Students who drop out of school face a difficult future. They are more likely to be unemployed, incarcerated, and/or impoverished. For students with disabilities, the risks are intensified. Their dropout rate is about 40 percent—more than twice that of their peers without disabilities.

The University of Virginia, known since its founding in 1819 as “Mr. Jefferson’s University,” has personified, in past and present, a distinctive approach to public higher education whose integration of academic vision and architectural environment attracts national and international acclaim.

By 2005 America’s schools will be serving more children (54 million) than ever before, and the total number of teachers will have grown to more than 3.5 million (up from 2.5 million in 1980). Because of rising student enrollments, growing numbers of teacher retirements, the reduction of class sizes,

National testing of elementary and secondary students exists in most industrialized countries. Each country’s national examinations are based on national curricula and content standards. The difference in weight and consequence of the exams varies tremendously from country to country, as does the use of exams at various levels of education.

Identified by American industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller as “the greatest investment I ever made,” the University of Chicago, founded in 1891, became a standard-bearer for modern America’s universities by being the first to meld the great English and German traditions of higher education