Across the country, many large school districts have seen flat or declining enrollments in recent years, including in places where there's been concurrent growth in charter schools. The result has been a growing perception that charter expansion is coming at the expense of the health of traditional school districts--a perception that, even if…

"Return on Investment in College Education" is the second publication in a series of informational briefings developed as part of The Guardians Initiative: Reclaiming the Public Trust, an effort to educate and engage trustees as advocates on key issues in higher education. What is the return on investment (ROI) in college education?…

Public education and teachers are under considerable scrutiny (Gibboney, 2008). With the inception of local, state, and national demands being placed on education, teachers are faced with many challenges (Eppley, 2015). Educational accountability measures have grown out of the political pressures impacting educational policies (Gibboney, 2008).…

For the institution and its regional campuses under review, the amount of outstanding student liabilities (i.e., monies owed by the student to the institution for educational-related expenditures not satisfied by the end of the term) grew at an alarming rate between 2000 and 2014, with some of the institution's regional campuses experiencing over…

The most prevalent model of Catholic schools has always been and remains the parish elementary school. Catholic schools are not simply private schools but a faith based arm of a larger parish. The interconnected leadership of schools by pastors and principals is at the core of understanding the model and inseparable in long-term viability. The…

This is an exploration of the perceptions and perspectives of early childhood leaders and practitioners with regards to preschool learners with autism engaged in inclusive educational settings. At a time when inclusive education is acknowledged as best practice, there is still a concern that many preschool learners with disabilities are receiving…

Aggression by students is a highly stable behavior and is a significant predictor for later aggression along with other undesirable outcomes for both the aggressor and victim. While aggression is often thought of in its physical form, acts of verbal aggression are equally problematic and can be especially complex for students who are identified…

Community colleges located along the Texas-México border provide an initial gateway for many of its local Latino students. Scholars highlight that Latino male students, compared to their female peers are less likely to complete a community college degree. We utilized Rendón's Theory of Validation and Borderlands theories to examine the academic…

The article begins with a brief review of the overall cost and learning problem confronted in the United States and the relative cost and learning impacts on the nation, moving then to a demonstration of the impact via results from an undergraduate "Legal Studies in Business" course, a key requirement in virtually every school of…

The purpose of the study was to broaden awareness of legislative intentions associated with a State's facilities funding policy (Texas' Instructional Facilities Allotment, IFA). Recognizing the politically contested nature of school funding, arguments in support and against investing in facilities appear equally replete. Be that as it may, some…

As opposed to the "place where you were forced to consider new ideas, to meet new people, to ask new questions, and to learn to think, to socialize, to imagine" (Fitzgerald, 2012, p. 20), millennial students view college as a financial rather than philosophical training ground (Berrett, 2015). Unfortunately, this perspective…

Much research has been conducted in the area of teacher professional identity in the past decades. Nonetheless, very little attention has been paid to the professional identity of tutors in distance education. Using interviews, this study set out to investigate distance tutors' claimed and assigned professional identities, their actual, ought and…

Background: School mental health programs (SMHPs) aim to strengthen school teachers' understanding about issues related to child and adolescent mental health and their management. Many studies have looked at outcomes of such programs quantitatively. However, there is a lack of studies on the qualitative effects of SMHPs. With this in mind, the aim…

The literature on school improvement is littered with sombre reports of how ICT-mediated innovations have failed to create impact on teaching and learning. Even when evidence-based successes are palpable, they are sporadic and rarely sustainable. Against the backdrop of the litany of such studies, this paper reports the case of a primary school in…

In educational development, accountability is paramount, in particular for activities that take educational developers away from their institutional boundaries to local, national, and international venues. Educational developers must demonstrate the benefits of such work to the home institution and its constituents. We asked educational developers…