In 2002 the Council of the Great City Schools and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project were to: (1) Establish a common…

As the economy increasingly demands a more educated workforce, states are looking to their colleges and universities to meet that demand for a better educated citizenry. Not only are individuals with postsecondary education likely to be employed, they are also likely to be more engaged in their communities through activities such as voting and…

Over the last decade, and in the context of the fiscal crisis in the nation in general and in higher education in particular, a debate has raged over the value of humanities research. Various commentators have argued that unlike nonhumanities disciplines, fields such as English studies and other humanistic disciplines bring very little into their…

Fingertip Facts is a compendium of some of the most frequently requested data sets from the Utah State Office of Education. This year's Fingertip Facts includes the following data sets: (1) SAGE Testing; (2) 2018 Utah ACT Scores; (3) CTE Career Pathways; (4) 2018 Public Education General Fund; (5) 2017 Public Enrollment Demographics; (6) Public…

It is generally expected that funds invested in public instruction will strengthen pupil achievement. Similarly, it is expected that enrollments of young children in preschool education should lead to higher achievement. In a trend analysis, we examined three variables as predictors of grade 8 achievement in 2007: (1) state expenditures per…

The role of the principal is rapidly changing. Once seen as building managers tasked with bus schedules and student discipline, principals now lead a range of school-level reform efforts. But not all principals are equipped to lead dramatic student achievement gains or know which actions to prioritize. Research on school leaders in urban areas…

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the Prouni--University for All policy, which has been implemented in Brazil in an effort to increase access of the underprivileged to postsecondary education. In order to provide a better understanding of the problem, three points of interest are initially addressed: income inequality, illiteracy, and a…

Over the past 60 years the internal rate of return (IRR) has become a major tool in investment evaluation. Many executives prefer it to net present value (NPV), presumably because they can more easily comprehend a percentage measure. This article demonstrates that, except in the rare case of an investment that is followed by a single cash return,…

Organization leaders are dependent on information technology for corporate productivity; however, senior managers have expressed concerns about insufficient benefits from information technology investments. The problem researched was to understand how midsized businesses justify investments in information technology infrastructure. The purpose of…

This dissertation consists of three studies on the development of information technology (IT) industry in Korea and Taiwan. Using industry-level data from those countries, I would like to investigate why similar economies would take different paths toward developing their industries. The first chapter, "Span of Control and Production…

Dormitories, student centers, lecture halls, laboratories, athletic facilities, quads--just try to imagine a residential campus without them. Impossible. They are among its most important assets. As fiduciaries, boards must ensure that those assets are protected and enhanced over time. But how to do so effectively when growing internal and…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a quarterly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This issue includes the following articles: (1) Rebalancing the Investment in Collections (H. Thomas Hickerson); (2)…

This study examined Federal Government Information Technology (IT) portfolio investments for twenty-seven Federal Government agencies, as provided annually to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in their Agency IT Investment Portfolio Reports (Exhibit 53), and divided Federal agency IT investments into four categories: Innovation,…

With a global marketplace, companies are seeking ways to manage knowledge with tools, such as the corporate university toward gaining a competitive advantage. Research has identified a common goal is to sustain competitive advantage. With a competitive advantage, a company may achieve a higher profitability. Thus far, research has provided limited…

The federal government pays for a wide range of goods and services that are expected to be useful some years in the future. Those purchases, called investment, fall into three categories: physical capital, research and development (R&D), and education and training. There are several economic rationales for federal investment. It can provide…