A recent report from Michigan's Mackinac Center asserts that there is little or no relationship between student achievement and marginal increases to what the report characterizes as the already "high" levels of spending in that state. Yet the report never substantiates its assertion that present spending levels are high, on average, or…

Schools across the United States are facing budgetary pressures on a scale not seen in generations. Times of fiscal exigency force policymakers and education practitioners to pay more attention to the return on various categories of public investment in education. The sizes of the classes in which students are educated are often a focus of these…

In 2007 Georgia instituted a flexibility policy through which school districts enter into performance contracts with the state, receiving waivers from state rules, provisions, and guidelines in exchange for agreeing to meet annual accountability targets. The performance contracts are intended to incentivize innovations that increase achievement…

These are the appendixes for the report, "District Changes in Student Achievement and Local Practice under Georgia's District and School Flexibility Policy." Five appendixes are included in the document: (1) About the study; (2) Data and methods; (3) Supporting analysis; (4) Survey instrument; and (5) Interview protocol. [For the full…

The PISA project has steadily increased its influence on the educational discourse and educational policies in the now 70 participating countries. The educational debate has become global, and the race to improve PISA-rankings has become high priority in many countries. For governments the PISA-test is a high-stake test. Governments are blamed for…

Class-size reduction (CSR) mandates presuppose that resources provided to reduce class size will have a larger impact on student outcomes than resources that districts can spend as they see fit. I estimate the impact of Florida's statewide CSR policy by comparing the deviations from prior achievement trends in districts that were required to…

In recent years, economic downturn and changes to Indiana's school funding have resulted in significant financial reductions in General Fund allocations for many of Indiana's public school corporations. The main purpose of this statewide study is to examine the possible impacts of these budget reductions on class size and student achievement. This…

Because classroom size reduction (CSR) and standards based testing were implemented at the same time in California during the mid-1990s, it is difficult to isolate the effects of classroom size on outcomes from the effects of curriculum changes. As a result, the main comparison in this paper is very specific--the effect of reduced sized…

California was, and remains, the largest "experiment" in class-size reduction (CSR) in the country's history. Its sweeping program to reduce the state's classes in kindergarten through the third grade covered nearly 2 million students and dropped the average class size from almost twenty-nine students per class, and often a great many…

"Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life" presents research findings on the effects of early childhood programs and practices in the first decade of life and their implications for policy development and reform. Leading scholars in the multidisciplinary field of human development and in early childhood learning…

A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted of Gordon, Kane, and Staiger's (2006) proposal to raise student achievement by identifying and replacing the bottom quartile of novice teachers, using value-added assessment of teacher performance. The cost effectiveness of this proposal was compared to the cost effectiveness of voucher programs, charter…

The purpose of the federal Title VI, Class Size Reduction program is to reduce class sizes in grades K-3 to 18 or fewer students. In AISD, these funds were used for recruiting, hiring, and training highly qualified teachers to raise student achievement through increased personal attention. This report summarizes evaluation results of AISD's Title…