Analyzes the Baltimore Public School District's contract with a private for-profit company to manage the instructional programs of nine schools. It shows that the award of the contract was solely a political consideration; no financial experts were involved. Additionally, the program has not improved test scores and is being challenged by the…

Suggests that children, as the nation's most precious social resource, are the shared responsibility of parents and government. Argues that current efforts to scale back social welfare programs in Canada need to be reversed, so as to provide children, and families with children, a decent minimum standard of living. (MDM)

A discussion of the economics of higher education in developed and developing countries looks at these issues: increasing costs, spending in comparison with level of development, public subsidization, access, proportion of spending on salaries, higher education as investment, funding sources, cost reduction, and strategies for shifting cost…

To help public schools experience free-market competition, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and President Bush propose parental choice among private, parochial, and public schools, supported by public financing for program design and tuition grants. Sidebars highlight church/state separation concerns and school choice experiments in…

Australia's higher education system reform, the booming overseas market, and unmet domestic demand have provided opportunities for private higher education. The growth of private provision, federal and state government responses, and pressures for subsidy and regulation have hastened development of a "peripheral private sector."…

Discusses how Russian vocational-technical education should be funded and proposes four possible scenarios. Recommends a privatization procedure in which an individual or a group of employees of a vocational school would purchase the institution from the government. (CFR)

The trend toward outside contracting of college and university services is examined, and issues involved in the decision to do so are discussed. The experience of one university in outsourcing its printing services shop is offered as illustration of how this approach can resolve several administrative issues: cost, quality and extent of services,…

Reviews positive and negative aspects of corporate involvement in public education, using educational research literature since 1990 and focusing on commercialization of public schools and use of private companies to deliver instructional services or to manage schools. Also explored are value conflicts among supporters and critics of such…

Faced with shrinking state and local tax support and an increased demand for K-12 educational reform, school leaders must use creative means to find money to improve and deliver instruction and services to their schools. This handbook describes innovative strategies that school leaders have used to find scarce dollars for purchasing educational…

Charter schools incorporate the focus of magnet schools but often go beyond their academic specialization to more social goals. They can operate at both elementary and secondary levels, although they are always quite small. The greatest difference, however, between charter schools and other public schools is their status as a bridge between public…

Contracting with the private sector is not new to public schools, but what is new is the scope of the services and programs offered by businesses and used by schools. This publication presents responses to a survey completed by 354 school districts belonging to the National School Boards Association (NSBA) about privatizing a wide array of school…

This document provides a brief history of urban school governance and summarizes some of the unique governance structures that have emerged in six American cities and one Canadian province over recent years. By 1920, ward-based systems in most urban areas had given way to systems with a high degree of centralization. These systems were more…

By 1990 Australia had experienced almost 10 years of incessant activity to restructure education. In many respects, educators are not in control of the change process. This paper explains transformations that have occurred in the senior education positions, in the shape of educational organizations (including schools), and in the way education is…

Americans are facing a critical choice between two different systems of school control the continuance of the current system of public governance or a move to a privatized approach to schooling. The purpose of this book is to help educators and citizens better understand the issues and opportunities associated with changes in educational…

This monograph examines issues in the field of psychosocial/psychiatric rehabilitation (PSR) services for people with serious mental illness, placed in the context of a debate within the field about trends toward managed behavioral health care companies. Four main issues are addressed: (1) the degree to which managed behavioral health care…