country. But Beryl Meiron says the price in local currency is generally comparable to about one hundred sixty dollars. The IELTS Web site is ielts.org. The TOEFL Web site is toefl.org. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. 051. Foreign Student Series: The SAT and the ACT This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we continue our discussion of college entrance tests in the United States. There are two competing admissions tests at the undergraduate level: the SAT and the ACT. We talked last week about the SAT. The reasoning test involves mathematics and language and includes writing an essay. You can also take SAT subject tests. The ACT is designed to measure what a student learned in high school. There are questions in four skill areas: math, English, reading and science. The ACT takes just over four hours. It costs fifty-six dollars to take outside the United States. A writing test -- which is not required -- adds thirty minutes and fifteen dollars. Details about the ACT can be found at act.org. ACT used to be short for American College Testing; SAT once meant Scholastic Aptitude Test. But today the letters no longer stand for anything. Most American colleges and universities require applicants for a bachelor's degree to take one of the tests. Some students take both. The ACT is advertised as "America's most widely accepted college entrance exam." The SAT is advertised as the one "most widely taken" and, combined with high school grades, "the best predictor of college success." Yet activists have long debated the fairness of these tests and what they really show. The issue has intensified as the test preparation industry has grown. Now, some colleges and universities have stopped requiring the tests. A group called FairTest has found almost eight hundred schools where students may be able to gain admission without the SAT or ACT. The list is at fairtest.org. For graduate-level programs, applicants often have to take the Graduate Record Examinations, or GRE. The general test measures reasoning, thinking and writing skills. The cost outside the United States is one hundred seventy dollars -- except in China, Taiwan and South Korea. The cost there is one hundred ninety-five dollars. Students can also take GRE subject tests. Information about the GRE can be found on the Educational Testing Service Web site, ets.org. The two major language tests for non-native English speakers are the TOEFL and the IELTS. These will be our subject next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our Foreign Students Series is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember. 052. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Admissions Tests This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Many American colleges and universities require applications for the fall term to be completed by January first. But some have deadlines of December first. So this was a fitting week for a research group in California to release its latest "national report card on higher education." The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education calls it "Measuring Up." The report says the price of college has increased more than four hundred percent since nineteen eighty-two. Costs have climbed much faster than other prices -- as well as the wages of average families. The group warns that a continuation of these trends would put higher education beyond the reach of most Americans. And it would mean greater debt for those who do go to college. The report also expresses concern that the United States is losing its leadership in sending young people to college. Earlier progress can be seen in the percentage of Americans age thirty-five and older who have a college degree. In a comparison of twenty-nine countries, the United States is second, after Canada. But today other countries are making progress more quickly. The United States is tenth in the percentage of college-educated adults age twenty-five to thirty-four. And it is seventh in the percentage of eighteen to twenty-four year olds in college. Also, a lot of students drop out. The report says college completion "has never been a strength" of American higher education. Among the twenty-nine countries, the United States is fifteenth in college completion rates. Completing college first requires getting admitted. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we begin a discussion of entrance tests. Advisers say a student's high school record is the most important consideration. But most American schools require one of the two major college-entrance tests. The SAT measures reasoning skills in math and language and includes an essay question. The four-hour test costs forty-five dollars. The international processing charge is twenty-six -- plus an extra twenty-three dollars in India and Pakistan. Students may also need to take subject tests. Information about the SAT can be found online at collegeboard.com. Next time, we will talk about the other major test, the ACT-- and about schools that do not require either. And we will discuss the TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 053. Education Report - Student Series: Thanksgiving in the US By Nancy Steinbach 2008-11-26 This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Americans traditionally gather for a large holiday meal with family and friends. Most schools are also closed Friday for Thanksgiving break. Some students get all week off. So where does this leave international students? We asked a few colleges and universities around the country for this week's report in our Foreign Student Series. In the Northeast, Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, has twenty-nine international students this year out of a student population of about eight hundred. Dick Weis is the director of international programs. He says teachers and coaches invite international students to their homes for Thanksgiving. Professor Weis is having six or seven at his house for the holiday. In the Southeast, Lelia Crawford is director of international student programs at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She says school groups organize meals for the more than one thousand five hundred international students at Emory. Local organizations also get involved, like a group called the Atlanta Ministry with International Students. It arranges for students in the Atlanta area to celebrate Thanksgiving with American families. The group also has a program called Christmas International House. International students can spend the long winter holiday with families in other parts of the United States. In the Midwest, Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, has more than one thousand students. Fourteen of them this year are from other countries. International student adviser Nadia Sifri says they are connected with local host families when they first arrive. The families provide a home away from home, she says, and they generally invite the students to spend Thanksgiving with them. And in the West, Bob Ericksen heads the Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA has more than five thousand international students, and he says they can enjoy not just one but three meals for Thanksgiving. His office and the Study Abroad Office have a dinner before the holiday. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, local families bring food to a park to share with international students. And that evening, the students can go to another Thanksgiving meal held by a service fraternity. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 054. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: The Application Process This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we talk about applying to an American college or university. International admissions officers advise students to apply to at least three schools. You may be able to apply online and pay the application charge with a credit card, or by mail. You should study the Web sites of schools that interest you. You can find information about how and when to apply, how much it will cost and whether any financial aid is available. And you can probably e-mail the admissions office with any questions. At Whitman College, the admissions Web site has an area where people can send questions to current international students. Whitman is a small private college in Walla Walla, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest. It has about one thousand five hundred students. Fifty-two of them this year are international students from more than thirty countries. By comparison, almost four thousand international students from more than one hundred countries are at Ohio State University. Ohio State is in the Midwest, in the city of Columbus, Ohio, and is one of the largest universities in the United States. It has more than fifty-two thousand students. Wherever you apply, you should start the application process at least two years before you want to begin your studies. Completing the applications and any required admissions tests will take time. Non-native English speakers will most likely have to take the TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language. We will be discussing the TOEFL and other tests in the coming weeks. So far in our series, we talked about choosing schools. We suggested getting help at the nearest Educational Advising Center. The State Department has advising centers around the world. We also talked about online education programs and subjects like accreditation and diploma mills. And we talked about student visas and the job of SEVIS. SEVIS is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System operated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Next week will be part twelve of our Foreign Student Series. If you missed any, our series is online with transcripts, MP3s and helpful links at 51voa.com. You can also send us e-mail through the site. Or write to special@voanews.com, and be sure to include your name and tell us where you are. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 055. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: What SEVIS Means to You This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We are now ten weeks into our Foreign Student Series on higher education in the United States. So far we have talked about planning for school and about subjects like online education and diploma mills. Last week the subject was getting a travel visa. Today we discuss something else that every foreign student needs to know about: SEVIS. SEVIS is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. More than nine thousand American colleges, universities and exchange visitor programs are required to use this electronic system. It links them with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in the Department of Homeland Security. The terrorist attacks in two thousand one led to the creation of the department. But SEVIS was being developed even before the attacks as a way to improve record keeping on foreign students in the United States. Some of the September eleventh hijackers entered the country on student visas. With SEVIS, a school enters information about a student. The system lets the school know when the student has arrived. The school must then provide reports on whether or not the student is attending classes. Students who violate the terms of their visa can be expelled from the country and may be denied future entry. Two examples of violations are failing to begin classes by the required date and working at a job without permission. Other violations are not attending classes full time and not leaving the country after completion of studies. SEVIS currently lists more than one million active, nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors and their dependents. Students and exchange visitors are charged fees to help pay for the system. The fee for students increased to two hundred dollars in September. This is the visa application charge we talked about last week. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the fee must be paid before going to an embassy or consulate for the visa interview. All the information you need to know about SEVIS can be found on the Internet at ice.gov. That's i-c-e dot g-o-v. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 056. