This report examines the roles and functions of state coordinating and governing boards of higher education. Data are from a study reviewing 20 years' worth of data and a current survey. After an introductory section, the first section analyzes historical trends which suggest modest growth in appropriations over the period. Section 2, based on the…

School districts often find themselves in a double bind when dealing with the public: they seek public input, but also are vulnerable to manipulation by organized interest groups that are not representative of the entire community. The dilemma is how to procure the overall community's public judgment of a topic and allow widespread participation.…

The inclusion of students with disabilities in assessment is deemed critical to improve the quality of educational opportunities for these students and to provide meaningful and useful information about students' performance to the schools and communities where they are educated. This inclusion raises important questions, however, concerning the…

This brief details the history of the federal government's stance with language minority students, and analyzes the implications of changes to its guiding principles made by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. With every federal re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act prior to 2001, the importance of bilingual…

This report sheds light on the use of contract teachers with a particular focus on Cambodia, Nicaragua and India--countries that have all relied on contract teachers at some point. The report documents the use of contract teachers in Cambodia, Nicaragua and India and outlines the experience of contract teachers in West Africa. It also discusses…

This publication offers an overview of the state of diversity in graduate education and considers the racial and ethnic makeup of the nation's faculty. It then offers recommendations for how to improve graduate education of students of color. The monograph is designed to help faculty, administrators and policy makers by offering strategies that…

This report of the NAVE (National Assessment of Vocational Education) Independent Advisory Panel fulfills an important obligation under the 1998 Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act (Perkins III). Perkins III directed the Secretary of Education to complete an "independent evaluation and assessment of vocational and technical…

This guidebook presents strategic interventions for community change. It is designed to build an understanding of six strategic interventions and create the capacity to deploy them. It helps local education funds (LEF) engage their communities, organize parents and other residents, advocate for sound policy, and work with districts and teachers.…

This discussion paper addresses two policy questions: (1) Can Canada afford to maintain its income security programs and social services, given the higher costs expected with an aging population? and (2) Do generous social programs discourage family responsibility or reinforce expectations of assistance within and between generations? The paper…

This document includes presentation summaries and policy recommendations from the 2004 Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) Education Conference: (1) The Present and Coming Crisis: Demography and Education (Dowell Myers and Estela Mara Bensimon); (2) A View from the Academic Community (Moderators: Jorge Haynes and Jamilah Moore; Presenters:…

Post-secondary systems throughout Canada and the United States have struggled with funding issues during most of the last decade of the 20th Century, and the new millennium did not open with great enthusiasm for change. This article examines the impact of post-secondary education funding changes in Alberta, Canada, by tracing the historical…

Because of elementary school overcrowding, federal "class size reduction" funding has not been used to reduce class sizes, but instead has been used to hire extra teachers to work with classroom teachers for some portion of the school day. These teachers are called "floating" teachers in most schools, but in some schools they…

This book is about how the process of deciding about education, or education policymaking, can be informed by research-based knowledge. Part 1 offers three chapters that attempt to clarify the central issues caught up in the problem of knowledge utilization--why there is so little utilization of research in educational policymaking, how research…

Research suggests that policy change can best be understood as the product of competition among advocacy coalitions within the constraints of a policy subsystem (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). This paper presents findings of a study that examined the rhetoric of policy change in Texas utilizing the voucher and charter-schools movements as an…

This paper provides a picture of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), primarily Europe and North America. The paper's main objective is to present an overview of the major policies and programs in these countries, and to classify them by their most salient…