The relationship of fiscal effort to eighth-grade achievement on international assessments was compared among U.S. states, for U.S. states versus foreign countries, and for the United States versus foreign countries. U.S. performance was as expected, given its relative fiscal effort, and several states were as efficient as top-performing foreign…

Describes the Collaborative Teacher Education Project (CTEP) at Indiana University that was created to address the shortage of special education teachers in rural communities by using distance education to allow elementary and secondary school teachers to complete course requirements in their local communities. Highlights include affordable,…

Availability in electronic format of scholarly and scientific literatures and other forms of information has altered challenges faced by library collection managers. Drawing on ideas of the multi-library consortia, which have grown up partly in response to the advent of electronic resources, librarians have devised new criteria and means of…

Discussion of information literacy focuses on the homework help centers developed by the County of Los Angeles Public Library. Describes a study conducted in partnership with the University of Southern California that investigated the cost effectiveness; success; and student, teacher, and parent perceptions of the centers to justify funding. (LRW)

Develops a model of the child-care environment, concentrating on how child-staff ratios, group size, and caregiver ability influence amount of time children spend on-task and intensity of caregiver-child interactions. The model clarifies these variables' roles and explains regulation's potential costs and benefits. Regulation alone cannot improve…

Describes automatic information retrieval system designed and built to handle Arabic data. Discusses cost-effectiveness of automatic indexing. Compares retrieval results using words as index terms versus stems and roots. Includes 19 tables; 60 queries using full words and relevance judgments are appended. (JAK)

Various types of recent research studies using data on twins, from longitudinal surveys of different cohorts, and cross-section data on earnings, all suggest that the payoff to schooling in the United States is high and especially high for investment in college. Discusses why this is so. (SLD)

Decisions to incorporate computers into public schools and universities, for administrative or classroom use, follow from the unquestioned assumption that computers are the latest expression of social progress. The paradox is that neither the computer industry nor educational policymakers understand the connections between the cultural forms of…

For-profit charter-school managers may be removing the "public" from public education. A study of 11 Michigan charter schools showed that cost-cutting strategies are adversely affecting student transportation, special education, and the socioeconomic mix of students. Corporations' superimposed bureaucracies have eradicated educators'…

A survey of 76 principals of twinned schools and 44 administrators of Ontario districts containing twinned schools provided baseline data about twinning, types of resource sharing, advantages and disadvantages, and suggestions for improvement. Commitment to twinning was not evident, and lack of a full-time principal was considered a disadvantage.…

Although second- and third-year evaluations of California's K-3 class-size reduction program show modest achievement gains, these improvements have had large costs. Interdistrict inequities have been exacerbated as the teacher work force increased 38 percent, qualifications dropped, and implementation costs soared. Recommendations are discussed.…

Using data from three sites, a study examined service use and expenditures under systems-of-care. The sites provided children with a full range of mental health services. Per-child expenditures were high, but for two sites, those expenditures were within the range of expenditures in other innovative attempts at service delivery. (Contains…

Discusses new ways of selecting information for digital libraries. Topics include increasing the quantity of information acquired versus item by item selection that is more costly than the value it adds; library-publisher relationships; netLibrary; electronic journals; and the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)…

Discusses Web-based distance learning and emphasizes the importance of human interaction and facilitation to ensure successful programs. Topics include corporate use of distance learning as well as academic institutions; cost effectiveness; dropout rates; social processes; avoiding technical problems; peer support systems; orientation; and student…

Describes a case study which explored the extent to which CD-ROM products can support the information needs in developing countries; assessed the economics of a system of CD-ROM databases supplemented by an online system; and investigated the breakeven analysis of the costs of searching CD-ROM versus online. (Contains 34 references.) (LRW)