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Getting a US Visa This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week, in part nine of our Foreign Student Series, we talk about getting a student visa to come to the United States. Just getting accepted to an American college or university does not guarantee that you will get a visa. And getting a visa just lets you arrive in the United States. It does not guarantee that an immigration officer will permit you to enter the country. Travel documents come from the Department of State. But immigration is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. The State Department has a Web site with all the rules for getting a visa. The address is unitedstatesvisas.gov. Unitedstatesvisas is all one word. If you are requesting a visa for the first time, you will probably have to go to an American embassy or consulate. You will need to bring a government form sent to you by your American school that shows you have been accepted. You will also need banking and tax records that show you have enough money to pay for your education. And be prepared to provide evidence that you will return to your home country after your studies end. All of this is important in satisfying the requirements to get a visa. A consular official will also take your picture and your fingerprints. Foreign students must contact their local embassy or consulate to request an interview and to get other information. This includes directions about how and where to pay the visa application charge. The cost is two hundred dollars. You should apply for the visa as soon as you have been accepted to a school in the United States. The government needs time to perform a background investigation. You cannot receive a visa more than one hundred twenty days before the start of your program. And if you are coming as a student for the first time, you cannot enter the country more than thirty days before classes begin. Once you come to the United States, you can stay for the length of your period of study. Your school is required to provide the Department of Homeland Security with reports on your status as a student. We will talk more about what that means next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. 057. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Getting a US Education From Home This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we talk about getting an American education online. A student named Hendra has written to us from Indonesia asking about a good online university. Finding the right online program requires research, just like a traditional education. Talking to advisers and recruiters can help. Keep in mind, though, that they might have a financial interest to direct you to certain programs. Avoid a diploma mill. We talked about this last week. Diploma mills, also known as degree mills, are nothing more than businesses. The education is poor quality, if they even require any class work to get a degree. The Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) recognizes a group in Washington, D.C., to accredit schools that offer distance learning. One hundred ten programs in the United States and six other countries are accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council. We asked the executive director, Michael Lambert, for advice on choosing a distance learning program. He says the first thing is to go on the CHEA Web site to find if a school is accredited. The address is c-h-e-a dot o-r-g. Next, make sure the school offers what you need. Do you need a degree, or will a certificate or license be enough? Another consideration is cost. Often the published price does not include all the costs -- like books. Technology requirements can also add to the costs. Will you need to get new software or a high-speed Internet connection or even a new computer to take the classes you want? Also, consider the level of interaction that an online program offers. You might never meet the teacher or other students in person. You need to be able to work without the supervision that you might find in a traditional class. Finally, and this is our own advice, find out what others say. You might search on the Internet for comments or ratings or news stories about schools that interest you. Just remember that what people say is not always fair or true. So now we have talked about getting an American education online. Next week, we begin explaining the steps to getting an American education in the United States. 058. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Diploma Mills This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week, in part seven of our Foreign Student Series, we talk more about accreditation of American colleges and universities. To become accredited, programs have to meet quality standards that are set by an accrediting agency. In the United States, private organizations around the country handle this process. Schools must be reaccredited every ten years, or sooner. They can lose their accreditation if they have problems that are not corrected within a given period of time. For example, the George Washington University Medical School announced last week that it was correcting problems found by its accrediting agency. The medical school in Washington, D.C., has been given two years to meet the standards. School officials said the changes include writing more detailed course objectives and providing more study areas for students. The process of accreditation is designed in part to protect against diploma mills. These operations call themselves colleges or universities but provide no real education. In August, a husband and wife were sentenced to three years in federal prison in a case in the northwestern state of Washington. They operated Saint Regis University and more than one hundred other diploma mills. These businesses supplied worthless degrees to more than nine thousand people in the United States and around the world. The couple got seven million dollars. George Gollin, a physics professor at the University of Illinois, is an expert on accreditation who helped investigate the case. He advises students to get the exact name of a school they are interested in, then look for it on the Web site of a group known as CHEA. CHEA is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The address is chea.org. Make sure a school or program is accredited by a legally recognized accrediting agency before paying any money. Only legitimate schools and programs are listed on the site. It also lists the only legally recognized agencies. Experts advise students to be suspicious of offers from schools that do not require much work or interaction with teachers. One warning sign is any offer of college credit for life experience. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. A link to the CHEA Web site can be found, along with our continuing Foreign Student Series, at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember. 059. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Accreditation Explained This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Now, we continue our Foreign Student Series for those of you considering an American college or university. Accreditation is a process used for quality control. Across the United States, there are eighty accrediting agencies for higher education. These are private, nonprofit organizations. They develop educational goals, then examine schools to make sure the goals are met. The first step is for a college or university to ask for accreditation. The school then measures its performance against the requirements. After that, the accrediting agency sends a team of specialists to decide whether or not the school meets the standards. Accredited schools are observed every few years to see how they are doing. Accrediting organizations must be recognized by either the federal government or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Almost half of all the agencies are recognized by both CHEA and the United States Department of Education. Higher education groups created CHEA in nineteen ninety-six. But students who want to receive federal student aid must attend a school accredited by a government-recognized agency. Foreign students might wonder why they should care much about all this. After all, foreign students in most cases do not receive aid from the United States government. But accreditation is also meant to tell employers that your studies met a set of quality standards. And accreditation can make it easier to move credits from one school to another. Seven thousand institutions and more than nineteen thousand programs were accredited by American organizations last year. Among them were almost five hundred foreign colleges, as well as foreign campuses of American universities. All accredited schools and programs can be found on the CHEA Web site, chea.org. It also has advice about how to avoid worthless educational programs and accrediting agencies. We will talk more about that subject next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 060. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: Colleges and Degrees This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We answer questions from two students this week in part five of our Foreign Student Series on American higher education. Sylla Hamed in Ghana wants to know the difference between a university and a community college. And Marcelo Porto Nicola in Brazil asks about the difference between an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree. Undergraduates are students in the first four years of higher education, or what Americans call college. In the United States, that means the four years after twelfth grade. But the work does not all have to be done at the same college. For example, a student may first attend a two-year school, also called a community college or junior college. Students who complete a two-year course of study earn an associate degree. Starting at a community college can save a lot of money if students want to go on to a four-year college or a big university. Many four-year schools will accept this work as the first two years toward a bachelor's degree. To earn a bachelor's degree, students usually take general subjects during their first two years. After that they take classes in their major area of study. Students who major in a scientific area receive a bachelor of science degree, known as a B.S. Students in the arts and humanities get a B.A. -- a bachelor of arts. Schools may also offer specialized degrees, like a bachelor of music. After students have a bachelor's degree, they may go on to earn a graduate degree -- either a master's degree or a doctorate. A master's degree generally takes two to three years of full-time study. A master of business administration, for example, takes about two years to complete. A doctorate can take much longer. It is the highest degree offered in graduate school. Some programs require six years of study or even longer after college. A student may earn a doctor of philosophy degree, known as a PhD, or a professional degree in an area like medicine, law or education. We will talk more about graduate programs later in our series. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 061.Education Report - Foreign Student Series: College, University or Institute? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Americans use the term college students to mean students either in colleges or universities. Not only that, Americans almost never say going off to university or when I was in university. That sounds British. Instead, they say going off to college and when I was in college. College, university: what's the difference? We answer that this week in part three of our Foreign Student Series on American higher education. Colleges and universities have many things in common. Both offer undergraduate degrees in the arts and sciences, for example. And both can help prepare young people to earn a living. But many colleges do not offer graduate studies. Another difference is that universities are generally bigger. They offer more programs and do more research. Another place of higher education, especially in technical areas, is an institute, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet even an institute of technology can offer a wide choice of programs and activities. M.I.T. says that seventy-five percent of freshmen come there with a strong interest and involvement in the arts. Modern universities developed from those of Europe in the Middle Ages. The word university came from the Latin universitas, describing a group of people organized for a common purpose. College came from collegium, a Latin word with a similar meaning. In England, colleges were formed to provide students with places to live. Usually each group was studying the same thing. So college came to mean an area of study. The first American universities divided their studies into a number of areas and called each one a college. This is still true. A college can also be a part of a university. For example, Harvard College is the undergraduate part of Harvard University. Programs in higher learning can also be called schools, like a school of engineering or a medical school within a college or university. You know, learning all these terms is an education in itself. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are at 51voa.com. We invite your questions for our Foreign Student Series. We cannot offer any personal advice or assistance. But we might be able to answer a general question during our series. 062. Education Report - Foreign Student Series: First Steps This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week in our Foreign Student Series, we discuss the first steps for students interested in higher education in the United States. One place to go for advice and information about American colleges and universities is an EducationUSA center. More than four hundred of these educational advising centers are located around the world. The advisers at EducationUSA centers do not charge any money for their services. They help students find schools and get information about financial aid, admissions tests and visa requirements. The centers are supported by the State Department. You can find the nearest one on the State Department's Web site for international students. The address is educationusa.state.gov. Again, it's educationusa.state.gov. Another place to get information is at an educational fair. Representatives of American colleges and universities present information and answer questions from students and their parents. The Institute of International Education has been organizing United States Higher Education Fairs in Asia since nineteen eighty-two. Last year, more than fourteen thousand students attended these fairs in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. The next higher education fairs in Asia are in October. For example, more than seventy colleges and universities will have representatives in Hong Kong on October eleventh. Other organizations hold similar events in other parts of the world. Information about educational fairs in your country can be found at the same Web site, educationusa.state.gov. One important piece of advice -- give yourself plenty of time to plan your studies in the United States. Educational advisers say you should begin planning at least two years before you want to start classes. 