Background: The frequency of parental separation means that increasing numbers of children have fathers who live in different households from mother-and-child; the significance of contact and relationships between children and their nonresident fathers for children's adjustment is receiving growing attention. Lessons from this research are…

Objective: The direct and indirect costs to society from child maltreatment are estimated to be quite high. The costs related to medical care are of interest to professionals serving on medically-oriented child protection teams that conduct medical evaluations of alleged abuse. This study was designed to explore a number of financially related…

Financial difficulties have prompted institutions of higher education to explore private sources of funding. In recent years, public institutions have significantly increased their focus on private giving, with several campaigns having more than $1 billion as a goal. Family and consumer sciences (FCS) professionals need to be actively involved in…

EDUCAUSE inaugurated its annual Current Issues Survey in 2000 by asking the primary representatives, typically CIOs, of its member institutions to identify up to three critical IT issues (five starting in 2004) from among 30 to 40 in response to each of four questions. The survey response rate has typically been 35 to 40 percent, with a…

Understanding the factors that influence alumni giving is a critical task of institutional marketers and development officers. To better understand the factors that influence alumni support, this research reports the results of a field experiment in which the effect that acknowledgement of alumni contributions has on their subsequent donation…

This article examines the relationship between teacher effectiveness and students' achievement as measured by test scores. A strong belief among policymakers and public as well as private funding agencies is that test scores are directly related to the quality of teaching effectiveness. This relationship implies that there could be a direct…

Ongoing technical support is often under-funded in district budgets. Most rail far short of the Consortium for School Networking's (CoSN) recommended ratio of one technician for every 50 to 70 computers, or one technician for every 500 computers in a closely managed networked environment. Add to this the fact that teachers' needs for instructional…

Potential applicants for postgraduate courses in librarianship and information science (LIS) have always had to consider how they would finance their studies. This paper examines how the funding axis for such courses has changed and how applicants from the UK are now looking to employers to fund courses rather than seeking support from national…

Based on a survey of public assistance and child welfare agency staff, this article examines how state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) policy decisions have affected kinship care providers. Findings indicate that most states have continued using TANF to provide income support to kinship caregivers, and some have used TANF to find…

Prodded by an outpouring of philanthropic and federal largess, school districts and even some states are downsizing public high schools to combat high dropout rates and low levels of student achievement, especially in big- city school systems. For longtime proponents of small schools, the upswell in support for their ideas is making for heady…

This article discusses how the philanthropy of Microsoft Corp software magnate co-chairs, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, are reshaping the American high school nowadays. Gates and his wife have put the issue on the national agenda like never before, with a commitment of more than 1.3 billion US dollars this decade toward the foundation's agenda…

There is no shortage of opinions about what the schools are doing right--and where they fall short. One interesting portal into public opinion comes from the annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Released each fall, this poll has proven to be an important gauge of where the public stands on timely…

Higher education in America faces such formidable problems as unaffordable tuition, lack of accountability, students ill-prepared for college, declining enrollment in math and science, and too few graduates fluent in critical foreign languages. This Opportunity 08 position paper recommends that the next President should take the following steps to…

"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) Congress Moves Forward with Budget Plan for FY 2008: House and Senate Spending Blueprints Include Significant…

Understanding educational advancement is important both for institutions, which increasing rely on its revenues, as well as professionals. This paper examines the knowledge base present in 241 doctoral dissertations on advancement, 1991-2006. Most dissertations are produced in education departments, using fundraising/philanthropy as a framework.…