Online program managers (OPMs) are third-party companies that work with colleges and universities to develop, launch, and deliver online learning. Despite the prevalence of these companies in higher education, cost details are often buried or asserted with legal protections as trade secrets or business models unavailable for public review.3…

School vouchers, a school choice policy that allows students and families to use public funds to fully or partially pay the cost of attending private schools, became a major area of policy debate once again during Betsy DeVos's tenure as United States Secretary of Education. Recent evaluations have found negative impacts of vouchers on academic…

Within California, there is widespread understanding and consensus that college affordability is a challenge that needs to be addressed. Along with this consensus on the nature and implications of California's college affordability problems, there is also emerging agreement about how to tackle it. While this convergence can form the backbone of a…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? In 2017, the California Department of Education's Expanded Learning Division (after-school and summer programs) took a radically different approach by cultivating the…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), most recently reauthorized in 2004, requires the inclusion of transition services in an individualized education program (IEP) for students with disabilities by the time they reach their 16th birthday, or earlier if determined appropriate by the IEP team. The IEP must include "(1)…

We study how the employment effects of enterprise zones vary with their location, implementation, and administration, based on evidence from California. We use new establishment-level data and geographic mapping methods, coupled with a survey of enterprise zone administrators. Overall, the evidence indicates that enterprise zones do not increase…

Response to intervention (RTI) can be both a system for providing early interventions to struggling students and a special education diagnostic tool for evaluating and identifying students with specific learning disabilities. Contributing to the very limited literature on state-level approaches, this report describes how nine states define and…

California State Board of Education policies authorizing implementation of early childhood legislation for K-3 programs are given. Legislative authority is quoted for each of the policies, which cover: (1) development of the early childhood education master plan--district level planning, individual school level planning, optional waiver of…

Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) is a public service program administered by the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The purpose of the program is to increase the number of minority students who have sound academic preparation, giving them the background to successfully complete a…

High-quality out-of-school-time (OST) programs have a positive effect on youth development, but many cities have found it difficult to address the challenges of expanding and improving the quality of programs offered to underserved and high-need students. In response, The Wallace Foundation sponsored an initiative to help five cities increase…

This module on fiscal management of a vocational education program is one of a set of eight on administration and supervision and is part of a larger series of thirty-four modules constituting a core curriculum for use in the professional preparation of vocational educators in the areas of agricultural, business, home economics, and industrial…

Using the District Review of Vocational Education (DROVE) process, information from 60 California district vocational education systems was collected and analyzed to determine important implications for State level management of vocational education. Some 257 visiting team members participated in writing recommendations and commendations from…

This report reviews current issues in vocational education and discusses their relationship to the California Statewide Longitudinal Study (SLS) of community college students. After a brief outline of the development of vocational education in the community college, current issues identified in a series of studies of vocational education in…

This document presents the findings of a review of federal and state job training programs and governance structures in California that was commissioned to identify options for restructuring California's work force preparation policy and governance of the state's system of work force preparation programs through vocational education, job training,…

This report focuses on two programs launched by the U. S. Office of Education (USOE) for personnel development in vocational education. The two programs (section 552, Leadership Development Awards and section 553, State Systems for Personnel Development), created under part F of the Education Professions Development Act (EPDA), are examined in 11…