063. Education Report - Foreign Student Series An Introduction This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A listener in Poland recently sent us an e-mail. Slawek Loboda writes: There are many American universities and colleges that provide long distance education to the world. The trouble is that each university says that it is the best. After an hour of searching and reading what they have in their offer, one gets a headache. You simply don't know whom to trust and what to choose. Slawek goes on to say, I have been listening to VOA for years and I would trust you if you made an interesting program about American universities for foreigners. Is there a university that you could recommend? Well, choosing a school is an individual decision. But we may be able to help inform that decision. Slawek's letter happened to come at just the right time. It gives us the perfect opening for not just one program, but a series -- our Foreign Student Series. We update the series every two years to provide fresh information for anyone interested in higher education in America. The United States has more than four thousand colleges and universities to choose from. They come in all sizes -- from a few hundred students to enough to populate a city. And students may not even have to be in the United States to take classes. Some universities have campuses in other countries. And, as Slawek pointed out, many programs are offered over the Internet. Over the coming weeks, we will talk all about the American system of higher education. Our reports will take you inside some of the nation's colleges and universities. We will explore programs of study and report on student life. We will talk about financial aid and employment, and about admissions tests and English language requirements. We will also explain the process for becoming an international student in the United States. And we will talk about how the terrorist attacks of September eleventh, two thousand one, changed some of the rules. 064. School, and Family, Budgets Under Pressure This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Fifty million public school children in America are starting a new school year. The number is a record high. Yet, at the same time, school systems in many areas are facing budget problems. The weak economy is not the only cause. Another reason has to do with increased prices for food and fuel. They mean higher costs for school meals and bus transportation. The United States will spend more than five hundred billion dollars on public education for the coming school year. The federal government helps pay, but the responsibility for education is mostly on state and local governments. Two major sources of money for public schools are property taxes and sales taxes. A slowdown in consumer spending, the engine of the economy, means fewer goods to tax. And the collapse of the housing market means less money to collect in property taxes. A report in July from the National Conference of State Legislatures said thirty-one of the fifty states were having budget problems. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says school officials in at least eleven states have cut or proposed cuts in education. Florida, for example, has cut school aid by about two percent per student. State officials say tax collections are low and lottery sales have fallen by one hundred million dollars. Florida and many other states use money from sales of lottery tickets to help pay for education. Around the country, the economic slowdown has added to the numbers of children receiving free or reduced price lunches at school. In other words, many of the same economic problems that have hit school budgets have also hit family budgets. Each year, the education group Phi Delta Kappa and the Gallup organization gather opinions about American public schools. This year's poll found support for increased use of federal taxes to finance public schools and to help young people attend college. People were also asked which presidential candidate they would vote for if they were voting on the basis of a desire to strengthen the public schools. Forty-six percent chose Democrat Barack Obama. Twenty-nine percent chose Republican John McCain. In the last two presidential elections, the poll found Americans equally split on which candidate would be more supportive of the schools. 065. Interest Grows in International High Schools in US This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Some American high schools are for students with special interests, like science or the arts. New York City even has a program for those interested in the food service industry, called Food and Finance High School. New York also has what are called international high schools, or internationals, for immigrant students. They must be new learners of English who have been in the United States less than four years. The first school opened in nineteen eighty-five. The city will begin the new term next month with ten. New York works with a nonprofit organization, the Internationals Network for Public Schools. Support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped the network expand. Oakland, California, opened an international high school last year. San Francisco and Los Angeles plan to follow in two thousand nine. Other cities are also showing interest. The network says the graduation rate was seventy percent last year in the four New York schools open long enough to have graduating classes. That, compared with twenty-three and a half percent for English language learners in all of the city schools. Over all, New York officials recently reported that the city's four-year graduation rate, excluding August graduates, reached fifty-two percent last year. At the same time, they reported that the city's dropout rate fell below fifteen percent. The Internationals Network says its schools have an average dropout rate of just five percent. Claire Sylvan is the executive director of the group. She says students drop out mainly because their families need them to work or because parents arrange marriages for girls. The network helps find teachers and trains them in the teaching method of the internationals. Claire Sylvan says the teaching approach is to have students use their different strengths to help each other. They work in small groups, but she says they are not grouped by ability. She says the students discuss issues, then produce a product like a paper, a play, a poster or a report. They learn English as they work. Some came from traditional schools where, they said, other students made fun of them. Students in the international high schools immigrated from more than ninety countries. The Internationals Network says more than ninety percent of the graduates continue on to college. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 066. Young Voices in the Fight Against AIDS This is the VOA Special English Education Report. One thousand young people from around the world attended the International AIDS Conference last week in Mexico City. They were there to represent the five million young people living with H.I.V. and the more than fifteen million who have lost parents to AIDS. Twenty-one-year-old Andrew Francis from Jamaica says young people must be active at every level of AIDS policy-making. If not, he says, there will continue to be programs and policies that do not connect with the realities of young people. Twenty-three-old Mary Awour Odhiambo of Kenya became infected four years ago after having unprotected sex. She says the drugs that she and others take to control H.I.V. give them the appearance of being healthy. But people on antiretroviral therapy can still pass the virus to others. So her advice to young people? MARY AWOUR ODHIAMBO: Never trust anybody, not even themselves. Even if you have to go like for sex, at least they should use a condom, because in this world you can't tell who has the virus now. Other young delegates talked about difficulties facing AIDS education and prevention efforts. Twenty-year-old Himakstu Piplani is from India. HIMAKSTU PIPLANI: Things back home are not very good. First and foremost the sex education program has been banned by twelve Indian states. So that's not a good thing because we are not getting adequate knowledge and information anymore. Secondly, the legal framework in India is not very good when it comes to AIDS and young people. We have laws that criminalize homosexuality. We have laws that criminalize drug use. The young people at the AIDS conference included teenage peer educators. Conference organizers invited seventeen-year-old Vanessa John Mlawi to speak about her work in Tanzania. VANESSA JOHN MLAWI: I am a peer educator in school and my role as a peer educator is I provide accurate information to my other students. And it is accepted and I think that by going on and doing this will make a really big change. Another delegate, Alischa Ross of Australia, lost her mother and stepfather to AIDS when she was a teenager. She later started a nonprofit group called YEAH, Youth Empowering Against AIDS. ALISCHA ROSS: When you think of the fact that the majority of people in the world affected by H.I.V. are young means the majority of people with the experience are young. So that makes perfect sense that we are at the center of responding to this pandemic. Alischa Ross saw hope in the large presence of young people at the latest International AIDS conference. At the first one she attended eight years ago in South Africa, she says, there were just thirty delegates under the age of thirty. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. 067. Former Teach for America Member Says The Program Changed Her Life This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Teach for America is a non-profit program that places new teachers in schools in low-income areas across the country. The teachers must remain in their positions for at least two years. About seventeen thousand college graduates have worked in the program since it began in nineteen ninety. A student at Princeton University, Wendy Kopp, developed Teach for America as part of her college work. Money from major businesses helped make her idea a reality. Wendy Kopp still heads Teach for America. It receives support from the federal government, private businesses and individuals. Some education experts criticize the program because its teachers get only five weeks of training before they start teaching. And they say most of the teachers do not continue teaching after two years. However, the program says most of the teachers who took part in the program are studying or working in education. And many of its former teachers have become leaders in the effort to improve education for all children. Margery Yeager is an example of this. Mizz Yeager taught in a public school in Washington, D.C. as part of Teach for America a few years ago. She now works in the office of Michelle Rhee, the top official of the District of Columbia public schools. Mizz Yeager says Teach for America changed her life path and that of many others. She says teaching in a city school is extremely difficult and more training time is not necessarily what is needed. She says even people who move to other kinds of work continue to stay involved in education issues. Chancellor Michelle Rhee and other top officials of the D.C. school system also served in Teach for America. Earlier studies about the success of students in Teach for America classes have been mixed. However, a recent study involved high school students in North Carolina. It found that the students of Teach for America teachers scored higher on mathematics and science tests than other students. Working for Teach for America is extremely popular among top college graduates. The program reported an increase in applications this year from eighteen thousand to twenty-five thousand. About three thousand seven hundred new teachers were accepted. Teach for America will have about six thousand teachers in public schools across the country in the fall. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Barbara Klein. 