This book offers a roadmap for developing, growing, and sustaining living-learning communities (LLCs) that promote student success and enhance the undergraduate experience. Drawing on the Best Practices Model presented in "Living-Learning Communities That Work," as well as updated research and rich, real-life examples from LLC…

The focus of this report is on mental health interventions delivered in K-12 neighborhood public schools. A vast array of commercially available programs, conceptual frameworks, and approaches to school-based mental health are not unanimously recommended, applied, or agreed upon. This poses a challenge to any comprehensive description or…

Many districts and schools are having difficulty implementing Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) in school settings. This quantitative study set out to examine the stage of MTSS implementation schools are at and identify factors from the implementation science framework that account for the different reported student outcomes related to MTSS…

One major problem in developing school district budgets immune to cuts is the model administrators traditionally use--an expenditure model. The simplicity of this model is seductive: What were the revenues and expenditures last year? What are the expected revenues and expenditures this year? A few adjustments here and there and one has a budget.…

Michigan radically altered its school finance system in 1994. The new plan, called Proposal A, significantly increased state aid to the lowest-spending school districts and limited future increases in spending in the highest-spending ones, abolishing local discretion over school spending. I investigate the impact of Proposal A on the distribution…

This policy brief outlines how national education accounts (NEAs) are created, and why they are a vast improvement over current financial tracking systems in the education sector. Examples from the health sector illustrate the benefits of national accounts for improving public services, and their ubiquity highlights the poor state of affairs of…

Low literacy rate and poor quality of education are the major drawbacks of the educational system in Pakistan. Our education is influenced by a number of factors that cause this downfall. Some of them are more prominent, such as low enrollment and high dropout rate at the primary level, different standards of education, low budget allocation for…

We provide an assessment of the French ZEP (Zones d'Education Prioritaire), a program started in 1982 that channels additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas and encourages the development of new teaching projects. Focusing on middle-schools, we first evaluate the impact of the ZEP status on resources, their utilization (teacher…

Learning analytics offers higher education valuable insights that can inform strategic decision-making regarding resource allocation for educational excellence. Research demonstrates that learning management systems (LMSs) can increase student sense of community, support learning communities and enhance student engagement and success, and LMSs…

For most academic institutions, selecting and/or designing a Program Assessment methodology for Assurance of Learning is a challenging task. This paper describes the steps taken to establish goals, values and criteria driving this process for a College of Business. In this case analysis, we document the options we explored in finding the right…

Assessment strategies that colleges and universities design to evaluate the effectiveness of their academic programs should be compatible with other institutional improvement strategies. This paper stems from work done by the Outcomes Assessment Project in International Education, a project that attempts to assist institutions in measuring the…

This monograph summarizes outcomes of a forum addressing strategies to improve special education program evaluation efforts and orient policymakers, administrators, and advocates to the benefits of program evaluation as an integral part of program improvement. The forum also addressed barriers restricting evaluation of program effectiveness…

Between fall 1987 and 1992, Maui Community College's (MCC's) (Hawaii) enrollment increased by 40%, to 2,799 students. This growth was a result of increased student and community interest in higher education on all three islands in Maui County, as well as MCC's aggressive recruitment and educational program delivery. However, budget restrictions…

This report describes the current spending priorities of the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Public Schools (MPS) and suggests how the same amount of money could be better spent on educating children. The report's major findings include the following: (1) of an average $6,451 expenditure per MPS pupil in 1989-90, only 26 percent finds its way into the…

In this issue of Forum Focus, we focus on what researchers and policy makers are doing to help governments take stock of their efforts to make sure that every young person is "Ready by 21"--ready for work, ready for college, ready for life. "Research Update" reviews efforts to establish a coherent set of youth development…