The aim of the SABER-school finance initiative is to collect, analyze and disseminate comparable data about education finance systems across countries. SABER-school finance assesses education finance systems along six policy goals: (i) ensuring basic conditions for learning; (ii) monitoring learning conditions and outcomes; (iii) overseeing…

School leaders are critical in the lives of students and to the development of their teachers. Unfortunately, in too many instances, principals are effective in spite of--rather than because of--district conditions. To truly improve student achievement for all students across the country, well-prepared principals need the tools, support, and…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in how high and low performing elementary school districts use and analyze data to differentiate instruction, make changes to district/grade level curriculum, determine professional development needs, determine teacher effectiveness, and determine the use of school district…

Education reform has been on a new path over the last 15 years; a path that leads to more accountability, more choice for students and parents, highly qualified teachers, as well as, best practices in instruction. In an effort to move along the path of reform and as a result of previous reform, the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA reviewed the field…

Performance measurement can be a difficult political as well as technical challenge for educational institutions at all levels. Performance-based budgeting can raise the stakes still higher by linking resource allocation to a public "report card." The 23-campus system of the California State University (CSU) accepted each of these…

This document asks higher education institutions in England to update information on their research activity. Their responses will be used to inform the distribution of research funds by the Higher Education Funding Council for England for the academic year 2000-2001. Responses are to be submitted by December 12, 2000. Information is requested…

Reviews the school-level resource-allocation literature and presents findings of a study of school-district expenditures in Chicago, Forth Worth, New York, and Rochester. Horizontal equity results show that in Chicago, New York, and Fort Worth, most coefficients of variation are below 0.15. Rochester's system is slightly less equitable. For…

Needs assessment, a procedure for obtaining and analyzing information for use in decision-making, consists of identifying the concerns of faculty, staff, parents, students, and community, and validating these concerns (which only then become "needs") by means of information derived from surveys and school records. The Worldwide Needs…

Based on a perceived need for the development of a base of information for community education to appraise programs, to properly allocate financial support, and to support the decision making process, this study was conducted to determine the present level of data being collected by selected local education agencies and to determine the perceived…

Provided is the appendix material from a study which examined and evaluated in detail all the existing sources of economic data on the arts and conducted a needs survey of arts councils, arts-producing organizations, and people concerned with the arts to find out which economic data sources, if any, they found useful. The study was conducted to…

The report summarizes questionnaire responses from 454 university department heads concerning information collected in the most recent self-study or review of their department. The responses included judgments about the importance of collecting each information element for (1) internal department use for porgram planning and improvements, (2)…

Designed to guide and structure the needs assessment of Pennsylvania children with special health care needs, this document describes six specific steps in planning and conducting a needs assessment. The steps include: (1) stating the goals of the needs assessment, including fulfilling legislative mandates, identifying geographical areas that have…

To assist the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in making decisions about the Endowment's future role in the development of new, and improvement of existing, economic data on the arts and cultural institutions, all the existing sources of economic data on the arts were examined and evaluated in detail. A needs survey was also conducted. A…