068. NYU Pushes Foreign Study This is the VOA Special English Education Report. The number of American students who study in other countries has been growing. The Institute of International Education, in its most recent report, counted more than two hundred twenty-three thousand, a record. A few years ago a commission established by Congress called for a goal of one million a year by two thousand seventeen. The institute says growth in study abroad programs is partly the result of more choices of shorter lengths of study than a full school year. More than half the American students who go abroad study in Europe, though fewer than in the past. Students have shown growing interest in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Since two thousand one, New York University has been sending more students abroad than any other campus in the United States. It offers classes in Argentina, China, Ghana and several countries in Europe. More than nine hundred sixty undergraduates from New York University will go abroad this fall. The largest number -- four hundred -- will study in Florence, Italy. Mostly local professors teach fifty courses there. Twenty-six students, the smallest number, are going to Berlin, Germany, where just eight courses are offered. Ayla Schermer of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a nineteen-year-old business major entering her second year at N.Y.U. She wants to study in another country for the spring semester beginning in January. She has to decide which country in September. Ayla says her choice will depend on the courses offered at each place and the cost. The classes will cost more than eighteen thousand dollars, but that does not include transportation or housing. Chris Nicolussi is the student services director in the Office of Global Programs at N.Y.U. He says housing costs differ from program to program. Some places offer dormitory housing; in others, students live with local families or in apartments. The strength of the euro against the dollar makes programs in Europe more costly than those in Argentina, for example. But Chris Nicolussi says the university has not seen any drop in the popularity of its European programs. He did say, however, that more students are interested in low cost activities organized by the university during their time abroad. And before they go, he says, more want to learn how to better budget their money. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. 069. Schools Look to Save Money With Four-Day Week This is the VOA Special English Education Report. As we said last week, American schools are looking for ways to save money on bus transportation because of high fuel prices. More children may have to walk, ride their bikes or find other ways to get to school. But, as another effect of the high prices, they may not have to go to school as often. Some schools, especially in rural areas, are changing to a four-day week. That means longer days instead of the traditional Monday through Friday schedule. Beginning in the fall, students in the Maccray school district in Minnesota will be in school Tuesday through Friday. Each school day will be sixty-five minutes longer. Superintendent Greg Schmidt says the district expects to save about sixty-five thousand dollars a year in transportation costs. The district has about seven hundred students living in an area of nine hundred square kilometers. State officials have approved the plan for three years. They may change their mind before then if learning suffers. In Custer, South Dakota, students have been going to school Monday through Thursday since nineteen ninety-five. Superintendent Tim Creal says the change has saved an estimated one million dollars over just the past eight years. But he sees other benefits, too. Students get more instructional time. And activities that used to interfere with classes are now held on non-school days. He says that in the future, the growth of online classes could make it possible to require even fewer days in school. High fuel prices are driving college students to take more online classes. And in some states, high school students can take them, too. A four-day school week sounds like a great idea for students and teachers. But working parents may have to pay for child care for that fifth day. In agricultural areas, though, it can mean an extra day of helping on the family ranch. In New Mexico, the first school district changed to a four-day week in nineteen seventy-four because of the Arab oil boycott. Now, seventeen out of eighty-nine districts use it. The Lake Arthur School District has just one hundred sixty students. Lake Arthur used a four-day schedule for twelve years. But a few years ago it went back to five days. Michael Grossman heads the district. He says two studies there failed to show any real educational improvement using the four-day week. And he says not much instruction was taking place during the last hour of school, because teachers and students were too tired. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 070. High Fuel Prices Mean a Hard Road for School Buses This is the VOA Special English Education Report. High fuel prices are affecting all areas of life, including education. The United States has an estimated four hundred seventy-five thousand school buses -- all painted yellow. Each day they carry more than twenty-five million children, half of all schoolchildren in the country. But these buses, on average, use four liters of diesel fuel to travel less than sixteen kilometers. When the school year began last fall, diesel averaged fifty-five cents a liter nationally. The price nearly doubled, to a dollar and eight cents, by the end of school in June. Bob Riley speaks for the American School Bus Council, an industry coalition. He says fuel prices negotiated for schools are not much lower than others have to pay. As a result, schools are looking for ways to reduce transportation costs. Bus routes are being redrawn or, in some cases, canceled. Some areas are buying buses that use natural gas or other alternative fuels. And a few places are investigating hybrid fuel-electric technology. Other steps include fewer field trips and less travel by sports teams. And some school districts may end any bus service not required by law. Most states require bus transportation through high school for public school students who need it. Massachusetts requires it only for elementary school. And schools can charge to ride the bus. State education officials say some districts may begin to do that, or raise existing fees. Studies show that school buses are the safest form of transportation to and from school. The American School Bus Council say cuts in bus service are bad for children and possibly the environment. It says removing buses from the road will mean an increase in other vehicles transporting students. Spokesman Bob Riley says another concern is that reducing bus service might reduce attendance. But it could also get more children to walk or bicycle to school. And that would surely make people happy at the National Center for Safe Routes to School. More kids walking or biking safely to school is the aim of a three-year-old federal program, part of an international movement. The goal is to increase physical activity and reduce air pollution. The United States will celebrate Walk to School Day on October eighth this year. But for some students, high fuel prices could make every day a walk-to-school day. Next week, we'll talk about other ways that schools and students are reacting to the prices. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 071. 'Summer Work/Travel' Brings Many Students to US This is the VOA Special English Education Report. This week, we answer a question from a student in Odessa, Ukraine. Marushka wants to know about a program that lets foreign students work in the United States during their summer vacations. The program is called Summer Work/Travel. The State Department administers it for full-time college or university students who speak English well. Students come on a J-one exchange visa. They can work for up to four months during their school break. They generally work in service jobs in stores, resorts, hotels, restaurants and amusement parks. But summer internships are also permitted. "Summer" in this case means summer in the student's country. Those from south of the equator come to the United States during the northern winter. Students cannot work as housekeepers in private homes or be involved in patient care. And they are supposed to be paid the same as Americans. Congress created this popular program under a nineteen sixty-one law, the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act. Last year, one hundred fifty thousand students came to the United States this way. Students can do the Summer Work/Travel program more than once. Sally Lawrence heads the State Department office responsible for the program. She says students should begin to gather information a year before they want to travel. More than fifty organizations are approved to act as sponsors. Sally Lawrence advises students to avoid unapproved groups offering services, and to research a few different sponsors. Sponsors must confirm the English language ability of students and make sure they are currently in school. But sponsors do not all charge the same price for their services. Another difference: some sponsors arrange employment and housing for students before they leave home. Others permit students to find their own jobs after they arrive. Sally Lawrence says the first thing to do is to find the list of sponsors on the Web page for J visa exchange programs. The address is a little long, but here it is: exchanges.state.gov/education/jexchanges. Click on Designated Sponsor List, then choose Summer Work/Travel under Category Description. For more information about the program, go to the main page and click on Private Sector Programs. 072. Debating Eighth-Grade Graduations This is the VOA Special English Education Report. In the United States, middle school is the period between elementary school and eighth grade. Often this is a difficult period of change for children. If all goes well, four years later, they are high school graduates. Graduation is a term traditionally connected with high school or college. Yet there are even kindergartens and preschools that hold "graduations." These might be mostly for fun. But some people are concerned about the popularity of eighth-grade graduations. Some families may have trouble paying for costly celebrations organized by parents or schools. Yet they may feel social pressure to take part. The same criticism has been made for years about high school graduations and senior proms. A prom, short for promenade, is a formal dance. But critics say that, more importantly, eighth-grade graduations may send the wrong message -- that an eighth-grade education is enough. They are concerned especially about poor communities where many people never finish high school. The subject has even entered the presidential campaign. Democratic candidate Barack Obama talked about it in a recent speech at a Chicago church. The senator from Illinois said children should be expected to finish high school and college. He reminded people "you're supposed to graduate from eighth grade." "Let's not have a huge party," he said, "let's just give them a handshake." A growing number of middle school administrators seem to agree. They are making changes. For example, instead of graduation, some schools now call it a promotion ceremony. James Williams is the superintendent of public schools in Buffalo, New York. He is urging the schools in his district to hold "moving up" ceremonies at the end of eighth grade. Families would celebrate that students are moving up to the next level of their education. The school chief says graduation from high school should be the goal. And the ceremony then, he says, should be an important, special and serious event in students' lives. But some parents in schools that are trying to limit eighth-grade graduations say administrators are overreacting. They say graduation ceremonies are a good way to celebrate success in school. And they say the recognition might make some students more likely to complete their education. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 073. Online Learning Grows, but Research Finds Mixed Results This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Forty-two of the fifty American states offered some kind of public online learning this past school year. One state, Michigan, now requires all students to have an online learning experience before they finish high school. Even the idea of a school has changed since the rise of the Internet in the nineteen nineties. A new report from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University says eighteen states have full-time virtual schools. There are no buildings. All classes are online. Online learners might work at different times. But there might be set times for class discussions -- by text, voice or video -- and virtual office hours for teachers. Florida started the first statewide public virtual school in the United States in nineteen ninety-seven. Today, the Florida Virtual School offers more than ninety courses. Fifty-six thousand students were enrolled as of December. Almost sixty percent were female. The school's Web site says each student was enrolled in an average of two classes. Two-thirds were also enrolled in public or charter schools. Charter schools are privately operated with public money. Other students are home-schooled or in private school. Florida Virtual School has now opened the Florida Virtual Global School. Students in other countries pay for classes. Janet Heiking teaches an English class. