The Los Angeles Unified School District stands to receive an estimated $566 million in extra Title I and special education money--plus an undetermined amount of state stabilization money--from the federal stimulus package. This article reports that officials in hard-hit states like California are breathing a little easier now that they can use…

Researchers have paid scant attention to the opportunities and the barriers associated with across-state study of college-transition policies, although the American states comprise a social system especially well suited for comparative analysis. What sorts of questions should researchers ask about college-transition policies and programs? How…

In his keynote address to the Fifth Annual American Indian Studies Consortium in 2005 David Wilkins began by commenting on earlier attempts to formally organize such a gathering in ways that might help establish and accredit Indian studies programs. He said he had the sense that the thrust of earlier meetings "was really an opportunity for Native…

In the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment of science learning, the equivalent of six school years separate the achievement of 15-year-olds in Finland, the best-performing country, from their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic. Still more than a school year lies between the neighboring countries Canada,…

The move of the University of Southern California to eliminate its German department in order to shift resources to Asian languages has sparked a debate about the relative importance of learning European languages. College administrators seem to assume that global shifts in economic power call for changes in the distribution of their budget for…

Scholars of adult basic literacy curricular materials have argued that the skill-based, deficit-oriented approach of many such materials denies the interests and motivations of adult learners. Exploring why these kinds of curricular materials are prevalent in adult basic literacy education, this article focuses on the case of ProLiteracy, a…

On February 24, 2009, President Obama outlined his fiscal plan for the 2010 budget to a joint session of Congress. Stressing the importance of backing education, Obama vowed to "expand our commitment to charter schools" and "invest in innovation." Obama's plan for more effective charters includes increasing federal aid and…

The authors investigated how children and adults evaluate the "niceness" of individuals who engage in resource distribution, with a focus on their sensitivity to the proportion of resources given. Across 3 experiments, subjects evaluated the niceness of a child who gave a quantity of pennies to another child. In Study 1 (N = 30), adults showed…

Throughout the history of publicly-funded voucher programs--enacted and proposed--the impact on taxpayers has been a recurring issue. As the nation's longest-running program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) provides an important case study. The fiscal impact of Milwaukee's program has evolved in very significant ways over its 18-year…

After more than a decade of dedicated investment, state funding to assist local California school districts in the construction, modernization, and maintenance of their school facilities has come to a halt. As the Governor, the legislature, and other stakeholders debate the future of the state's K-12 school facility funding role, a big unknown…

After decades of dedicated investment, state funding to assist local California school districts in the construction, modernization, and maintenance of their school facilities has come to a halt. As the Governor, the legislature, and other stakeholders debate the future of the state's K-12 school facility funding role, a big unknown exists:…

The purpose of this study was to assess the equity and adequacy of the NYC schools through analysis of the distribution of key resources before and after its 32 decentralized community school districts were recentralized into ten administrative regions in 2003. The study used a framework for assessing adequacy based on economic, sociological, and…

In November 1996, the voters of Montgomery County (Maryland) approved by referendum an amendment to the County Charter that changed the County Council's review and approval cycle of the six-year Capital Improvements Program (CIP) from an annual to biennial cycle. The referendum specified that in odd-numbered fiscal years (on years) the County…

Technological innovation is driving fundamental changes in all aspects of our lives. This is especially true of digital content, as our use of e-books, downloadable music, streaming television and movies, and online social networks has exploded. However, the explosive growth in our use of digital content seems so far to have eluded many of the 50…

The latest installment of the Fordham Institute's "Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning" series investigates one of the more controversial aspects of digital learning: How much does it cost? In this paper, the Parthenon Group uses interviews with more than fifty vendors and online-schooling experts to estimate today's average…