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Twenty-six thousand foreign exchange students are in American high schools this year. 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. She says the biggest difference is the relationship to the teachers. She says here the teachers are more like friends, and in Germany they are more like parents. Another difference? In American high schools, the students are usually the ones who move to different classrooms for different subjects. Johanna and Daniel... 

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... 

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. He says the number of young adults who 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. Another reason for the enrollment increase: the recession.... 

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 in two thousand eight. 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 in two thousand eight was almost fifteen percent higher than the last... 

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. He says Earlham is a small college, just... 

Bess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, singer and teacher who died in November at the age of eighty-eight. She came from a family of music historians. She helped her father and brother, John and Alan Lomax, collect folk music. John Lomax developed an Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. In the nineteen forties, after college, Bess Lomax joined the Almanac Singers, a group that sang social protest songs. Other members included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and «Butch» Hawes, who became her husband. The family later moved to California, where Bess taught music,... 

We received a question from a listener about how American schools use educational technology. There is not a simple answer. It depends on the subject and level of students, of course. But it also depends on the interest and training of the teachers, and the goals and budgets of the schools. Schools are almost all connected to the Internet. But some have more technology, and use it more, than others. For example, some schools use computers for activities like video conferencing, to bring the world into the classroom. And some classrooms are equipped with things like a Smart Board, a kind of... 

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. He says: «'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... 

In two thousand nine, Special English Web site users began posting comments about our stories on our Web site. The Education Reports have received many of those comments. We began the year in the middle of our Foreign Student Series. These were reports about how foreign students could attend a college or university in the United States. The report that received the most comments--seventy-three--told how to qualify for free training at an American community college. The next highest number of comments was forty-nine. They were about a report on services at American colleges that help foreign... 

We had a question from China from a listener who wanted to know 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. Mister Hickman told us he just returned from two weeks of meetings in Beijing in December. He and Chinese educators discussed the close relationship between Dewey's ideas and those of Confucius. He also worked with a group of... 

Today we answer a question from a listener in Brazil who 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. The students are 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. The aim was to protect the Hudson River from the British soldiers. He moved his headquarters to West Point in seventeen... 

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... 

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 City. Professor Johnson says she thinks text messaging has made students believe that it is acceptable to make bad spelling and grammatical errors. She says her students have increasingly used less formal English in their writing. She says words and phrases like «guy» and «you know» now appear... 

Some schools in the United States and other countries offer Chinese language classes with government support from China. Saint Mary's School is a private college preparatory school in Medford, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest. Carly Irvine is in her fourth year of learning Mandarin. She says: «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 Marys also teaches Spanish, German and Latin. It added Mandarin in two thousand five. Two years ago, it became the first school... 

Many colleges and universities in the United States have writing centers to help students improve their skills. Some materials are available free at Web sites like the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL. The site is connected to the Writing Lab at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. It includes resources that can help non-native English speakers. VOA's Art Chimes recently spoke with the director, Linda Bergmann. She said the Purdue Online Writing Lab is a collection of workshops, worksheets and instructional materials. For example, even native speakers are often not sure when to... 

This week on our program, we answer a question from Japan. A listener named Maki would like to know if the test known as the TOEIC is popular in the United States. TOEIC is the Test of English for International Communication. It measures the ability of people to communicate in the workplace using everyday English. The Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, develops and administers the TOEIC. It says more than nine thousand organizations use the test in more than ninety countries. Each year the TOEIC is taken in the United States about twenty thousand times. So how popular does... 

The Obama administration says American schools should produce students who are «college and career ready.» What is the best way to do that? The National Center on Education and the Economy has some ideas. The center will be working with eight states on a project to test board examination systems. Students who volunteer will take board examination classes similar to those found in other parts of the world. Once they pass the exams, they can leave high school as early as the end of the second year. Marc Tucker is president of this nonprofit organization. He says the aim is to make... 

Most schools in the United States receive money from federal programs. That means most schools must obey a federal law known as Title Nine. It bars discrimination on the basis of sex at any educational institution that receives federal money. An exception is made for admissions at private undergraduate schools. For others, Title Nine covers «any education program or activity» receiving federal financial assistance. The full name is Title Nine of the Education Amendments of nineteen seventy-two. A lot of Americans may be surprised to know that it was written without saying anything... 

In February, students from one hundred three universities in eighty-eight countries took part in an international computer programming contest. It was called The Battle of the Brains. The competition took place in Harbin, China. Three-person teams from each school had five hours to solve eleven real world problems. Jerry Cain coached the team from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. He says the problems involved, among other things, paperweights, robots, castles and lakes. The students first listed the problems in order of difficulty. Then they figured out the requirements of each. They... 

President Obama sent Congress a proposal in March to rewrite the main federal education law. The current version of the law, signed by George W. Bush eight years ago, is known as the No Child Left Behind Act. That name would go away. The current policy calls for every student to be able to pass state tests in reading and math by two thousand fourteen. All schools must show yearly progress toward this goal. But states decide how much students need to know to show «proficiency.» President Obama's goal is that every student should graduate from high school «ready for college...