Before the educational reforms of the early 1990s, Kentucky was in the bottom 10% of the states on most indicators of educational quality. Educators and policymakers in Kentucky approached educational reform in a thoughtful and systematic way and developed a state law mandating an education system that now serves as a national model. The education…

School finance has traditionally concentrated on the distribution of resources to school districts, focusing primarily on the equitable distribution of funds within a state. In recent years, more attention has been paid to the issue of productivity-how effectively school districts use the funds they receive to provide education to students. This…

This guide for locating local resources to support a literacy program is designed to help program directors or organizers identify partners and stakeholders in their community--those that may not have been thought of as a resource. In the context of this guide, resources refers to any organization, initiative, or individual who supports…

This report discusses the outcomes of a study designed to identify the reasons that individuals with disabilities use the assistive technology loan programs offered by state assistive technology projects. The study aimed to identify the types of devices that were purchased through the loan programs and the effects of these devices on the lives of…

This paper describes the initiatives of Tusculum College, Tennessee, to reverse a pattern of steady decline in enrollment, campus morale, academic standards, financial support, and institutional reputation. The tide began to turn when Tusculum, after a broad and inclusive search, hired its 25th president, Robert E. Knott in 1989. During his term,…

Ten exemplary program descriptions arose from the 1998 conference hosted by Selected Programs for Improving Catholic Education (SPICE), an organization created to assist Catholic school leaders to choose and replicate programs that successfully meet the needs of the contemporary Catholic school. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the annual…

This report provides 10 guiding principles for aligning school spending with the goal of creating a system of high-performing schools: (1) It is necessary to recognize that money matters--"you get what you pay for" applies to schools; (2) Aligning school spending to the goals of high performance requires investing in those things that…

This publication sets out the allocation of funding for the widening participation special funding program in England for 1999-2000 to 2001-2002. The program is part of an effort to improve access to and participation in higher education for under-represented groups. Higher education institutions funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for…

This document is comprised of two papers providing resources for after-school programs and additional information available from the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP). The first paper, "Organizations in Out-of-School Time: An Introduction," reviews the national, state, and local organizations active in the field of out-of-school time, grouped…

This policy brief describes the components of a computer model to compare different financing approaches for universal early care and education programs as developed by the Financing Universal Early Care and Education (ECE) for America's Children Project. The brief also discusses lessons learned from analyzing key features of existing…

Locating and financing educational facilities is a significant challenge facing many charter schools. This report outlines five options state policymakers can pursue to enable charter schools to gain access to suitable, high-quality facilities. The five options addressed are: creating new revenue streams for facilities cost; giving charter schools…

In response to changes in society and the nonprofit sector, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation developed and funded the Building Bridges between Practice & Knowledge in Nonprofit Management Education initiative (Building Bridges). The work of those involved in Building Bridges and other leaders in nonprofit management education can benefit from the…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is the most recent reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) and was signed into law in January 2002 by President George W. Bush. This educator's guide was commissioned by the Geography Education National Implementation Project (GENIP) to help geography educators…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is the most recent authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and was signed into law in January 2002 by President George W. Bush. Of key interest is the progress of the last two decades, which lead to the law's inclusion of geography as a "core academic subject" and the…

This paper provides a brief overview of the elementary and secondary school-finance system. The scope of the school-finance enterprise is large. On any given day, about 20 percent of the country's population participates in precollegiate education programs of some sort. The states provide nearly half of all school revenues, which come from…