"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) House of Representatives Passes Education Funding Bill: Legislation Draws Veto Threat From President Bush for…

Economic pressures on universities and the emergence of new technologies have spurred the creation of new systems for delivering engineering laboratories in education, in particular simulations and remote-access laboratory systems. Advocates of simulation argue that physical labs needlessly consume university space and students' time. However,…

The greatest challenge for institutions of higher education in most OECD countries since the 1970s has arguably been to cope with reduced public support. Many institutions responded to reductions in funding, first, by cutting costs and lobbying governments to reverse cutbacks, and then--when it became clear that funding levels would not be…

IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) is a promising technology aimed at supporting learning processes. IMS-LD packages contain the learning process metadata as well as the learning resources. However, the allocation of resources--whether data or services--within the learning design is done manually at design-time on the basis of the subjective appraisals…

Fiscal equity in public education has been a substantive issue with a long history in school finance literature. However, the growing demands of capital outlay financing are given little or no attention in typical equity funding schemes. Currently, school districts throughout the nation are faced with the need to finance the construction,…

As part of their course, the authors were asked to teach a mathematics lesson to a class of Y6 pupils. Since they did not know the pupils, they felt that the theme of the session was of the utmost importance, so they chose something which they hoped would stimulate the pupils' imagination and entice them into the session. They wanted to use…

With the enactment of the NCLB mandates, emphasis on high-stakes testing became more prevalent than ever. Some argue that high-stakes tests can be a driving force behind fundamental change in schools. Whether or not this type of test-driven change leads to school improvement is an empirical question. What we do know is that high-stake testing can…

Using detailed administrative data for the public K-12 schools of North Carolina, we measure racial segregation in the public schools of North Carolina. With data for the 2005/06 school year, we update previously published calculations that measure segregation in terms of unevenness in racial enrollment patterns both between schools and within…

"IMHE-Info" is the newsletter published by the Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) programme of OECD. This issue includes: (1) Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society; (2) The Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO); and (3) City-Regions in Focus. Publications of interest, IMHE News, and a calendar…

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) works with school and district leaders to help them more strategically use resources--people, time, and money--to improve student performance. They have found that many school districts begin creating small high schools without a clear sense of how much they will spend or how to ensure that small schools…

The new public sector community development workers (CDWs) programme was established in 2004 following ineffective service delivery through chronic under-spending on annual budgets in post-apartheid South Africa. CDWs receive training in learnerships within the National Skills Development Strategy to ensure access to and spending of local…

Effectively teaching college students about social class stratification is a difficult challenge. Explanations for this difficulty tend to focus on the students who often react with resistance, paralysis, or rage. Sociologists have been using games and simulations as alternative methods for several decades to teach about these sensitive subjects.…

This report finds that now more than ever, New York needs a strong workforce development system--but declining funds and uncoordinated programs are obstacles to progress. In December 2003, the Center for an Urban Future and the New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals released a report, "Seeking a Workforce System,"…

America is home to a diverse set of institutions that range from the fabulously well endowed to those that are very poorly funded. Yet many of our poorer institutions provide educations that are just as good as--and in some cases even better than--their richer counter-parts. In this article, the author argues that wealthy institutions of higher…

This highly practical guide is grounded in the authors' experience setting up and running a successful professional development program to improve K-3 reading instruction. The book systematically describes how professional development works: how sessions are organized, what they contain, routines and procedures, and the roles of each participant.…