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To identify key trends in college student volunteering and to understand their implications for growing volunteering among college students, the Corporation has produced a new report, titled "College Students Helping America," the most comprehensive national report ever conducted on college student volunteering in the United States. The report analyzes data collected from 2002 to 2005 as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a comprehensive and scientifically rigorous survey of 60,000 American households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It concludes that college student volunteering increased by approximately 20 percent between 2002 and 2005, as students have become involved in helping their communities. The report presents data on student volunteering and volunteers in an easily accessible format that will be useful to people--whether experienced researchers, policy makers, or just concerned citizens--interested in learning more about volunteering in the states. The report includes a state-by-state ranking of college student volunteering. Specific findings in the report include: (1) Since September 2001, the overall percent of college students who volunteer has increased from 27.1 percent to 30.2 percent, exceeding the volunteer rate for the general adult population of 28.8 percent; (2) Tutoring and mentoring youth (26.6 and 23.8 percent, respectively) are the most common volunteer activities among college student volunteers; (3) 39.2 percent of black college students mentor when they volunteer, compared to 22.3 percent of white college students; (4) Between 2003 and 2005, college students followed the national trend in volunteering, with females (33 percent) volunteering at a higher rate than males (26.8 percent), and whites (32 percent) volunteering at a higher rate than students of other races and ethnicities (23.6 percent); (5) College students were twice as likely to volunteer as individuals of the same age who are not enrolled in an institution of higher education (30.2 percent and 15.1 percent, respectively); (6) While 23.4 percent of college student volunteers serve with religious organizations, 34.8 percent of the general adult volunteer population serves through such organizations; (7) Students who work 1 to 10 hours per week part-time (46.4 percent) are more likely to volunteer than those who do not work at all (29.8 percent); (8) Volunteering rates decline substantially as college students work more hours--Students who work 31 to 35 hours and 36 to 40 hours volunteer at rates of 22.8 percent and 23.2 percent, respectively; and (9) College student volunteers (27%) are more likely to be episodic volunteers (volunteering fewer than two weeks per year with their main organization) than the general adult volunteer population (23.4%). Nevertheless, 44.1 percent of college student volunteers also engage in regular volunteering (volunteering 12 or more weeks per year with their main organization). (Contains 5 tables, 10 figures, and 47 endnotes.)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how well-prepared vocational educators are to teach courses and programs that reflect the emphasis on academic skills in the Perkins III legislation. The paper examines the academic skills and pedagogical knowledge of elementary, secondary and secondary vocational candidates to assess how well-prepared vocational candidates are to support and reinforce students' acquisition of academic skills. The study includes an analysis of (1) the demographic and academic characteristics of teacher candidates; and (2) the academic skills and professional knowledge of teacher candidates as measured by reading, writing, mathematics and pedagogical knowledge test scores on the Praxis assessments. The data reported in this study are from more than 200,000 elementary, secondary and secondary vocational teacher candidates who completed the Praxis Series assessments for teacher certification between 1994 and 1999. The Praxis test takers are primarily college students actively seeking entrance to a college of education. Three key findings emerged from the analysis: (1) Candidates for certification in vocational fields are not as academically or pedagogically prepared as are candidates for certification in secondary fields; (2) Candidates for certification in vocational fields are not as academically prepared in reading and writing as candidates for certification in elementary education; and (3) A potential disconnect may exist between the academic and pedagogical skills of vocational candidates and the direction of federal policy, which has increasingly emphasized the importance of academic skills for vocational students. There may be several factors that contribute to these differences, including: (1) Vocational teachers' job requirements and teacher preparation programs may not currently emphasize this new direction of federal policy; (2) Prospective vocational candidates tend to be older than other teacher candidates and may have been out of school for longer periods of time; and (3) Prospective vocational candidates tend to have lower grade-point averages in college than other prospective teachers, and they may have taken more courses that did not emphasize academics. (Contains 16 figures and 12 footnotes.)