State funding mechanisms are subject to intense political and economic scrutiny. The question asked most often tends to be, is the public getting sufficient return on their investment? Accountability standards arising from the No Child left Behind Act (NCLB) have sharpened the focus of this question to whether the students and schools are meeting…

Until this year, the Oregon Department of Education ran a central portal of thousands of learning resources that required all teachers and students to have an email address as authentication for security purposes. Because many districts didn't offer student email, the learning materials were not available to everyone. In April, Oregon became the…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of the investigation was to determine the effects of visible cheese on selection and consumption of food groups to encourage (FGTE) in middle school students. Methods: Study 1 was conducted in three middle schools with 145 students (Boys=67, Girls=78, 30% minorities). The regular monthly menus were altered to…

Under pressure to keep spending down but also keep pace with rapid technology changes, many districts are future-proofing their schools--trying to get the most out of their tech spending by providing solutions they will be able to use now and in the future without major, expensive infrastructure overhauls. The idea is growing in popularity across…

The cost of teacher turnover to schools and school districts has only recently been studied. This research reveals that when high-quality teachers leave the classroom, the effect on both student performance and school and district fiscal operations is significant and deleterious. The implications for study in this area include the planning of…

As higher education budgets tighten in the ongoing recession, colleges and universities have found themselves questioning, lengthening, and even eliminating tech refresh cycles. Yet how deep an institution cuts into its refresh program can compromise its ability to provide an up-to-date and competitive computing environment for students and a…

A widely accepted result in the literature is that the majority of voters are against the introduction of universal vouchers. Chen and West (2000) predict that voters' attitudes towards selective vouchers (SV) may be different. They claim that voters are indifferent between the no-voucher and SV regimes, unless competition leads to a reduction in…

Mobile devices offer unique opportunities to deliver learning content in authentic learning situations. Apart from being able to play various kinds of rich multimedia content, they offer new ways of tailoring information to the learner's situation or context. This paper presents the results of a study of mobile media delivery for language…

This article discusses the UK government's consultations on skills policy and further education funding. Adult learning has, throughout the years, been subject to endless strategies and proposed plans--but none of these has fully realised its potential. There are two contrasting attitudes to the outlook for further education and, indeed, the…

We characterize medium and long-run labor market impacts of HIV/AIDS and ARV treatment using unique panel data of worker absenteeism and information from an AIDS treatment program at a large mining firm in Botswana. We present robust evidence of an inverse-V shaped pattern in worker absenteeism around the time of ARV treatment inception.…

The global economic crisis of the past 2 years has brought harsh circumstances to most libraries, calling into question many of the ways that librarians allocate resources. Lean budgets force libraries to devise strategies that make the very most of the resources available. Many libraries face the reality of doing more with less, often much less.…

States and school districts receive funding through ESEA, IDEA, and national school meals programs. Some requirements for these programs are intended to help ensure program integrity and transparency, among other purposes, but questions have been raised about whether some federal requirements place an undue burden on states and school districts.…

It is not troubling, or even surprising, that the United States today faces increasing economic competition from around the world. It is easier for other nations to make up ground on the world's leader by copying more-advanced existing innovations, than it is for the leader to move forward by making new innovations. And as other nations improve…

The rise in student loan debt has directed critical attention to the growing pace of college costs as well as the reliance on loans to finance those costs. For graduates entering the workforce in recent years, many are finding that they are unable to find the type of job they thought they were securing when they received their degree, if they are…

Many European countries have delayed the time when school tracking starts in order to pursue equality of opportunity. What are the efficiency costs of de-tracking secondary schools? This paper builds a stylized model of the optimal time of tracking, estimates the relevant parameters using micro data for 11 European countries and computes the…