The increasingly competitive and globalizing environment of today's higher education market has compelled many colleges and universities around the world to revamp their academic programs and organizational structures by responsively addressing various contemporary issues raised by internal as well as external stakeholders. It is no exception that…

For decades, when California's state leaders have wanted to see local school districts respond to shifts in policy and expectations they relied on the state-controlled school finance system to leverage local change. Through the use of categorical programs and earmarked funding, they created incentives for districts that complied and penalties for…

America's approach to the education of children with disabilities is antiquated, costly, and ineffective. "Special education" as we know it is broken--and repainting the surface won't repair it. It cries out for a radical overhaul. Federal policy is responsible for much of this failure. Even though the education world has changed around…

This study implemented a two phase concurrent mixed-methods design to generate a greater understanding of how elementary schools with increased autonomy in fiscal decision making allocated their money, how their site-based decisions affected allocative efficiency, and how increased autonomy affected site-based decision making when compared with a…

At the conclusion of the 2007-08 academic year, the City of Keene and Keene State College (KSC) began to celebrate the college's 100th anniversary. Keene is the 23,000-person hub of a 70,000-person county in southwestern New Hampshire. The history of a supportive town-gown relationship began prior to the college's founding in 1909. The city had…

The difference between the University of Texas at San Antonio's Applied Engineering and Technology Library and other science-focused libraries is not that its on-site collection is also available electronically. It is that its on-site collection is only available electronically. The idea of libraries with no bound books has been a recurring theme…

This article experimentally studies punishment from unaffected third parties in ten different games. The authors show that third-party punishment exhibits several features that are arguably undesirable. First, third parties punish strongly a decider if she chooses a socially efficient or a Pareto efficient allocation and becomes the richest party…

In recent years the majority of California community colleges evaluated for re-accreditation received sanctions requiring documented improvement in the integration of college planning and budgeting processes. This study explores the challenges colleges face and the best practices utilized by successful colleges in implementing integrated…

Through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, the federal government provides more financial aid for higher education than any other institution. But because of discriminatory laws the FAFSA treats families headed by two mothers or two fathers differently than families headed by a mother and a father. This treatment distributes…

This study used a purposeful sample of five public non-charter elementary schools in Hawai`i. The schools, located on two different islands, displayed evidence of improving academic performance and consistently outperformed the state average growth in scores on the Hawai`i State Assessment (HSA). These schools had mid to high percentages of…

This brief summarizes the ways that schools and their teachers can simultaneously reach more students with excellent teaching, expand teachers' career opportunities, and sustainably fund higher pay and other priorities. This is based on Public Impact's school models that use job redesign and technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers to…

High-end amenities like rock climbing walls on college campuses have become an easy target for those attempting to explain rising tuitions. This Delta Perspective looks beyond the media attention surrounding these "frills" to examine more serious questions about spending on campus facilities, college spending in general, and the real drivers of…

Before the 2005 launch of the New Zealand SunSmart Schools Accreditation Programme (SSAP), 242 randomly sampled primary schools completed a mail survey about sun protection policies, practices, curriculum and environment. A 2009 follow-up included 189 (78%) and their mean Total Accreditation Score (TAS = total SSAP requirements met, range 0-12),…

This study extends the theoretical perspectives in policy studies on the issue of educational equality by analyzing the influence of cultural values on policies and policy processes. The present paper first teases out the key cultural values regarding education and equality, and then explores how these values shape the institution and policy…

The authors describe a conceptual and measurement framework that provides a template for guiding policy development and systems change. The framework is built on the concepts of vertical and horizontal alignment, system-level processes, and organization-level practices. Application of the framework can structure the thinking and analytic…