"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) New Report Offers Recommendations for Defining and Improving Graduation Rates: Calls for New Federal Funding Stream…

"Alabama Education News" is published monthly except for June, July, and December by the Alabama Department of Education. This publication, authorized by Section 16-2-4 of the "Code of Alabama," as recompiled in 1975, is a public service of the Alabama Department of Education designed to inform citizens and educators about…

Student support consists not only of direct financial support, but also of educational provisions that are free of charge or subsidized by the state and local authorities. These provisions include formal education, as schools for young people and adults as well as higher education, and non-formal education, such as study circles and folk high…

The new monograph series, IBE Collaborative Projects: Strengthening Capacities through Action, documents projects initiated and managed by local or national level institutions in diverse countries, which have been technically or academically assisted by UNESCO's International Bureau of Education (IBE). This first publication in the series…

In 2005 many California Public Library staff members attended focus groups on the status of California Library Services Act (CLSA) cooperative system services, which were held throughout the state in late November and early December and focused on four general questions: (1) What works well now in cooperative library services? (2) What does not…

The KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Student Satisfaction Survey is a paper-based survey distributed to all students in Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. The results of the Sheridan College survey for 2001 are presented in this report. The student population at Sheridan for the winter 2001 survey was 9,134. A total of 6,566…

This research brief examines the effects of federal legislation on vocational and technical education. Federal legislation must be reauthorized every 5 years, with an associated national study, the series of National Assessments of Vocational Education (NAVE). This pattern of constant reexamination has made federal support for vocational education…

This paper highlights the experiences of several citywide after school initiatives from the Cross-Cities Network, describing activities and strategies that contributed to building operational and sustainable citywide delivery of out-of-school time programs. The paper presents evidence of success and notes lessons learned, identifying key elements…

Because of an increasingly challenging fiscal climate, state lawmakers are faced with making tough financial decisions regarding their early childhood systems. This document describes and examines various funding sources used when making decisions about possible early childhood initiatives combined with policy choices that may be considered in…

This study examined the profile of community college dropouts, in an attempt to identify how this cohort differs from university-level dropouts and to identify reasons for community college students' withdrawal from school. The authors argue that the profile of a typical community college student--a person who has a full- or part-time job, lives…

This State Policy Update provides background on professional development (PD) in adult education. Section 2 describes survey methods used to document how states funded and designed their PD systems. Section 3 reviews data collected by the survey of state PD systems, highlighting PD activities in Kentucky, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. It…

Tribal Colleges were created over the last 30 years in response to the higher education needs of American Indians, and to serve geographically isolated populations that have no other means of accessing education beyond the high school level. Tribal colleges combine personal attention with cultural relevance in order to encourage American Indians…

This report from the Chancellor's Office of California Community Colleges (CCC) is the third in a series of reports that present systemwide, district- and college-level Management Information System (MIS) baseline information specific to the systemwide Partnership for Excellence performance goals. This report presents information for 2 fiscal…

This report examines the relationship between philanthropy and public schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas served by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL). While begun as a project to build understanding and to support institutional planning, this report speaks also to local school leaders, the…

With federal funds accounting for only 7% of public elementary and secondary education revenue, funding responsibility for K-12 education is split primarily between state and local governments. Since the 1980s, state governments have generally assumed primary fiscal responsibility, with local governments supplying the rest of the necessary…