News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The case for charter schools, by all appearances, has been made with politicians and the public. Forty states now have them, their numbers are rapidly increasing, and they now serve more than a million students.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Many things have been said about reality TV, but "educational" has rarely been among them.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Students in public schools learn as much or more math between kindergarten and fifth grade as similar students in private schools, according to a new University of Illinois study of multi-year, longitudinal data on nearly 10,000 students.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Seventy-five years after the Nazis rose to power, historians still struggle to explain how the Nazis could take such effective hold of Germany and bring it to such murderous extremes in war and in the Holocaust.

Champaign, IGPA, the U. of I. College of Media, and the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the Urbana-Champaign campus.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - James D. Anderson, the Gutsgell Professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education, considered the highest honor in the field of educational scholarship.

A Minute With™... education professor Violet Harris

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Eighty-seven local teachers are expected to take part in the fourth annual Chancellor's Academy, which starts Thursday (July 31) and continues on weekdays through Aug. 8.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Illinois college students preparing to apply to law school are invited to attend Law School Day at the University of Illinois on Oct. 8.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Books, kids, and the love of reading will take center stage Oct. 2-4 in Champaign-Urbana, at the University of Illinois, and in 44 area schools - all as part of a first-ever Youth Literature Festival in East Central Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Author and syndicated columnist Naomi Klein will speak Oct. 29 on the University of Illinois campus, on the topic "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in Latin America."

A Minute With™... education professor Sarah J. McCarthey

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Commercial broadcasters are doing the "bare minimum and not much more" for children's educational programming, according to University of Illinois communication professor Barbara Wilson, one of two lead researchers on a study released today (Nov. 12) by the organization Children Now.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Traditional classroom teaching in higher education could learn a thing or two from online teaching, otherwise known as e-learning, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies computer-mediated communication, information exchange and the Internet.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Much more cross-gender bullying - specifically, unpopular boys harassing popular girls - occurs in later elementary school grades than previously thought, meaning educators should take reports of harassment from popular girls seriously, according to new research by a University of Illinois professor who studies child development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The naming of Arne Duncan, chief executive of the Chicago public school system, to run the U.S. Department of Education signals that education will not be second-tier issue in a Barack Obama presidency, says James D. Anderson, the Gutsgell Professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - To no one's surprise, Asian students outscored their American classmates on the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a highly respected international assessment administered every four years to compare the mathematics and science test scores of fourth- and eighth-grade students from around the world. But according to a University of Illinois education professor, one standardized test should not be taken as a final verdict on the quality of math and science education in U.S. elementary schools.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Parents and educators who favor traditional classroom-style learning over free, unstructured playtime in preschool and kindergarten may actually be stunting a child's development instead of enhancing it, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - As fans of talk-show host Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews know, Americans suffer from a national epidemic of historical and civic ignorance. But just because most Americans know more about "American Idol" than they do about American government doesn't necessarily mean it's entirely their fault.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - In another "Freakonomics"-style study that turns conventional wisdom about public- versus private-school education on its head, a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - It turns out that being voted "Most likely to succeed" in high school might actually be a good predictor of one's financial and educational success later in life.

A Minute With™... Walter W. McMahon, a professor of economics emeritus and educational organization and leadership emeritus

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Universities need to embrace new online media, social networks and a culture of "openness" as part of their pedagogy, or they risk becoming seen as anachronisms in today's hyper-connected world where information is available freely, says a University of Illinois expert who studies the knowledge economy's effect on higher education.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Applied baccalaureate degree programs at community colleges not only offer a path for non-traditional students to earn a bachelor's degree, but they also help state and local governments address shortages in the workforce, according to a University of Illinois expert who studies how first-generation college students use community colleges as a bridge to higher education.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Interactive Web-based science tutorials can be effective tools for helping elementary school teachers construct powerful explanatory models of difficult scientific concepts, and research shows the interactive tutorials are just as effective online as they are in face-to-face settings, says a University of Illinois expert in science education.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Popular culture may have an uncharitable attitude toward community colleges, but a University of Illinois expert in education says they are an underfunded community asset and an invaluable resource for first-generation college students, low-skilled adult workers and immigrants aspiring to enter college, and downsized workers and mid-career changers transitioning to a recession-proof career.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A market-based approach to increasing school choice actually leads to fewer educational opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged students in urban areas, according to a University of Illinois expert in education.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - In the years immediately following the Civil War, the question of education for newly emancipated slaves in Mississippi centered on whether schools should seek to educate blacks as citizens or train them as subsistence laborers. While many whites favored the laborer option, those who had been freed wanted schools established by and for themselves as a means of achieving independence, equality and political empowerment - in essence, full citizenship, says Christopher M. Span, a professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois.

