Asserts that pursuing use as the defining goal of evaluation can distort the allocation of evaluation resources and reduce the contributions of evaluation to broader social goals, such as social betterment. Pursuing use can result in an overemphasis on evaluations oriented toward program improvement at the expense of assessment of worth and other…

Shows that commonly used "value-added" models are misspecified when estimated using the National Education Longitudinal Study, a finding that raises questions about whether previous value-added studied are unbiased. Also reviews more recent literature using instrumental variables methods to address omitted variables bias. (SLD)

A review of the articles on modernization in Australia, England, New Zealand, Scotland and the USA demonstrates and discusses the complexity attached to the concept. This also enables a better understanding of the contention and controversy that surrounds the concept and its application to educational policy and practice. Modernization policies in…

In recent theories of event-based prospective memory, researchers have debated what degree of resources are necessary to identify a cue as related to a previously established intention. In order to simulate natural variations in attention, the authors manipulated effort toward an ongoing cognitive task in which intention-related cues were embedded…

All respected educators share one ultimate goal: to enhance the lives of students in their care. Few make impacts that get lauded worldwide; instead, most are content to know that, at day?s end, one child is more knowledgeable, more secure, or more fired up to learn thanks to that presence in their lives.

The rise of cohabitation and the growing share of births to cohabiting couples have led to speculation that the boundary between marriage and cohabitation is blurring. Examines this issue with an analysis of the financial arrangements of fathers of mainland Puerto Rican children. Reveals that married fathers are more likely than cohabiting fathers…

The U.S. Department of Education will see its smallest budget increase in nearly a decade under the catchall spending plan approved by the Republican-controlled Congress in a lame-duck session. For the first time since President Bush entered office, the budget will fall short of his overall request for education funding. The final fiscal 2005…

Debates about how to improve public education in America often focus on whether government should spend more on education. Federal and state policymakers proposing new education programs often base their arguments on the need to provide more resources to schools to improve opportunities for students. Many Americans seem to share this view. While…

This case study examines the process of resource allocation in support of one school district's goal of graduating each student ready for college, career, and citizenship. This case study focuses on questions of equity in resource allocation and the leadership moves that a superintendent and other administrators made during one year to better…

This study examines the ways that student support services in community colleges inadvertently perpetuate and legitimate disadvantage. Using interview data from students at two colleges in the northeast, we find that although support services are open to all students, only those who come to the college with pre-existing social and cultural…

This study investigates the cultures of the academic and student affairs divisions within one selective residential liberal arts institution. Specifically, the study investigates how faculty and student affairs personnel perceive their own and each other's roles as educators on the campus and how these perceptions influence the potential for…

A fundamental concern with competitive health insurance markets is that they will not supply efficient levels of coverage for treatment of costly, chronic, and predictable illnesses, such as mental illness. Since the inception of employer-based health insurance, coverage for mental health services has been offered on a more limited basis than…

Three universal demands characterize higher education globally: the demand for higher quality, for increased access, and for greater equity. In East Africa, where resources are highly constrained, no nation has been able to meet these demands on the basis of public expenditures alone. Instead countries have had to increase resources from nonpublic…

This paper is based on the work of an expert team invited by the Ministry of Education of Finland to develop criteria and an evaluation framework for societal and economic engagement for use in university performance management. The paper maps out possible indicators for the societal and economic engagement of universities in the light of national…

The value of, and need for, parent-professional partnerships is an unchallenged mantra within policy relating to "special educational needs". In spite of this, partnerships continue to be experienced as problematic by both parents and professionals. This paper brings together the different perspectives of two disability researchers: one…