In 2006, President Bush proposed the America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids initiative in his budget request for the Department of Education. The plan would make $100 million available in competitive grant awards to provide scholarships to low income students in persistently failing public schools. Only low-income students attending public…

One of the major responsibilities of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is to report on the condition of public elementary and secondary education in the United States. In support of this mission, NCES collects from state education agencies selected data items about all the public elementary and secondary schools and education…

Survey of 117 Missouri school district administrators found that almost all respondents were dissatisfied with current administrative internships. Suggestions for improvement focused on practicality; 6-month internships were preferred over 12-month, and over 80% would allow their principals to serve as mentors. Interest in collaborative planning,…

Examination of 19 school district consolidations in 10 states, 1980-84, revealed that, of 6 expenditure categories, only administration showed significant savings 3 years after consolidation, when compared to changes in state average costs during that period. Changes in other expenditure categories varied widely among districts. Contains 22…

Measuring the extent of professional development in a large school system is complex. It's challenges to gauge training and its effects when schools choose different instructional reform models, and the task is more formidable when the models are chosen at different times and change. This study evaluates the effectiveness of Schools of Opportunity…

Without good schools, none of America's hopes can be fulfilled. Since 1983, school reform has been at the top of the national agenda; however, there is a disturbing gap between rhetoric and results. After travelling to some of the nation's largest cities and interviewing administrators and teachers, Carnegie Foundation representatives determined…

A guide to the practice of institutional research and planning in American higher education in the 1980s is presented. Attention is directed to the impact of current changes in the external environment on higher education and implications of these changes for institutional research and planning. Topics include national issues crucial to the future…

The research topics addressed in this study include the following: (1) reasons dropouts who immediately pursued a General Educational Development (GED) did not complete high school; (2) characteristics of the schools those GED examinees last attended; (3) differences in the reasons for not completing school by school characteristics; and (4)…

A survey of 1,499 graduate students from 7 colleges and universities in northeastern Ohio identified 15 major factors in graduate business school choice: academic reputation, accreditation, evening classes, programs, potential degree marketability, part-time programs, completion time, proximity, costs, faculty contact time, location, library size,…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined the "health" of the superintendency as perceived by superintendents in two states. Questionnaires sent to 307 Illinois superintendents elicited 227 responses, a 74 percent response rate, and questionnaires sent to 137 Massachusetts principals yielded 104 responses, a 76 percent response rate.…

An overview of the history of rural school consolidation in north central Iowa reveals that by 1994, 9 of the 10 high schools in towns of less than 500 in 1940 had closed, and 3 of the 5 high schools in towns with populations of 500-999 had closed. However, all three towns with populations over 1,000 in 1940 had high schools in 1993-94. This…

Jurisdictional consolidation of local governments and school districts is a controversial and persistent subject for rural communities. Consolidation proposals are usually based on the assumption that larger jurisdictions are necessary to capture economies of scale. This paper argues that the effect of size depends on the function that a…

The effects of state educational consolidation policies and decentralizing curriculum reform initiatives on small school districts in New York are examined in this paper, with a focus on identifying patterns of environmental "embeddedness" that may include or exclude small districts from state equalization aid. Methodology involved…

This annual report for the 1984-85 school year in the Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools includes information on the academic progress being made by students and reports on various aspects of the operations of the school district. The Plan for Excellence, a blueprint adopted in early 1985 for use in Iowa's largest school district, was used to fine…

Based on the experiences of an administrator of a small Arizona school district, the paper addresses significant forces within special education in the past decade and future challenges. Past forces included: a drive for services by parents and others who defined handicapped children by their particular defects, thus forcing a categorical approach…