"Between Public and Private" examines an innovative approach to school district management that has been adopted by a number of urban districts in recent years: a portfolio management model, in which "a central office oversees a portfolio of schools offering diverse organizational and curricular themes, including traditional public…

The 2008 EFA Global Monitoring Report recognises adult literacy as the most neglected of the EFA goals. It is neglected most obviously in respect of the financial allocations made by governments and donors. This shortage of financing creates a dangerous situation in which adult educators seek to convince politicians to invest, based on false…

This paper provides information on the policy strand of an investigation into the Australian Research Council Linkage research project into "interactive distance e-learning" [IDeL] following the introduction in New South Wales and in the Northern Territory of Australia of satellite-supported two-way broad-band internet services for…

The vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia has undergone a prolonged period of substantial and significant restructuring. Reforms have been driven by a pressure to increase market forces within the system, and to gear "outputs" ever more closely to economic considerations and the needs of industry. This paper…

During the past 20 years, afterschool programs have become an increasingly vital part of most American communities. Today, some 6.5 million children across the nation participate in these programs. Another 15 million children would participate if a program were available to them, according to their parents. These numbers tell at least two…

We investigate interrelationship among income inequality, global economy and the role of the state using an unbalanced panel data set with 311 observations on 60 countries, dated from 1970 to 1994. The analysis proceeds in two stages. First, we test for effects on income inequality of variables characterizing the situation of a society in the…

This chapter provides some examples and recommendations for expanding the connections between economics and institutional research. (Contains 1 figure.)

Social cohesion, the "glue" that keeps a society together, is influenced by the various sectors or "pillars" of that society-educational institutions, social and religious institutions, business institutions, and government. In this article, the effect of the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) on social cohesion is…

Explores the potential mission of the National Education Network (NEN) in light of the emerging global learning infrastructure made possible by the Internet. Develops a five-part framework for exploring the nature of education information provision in a networked digital environment and examines government-sponsored and private sector initiatives.…

Many features of organizational environments discourage high-skill workplaces and training investments. Both public and private sectors can improve measurement of investment in people by identifying reliable and valid indicators, using benchmarks, and promoting certification of high-skilled workers. (SK)

Examines factors that have contributed to the development of measures that can determine the impact of library services, including evaluation approaches, demands for public sector accountability, and government activities aimed at determining service outcomes. Discusses impacts of community information services based on a study by the Institute of…

Discussed are the efforts of the Pentagon to help U.S. companies remain competitive in high-tech civilian markets. The tug-of-war for these companies between Congress, which has come to view them as a vehicle for pork-barrel funding, and the administration, which is trying to rein them in, is described. (KR)

Suggests that our combined public, private, corporate, and proprietary system of postsecondary education can be best understood as a complex interaction of various types of markets, governmental policies, disciplinary associations, and institutional actors. Proposes a model for explaining how these factors interact to form the "system" of American…

Previous studies find large cross-national differences in inequality amongst rich Western nations, due in large part to differences in the generosity of welfare state transfers. The United States is the least generous nation and the one having the most after-tax and transfer inequality. But these analyses are limited to the effects of cash and…

This article discusses how representations of individual discipline and risk-taking in mass media inform the broader public discourses about public education and the public sector generally. Such representations and narratives about individual discipline and risk-taking often function in mass media as moral imperatives of consumer culture. Such…