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her students live as far away as Africa and Japan. She says they are taking her Advanced Placement class to prepare for attending an American college. They can earn college credits by passing the A.P. test. So how good are virtual schools? Studies have shown mixed results, as that new report from Indiana University notes. For example, students at Florida Virtual School earned higher grades than those taking the same courses the traditional way. And they scored higher on a statewide test. But virtual school students in Kansas and Colorado had lower test scores or performed at a lower level than traditional learners. Studies also find that virtual schools may not save much in operating costs. Education experts say the mixed results suggest the need for more research to find the best ways to teach in virtual schools. Also, they say schools of education need to train more teachers to work in both physical and virtual classrooms. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. To learn more about computer-based learning, go to 51voa.com. I'm Bob Doughty. 074. Book Predicts Jump in High School Courses Online This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Computers have been used in teaching for more than twenty years. But a new book says that only now are they changing education. And it predicts that a lot more is about to happen. The book is called "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns." "Disruptive innovation" is a theory developed by lead author Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School. He says organizations almost always use new, creative technology only to continue what they already do. New technology should change organizations, he says, disrupt them in a good way. They should use the technology to do things differently -- for example, to serve more needs. The new book says the needed disruptive force in education is computer-based learning. Michael Horn, another author of "Disrupting Class," told us about a Boston public school that he visited. Every student at Lilla G. Frederick Middle School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, has a laptop computer. One class was learning about storms. Michael Horn says the laptops made it possible to truly individualize the lessons, to divide materials by ability level and learning style. At the end, the students all took part in a discussion led by the teacher. Computer-based learning offers a way for students to take advanced courses not offered at their school, or to retake classes they failed. It also serves those who cannot physically attend school, and students who receive home schooling or need tutoring. Computer-based learning includes online courses. Enrollments in online courses have grown sharply. In two thousand seven, the United States had about one million enrollments, not including college courses. Students could be enrolled in more than one course, through schools or education companies. High school students make up about seventy percent of the enrollments. Still, nationally, only about one percent of all high school courses last year were taught online. But the authors of "Disrupting Class" predict it will be ten percent in about six years. And their research suggests that the number will be about fifty percent by twenty nineteen. And Michael Horn says the future of online learning could be even greater in developing countries. We'll talk more about online learning next week. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are online with transcripts and MP3s at 51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember. 075. Teens Compete, Improve Their Financial Literacy This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Business competitions for young people can be a good way to learn about economics and finance. In Northern California, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship recently held a business plan competition. Seventeen-year-old Huong Cheng won first place and now goes on to the national level. Her idea is for a business where high school students volunteer to do small tasks for old people. The families of the retirees would pay her company. Then the company would share the profits with school clubs that the students belong to. Another competition, the National Economics Challenge, reached the finals last month in New York City. Sixteen students competed from four high schools in Alabama, California, Hawaii and Indiana. They raced to answer questions on different subjects -- from personal finance to economic theory to current events. Teachers said the current problems in the economy offered a lot of examples to use in the classroom. The nonprofit National Council on Economic Education has held the challenge for eight years with the Goldman Sachs Foundation. The winners and their teachers each received three thousand dollars in United States Savings Bonds. Carmel High School from Indiana won the beginners division. Vestavia Hills High School in Alabama won the advanced division. Team member John Reinhardt says economics is a good way for young people to learn to make their own decisions. Back in Northern California, a middle school in South San Francisco started a school bookstore this year. Students help operate the store. But mostly the goal is to help them improve their English skills and learn to love reading and literature. Test scores at Parkway Heights Middle School have been very low for the last seven years. The students come largely from poor, Spanish-speaking families. Two language arts teachers opened the bookstore in April with a choice of interesting books at good prices. Trish Issac and Swaicha Chanduri received money from Schoolwide, a group that helps schools set up bookstores. Teachers hope the bookstore will be open more than one day a week, especially during summer vacation. The store may be competition for the school library. As one eighth grader noted, the bookstore has new books, and if you want to buy them, you can. Also, the library is very quiet, she says, while the bookstore "seems like a more social area." And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. I'm Jim Tedder. 076. Fighting Music Piracy on College Campuses This is the VOA Special English Education Report. When the parents of todays young people were in school, sharing music was a slow process. They had to copy songs from a vinyl record or a cassette using a tape recorder. Today friends can share the latest hits at the speed of light over the Internet. Peer-to-peer networks make file sharing easy -- and, in many cases, illegal. Five years ago, the Recording Industry Association of America, the R.I.A.A., launched a major effort to catch music pirates. Piracy violates copyright laws. These laws protect creative works against reproduction or sale without permission. The industry group has brought thousands of civil actions against university students. Students caught pirating can also pay a settlement to avoid a lawsuit and possible fines. The association uses special software to identify illegal file sharing on campus networks. But many colleges and universities oppose efforts to require schools to use similar technology. They see it as a waste of resources. They say much more illegal sharing takes place through commercial Internet providers than through campus networks. Educause is a group that works for what it calls the "intelligent use" of information technology in higher education. Steven Worona from Educause says about eighty percent of college students do not live on school grounds. And their computers, he says, are generally not linked to school networks. On its Web site, the R.I.A.A. says it has chosen to target college students because their music piracy remains an especially big problem. It says that some recent surveys show that more than half of the nations college students often download music and movies illegally. The industry group has also pushed Congress to take action. In February, the House of Representatives approved a higher education bill containing anti-piracy requirements. The measure would require all schools involved in federal financial-aid programs to develop plans to deal with unlawful downloading. Schools could invest in technology to block piracy, or they could offer legal file-sharing services. A similar bill in the Senate would require schools to inform their students about issues related to peer-to-peer file sharing. Educauses Steve Worona says most American colleges and universities already do this with incoming students. Students who get caught often have to pay fines, or they lose their use of the schools network. And thats the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Jill Moss. Im Steve Ember. 077. Some College Recruiters This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We started to talk last week about college recruiting companies. Their business is to connect students and schools. Who pays them? It depends. The college might, if the recruiter was working for the college. Or the student might, if the recruiter was working for the student. Sometimes, recruiters get paid by both sides. They help a student get into a college that was also paying the recruiter. Such relationships between colleges and recruiters worry some people who work in international education. They question how well the interests of students are being served in finding a college that is best for them. These critics say taking money from colleges limits the information that recruiters provide. One company that says it only accepts money from students is the American Universities Admission Program. AUAP is based in Florida and has been in business since nineteen ninety-five. President Jean Prade says it has helped almost three thousand foreign students attend American colleges. The company charges two thousand five hundred dollars. It suggests four schools where a student is likely to be accepted. Students receive help with the admissions process, and a guarantee that they will be accepted by at least one of the four. If not, Jean Prade says, AUAP returns eighty percent of the money. Two years ago, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers took AUAP to court. The company was an association member. But it was accused of trademark violations over unapproved use of the associations name on its Web site. The association lost the case. Free information about American colleges and universities can be found at EducationUSA centers. The State Department has about four hundred fifty of them around the world. Advisers work with students in their search for a school. The centers also have information about financial aid, admissions tests and visa requirements. And some have information programs for students who are preparing to leave for the United States. The EducationUSA Web site is educationusa.state.gov. For a link, go to 51voa.com. You can also find other information about getting into an American college or university. Click on the Foreign Student Series link at the bottom of the front page. And thats the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Im Steve Ember. 078. Study Raises Questions About Reading Program in US This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A federal program in the United States called Reading First has received one billion dollars a year for the past several years. The money has gone to school systems to get them to use scientifically based ways to teach reading. The goal is to help all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The Bush administration's education law, the No Child Left Behind Act of Two Thousand One, established Reading First. Now, the Department of Education has released findings from a study of the program. On average, teachers using it increased the time they taught reading skills like phonics and vocabulary. But the study also found, on average, little or no effect on test scores in reading comprehension. Government researchers say they are not sure how to explain the results. Critics call the program a failure and want Congress to end it. The program also came under attack after Education Department officials were accused of conflicts of interest with reading publishers. Congress cut the billion-dollar budget by almost two-thirds this year. But federal officials want to continue the program. The study did find improvements in some cases. The report examined the effects of Reading First grants in seventeen school districts across twelve states and one statewide program. The findings are for two thousand four to two thousand six. A final report with an additional year of research is expected early next year. Another new report listed the books read most often last year by students in American schools. The Renaissance Learning company based the report on its reading programs used in many schools. Students read books and then take computer quizzes to see if they understood them. There are tests for more than one hundred fifteen thousand books. The book read most often by first graders was "Green Eggs and Ham" by Doctor Seuss. In fourth grade the top book was, not surprisingly, "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" by Judy Blume. Three of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books were among the top ten in grades nine through twelve. But the book read most often was "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. Others included John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," "A Child Called 'It'" by Dave Pelzer and "Holes" by