A Minute With™... Debra Bragg, a professor of higher education

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Mothers and fathers play different roles and make different contributions to a child's upbringing, but a father's influence upon a child's academic success later in life is felt the most when he's involved from the very beginning, says a University of Illinois expert in early childhood education.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Whether they're found in a museum or a textbook, historical narratives about traumatic events such as war and genocide are better left to older students, who have typically developed a more refined historical consciousness, says a University of Illinois professor who studies and teaches historical instruction.

A Minute With™... educational psychology professor Dorothy Espelage

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The current generation of college students and teachers need to be as culturally fluent with people from different cultures as they are with their own, a soft skill that has become an essential part of life in the 21st century, a University of Illinois expert on teacher education says.

A Minute With™... education professor Jennifer A. Delaney

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The underlying similarities between teaching, research and music can be a powerful metaphor for education and qualitative inquiry, according to a University of Illinois professor of education.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The impact of text messaging on the decline of formal writing among teens has been debated in pedagogical circles ever since cell-phone ownership became an adolescent rite of passage in the mid-2000s. But according to a University of Illinois expert in media literacy, not only are critics who argue that texting is synonymous with literary degradation wrong, they also often overlook the bigger role that texting and its distant cousin, "tweeting," could play in education and research.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new study co-written by a University of Illinois expert in math education suggests that incorporating technology in high school-level geometry classes not only makes the teaching of concepts such as congruency easier, it also empowers students to discover other geometric relationships they wouldn't ordinarily uncover when more traditional methods of instruction were used.

A Minute With™... education professor Christopher Lubienski

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - What we learn from our siblings when we grow up has - for better or for worse - a considerable influence on our social and emotional development as adults, according to an expert in sibling, parent-child and peer relationships at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The lack of affordable, high-quality on-campus day care programs that cater to undergraduate students who double as parents is a stealth issue that has the potential to harm both the student-parent and the child, says a University of Illinois expert in early childhood education.

A Minute With™...  Mary Kalantzis, the dean of the College of Education

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Despite growth in recent decades, unionization of higher education faculty remains contested, and its modern concerns can be traced back to the 1910s and 1920s, according to a University of Illinois expert in historical issues involving faculty work and faculty workers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - An approach to teaching young children the principles of writing and literacy that prohibits them from borrowing from our common cultural landscape is a problematic one, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Images from racial theme parties that are posted on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace not only elicit different reactions from different people based on their race and their attitudes toward diversity, they also represent an indirect way to express racist views about minorities, according to published research by a University of Illinois professor who studies the convergence of race and the Internet.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Brendesha Tynes, a professor of educational psychology and of African American studies at the University of Illinois, has been awarded a $1.4 million grant to study the effects of online racial discrimination. The grant is from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A sink-or-swim mentality for socializing new employees will ultimately only drain organizations of their best talent over time, according to new research by a University of Illinois expert in workplace dynamics.

A Minute With™... Carolyn Shields, a professor of education

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Colleges and universities are under siege from an array of economic, political and cultural forces that are dramatically changing higher education as we know it - but not for the better, according to Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - High schools need to work with community colleges to align their curricula better and to reduce the number of students who need to enroll in remedial courses, according to a University of Illinois expert who studies community college education policy.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Nationally known and emerging authors, illustrators, poets and storytellers will engage with their young readers and readers young at heart during the second Youth Literature Festival. The festival, to take place Oct. 9 at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Illinois campus, celebrates the ways in which written works enrich the lives of young people and promotes reading as a fun activity.