Blended learning, which combines independent online work with in-person group sessions, can support educator development while promising time-savings, flexibility, learner autonomy, and ease of use -- all without sacrificing program quality. Indeed, two decades of peer-reviewed studies of in-person, online, and blended instruction have…

Innovations within higher education are often prompted through the capture of supportive funding. One of the largest examples of this arose from the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) initiative in England (2005-2010). Drawing on the experience of two such Centres, this paper analyses some of the consequences of that funding.…

This paper presents the activities of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for 2009. The past year was one of accomplishment for USAC. USAC implemented a host of advances in operations, infrastructure, and outreach in an effort to continue to improve collection and disbursement of the Universal Service Fund (USF) support and to…

The report summarizes the findings from a 3-year evaluation of 11 child abuse and neglect demonstration service projects. The 11 projects are described in terms of their goals, service activities, organization and management styles, staffing patterns, resource allocations and service costs, types of clients served, methods of case management used,…

A 1979 Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) survey focused on reviewing the current state of fiscal planning and cost studies in Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries. The survey results indicate that, while some libraries are beginning to use cost analysis techniques to evaluate current programs, to plan for new…

In the standards-based education reforms of today, an important question is how much it will cost for all--or almost all--students to reach state-determined proficiency levels? School finance adequacy seeks to determine that cost. Four models have been developed to estimate the costs of adequacy. Two of them--the professional judgment and the…

This report provides a blueprint for reorganizing the governing structure of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and suggests new procedures of test development and test administration that will increase the interpretability of the assessment while at the same time making more staff and monetary resources available for research…

This primer introduces the basics of Program Management and Budgeting (PMB) in an effort to demonstrate how PMB can benefit school systems. Short quotes from previous publications on the topic are paired with cartoons designed to clarify the purposes and workings of the program. The publication begins by defining PMB as an alternative financial…

This handbook was developed to assist vocational administrators in (1) developing strategies for goal-setting and resource allocation, (2) identifying potential problems, (3) analyzing cost-effectiveness of vocational programs, and (4) improving managerial skills using information from the analysis in the decision-making process. The handbook…

Planning-programing-budgeting systems (PPBS) have borne few of the fruits that many claimed they would. This is partly due to the five following widely held misconceptions about PPBS: 1) that PPBS is primarily concerned with budgeting; 2) that PPBS should displace instructional goals; 3) that it is not necessary to attend to all elements of PPBS;…

This summary of the 1973-74 Michigan Cost-Effectiveness Study describes the results of an exploratory inquiry into compensatory education reading programs in forty-eight Michigan schools. The study is said to have as its purpose the development and implementation of evaluation techniques to determine what educational practices bring about changes…

The relative efficiency of various manpower programs as seen through cost-benefit analysis is assessed, and the contribution that cost-benefit analysis has made in evaluating manpower programs is discussed, taking into account a variety of methodologies presented in different studies. Vocational rehabilitation appears to yield the highest…

The University of South Carolina/Columbia responded to the concerns of a small group of students by establishing a permanent office of waste reduction and recycling. Students, faculty, and staff worked together to obtain a grant and matching funds to create a recycling system that reduces waste disposal costs substantially and uses existing campus…

This report delineates the data and the analytical procedures necessary for comparing educational demonstration programs. Used as a means of encouraging the introduction of new practices into the educational process, demonstration programs and their effectiveness depend, in part, on the quality of the data about the program and its availability to…

In 2007, the Texas Legislature (80th Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2007) authorized the creation of the Texas Rural Technology (R-Tech) Pilot program, which provides $8 million in funding to support rural districts in implementing technology-based supplemental education programs. In order to be eligible for funding, districts must have…