Despite huge investments in the educational sector, many countries in Africa have not fared well in the education indices. This study examined the effect of teaching equipment and teachers' effort on learning outcomes in 744 Nigerian primary schools using Stochastic Frontier and Ordinary Least Square regression. The mean technical efficiency was…

Survival of organizations nowadays depends on their ability to learn properly and quickly increase their efficiency and their performance and to adapt to the changing environment. Creating an organizational learning culture (OLC) could achieve an increase in the survivability of organizations. This paper examines the OLC questionnaire, the…

Background: Local governments increasingly rely on sales taxes to raise revenue, often justifying the need for a local sales tax increase with a specific programmatic goal, such as better education or transportation. In Washington State, the legislature explained that a local sales tax increase was necessary to support criminal justice because…

Background: In 2009, the Obama Administration announced its intention to rapidly "turn around" 5,000 of the nation's lowest-performing schools. To do so, it relied on the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program to provide temporary funding for states and schools, and to mandate drastic, school-level reforms. Most of these reforms require…

A variety of theories have emerged that offer plausible explanations, one from the political institutional perspective and others from sociological perspective. There has been renewed interest in the effect of local political structure on police strength in the policing literature. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to assess the two main…

This research sought to document and better understand four evolving learning communities in Victoria. It was based upon an earlier study by the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA) (Snelling, 2003). The study was qualitative in nature, based on face-to-face interviews and case studies. This supporting document provides the literature…

This paper is an empirical analysis of the determinants of crime in Virginia. Over a dozen explanatory variables that current literature suggests as important determinants of crime are collected. The data is from 1970 to 2000. These include economic, fiscal, demographic, political, and social variables. The regression results indicate that crime…

This report offers three broad suggestions for redefining how small town service delivery is examined. First, it uses a very broad definition of service delivery that encompasses revenue enhancement methods, expenditure reduction options, and innovative program arrangements. Second, it argues that three interrelated categories of research needs…

This paper constructs a profile of the condition of the diverse areas of rural America at the Beginning of the 1990s. The widely used designation of metropolitan or nonmetropolitan areas based on the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) does not describe the diverse nature of rural America. One alternative typology differentiates nonmetro counties…

This book clarifies current efforts to reform teaching by providing a conceptual analysis of what a professional and a bureaucratic view of teaching entail. Case studies are presented illustrating what happens when differing approaches to teachers' work are tried in three school districts. The first chapter describes the two approaches to reform…

This report provides as complete a description as available data permit of the nature and operations of the Adult Education Act Grant Program. It is divided into three major chapters. The first presents programmatic background information and a legislative history of the Adult Education Program providing funds to state and local projects. Chapter…

Four commissioned papers prepared for a conference on key concepts in the areas of economic productivity and adaptability in the Northeastern states are presented in this document. These papers reflect an important fact: that major socioeconomic changes are underway that will affect the ability of Northeastern states to maintain productive and…

This volume is a compendium of current research in the field of state and local government finance and financial management. It was created in response to the need of both users and researchers in the area for a comprehensive picture of research work that has been undertaken since 1974 and the results of which are now, or will be soon, available.…