Few of today's teachers can remember an economic situation quite like the one everyone now faces. To find analogies for the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent credit crisis, one has to search not his or her memories but the textbooks. "The Great Gatsby" and "The Grapes of Wrath" suddenly make more sense now. Generations of students…

Representatives from the Michigan Department of Education and the Center for Educational Performance and Information requested assistance in estimating Michigan's capacity to adequately staff its high schools to meet the course requirements of the new Michigan Merit Curriculum. The study team devised a formula to estimate the number of additional…

The goal of this paper is to explore the effects of micro-budgeting decisions and show how they might support or hamper district reform strategies. The study draws on public and private sector resource allocation literature to identify key elements of resource allocation decisions. These elements are used to highlight different allocation…

In 2002, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that veteran students were awarded similar amounts of Title IV aid as nonveteran students, and veterans' total federal aid was greater when Chapter 30 GI benefits were included. This report responds to request from the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, Committee on Veterans' Affairs…

Among the studies of the internal efficiency in higher education, most have focused on the scale of university (the economies of scale), but little on internal operating efficiency in higher education, especially on the combined efficiency of outputs (the economies of scope). There are few theoretical discussions or experimental research on…

The never-ending organizational challenge is to allocate available resources to best achieve its goals. Out of this fundamental question several models have evolved. One is a conceptual model--a way to think about how organizations operate. A second is a statistical model estimating the magnitude of relationships among goals and elements of the…

In their best seller, "Freakonomics", University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and "New York Times" writer Stephen Dubner show in an amusing and often provocative manner how an economic way of thinking can be useful in explaining all sorts of real-world phenomena. Their central insight is very simple: incentives are the cornerstone of modern…

Over the last 3 decades student achievement has remained essentially unchanged in the United States, but not for a lack of spending. Over the same period a myriad of education reforms have been suggested and per-pupil spending has more than doubled. Since the 1990s the education reform attempts have frequently included judicial decisions to revise…

The California Community Colleges are vital to closing the projected shortfall of Californians with a postsecondary credential and sustaining the state's economic competitiveness. Increasing the number of students who pursue and earn certificates and associate degrees in career technical education (CTE) fields is an important component of the…

The performance of higher education in New Mexico--measured by cost-efficiency, degree production, graduation rates, and a host of other metrics--remains exceptionally low in comparison with all but two or three other states. For most of the 2013 calendar year the Higher Education Department worked on various fronts to address the most pressing…

Over the last decade, Colorado has emerged as a national leader in crafting innovative solutions for challenges facing its public school system. From implementing the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reforms to more recent legislation including standards and assessments for a preschool-through-college…

In China, the access to education is determined by not only student's demand for schooling, but also the allocation of educational resources and the schools' selection of candidate students. Based on the data obtained from the rural life level and rural social assistance household surveys in four provinces in 2005, the demand-identified bivariate…

The purpose of this study is to examine resource allocation patterns and the predictive power of these resources in increasing the likelihood of four-year college enrollment among academically qualified, low-income students. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study, college choice decision-making is conceptualized in relation to an…

This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" summarizes recent research that may challenge conventional wisdom on how and where public resources for postsecondary education should be dedicated in an effort to increase college completion rates. Questions to be examined include: (1) How did changes in enrollments and the allocation of resources…

This monograph discusses how to make England's further education (FE) system genuinely responsive to learner demand, as well as stable, affordable, and of high quality. It looks at how a demand-driven system can be organised and funded, at what is required of governments, and what can be left to learners themselves and to the education and…