Students with an understanding of economics are better equipped to comprehend the forces that influence people's standard of living and overall financial well-being. Broad-based economic literacy supports an environment where students can participate in America's democracy as well-informed and responsible citizens, whose collective actions may…

In the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and St. Louis began a systematic evaluation of their economic and personal finance educational outreach programs. Both banks were interested in developing tools to assess the success of their existing economic and financial education programs. However, before any assessment could begin, a…

Many textbooks define economics as the social science that studies how people make choices when faced with scarcity; or how a society decides what to produce, how to produce, and for whom to produce. Regardless of the definition, students' economic understanding is fundamental to their financial well-being and their ability to build successful…

Since 1964, the federal government has had two successful programs that have helped Americans from low-income and first-generation college backgrounds (whose parents never enrolled in higher education) prepare for and earn their college degrees, helping to stop the cycle of poverty. The federally funded TRIO programs (Upward Bound, Veterans Upward…

The authors analyze bills, congressional records, agency reports, and newspaper articles to trace the evolution of Project Head Start, by far the nation's largest federal early childhood program, beginning with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Their analysis is organized around the policy goals embedded in the program and the governance…

New Leaders and the George W. Bush Institute's Alliance to Reform Education Leadership (AREL) released a report entitled "Great Principals at Scale: Creating District Conditions that Enable All Principals to Be Effective" in June 2014. This brief summarizes the framework presented in that report and recommends actions that states and the…

Created in a time of segregation and discrimination to educate students of color, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have played a pivotal role in transforming the landscape of higher education in the United States. Today, in an era of rapid transformation, HBCUs face historic challenges as well as new obstacles. Questions about…

Central banking in the United States has a long and controversial history dating back to the earliest days of the republic. One of the most widely presented arguments against a central bank has been that the U.S. Constitution does not expressly grant the federal government power to charter a bank. Recently, this issue has received new scrutiny in…

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama's plan for teacher education reform and improvement was described in the document "Our Future, Our Teachers" (2011). The rationale for reform is that "many of our teacher preparation programs fall short" (p. 5). The measures of this are stated as "only 23% of…

President Obama's FY 2013 budget request includes another major spending increase for the Department of Education--2.5 percent more than last year--to nearly $70 billion. American taxpayers are calling for spending restraint in Washington, yet President Obama's proposals would exacerbate the existing bureaucratic maze of federal programs and…

Beginning with the No Child Left Behind federal legislation, states were required to use data to monitor and improve student achievement. For high schools, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education chose End of Course Exams (EOC) to demonstrate levels of student achievement. The policy changed from school choice of paper-pencil…

The basic currency of higher education--the credit hour--represents the root of many problems plaguing America's higher education system: the practice of measuring time rather than learning. "Cracking the Credit Hour" traces the history of this time-based unit, from the days of Andrew Carnegie to recent federal efforts to define a credit…

The overall aim of this volume of essays is to honor Frank B. Murray's commitments to empirically-based quality assurance and to the development of increasingly effective systems of quality control in educator preparation programs. As the editors approached the authors with the invitation to contribute an essay, two characteristic aspects of…

This article presents a discourse analysis of President Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address. Fredric Jameson's concepts of cognitive mapping, cultural revolution, and the unconscious are employed to examine the president's vision of educational and economic transformation. Ultimately, it is argued this vision evokes a world in which…

The Labor government in Australia has recently embarked on an extremely ambitious program of social inclusion for the most marginalized groups in society. Drawing upon the approach of "policy scholarship" this paper examines some federal government "policy texts" to describe what has occurred and asks questions about what is…