Consuming large quantities of alcohol the night before an exam may not affect test performance, according to a study conducted by researchers from Brown University and Boston University. The study found that binge drinking did not affect participants' performance on long-term and short-term memory tests. Researchers distributed regular and nonalcoholic beer to 193 university students. The next morning, the volunteers took the practice Graduate Record Exams and a mock quiz on a lecture held the preceding afternoon. Other negative consequences of drinking, however, were mentioned by the researchers as important factors to overall academic success.
Results of the National Assessment of Education Progress revealed that schoolchildren across the nation have greatly improved their mathematics test scores over the past 17 years, but their reading scores have improved little, if at all, The New York Times reported March 24. The assessment measures student achievement and identifies changes over time, but is not intended to pinpoint the causes of these changes, federal officials who administer the test told The Times. Experts suspect that a decline in reading for pleasure and unchallenging curricula caused the lagging scores. The nation's worst readers have made the greatest improvements, while the best readers have remained static, Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Times.
For the first time in Israel, a university has appointed an Israeli-Arab woman to the position of full professor, the Tel Aviv-based newspaper Haaretz reported March 25. Fadia Nasser-Abu Alhija, the newly appointed professor and education expert at Tel Aviv University, told Haaretz that "more Arab women are entering the higher education system in a variety of fields." Nasser-Abu Alhija, who has taught for roughly 30 years, learned of her appointment in February. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in research, evaluation, measurement and statistical methods in 1997, Haaretz reported.
