More than half of the school districts situated across the country probably know the real shocker in federal funding for the school year--that they will be getting less of a piece of it than they had been expecting to get. While most of the public debate about the funding of the "No Child Left Behind" Act has concerned covering the extra…

This article applies the logic of the improved school finance, arguing the need to understand how resources are used at the school and classroom levels. While California policies and most court cases have been seriously inadequate from this perspective, the recent case of Williams v. California provides new opportunities for equity since it…

During the last quarter of a century, public higher education institutions have found themselves buffeted by a perfect storm. This storm has led to discussions about the privatization of those institutions, which has implications for their ability to improve, or at least maintain, their quality and their accessibility to students from all…

This article estimates the dollar amount of public higher education subsidies received by U.S. youth and examines the distribution of subsidies and the taxes that finance them across parental and student income levels. Although youths from high-income families obtain more benefit from higher education subsidies, high-income households pay…

This generation of young people is on track to be less-educated than their parents--for the first time in American history. This, at the same time the world and workplace are changing dramatically and rapidly--when students, more than ever, need high levels of skill in order to compete. Advance Illinois has developed this report "We Can Do…

School finance adequacy litigation has become a widely-used means in the efforts to improve educational outcomes for children. This form of litigation has been attempted in nearly every state over the past two decades. Despite its prevalence, its effectiveness remains questionable due to a lack of study relating finance litigation to student…

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…

A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted of Gordon, Kane, and Staiger's (2006) proposal to raise student achievement by identifying and replacing the bottom quartile of novice teachers, using value-added assessment of teacher performance. The cost effectiveness of this proposal was compared to the cost effectiveness of voucher programs, charter…

Every year, the ministry writes to the public post-secondary institutions outlining operating budget allocations, service delivery targets and priority issues. The letters are a component of ministry planning, as identified in the accountability framework. Goals and objectives are identified in the annual ministry service plan. Each institution…

As of March 2008, over half of U.S. states are facing projected budget shortfalls for the coming fiscal year. During economic downturns such as this, opportunities available to hard-working, low-wage families are diminished. These conditions create growing concerns for policymakers who must, with fewer state resources, enhance opportunities and…

The United States no longer leads the world in college completion rates. Inequality in college access rates by income have barely narrowed over the last 25 to 30 years and inequality in college completion rates have narrowed even less. The groups in the population that are growing the most rapidly are those that have historically been…

This paper is a critique of "The Changing Politics of Education: Prospects for the 1980's" edited by Edith K. Mosher and Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr. The author contends that the themes of this "neo-conservative" volume are that (1) resources for schools are dwindling and the future of education will be bleak, and (2) political…

Based on ten years of experience in curriculum research and development, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory supports the following principles concerning policy issues in curriculum development: (1) state and local policy makers and practitioners should make decisions about needed curriculum development, and the same persons should make…

In this paper the authors argue that the decision structures of educational institutions are multi-level, multi-decision-maker hierarchies which can be described and analyzed in decision theoretic terms and that these multi-levels, multi-decision-maker hierarchies can be reduced to equivalent one-level, one-decision-maker formulations, which can…

Discusses selected allocation issues that address the adaptive capacity of the present higher education policy system, including present allocations and concurrent rationales for legitimacy in the postsecondary policy system, three challenges that affect present patterns of higher education allocations, and problems in predicting the future…