This article seeks to explain the nature of the arguments the Iroquois presented to the US government in trying to prevent their removal. In the letters they wrote to the federal government from the 1830s to the 1850s they emphasized their own law as well as that of the United States. They drew on whatever perception of law they deemed was best…

In 2011, Indiana's legislature reshaped the state's education policy landscape with a package of laws that enabled local leaders to make swift and potentially sweeping changes to district and school operations. The Hoosier State's reforms, dubbed by supporters as the "Putting Students First" agenda, provide a valuable case study of the…

Almost immediately after he was named Commissioner of Education in March 2011, Stephen Bowen traveled to school districts across Maine and spoke to students, teachers, school administrators and community members about what they saw as the challenges confronting Maine's schools and what role they saw for the Maine Department of Education in…

Little known about the now celebrated 1912 Bread and Roses strike is that prominent Progressive-era reformers condemned the strikers as "uncivil" and "violent." An examination of Bread and Roses' controversies reveals how a ruling class enlists middle-class sentiments to oppose social-justice arguments and defend a civil…

This study examined the relationships between emotional intelligence, locus of control, and mental boundaries. Three hundred and eighty-two county employees were sampled using a cross-sectional survey design. The results indicated internal locus of control and thin mental boundaries are positively related to emotional intelligence. A hierarchical…

The first page of this report sets forth starkly the imperative for states to increase substantially the numbers of postsecondary education degrees and certificates earned each year by their residents: By 2018, the United States will fall far short of the number of new college degrees needed for an emerging economy that increasingly depends on…

Solving America's dropout crisis requires immediate, drastic action. Intractable as the dropout problem may seem, recognition of its magnitude has created an environment ripe for action. Most notably, federal regulations adopted in 2008 require states to use more accurate ways of counting dropouts and holding districts and schools more accountable…

This paper exploits a major, unanticipated reform of the California teachers' pension to provide quasi-experimental evidence on the link between pension generosity and retirement timing. Using two large administrative datasets, the author conducts a reduced-form analysis of the pension reform and estimates a structural model of retirement timing.…

The problem is clear: an unacceptable number of America's students are not graduating from high school, and many who do are still not adequately prepared for success in college and career. Past efforts to address this problem have only been able to achieve incremental results. Now, there is increasing recognition that in order to meaningfully…

With more than four decades of experience in both urban and suburban districts, Superintendent Gerald Kohn knows how difficult it can be to change the culture of a school district beset by poverty, social issues and politics. Yet he accepted the challenge of bringing change to the Harrisburg School District in central Pennsylvania eight years ago.…

As the reconstruction efforts continue in China in the wake of the Great Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, the China Development Research Foundation, with the support of the OECD Centre for Effective Learning Environments, organised an International Training Programme on the Post-Earthquake Reconstruction of Public Facilities from 1 to 11 December…

We provide the first empirical assessment of commenter influence during the rule development stage of administrative rulemaking. We argue that public commenters play a critical agenda-setting role during rule development. To test this proposition, we analyze data from 36 Department of Transportation rules and almost 500 comments. Each of these…

Desperate for cash to fill growing budget deficits, state governments are starting to tangle with federal and local officials over a $39.8 billion pot of economic-stimulus money that was designed to prop up the budgets of local school districts, but is increasingly being eyed as a patch for states' own financial woes. Vague language and loopholes…

A basic premise of charter school reform in public education is offering more autonomy in the use of funds and the design of curriculum in exchange for greater accountability in academic and financial outcomes. This premise poses a significant policy challenge for state policymakers to establish an appropriate level of regulation; charter schools…

Fewer than one-third of degree-seeking, full-time freshmen in the nation's public four-year institutions graduate in four years. To help raise this rate, SREB examined many strategies that public institutions are using to help more students earn bachelor's degrees, with particular attention to students in regional colleges and universities who…