The "new ruthless economy of globalization" has spawned a culture of performance in education characterized by increased demand for accountability through high stakes testing, and decreased funding. Effects include loss of teacher autonomy, focus on teaching to the test, proliferation of commercial cramming schools, increased external…

The Education Law Center (ELC) sought an independent review of special education funding in New Jersey as part of a larger group of studies intended to critique the cost study conducted by Augenblick and Palaich and Associates (APA) and the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) and inform the ongoing public debate. In doing so, ELC recognized…

Countless reports have analyzed the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 on teacher quality and student achievement. What many of these reports truly leave behind, however, is the reality that state governments--not the federal government--have the strongest impact on the work of America's 3.1 million teachers. With that in mind, three…

The "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" examines what is arguably the single most powerful authority over the teaching profession: state government. This Colorado edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ's) "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" is the first of what will be an annual look at the status of state policies…

The impact of date of birth on cognitive test scores is well documented across many countries, with the youngest children in each academic year performing more poorly, on average, than the older members of their cohort (see, for example, Bedard and Dhuey (2006) or Puhani and Weber (2005)1). However, relatively little is known about the driving…

The goal of this book is to generate discussion not only about how individuals can create meaningful educational experiences for all learners, but to challenge systems that necessitate a resilient nature. Ultimately, the authors promote the need for a foundation of socially just policies and practices in all educational settings and respond to the…

As federal, state, and local policy makers attend to the economic, educational, social, and health-related needs of children, they are beginning to share a vision of a "seamless web" of high-quality, comprehensive, continuous services for children and their families. It remains a challenging goal because of the complexity of children's needs and…

Meant to orient a broad audience to basic issues of child and family policy in the United States today, this book includes an overview of the recent history of child and family policy in the United States, an exploration of several political economic conditions underlying changes in these policies, case studies of selected local, state and federal…

This paper provides the text of a Congressional presentation outlining the position of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) concerning reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The CEC believes that the fundamental rights and protections for children and their families, as well as the basic fiscal and…

This guide chronicles the ongoing work and writings of the Chapin Hall Center for Children, a policy research center dedicated to bringing sound information, rigorous analyses, innovative ideas, and an independent multidisciplinary perspective to bear on policies and programs affecting children. The guide includes listings of projects and…

Parents around the world grapple with the common challenge of balancing work and child care. Despite common problems, the industrialized nations have developed dramatically different social and labor market policies--policies that vary widely in the level of support they provide for parents and the extent to which they encourage an equal division…

Chief financial officers in today's universities are so busy with the challenges of day-to-day management that strategic thinking often takes a back seat. Planning for strategic change can go a long way toward streamlining the very daily tasks that obscure the "big picture." Learning how to integrate strategic thinking into day-to-day management…

This study was conducted to better understand the relative affordability of public university education in Canada and the United States. The report was written to answer two key questions: (1) How does access to university education in Canada compare to access in the US? and (2) How affordable is the Canadian university system compared to the…

In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court declared that the state's public school system was unconstitutional and ordered the Kentucky legislature to create a new system of public education. The Kentucky General Assembly then enacted the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA). This book sets forth the policy assumptions underlying KERA and…

An updated study of Kentucky school district performance since the implementation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA) added 4 years of accountability data; compared the performance of various districts; and explored district financial and teaching resources and their impacts on performance. After the initial years of change…