This report presents the results of a pilot survey on aid effectiveness indicators in the education sector carried out by the Education for All--Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) Secretariat. The covers 10 FTI-endorsed countries: Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Rwanda. All…

Quality afterschool programs are improving and transforming the lives of children and youth across the nation. Research shows that afterschool programs keep kids safe, inspire them to learn and help working parents. They give children opportunities to see new worlds, put school lessons into practice, discover their talents and explore career…

Endowments of major universities such as Cornell have received much attention over the past few years. Last academic year, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation into the finances of universities with endowments that exceeded $500 million dollars and required all of these universities to file reports detailing their finances.…

This study examines whether financial aid, specifically federal Pell grants, is associated with academic success for low-income community college students in California. Previous studies in this series of MPR Research Briefs have examined transfer patterns and the types of financial aid typically received by students in this sector. This report…

Extended learning opportunities (ELOs) provide safe, structured learning environments for students outside the traditional school day. ELOs include afterschool and summer learning programs as well as before-school, evening, and weekend programs. ELOs come in many forms and can include tutoring, volunteering, academic support, community service,…

As part of an American effort to reduce poverty, national organizations, like members of the Learning First Alliance, must make a vigorous federal, state and local commitment to improving public schools. Only such shared commitment can move them towards a common vision for the public education system they need. In the past decade, however, the…

This article provides a multi-level conceptual framework for service-learning that can serve as a decision-making guide for service-learning initiatives in Canadian post-secondary education. Service-learning approach options along a non-hierarchical continuum (philanthropic, social justice, and social transformation) are examined; the theoretical…

This study explores the influence of the 1994 tax reform on intraprovincial inequality in financing basic education. The empirical analysis finds that the reform has decreased inequality in general, suggesting that the center may attain its policy goal through centralizing its relative fiscal capability and increasing the intergovernmental…

Since its establishment in the early 1950s, the Greek Extension Service has undergone considerable changes. Especially after 1981, a bureaucratic-administrative role related to the implementation of the CAP has been undertaken. In parallel, in the international scene, governments have started experimenting with various cost-recovery mechanisms for…

This article explores the role of the Korean government in expanding private higher education over time and attempts to examine the impact of such expansion on access to and equity in higher education. The enrolment rate in Korean higher education has increased to over 80% within the past 60 years. This can be attributed to two factors: the rapid…

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has just rolled out a document spelling out five major social, economic and environmental goals it wishes to achieve by 2020. These goals are lofty indeed but they can be achieved only with reliance on not only an enlightened citizenry but on 40% of the population that should have received…

The focus of this article is on the impact of cultural influences in academic knowledge transfer (KT). This aspect of the KT process was studied at Dutch and German technical universities. The analysis shows that professional values and identities play an important role in academic KT. Administrators in university KT offices were found to be…

Like many grant-making philanthropies in Canada, the Winnipeg Foundation for years had no history of giving directly to schools, fearing that could let governments off the hook for public education. In 2003, the Winnipeg Foundation invested $3 million over five years in one of the city's most impoverished neighbourhoods, with a local school as the…

The Kinder lernen Deutsch Committee (KLD) is a standing committee of the AATG that has existed since 1987 and that was originally charged to support the advocacy of German in grades K-8. With generous funding by the Standige Arbeitsgruppe Deutsch als Fremdsprache (StADaF) from the German government and the Goethe-Institut, the Kinder lernen…

The role of planned professional learning in being an accomplished languages and cultures teacher has never been so important. Professional learning that focuses on "becoming" an accomplished practitioner as part of an ongoing professional learning experience rather than a process of detailing deficiencies is to be applauded. Indeed, the…