Louis Sachar. Also in the top ten were "Night" by Elie Wiesel, "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton and "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 079. From Forester to National Teacher of the Year This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A science teacher from Prineville, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest, is the new National Teacher of the Year. Michael Geisen is thirty-five years old. He was a forester. But he decided he would rather work with growing minds than with growing trees. Seven years ago, he got a master's degree in teaching and a job at Crook County Middle School. Crook County has high rates of poverty. He brought new energy to the science department. He also created school projects to get parents involved in their children's work. One girl who was recently in his class said he could probably make it interesting to watch grass grow. During lunch, his students come to his room to talk, get help, visit his turtle and sometimes join him in playing guitar. He writes songs and develops games about science. He says one of his goals as a teacher is to create people who will continue to learn throughout their lives. Michael Geisen studied forest resource management and graduated with high honors from the University of Washington. He says he tries to be creative with each activity. He does not like to use textbooks much. When students know that the work is local and useful to their lives, he says, they start to get interested. On June first Michael Geisen will begin a year as a spokesman for education. The father of two young children will travel the country and the world. The National Teacher of the Year program, a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers, began in nineteen fifty-two. The winner is chosen from among state teachers of the year. President George Bush honored this year's top teachers at the White House last week. He noted that in Michael Geisen's first two years as head of the science department, scores on a state science test rose sharply at his school. And they are still rising. The president's education reform law, the No Child Left Behind Act, expanded testing as a way to measure results. But speaking at the White House, the new National Teacher of the Year said children are "not just numbers to be measured." MICHAEL GEISEN: "Students need to know that we value more than just being right all the time. We need to really honor their creativity. We need to honor their desire to learn useful skills that are going to be relevant to the twenty-first century world. "These are skills such as innovation and creativity, people-skills like compassion and collaboration and the ability not to just know the details but to really see how it fits into the big picture. This is our real challenge, is to educate the entire child." And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 080. Applicants Ask Colleges: Why Should I Accept You? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. May first is an important date in the college admissions process in the United States. This is the last day for high school seniors to accept or reject offers of admission in the fall. Offers are sent by April fifteenth. Acceptance rates at the top colleges were lower than ever this year. No surprise, just more stress from stories of top students getting rejection letters even from less competitive schools. Numbers tell the story. The Education Department predicts that the number of high school graduates in the United States will reach the highest level ever this year. Three million three hundred thirty thousand students are expected to graduate. But not only are there more college applicants these days, they are also applying to more colleges. Online and common applications make the process easier. It can mean several acceptances to choose from. It also means more work for colleges to get the students they accept to accept them. Many colleges and universities hold visiting days that offer a chance to attend classes and stay overnight; sort of a test drive. Some schools send gifts. At least one college has its international students write letters in the native languages of accepted applicants. For many families, though, the most important thing colleges can do is show them the money. Lately, top schools with lots of money have increased their financial aid, putting pressure on other colleges to do the same. Deciding how many students to accept can be difficult. It involves trying to predict the number of applicants who will decide to attend. Students may not like being put on waiting lists, but mistakes can be costly. Some colleges have had to house new students in hotels because a larger than expected number accepted admission offers. This year, the weak economy has admissions officers nervous that some families may not be able to pay for college as planned. The recent problems that spread from the housing market to credit markets have even affected student loans. Colleges are also facing changes in the population. The Education Department expects the number of high school graduates to start going down after this year. This will happen as the last of the children of the baby boom generation finish high school. The number is not expected to start rising again until two thousand fifteen. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Transcripts and MP3s of our reports are at 51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember. 081. Physical Education Aims for Active Lives, Fewer Painful Memories This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Common sense would tell us that physically active children may be more likely to become active and healthy adults. In the United States, elementary and middle schools are advised to give students two and a half hours of physical activity a week. That is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association recommend. They say high schools should provide about four hours of physical activity each week. Yet many schools across the country have reduced their physical education programs. Criticism of the cuts has led in some places to efforts to give students more time for exercise, not less. The future health of Americans may depend on it. Just this week, a study reported that life expectancy has fallen or is no longer increasing in some parts of the United States. The situation is worst among poor people in the southern states, and especially women. Public health researchers say it is largely the result of increases in obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. They also blame differences in health services around the country. In two thousand six, a study found that only four percent of elementary schools provided daily physical education all year for all grades. This was true of eight percent of middle schools and two percent of high schools. The study also found that twenty-two percent of all schools did not require students to take any P.E. Charlene Burgeson is the executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. She says one problem for P.E. teachers is that schools are under pressure to put more time into academic subjects. Also, parents may agree that children need exercise in school. Yet many parents today still have bad memories of being chosen last for teams because teachers favored the good athletes in class. But experts say P.E. classes have changed. They say the goal has moved away from competition and toward personal performance, as a way to build a lifetime of activity. These days, teachers often lead activities like weight training and yoga. Some parents like the idea of avoiding competitive sports in P.E. class. Yet others surely dislike that idea. In the end, schools may find themselves in a no-win situation. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. You can learn more about the American education system, and get transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports, at 51voa.com. 082. Your Reaction to the Idea of Paying Students This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Recently we asked for your opinions about paying students to improve school attendance or performance on tests. Some American schools are doing this. More of you were against the idea than were for it. Some people said paying students sends a message that money is the only valuable reward. Steven from China says students should study for knowledge. Money may improve performance in the short term, he says, but we should think about the long term. Zhao Jing Tao, a college student in China, thought of an old saying. Paying students is like "drinking poison to end thirst" -- trying to solve a problem without considering the effects. Dinh Minh Tuan from Vietnam says rewards are important because they prepare students for a competitive life. But young children should get things they value more than money, like funny books, pens and film tickets. There was a suggestion from South Korea that if rewards are necessary for learning, they could be gathered like a charity fund. This money could be used for a project designed by the students. Francisco Mora from Colombia says the city of Bogota pays parents, so children do not have to work until they finish their basic education. This, he says, has increased the attendance in public schools. Teresa Finamore wrote: "I am an Italian teacher of math and science for students from eleven to fourteen. I think that it is wrong to pay students. Each student has to understand that going to school, he gets a wonderful opportunity to live better in the future and also in the present." Nelly Constant in France wonders, if young people get paid for studying, what will they expect from a job -- a rocket to the moon? Sergio Fernandes from Brazil says paying students is not realistic. But Camillus Chiemela, a Nigerian living in Germany, feels it will help to improve the education system. Students' expectations will be much higher. Naval from Russia also says yes to the idea: "We should at least get something for our time wasted. Because in my country students pay money to go to school or get good grades from teachers." And Lucy Ding from China says most Chinese students work hard for two reasons: their parents' expectations and pressure from teachers. She says getting rewards will become a custom that will get students to work hard for themselves, for the things they hope to get. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach and online at 51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember. 083. New Study Adds to Evidence That Too Many Americans Do Not Finish High School This is the VOA Special English EDUCATION REPORT. A new report says only about half of all students in the main school systems of America's largest cities finish high school. The report notes higher rates of graduation -- more than seventy percent -- in areas surrounding the cities. The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center prepared the report. Researchers studied high school graduation rates from the two thousand three, two thousand four school year. They also identified the nation's fifty largest cities. The largest, New York City, had a population of more than eight million. The smallest city was Wichita, Kansas. It had about three hundred sixty thousand people. Researchers used a system of measurement called the cumulative promotion index to find graduation rates. School officials in many of the cities studied say the resulting numbers were too low. That is because different areas use different methods to find graduation rates. Critics say many methods do not give a true picture of the number of students who leave high school before finishing. Other studies have put the national graduation rate at about seventy percent. But experts agree that too many students are not completing high school. They estimate the number at more than one million each year. The report was prepared for America's Promise Alliance. The private group aims to help children receive services they need to succeed. General Colin Powell was chairman of America's Promise Alliance when it was formed in nineteen ninety-seven. He attended the press conference Tuesday where the report was released. He said studies have shown that the United States must do more to educate the leaders and work force of the future. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings also spoke. She said the government will propose that states use the same methods when reporting graduation rates. Alliance officials also announced the start of a nationwide campaign to improve graduation rates. It is to include a series of meetings to be held in every state over the next two years. The meetings will bring together elected leaders, business owners, students, parents and education officials. They will develop plans to increase the number of Americans who finish high school. This VOA Special English EDUCATION REPORT was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 084. In Some Schools, Learning Is Not Enough of Its Own Reward This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Some American schools pay teachers more if their students improve on tests. Now, there is a growing movement to pay the students -- in some cases, even just for coming to class. Students at one school in New Mexico can earn up to three hundred dollars a year for good attendance. A program in New York City pays up to five hundred dollars for good attendance and high test scores. In Baltimore, Maryland, high scores on state graduation tests can be worth more than one hundred dollars. And a New Jersey school system plans to pay students fifty dollars a week to attend after-school tutoring programs. Schools that pay students can be found in more than one-fourth of the fifty states. Other schools pay students with food or other rewards. Robert Schaefer is public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, an activist group. He says paying may improve performance in the short term, but students develop false expectations for the future. He sees a lack of long-term planning in these programs because of pressure on schools to raise test scores. Public schools need to show improvement under the education reform law signed by President Bush six years ago. Low-performing schools may lose their federal money; teachers and administrators may lose their jobs. Often these schools are in poor neighborhoods where getting students to go to school can be a continual problem. Critics say paying students sends a message that money is the only valuable reward. But some students say it makes school more exciting. And some teachers have reported getting more requests for extra help. In two thousand four, the city schools in Coshocton, Ohio, launched a program. They wanted to see if paying elementary school students as much as one hundred dollars would help in passing state exams. Now, Eric Bettinger of Case Western Reserve University has reported mixed results. Math scores increased, but only while students were able to get paid. And there was no evidence of higher scores in reading, social studies and science. Officials will decide later this year whether to continue the program. Yet adults get paid for their work. And if teachers can be rewarded for their students' work, then why not the students themselves? This is what some people say. What do you think? Write to special@voanews.com, and please include your name and country. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 085. Three Schools for the Learning Disabled This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Today we complete our series on learning disabilities. In the United States, federal law requires public schools to provide special education services to children with any disability. Specialists commonly provide these services while the children attend the same schools, and often the same classes, as other students. But today we look at three private schools that serve only students with learning disabilities. The Hillside School in Pennsylvania accepts up to one hundred twenty-eight children. The students are ages five to thirteen. They have disorders with language, writing or working with numbers. They may also have attention deficit disorders. Each class has no more than eight students. Hillside administrators say the main goal is to prepare students to learn effectively in a regular school. Teachers and specialists develop individual learning plans for the students, which is something a public school may also do. Development director Kathy Greene says most students remain at Hillside for about three years before leaving for a regular classroom setting. The Shelton School in Dallas, Texas "Serving intelligent students with learning differences" is the slogan of the Shelton School in Texas. Its Web site says the school has about eight hundred fifty students in all twelve grades, and one teacher for every six students. The Shelton School also says its goal is to prepare students to return to regular classes, although some do finish high school there. The Web site says Shelton graduated forty-four students in two thousand six. And it says they received acceptances from a total of seventy-seven colleges and universities. Landmark College in Vermont is a college for students with learning difficulties. It offers a two-year program that prepares students to continue their studies at a four-year school. Each student has an adviser and an individual learning program. Landmark has international students this year from South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. All three schools offer financial aid. Hillside costs about seventeen thousand dollars a year. Shelton costs between ten and twenty-one thousand, depending on the grade level. Shelton and Hillside students live at home. Landmark College costs about fifty thousand dollars a year, which includes housing. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our nine-week series on learning disabilities is online with transcripts and MP3s at 51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember. 086. A Way to Help Students Before They Fail This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Now, we continue our series on learning disabilities. We look this week at a process used to identify problems and help children avoid failure in school. This process is called response to intervention, or R.T.I. Lynn Fuchs is a special education professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She studies R.T.I. and says more and more schools in the United States are using it. Learning disabilities are neurological disorders that affect different skills. Federal law requires public schools to help disabled students through special education services and individualized programs. The first step is finding which children need help. Professor Fuchs explains that the traditional way is to test students who are failing. But research shows that failure can lead to depression, and that can make improvement in school very difficult. So some schools are using response to intervention as a way to identify problems much earlier. The growing interest also results from concerns that some children placed in special education programs do not truly have a learning disability. They may just need extra help with skills like reading or math. Response to intervention supplies that extra help. R.T.I. provides specially designed instruction for children who have scored low on general tests. Professor Fuchs says the process usually involves about eight to ten weeks of small group tutoring. The intensive work uses research-based methods of instruction. The students are tested, sometimes as often as every week, to measure progress. Those who improve after the instructional intervention go back to their normal classroom activities. Those who do not might be declared learning disabled. But Professor Fuchs says most school systems require additional testing to confirm the presence of a disability. Some teachers and administrators believe response to intervention can reduce the number of students put into special services. Professor Fuchs tells us this has not been proven. But studies have shown that R.T.I. can solve learning problems for some students, especially young children. And, at the same time, it can identify others who need much more help. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our series on learning disabilities continues next week. The reports are online at 51voa.com with transcripts, MP3 files and links to additional information. I'm Steve Ember. 087. What to Do About ADHD in Children? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. We continue our series on learning disabilities with a problem that is not considered a learning disability by itself. But it can affect learning. Our subject is . These affect an estimated five to ten percent of children worldwide. Children who forget easily and never seem to finish tasks or pay attention might be found to have A.D.D. If, in addition, they seem overly active and unable to control their behavior, a doctor might say it is A.D.H.D. Experts say the cause involves a chemical imbalance in the brain. It can affect not only school, but also personal relationships and the ability to keep a job later in life. Many of those affected also have learning disabilities or suffer from depression. Medicines can produce calmer, clearer thinking for periods of time. But the drugs can also have side effects like weight loss and sleep problems. And there is debate about the morality of medicating children. Susan Smalley is a psychiatry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She just led a study of A.D.H.D. in northern Finland. The study found that rates and signs of A.D.H.D. are about the same in children there as in the United States. The Finnish children are rarely treated with medicine, while medication is widely used in the United States. Yet the study found that the two populations have few differences with A.D.H.D. among older children and teenagers. Professor Smalley says medication is very effective in the short term. But she says the study raises important questions about the long-term effectiveness of current treatments. The study also found that only about half the Finnish children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. had deficits in short-term memory and self-control. These cognitive deficits are generally considered part of the definition of A.D.H.D. The study also found more evidence that A.D.H.D. symptoms change with age. Hyperactivity and lack of self-control decrease. But about two-thirds of children continue to show high levels of inattention as teenagers. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published the study. Even if drugs are used, experts say children with A.D.H.D. also need other help. For example, they need to learn organizational skills, and they need supportive adults. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach and available at 51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember. 088. When Trouble With Math Equals a Learning Disability This is the VOA Special English Education Report. So far in our series on learning disabilities we have talked about problems with reading, writing and movement. Today we talk about a problem that affects the brain's ability to process and understand the meaning of numbers. The name for this is dyscalculia. Children with dyscalculia have trouble reading numbers and picturing them in their mind. For example, they might mistake a three for an eight because the numbers look similar. They also have trouble counting objects and organizing them by size. Memory is another issue. Children with dyscalculia may not remember the correct order of operations to follow in solving math problems. Difficulties like these can lead to a lifelong fear of mathematics. Of course, just because people have trouble with math does not necessarily mean they have dyscalculia. But experts say parents and teachers may begin to suspect a problem if a child is good at speaking, reading and writing but slow to develop math skills. Does a child remember printed words but not numbers? Does the child have trouble making sense of time or understanding the order of events, like yesterday, today and tomorrow? People with dyscalculia might also have a poor sense of direction. They might have difficulty keeping score during games, and limited ability to plan moves during games like chess. Children suspected of being dyscalculic should be examined by a professional trained to recognize this condition. Experts say the disorder never goes away. But Sheldon Horowitz at the National Center for Learning Disabilities says carefully designed practice can improve math skills. For example, a teacher might use a number line to help a child understand the difference between larger and smaller numbers. The child could be asked to point to different numbers and to describe their relationship to other numbers on the line. Or objects could be grouped to represent numbers. Something else that can help children understand number relationships is to have a math problem described in the form of a story. Experts say students with dyscalculia need extra time to complete their work. Sheldon Horowitz also advises letting them work with a calculator in school. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Transcripts and MP3s from our series on learning disabilities are at 51voa.com. I'm Bob Doughty. 089. Dysgraphia: More Than Just Bad Handwriting This is the VOA Special English Education Report. People who have unusual difficulty with reading, writing, listening or working with numbers might have a learning disability. We talked last week about a reading disorder, dyslexia. Today we discuss a writing disorder, dysgraphia. Writing is not an easy skill. Not only does it require the ability to organize and express ideas in the mind. It also requires the ability to get the muscles in the hands and fingers to form those ideas, letter by letter, on paper. Experts say teachers and parents should suspect dysgraphia if a child's handwriting is unusually difficult to read. Letters might be sized or spaced incorrectly. Capital letters might be in the wrong places. The child's hand, body or paper might be in a strange position. These can all be signs of dysgraphia. Spelling problems can also be related to the disorder. Many people have poor handwriting, but dysgraphia is more serious. Dsygraphia is a neurological disorder that generally appears when children are first learning to write. Writing by hand can be physically painful for people who have it. There are different kinds of dysgraphia. And it can appear with other learning disabilities, especially involving language. Experts are not sure what causes it. But they say early treatment can help prevent or reduce many problems. For example, special exercises can increase strength in the hands and improve muscle memory. This is training muscles to remember the shapes of letters and numbers. Children can try a writing aid like a thick pencil to see if that helps. Schools can also provide simple interventions like more time to complete writing activities or assistance from a note taker. Teachers could have students with dysgraphia take tests by speaking the answers into a recorder, or type their work instead of writing it. Children with dysgraphia might be able to avoid the problems of handwriting by using a computer. Yet experts say they could still gain from special instruction to help them organize their thoughts and put them into writing. Such skills become more important as children get older and schoolwork becomes more difficult. