Low-income students miss out on college for two key reasons: they don't know how much it actually costs, and they're not aware of how to get access to billions of dollars in financial aid, according to a report from Pew's Economic Mobility Project. This matters because postsecondary education is among the most important factors in determining whether a person achieves the American Dream of upward economic mobility, according to the report, titled Promoting Economic Mobility by Increasing Postsecondary Education.

There's a new free, online "college guidance" tool for students and parents. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is appalled at the state of higher education, finding that many major colleges and universities no longer require classes in what it has identified as seven key subjects: composition, literature, foreign language, history, economics, mathematics, and science. This lack of "general education" will have a significant impact on the country's ability to innovate and compete in the global marketplace, the nonprofit organization says.

The Apple, a Web site "Where Teachers Meet and Learn," is an ongoing source of information, communication, and inspiration for teachers. Among the resources at www.theapple.com are news, lessons, videos, as well as "Ask a Teacher" and "In the Workplace" forums. Recently, the site posted these 10 ways for teachers to boost their job satisfaction and effectiveness in the classroom.

Today's instant-access electronic environment provides a range of opportunities for learning, communication, and interaction. But teens can be careless in the way they present themselves online, and those short-term actions can have long-term repercussions.

This one's especially for those of you in the upper division. Let's say that you don't get enough drama around college applications and acceptances in your day-to-day working life. Someone out there in TV world has your back.

Research conducted at Northwestern University in Illinois has important implications in two areas—for educators dealing with the ongoing debate about "how early is too early" to start teaching students a foreign language, and for schools that offer dual-language immersion programs.

No doubt you've noticed there's an infectious disease spreading among your upper division's graduates-to-be—the dreaded "senioritis". Characterized by high spirits, low motivation, and short attention spans, the condition has rarely proved fatal. However, the consequences this year may be more serious. In fact, students whose academic standing drops may face having a college acceptance withdrawn.

You know all about "break points" and how dangerous they can be. When their children are about to make the transition from one division to the next, that's when parents tend to seriously re-examine their commitment to a private school education.

Last month, The Journal of Gerontology published its most recent findings about the benefits of having senior citizens volunteer in school classrooms. After following Experience Corps volunteers—a group of paid volunteers that consists primarily of African-American women age 60 and older—over a period of years, researchers from Johns Hopkins University found that students who interact with the Experience Corps volunteers showed significant gains in reading comprehension when compared to students in control classrooms.

Whether your school is at the height of hiring season or at a different point in the process, it's quite likely that you'll soon see some fresh faces in the classroom. Many of these hires may be just out of school, eager to share their new perspectives with fellow faculty members and your students. According to human resources expert Susan M. Heathfield, these "Millennials"—those teachers who were born in 1980 or thereafter—have developed a wide variety of characteristics and work habits with which you should be familiar. We've listed several of these qualities below.