Just as the recession has taken a toll in other states, New Jersey state budget coffers are shriveling up as public colleges and other state-supported services are asked to do more with less. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's slashing of $173 million from public colleges and universities has drawn the ire of higher education leaders, educators and…

This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…

The financial state of the nation's public pension funds--which provide the retirement incomes for all state employees but in most states are dominated by teachers, administrators, and other school employees--has gone from bad to worse, and is projected to continue to worsen in coming decades. A perfect storm of factors has combined in the past…

The high cost of providing public services in urban areas of high population density is not always matched by a high capacity to meet that cost. The additional costs that must be borne by taxpayers in urban areas are collectively termed the "municipal overburden." The literature on municipal overburden has failed to recognize that this…

Severe reductions in funding coupled with the imperative to measure and report teachers' ability to integrate technology into their practice pose a significant problem for school districts in New Jersey. This study was designed to identify factors that influence teacher use of technology. A review of the literature identified four areas of…

Questions about inequities in educational funding were raised in New Jersey when the legislature enacted the state's second major education-finance-reform law, the Quality Education Act of 1990 (QEA). This paper describes changes in revenues, expenditures, and programs in 11 diverse New Jersey school districts during the first year of…

The well-being of a large portion of American children is distressingly low. Integrated service delivery--which provides the broadest range of education, health, housing, and social services--is viewed as one way to remedy the failure of public and private institutions to deliver effective services that can ameliorate or reverse these problems and…

1976 saw a number of major fiscal changes occurring in New Jersey, all of which had an impact on educational funding. These include the imposition of a state income tax, a property tax rebate program, and a new system of funding public education that significantly increases the state's share of total education support. Based on a measure of the…

New Jersey's school funding reform initiative, the Quality Education Act of 1990 and its 1991 amendments, are described in this booklet. The amendments attempt to equalize the tax burden of all districts, provide property relief, and impose stricter spending limitations. In the new foundation funding system, the state provides aid based on a…

The primary sources of capital funds in Minnesota are the local capital expenditure levy and school district bond sales. The state provides assistance to low-wealth districts by providing a capital expenditure equalization aid program and two types of loans under the Maximum Effort School Aid Law. It has been argued that the concepts of equal…