The focus of this study was to examine how well Educational Leadership programs prepare principals to serve as literacy leaders. The role of a school leader is complex and multifaceted involving managerial duties and resource allocation (Jenkins, 2009). Yet, the primary role of the school leader is "…to promote the learning and success for…

Lawsuits challenging state methods for funding public schools have been launched in 46 of the 50 states, and in recent years they have been extraordinarily successful. Since 1989, plaintiffs have prevailed in over 65 percent of the final liability decisions in cases based on "adequacy claims"--assertions that all students have a…

Presenters at the State of the States Roundtable session at the 2014 National Education Finance Conference in Louisville were invited to submit their papers for publication. These papers address the following topics: (1) State issues affecting P-12 and/or higher education funding; (2) Funding priorities/trends for P-12 and/or higher education; (3)…

In February 2015 a large group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in P-20 finance issues gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for the National Education Finance Academy's annual conference, on February 25-27, 2015 to discuss, among multiple topics, the state of P-20 finance in all 50 states. There were 35 states represented in the…

Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger (2014) addressed the need for states to align their accountability systems with new college- and career-ready learning standards. The authors recommended a new accountability paradigm that focuses on 1) meaningful learning, enabled by 2) professionally skilled and committed educators, and supported by 3)…

The "Race to the Top" competitive grant program initiated a wave of teacher evaluation reform, which scholars and policymakers have long identified as critical to improving teacher quality and student performance. State boards of education (SBEs) and state education agencies (SEAs) took different approaches to these reforms, and as a…

Adequate funding for the nation's schools to meet the call for higher student achievement has been a litigious issue. Spending on schools is a political choice. The choices made by state legislatures, in some cases, have failed to fund schools adequately and have incited school finance lawsuits in almost all states. These proceedings are generally…

Policy shapes practice, and the increasingly important realm of professional development is no exception. To identify effective professional development policies and strategies, a Stanford University research team examined the policy frameworks supporting high levels of professional development activity in four states--(1) Colorado; (2) Missouri;…

Increasingly, there is a growing realization in alumni relations that successful alumni programs, benefits, and services are not ends in and of themselves. Rather, alumni engagement is ultimately all about the institution. Success in alumni relations ideally advances an institution's overall forward progress. Twenty years ago, alumni strategic…

The vast majority of public employees--including teachers--are enrolled in defined-benefit pension plans. These plans are usually the product of state legislation that determines eligibility, benefit formulas, employer and employee contributions, and how payments will be calculated when an employee retires or leaves the system. Once an employee…

The legal terrain regarding institutions' rights for use of major charitable gifts has clarified somewhat in recent months. While this may encourage institutional fundraisers, it is also clear that extreme care still must be taken about the acceptance and terms set for use of transformational gifts. As recent lawsuits demonstrate, careful planning…

Traditionally, the high-performance computing (HPC) systems used to conduct research at universities have amounted to silos of technology scattered across the campus and falling under the purview of the researchers themselves. This article reports that a growing number of universities are now taking over the management of those systems and…

As more college students are relying on part- or full-time work to help pay for their education, federally financed work-study jobs are becoming harder to find. The percentage of freshmen who planned to hold full-time jobs while in college jumped to 4.7 percent this year, from 2.7 percent in 2000. But as more students are seeking jobs, federal…

The goal of this study is to apply a conventional education cost-function approach for estimating the sensitivity of cost models and predicted education costs to the inclusion of school district level racial composition variables and further to test whether race neutral alternatives sufficiently capture the additional costs associated with school…

The use of selective, as contrasted with across-the-board, state funding as an incentive for program improvement in higher education institutions is discussed, and the experiences of four states (New Jersey, Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee) are examined for forces that work against the long-term feasibility of this approach. (Author/MSE)