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our continuing series on learning disabilities, along with links to more information, can be found at 21voa.com. I'm Steve Ember. 090. Dealing With Dyslexia This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Today we have the second in a series of reports about the group of disorders known as learning disabilities. Different ones affect reading, writing, listening, speaking or working with numbers. The most common learning disability is dyslexia. A person with dyslexia has difficulty with language skills, especially reading. The International Dyslexia Association says studies in different countries generally show that four to seven percent of people are dyslexic. Dyslexia most commonly affects reading, spelling and writing. Some people have problems with only one of these. Others have trouble with spoken language. They find it difficult to express themselves clearly or understand what other people say. Dyslexia can also affect a person emotionally. Dyslexic children often think they are unable to learn. They think they are stupid, or that is what they are told. Specialists say children who feel this way are in danger of failure and depression. What causes dyslexia is not clear. But studies have found differences in brain activity and development in dyslexic people compared to the general population. Early signs include a delay in learning to speak, and difficulty pronouncing words. While learning to read, children with dyslexia may not recognize letters or connect them with their sounds. They may also have difficulty learning or remembering numbers, colors, shapes or days of the week. Older children may have difficulty learning a foreign language. They may read slowly or have trouble remembering what they read. And they may fail to see or hear similarities and differences in letters and words. There is no cure, but people with dyslexia can still be successful learners. Experts say the most important thing is to find the condition at an early age. And they say only a trained professional can tell if a person is dyslexic. Specially trained educators can teach people with dyslexia different ways to learn. Computer-assisted learning might help, or using recorded books instead of printed ones. Schools can provide more time to finish tasks, and resources like help in taking notes. More information can be found through organizations like the International Dyslexia Association in Maryland. For a link, along with transcripts and MP3s of our reports, go to voaspecialenglish.com. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our series on learning disabilities continues next week. I'm Steve Ember. 091. Series on learning disabilities This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Today we begin a series of reports about learning disabilities. Experts say the problem is not with intelligence or the willingness to work hard. The problem, they say, is that some people's brains process information differently. By definition, people with learning disabilities are average or above average in their intelligence. But their disorders may affect their ability to gain knowledge and, as a result, limit their success in school or jobs. Different people can have different kinds of learning disabilities. One person may have difficulty with language development. Another may have problems with reading or writing. Still another may have trouble working with numbers. People can have more than one disorder, but reading is the most common area of difficulty. Learning disabilities are neurological disorders that affect the brain's ability to store, process and communicate information. The National Center for Learning Disabilities estimates that fifteen million Americans, or five percent, are affected. The group says three million students in the United States receive some kind of special help in school because of learning disabilities. There are different names for different disorders. For example, a person who has difficulty reading may have dyslexia. Someone who has trouble with mathematics may have dyscalculia. Learning disabilities may help explain why some students do not perform as well in school as intelligence tests suggest they should. People with a learning disability may have trouble following directions. Or they may not know how to start a task. Children who have problems connecting letters with sounds or understanding what they read may be showing signs of learning disabilities. But since these are a group of disorders, there is no one single sign to look for. Experts say learning disabilities cannot be cured. But people can learn ways to deal with their disorders. Teachers and parents can provide support that will help students learn successfully. In the next few weeks, we will discuss different learning disabilities as well as other disorders that interfere with learning. We will provide advice from experts about ways to deal with them. And we will examine some of the political issues raised by special education programs. Transcripts and MP3s of our reports will be available online at voaspecialenglish.com. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 092. With College Endowments, How Much Is Too Much? This is the VOA Special English Education Report. An endowment is money from donations and investments. Colleges use endowment money for student aid and campus improvements, and for financial security. But college costs in the United States have been rising faster than inflation. Graduates often face years of debt from student loans. Yet more than sixty colleges and universities, half of them public, have endowments worth at least one billion dollars. Critics say schools with a lot of money should be sharing more of their wealth to ease the struggle for families. As we reported last week, some now plan to do just that. These include Harvard and Yale. They will also give money to families that earn much more than those that now receive aid. Harvard has by far the largest endowment of any American university, thirty-five billion, followed by Yale at twenty-two and a half billion. Yet some educational activists worry what might happen as less-endowed colleges try to compete with these changes. They say the pressure to help upper middle-class families might mean less aid for poor students. Colleges and their endowments are excused from taxes. Other tax-exempt groups are required to spend at least five percent of their endowments each year. Some people, including Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, think it is reasonable to consider such a requirement for colleges. The senator praised Harvard and Yale for their plans and said he hopes others will follow. Senator Grassley is the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which deals with tax policy. Last September, at his urging, the committee questioned experts about this issue. One was Lynn Munson of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. She says universities pay out only about four percent of their endowments, yet their investments earn much more than that. A study found that endowments of more than one billion dollars earned an average return of fifteen percent in two thousand six. The average for all endowments was just under eleven percent. But some experts say most endowment money has to remain invested so schools are not hurt when markets fall. Also, universities point out that donors often restrict the uses for their donations. Still, Lynn Munson said forty-five percent of endowment money at private schools is unrestricted, and twenty percent at public colleges. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember. 093. US Colleges Move to Increase Financial Aid This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A recent decision by Harvard University to expand financial aid is putting pressure on other schools to do the same. The full price for one year at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is more than forty-five thousand dollars. Many other private colleges cost just as much. But Harvard is much wealthier than any other American university, so it has more to give. Harvard already offers a free education to students from families that earn up to sixty thousand dollars a year. This has helped increase the numbers of lower income and minority students. Now, the aim is to help all but the wealthiest American families pay for a Harvard education. The new policies announced last month will assist families that earn as much as one hundred eighty thousand dollars. These families will be asked to pay no more than ten percent of their income for college. For example, a family earning one hundred twenty thousand dollars would pay about twelve thousand a year. Under existing student aid policies the amount is more than nineteen thousand. What Harvard has done is change the way it offers financial aid. Undergraduates will not be expected to take out loans. Increases in grant aid will replace loans. Also, Harvard officials will no longer consider the value of a family's home when deciding how much aid to give. Harvard says it expects to spend up to twenty-two million dollars more a year in financial aid. This will come from its endowment. A college endowment is money given by former students and others as gifts. Schools invest the money to earn more. Harvard's endowment is valued at thirty-five billion dollars. Other universities with large endowments are also changing their financial aid policies. Examples include Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Yale's endowment is the second largest after Harvard, at twenty-two and a half billion dollars. This week, Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, announced it will use more of that money for financial aid as well as scientific research. Yale may also admit more students. But some colleges say they simply do not have enough money to compete with the new policies that are being announced. Critics of the rising costs of a college education say schools are making these changes in an attempt to avoid action by Congress. Some lawmakers have criticized universities for raising their prices even as their endowments grow larger and larger. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. We will talk more about endowments next week. Transcripts and MP3s of our reports are at www.iciba.com. I'm Steve Ember. 094.On the Web College Classes With No Charge or Credit This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Knowledge is free on the Internet at a small but growing number of colleges and universities. About one hundred sixty schools around the world now offer course materials free online to the public. Recent additions in the United States include projects at Yale, Johns Hopkins and the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley said it will offer videos of lectures on YouTube. Free videos from other schools are available at the Apple iTunes store. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became an early leader with its OpenCourseWare project, first announced in two thousand one. Free lecture notes, exams and other resources are published at ocw.mit.edu. Many exams and homework assignments even include the answers. The Web site also has videos of lectures and demonstrations. Today, OpenCourseWare offers materials from one thousand eight hundred undergraduate and graduate courses. These range from physics and linear algebra to anthropology, political science -- even scuba diving. Visitors can learn the same things M.I.T. students learn. But as the site points out, OpenCourseWare is not an M.I.T. education. Visitors receive no credit toward a degree. Some materials from a course may not be available, and the site does not provide contact with teachers. Still, M.I.T. says the site has had forty million visits by thirty-one million visitors from almost every country. Sixty percent of the visitors are from outside the United States and Canada. There are links to materials translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Thai. OpenCourseWare averages one million visits each month, and the translations receive half a million more. Students and educators use the site, including students at M.I.T. But the largest number of visitors, about half, are self-learners. Some professors have become well known around the world as a result of appearing online. Walter Lewin, a physics professor at M.I.T., is especially popular. Fans enjoy his entertaining demonstrations. M.I.T. OpenCourseWare now includes materials for high school. The goal is to improve education in science, technology, math and engineering.