School systems are currently faced with critical recovery needs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Leaders must decide how to allocate nearly $200 billion of federal funding, which has the potential to significantly impact efforts to accelerate learning and provide student well-being supports, especially for students who have been…

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of…

The purpose of this paper is to address the need for guidance on professional standards for educational practices in online education. Since 1995, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) has provided leadership in the introduction and successful implementation of distance education. During this time, the ASCCC has played a…

Back in the mid-2000s, in public and in the news media, Joseph P. Burke, then superintendent of the Springfield public schools, and Timothy T. Collins, president of the local teachers' union, often seemed to be at odds with each other. Out of the public eye, however, the two men had begun meeting regularly. When Burke left the district, the work…

The recent decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that Northwestern University football players on scholarship are "employees" entitled to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) should serve as a wake-up call for higher education administrators. Part of a trend in which both the NLRB…

Rising health insurance costs have been a source of fiscal distress for school districts. In this paper, I closely examine data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to address a few basic questions: (1) Are district costs for teachers' health insurance higher, on average, than employer costs for…

In recent years, states have sought to increase accountability for public school teachers by implementing a package of reforms centered on high-stakes evaluation systems. We examine the effect of these reforms on the supply and quality of new teachers. Leveraging variation across states and time, we find that accountability reforms reduced the…

Perhaps the most predictable lesson learned about the imposition of fiscal austerity over the past few years has been that it has generally failed where it has been tried. A recent Education International study of EI members examines global trends in freedom of association and collective bargaining in the education sector since the 2008 financial…

This article provides a case study of union change in an environment in which radical school restructuring is taking place, and active strategies to weaken and marginalize organized teachers are being pursued by the state. The case study union is the National Union of Teachers in England. The article explores a number of different strategies open…

The purpose of this study was to examine the general trend of education governance in the Canadian province of Ontario since 1995 when the Progressive Conservatives led by Michael Harris formed a new majority government. The article is divided into three sections. The first section provides the context and a historical background of Ontario…

Dissatisfaction with postdoctoral appointments is associated with demographics, career goals, types of research, postdoc-advisor interaction, and program quality. Rather than a simple inverse relationship to dissatisfaction, the effect of program quality depends on the postdoc's autonomy to shape a research project, interaction with an advisor,…

This article describes a group of dedicated educators who, in the midst of a constant barrage of attacks, dramatically changed the conversation. It is the story of a union that recognized that, in order to bring about the transformation necessary for the betterment of the entire community, its members needed to transform the way in which it…

Community and technical colleges (collectively referred to as associate's institutions throughout this brief) serve an important role in the U.S. higher education system. They are often an option for students who: (1) need skills development, an associate's degree, or training for specific jobs in their community; (2) need a more affordable…

Public education has historically been in the public and political eye. Then came 2011 and the high profile and well televised protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. In each case Republican Governors and Republican controlled state legislatures had introduced substantially similar bills that sought sweeping changes to each state's collective…

California's draft Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan is now open for public comment. As the plan was reviewed, five primary things came into focus. This report discusses how the state did, what is in the plan and what still needs to be done to strengthen protections and services for low-income students, students of color, and other…