America's fragmented, decentralized, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance is a major impediment to school reform. In this important new book, a number of leading education scholars, analysts, and practitioners show that understanding the impact of specific policy changes in areas such as standards, testing, teachers, or…

In most PISA-participating countries and economies, the average socio-economic background of students who attend privately managed schools is more advantaged than that of those who attend public schools. Yet in some countries, there is little difference in the socio-economic profiles between public and private schools. Why? An analysis of PISA…

This essay captures elements of the accumulated experiences of different teachers' centers and presents possible alternatives for efforts to establish new centers. Characteristics of a "typical" teachers' center are presented, according to origin, setting, facilities, program, governance, participation, and staff. Common differences…

This resource examines the role of the central office in improving instruction and therefore improving student achievement. Mac Iver and Farley-Ripple provide a comprehensive review of the available research (since the 1970s) on the role of the central office in student achievement. First, they review the research chronologically, and then by…

This book calls for changes in special-education fiscal policy, claiming that special-education finances need to be more fully incorporated into education-finance literature and fiscal-policy discussions. The first few chapters discuss fiscal and program-policy funding in the United States and in Europe. They trace the history of federal…

The decade 1980-90 saw a spate of educational reconstruction occurring simultaneously in many countries. This book argues that the school restructuring of the past 10 years has been called the "education-reform movement," but that term is somewhat misleading. The current reform efforts seem to aim primarily at the control and governance of both…

Comparing or estimating the costs of educational projects by merely using cost-per-student figures is imprecise and ignores area differences in prices. The resource approach to cost analysis begins by determining specific physical resources (such as facilities, staff, equipment, materials, and services) needed for a project. Then the cost of these…

This study sets out to examine the relationship, if any, between the decentralization of funding for schools and the prevalence of corruption and fraud. It is based upon work carried out in four countries: Australia (the State of Victoria), the United Kingdom (specifically England), Poland (with particular reference to two cities) and Brazil…

This comprehensive resource is an invaluable aid for adding a global dimension to students' understanding of American history. It includes a wide range of materials from scholarly articles and reports to original syllabi and ready-to-use lesson plans to guide teachers in enlarging the frame of introductory American history courses to an…

Within the context of UNESCO publications concerning science development, this first survey of country studies on Belgium, Chile, Egypt, Hungary, Nigeria and Sri Lanka gives information on the present state and organizational structure of social sciences. Evaluations of achievements which should contribute to the development of research and…

The philosophical underpinning of the purposes of the community college, an examination of the basis for state financial support from a philosophical viewpoint, and an analysis of the ways in which the various states have implemented that philosophy in financial support programs are the central focus of this report. The four current patterns of…

A discussion of higher education in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland assesses policy and provision of education in the two jurisdictions and places them in their international context. The jurisdictions' demographics, trends in participation, and patterns of expenditure are examined first, in the context of both the United Kingdom and…

This report presents comparative data governing the financing of public higher education in each state and the District of Columbia. The model used in data analysis involves the following nine data elements: population, number of high school graduates, public full-time equivalent enrollment, taxable resources, tax revenue collected, state and…

Media programs were compared in 21 Utah high schools having student populations between 700 and 1,500. Differences in responses to a questionnaire administered by the Utah State Division of Instructional Media (USDIM) on the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the school media program were identified, and the levels of responses were compared…

This report reviews the problems of protecting nature in a heavily industrialized democracy such as the United States. Factors contributing to the establishment of protected areas in the United States are traced from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to the present. Arguments in defense of wilderness areas consider nature as: (1) a…