In light of reduced or eliminated federal funding, this report discusses mental health services provisions. The history of mental health service funding is presented. Funding responsibility is traced from communities, to states, to private health insurance, to federal assistance, to community provision with state and federal funds, and finally to…

One of the major deficiencies of the recent educational reports calling for educational reform is the failure to suggest ways of using the federal role to meet the national interest. Seven dimensions of national social, economic, and political commitment that are linked to education are: (1) expansion of equality of opportunities for the…

The paper outlines the educational objectives of a course offered at the 1982 meeting of the American Academy on Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. The course addresses policy changes and trends in publically financed services to developmentally disabled persons. Topics covered in the outline are a continuum of care; historical…

This issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance contains five articles summarizing five papers on the regulation of education that were originally presented at the institute's Law and Education Seminar. Each summary was written by the author of the original paper. David Kirp's article…

Federal funds continue to underwrite about 50 of the national research and development (R&D) enterprise, and the nature of this support continues to be of special interest to policymakers. This report provides data on trends within functional areas and noteworthy shifts among areas. It is based on an annual National Science Foundation survey.…

Drawing on studies by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and other federal and state organizations, this document summarizes information and findings on six federal block grant programs involving social services, low-income home energy assistance, mental health, community services, maternal and child health, and preventive health. It also…

This series of articles discusses categorical grants, defined as financial assistance by a higher level of government to a lower level for educational services of a specific type or for a particular group of students. In the first article, criticism of such programs is discussed, as well as alternative approaches to better meet the goals of…

This report highlights recent and projected economic trends that affect higher education, focusing on national economic conditions, government support for higher education, students' ability to pay for college, and labor market trends. It found that the U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), is projected to grow at a…

This paper examines the problem of determining how effective student aid programs have been in promoting the college enrollment of lower income and disadvantaged students and analyzes the institutional means through which federal aid policies have been implemented. The importance of considering the key role of state and institutional responses to…

Youth apprenticeships have the potential to address simultaneously two national dilemmas: how to prepare U.S. business and its workers for a high skills future and how to upgrade the academic skills of all students. The highly successful German model may require some modification to work well in the United States. The biggest change may have to…

This essay reports on a roundtable of higher education leaders, association heads, government officials, and public policy experts that examined the changes in policymakers' attitudes toward federally sponsored research. Since World War II national science policy has made universities the principal locus of basic research in the United States. But…

Although federal involvement in education has been reduced in the 1980's under the Reagan Administration's "New Federalism," it is far from clear that state and local governments are willing and able to adequately compensate for this decreasing involvement to ensure educational equity and quality. In the current debate over federalism,…