The U.S. is largely neglecting the estimated 3 million academically gifted and talented students who represent diverse experiences, skills, ethnicity, and cultural and economic backgrounds. All of them require a responsive and challenging educational system if they are to achieve to their highest potential. According to the "State of the States"…

With heightened expectations and greater funding as backdrop, one would expect elected officials and educators to ensure that America's substantial investment in public education is used effectively to accomplish its ambitious new goals. Conventional modes of funding school improvement, however, such as across-the-board salary increases,…

The balanced development of compulsory education, with a focus on the goal of educational equality, is both a matter of policy orientation and a practical educational issue. At present, people are mostly concerned with the unbalanced state of development of compulsory education, its causes, and issues regarding its administration. Various modes of…

"Trends in College Spending, 1998-2008: Where does the money come from? Where does it go? What does it buy?" is the third in a series of reports on college and university spending from the Delta Cost Project. The findings presented in this report concentrate on the 1998 to 2008 time period--the last academic year for which spending data are…

Remaking Adult Learning provides an exciting and innovative addition to the literature on adult learning. Charting challenges and successes in the sector, it illustrates how taking part in well-thought-out programmes can have a positive and sometimes life-saving impact on people's lives. While grounded in adult learning practice, the book draws…

Community colleges across the nation appear to be facing a "perfect storm" during which surging enrollments, tepid state funding, and strong accountability forces are colliding to severely threaten access to and completion of postsecondary education and credentials by lower-skilled and low-income students. In the last few years, record enrollments…

In an era of intense fiscal pressures, educators are focusing on those investments most likely to lift student achievement. They are also trying to make more strategic use of existing resources. To achieve these goals, a growing number of policymakers are considering integrated PreK-3rd approaches. Increasingly, they are recognizing that the first…

We provide an assessment of the French ZEP (Zones d'Education Prioritaire), a program started in 1982 that channels additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas and encourages the development of new teaching projects. Focusing on middle-schools, we first evaluate the impact of the ZEP status on resources, their utilization (teacher…

This book presents the results and implications of a major new national study exploring the effects of institutional racial composition on African American students' development and their educational outcomes, taking into account individuals' background characteristics, their perceptions of the institutional environment, and their experiences in…

In this update, the author notes the passage of the "Second Chance Act" by Congress--signed into law by the President on April 9, 2008. Programs created in law may or may not be immediately funded and implemented. The criminal justice community will be watching the appropriation process with interest to learn what Second Chance programs will be…

Young teacher applicants to the Teach Plus Policy Fellows Program indicate that contrary to the opinions of those who believe they are in teaching only for the short term, they actually want to find a way to continue teaching. Their description of the profession they seek--one that makes a difference, challenges them, engages them as leaders, and…

No empirical studies have attempted to explain why states invest differentially in their research and in their non-research universities, although these differences hold important implications for students, postsecondary systems, and society. Deploying a form of hierarchical-linear modeling, our study examines across-state variation in state…

The latest installment of the Fordham Institute's "Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning" series investigates one of the more controversial aspects of digital learning: How much does it cost? In this paper, the Parthenon Group uses interviews with more than fifty vendors and online-schooling experts to estimate today's average…

In their best seller, "Freakonomics", University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and "New York Times" writer Stephen Dubner show in an amusing and often provocative manner how an economic way of thinking can be useful in explaining all sorts of real-world phenomena. Their central insight is very simple: incentives are the cornerstone of modern…

This report summarizes the perspectives and attitudes of a selected set of district and school site administrators whom the authors interviewed in Twin Rivers Unified School District (TRUSD) during the fall of 2009. The authors carried out interviews and focus groups with these individuals to gain an understanding of how the current budgeting…