Since the early 2000s, billionaires have treated the Denver Public School District as a Neo-liberal education experiment. Using a tangled web of astroturf groups, nonprofits, and training organizations, billionaires have hijacked this public school district, leaving some schools, students, and democracy behind. In this report, Denver's Mike…

Online program managers (OPMs) are third-party companies that work with colleges and universities to develop, launch, and deliver online learning. Despite the prevalence of these companies in higher education, cost details are often buried or asserted with legal protections as trade secrets or business models unavailable for public review.3…

Homeschooling has developed from a small, isolated, parent-led effort to a vibrant national movement to lobby for and legalize K-12 education at home in all 50 states. Although a majority of homeschool families are Evangelical Christians, the others come from a variety of religious and nonreligious backgrounds, giving homeschooling a broad…

Peter Blake reports on new legislations and reforms in Virginia that provide colleges and universities more operational and administrative autonomy in return for their commitment to public goals for higher education. He traces the history and context of privatization in Virgina from 1988. During this time, the legislatively mandated Virginia…

This report explains how welfare reform in New Jersey has served as an occasion for attempts to restructure the relations between public agencies and private service providers, and that these attempts raise important questions about who will and ought to play a part in the state's welfare programs. The historical context for privatization has…

This paper presents an overview of legislative developments and policy debates that occurred in Maryland during 1994-95 and their effects on school finance. These developments include: (1) the election, by a narrow margin, of a new Democratic governor who promised to restore state cuts in educational expenditures; (2) the increase of…

The choice of the Oregon Health Sciences University to change its status from public to private is discussed, focusing on the reasons for the change (decreased public funding, health care market competition, bureaucracy), the political process of building support for legislation, key features of restructuring, challenges faced, and lessons…

This paper is the fourth in a series of yearly efforts to identify the top 10 public-policy issues facing higher education. Each of the issues is discussed in terms of likely developments in 1997-98, the issue's various aspects, and sources of further information. Issues identified are: (1) the Higher Education Act Reauthorization (issues relating…