Isabel Sawhill, Adam Thomas, and Emily Monea believe that given the well-documented costs of nonmarital births to the children and parents in fragile families, as well as to society as a whole, policy makers' primary goal should be to reduce births to unmarried parents. The authors say that the nation's swiftly rising nonmarital birth rate has…

Cloud computing technologies although in their early stages, have managed to change the way applications are going to be developed and accessed. These technologies are aimed at running applications as services over the internet on a flexible infrastructure. Microsoft office applications, such as word processing, excel spreadsheet, access database…

School district consolidation is a striking phenomenon. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 117,108 school districts provided elementary and secondary education in 1939-1940. By 2006-2007, the number of districts had dropped to 13,862, a decline of 88 percent. The rate of consolidation has slowed in recent years, but at…

Background/Context: There is much current interest in the impact of early childhood education programs on preschoolers and, in particular, on the magnitude of cognitive and affective gains. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Because this new segment of public education requires significant funding, accurate descriptions are…

Sponsored by the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), the second edition of this groundbreaking handbook assembles in one place the existing research-based knowledge in education finance and policy, with particular attention to elementary and secondary education. Chapters from the first edition have been fully updated and revised…

According to Gartner a certain hype of e-Learning was followed by a downturn but eLearning will continue to be an important factor in learning scenarios. However the economic viability of e-learning projects will be questioned with more scrutiny than in earlier periods. Therefore it seems to be a good opportunity to see what can be learned from…

Poor countries need development programs that are both effective and cost-effective. To assess effectiveness, researchers are increasingly using randomized trials (or quasi-experimental methods that imitate randomized trials), which provide a clear picture of which outcomes are attributable to the program being evaluated. This "Policy Insight"…

The North Dakota University System's (the "System") discussion and analysis (MD&A) provides an overview of the System's financial activities and issues for the year ended June 30, 2008. It is designed to focus on the current year's activities, resulting changes and currently known facts to assist readers in understanding the…

Advances in neuroscience, developmental psychology, and program evaluation have been combined to develop a unified framework that provides evidence-based guidance related to early childhood policy. This research shows how insights from the field of economics-- human capital theory and monetary payoffs--also contribute to that framework.…

School districts have by and large had great results implementing VoIP, which has become the conduit for delivering expanded functionality, achieving greater internal control, and gaining freedom from onerous monthly phone bills. But demonstrating a financial return on what is a substantial investment can be an elusive effort. The goal of…

Objectives: To determine whether drink specials independently increase patrons' risk of achieving a high level of intoxication upon exiting drinking establishments. Methods: In a campus community, data were collected from exiting patrons (N=291) via sidewalk interviews and breath tests on 6 nights of 2 consecutive semesters. Results: A…

The safety and quality of healthcare is of great concern in the United States. The positive effects of information technology reported in past research, especially case studies, has encouraged expectations that information technology may increase the quality of healthcare while reducing costs of healthcare. The goals of this study was to examine…

This report was written out of a recognition that there has been little effort to systematically examine the value to anchor institutions of engaging in significant community investment. In the absence of such research, the authors believe that institutions tend to overestimate the costs and risks and underappreciate the potential benefits. In…

Background: School-based screening for health conditions can help extend the reach of health services to underserved populations. Screening for mental health conditions is growing in acceptability, but evidence of cost-effectiveness is lacking. This study assessed costs and effectiveness associated with the Developmental Pathways Screening…

As state tax revenues plummet, some lawmakers and higher-education leaders are once again looking at loosening the bonds between state governments and public colleges to save money and give colleges the freedom to bolster their bottom lines in new ways. Over the past two decades, college officials have often lamented the growing need to secure…