Reform in American higher education depends on recognizing freshman courses as the foundation of higher-order thinking and learning. These courses must be recognized for their intellectual significance and their inherent possibilities for multi-disciplinary scholarship. The Maimon Hierarchical Fallacy is a phrase coined by Elaine Maimon to refer…

Alberta Education has been engaged in reviews and reforms of special education, and attempting to describe and move toward more inclusive ways of supporting students with disabilities since 2008. These efforts have, at times, resulted in more progressive and inclusive education policies and, at times, seemed somewhat halting. The obstacle to…

Performance-based funding models are increasingly becoming the norm for many institutions of higher learning. Such models place greater emphasis on student retention and success metrics, for example, as requirements for receiving state appropriations. To stay competitive, universities have adopted academic analytics technologies capable of…

California ended 40 years of reliance on categorical funding for schools when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law on July 1, 2013. LCFF intends to enhance services for high-needs students through new flexibility, targeted student funding, and local accountability. Two years into LCFF implementation,…

This article contributes to the analysis of the global spread of support for school choice and to the understanding of how a particular form of policy development reflects and cements this support. It maps the growing dominance of school choice within a reconfiguration of politics, policy making, and research. To establish the nature of this…

This paper intends to describe the recent experience of a small, rural, two-year technical college. After four decades of success, the college had found itself in a difficult situation with a substantial loss in enrollment and diminished state and local support, coupled with low campus employee morale. In response, the college team closed ranks…

The effects of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 continue to challenge school business officials (SBOs) and other education leaders as they strive to prepare students for the global workforce. Economists have borrowed a word from chemistry to describe this state of affairs: hysteresis--the lingering effects of the past on the present. Today's SBOs…

In 2013 California adopted a new funding formula that includes a significant reinvestment in public education after years of budget cuts. The new law allocates funds differently, directing more resources to students with higher needs and providing more local control and greater transparency. This revolutionary change presents California districts…

As states consider increases to K-12 spending amid better economic conditions, governors on opposite sides of the partisan divide are proposing significantly different plans and arguments for the best ways to use new education aid. Two prime examples: Minnesota and Ohio, a pair of Midwestern states with chief executives intent on pumping more…

As a state legislator, you're well aware of the fiscal pressures that have caused many states to change their pension systems. But you should also be aware of the impact that pension reform has on public education. This brief guide shows you how and why pension programs affect your state's efforts to attract and retain the best teachers. It…

The concern about the United States' education attainment levels as compared with those of other countries, and the consequences of this poor showing, were given visibility by the inclusion of international statistics in the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education publication, "Measuring Up 2008." That concern was…

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) represents a fundamental transformation of the way California allocates state funds to school districts and the ways the state expects districts to make decisions about (and report on) the use of these funds. This is the first in a series of short briefs that aims to capture some key themes emerging from…

A tight race for governor, the heavy burden of rebuilding a school funding system recently declared unconstitutional, and a fourth ballot measure in two decades on charter schools has placed Washington state on an intense--and unpredictable--road for education this year. Washington is one of nine states that do not allow charter schools, and the…

The theme of the 2016 National Conference of the Australian College of Educators (ACE), "Challenges and changes: The power of education to build the world to which we aspire," provided a unique opportunity for education professionals to carefully consider and propose papers, workshops, and poster sessions to stimulate discussion and…

As the enduring economic recession forces state and local governments to cut education budgets, astute allocation of resources is becoming more important. The author analyses three basic categories of educational resources: money, human capital, and time before moving to a discussion of resources as a component of school reform. The author…