Designed to serve as an introduction to research currently being conducted on behalf of the Task Force into implications for rural schools of the Levittown decision, the primary purpose of this report is to provide background information and to provoke discussion about fiscal problems in rural areas. Two sections provide historical as well as…

Graduate study is a complex enterprise. It is both a legacy of the past and a mixture of novel developments and potentialities for the present and future. One major focus of concern is the problem of PhD's who are either without jobs or underemployed. Declining priorities for research and declining undergraduate enrollment mean limited…

Providing tabular, graphic, and narrative data, this report on American Indian education programs within the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) details past, present, and future BIA educational concerns. Specifically, this report addresses: the BIA background; the contemporary scope of BIA education (Federal school operations, higher education and…

In New England, school districts often look toward cooperative agreements as alternatives to further consolidation or "bigness." Cooperatives and collaboratives in Massachusetts are viewed as a politically acceptable alternative to further reorganization through consolidation. The emergence of collaboratives and the enactment of six…

The more commonly cited uses of state and local district assessment programs are addressed. The implications of seven proposed uses of state assessment data are reviewed point-by-point: (1) allocating state grants-in-aid to alleviate weaknesses in instructional programs; (2) designing instructional support programs for teachers; (3) developing…

A product of research first begun by one of the authors in Bangladesh, this book develops a comprehensive set of methods for planning technical education. Wherever possible, the authors draw on existing tools, fitting them to the specific context of technical education. When faced with planning problems for which existing methods are ill suited…

This paper presents a complex, hybrid, method of cost analysis of online courses, which incorporates data on expenditures; student/course enrollment; departmental consumption/contribution; space utilization/opportunity costs; direct non-personnel costs; computing support; faculty/staff workload; administrative overhead at the department, dean, and…

Many school reform initiatives now require school leaders to make curriculum and resourcing decisions on the basis of evidence about their likely impact on student achievement. In this paper, we discuss the implications of this policy demand in the context of a descriptive study of schools' capacity to collect, analyze, and use collective…

In 1992 the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) surveyed administrators in member libraries regarding resource strategies of the previous three years. This paper summarizes revenue activities, adaptive tactics, and budgetary practices reported by 87 Canadian, U.S. private, and U.S. public university libraries and establishes a baseline for…

Conventional research dealing with education finance in general and resource allocation in particular has focused on the raising of revenues at federal, state, and local levels and the subsequent apportionment of these resources across schooling systems, typically school districts. Concern about productivity and equity, however, cannot be…

This study compared the actual resource costs and outcomes of instruction in inclusive classrooms with the costs and outcomes of special class/integrated instruction in a California school district where both types of programs were operating. Four students included in general elementary education classrooms were matched with four pupils from…

Unlike many other states, Michigan's school-finance reform was triggered not by a lawsuit but by legislative action that eliminated the property tax as a revenue source for public schools. Changes included an increase in the sales tax from 4 to 6 cents and a move to a foundation grant formula, which included a state foundation-allowance target for…

Since 1969, Toronto's Metropolitan Separate School Board has been rewarding additional monies to "Special Needs" schools within its jurisdiction in the hope of raising educational opportunity in those schools to a more equitable level. The attempt to arrive at a fair system for determining which schools should receive such assistance led…

The National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) examined how the federal law was implemented and federal funds were distributed under the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984. Data were reported on targeting of resources among and within states and on the uses of federal funds, and implications were drawn from the findings. The…

Drawing upon a database of state-administered vocational education program improvement projects, a study examined state-administered programs to improve vocational education that were implemented from fiscal 1978 through fiscal 1982. After analyzing abstracts of 3,994 research, exemplary and innovative, and curriculum development activities,…