Federal policies,state responses,and community college outcomes: Testing an augmented Bennett hypothesis

We estimate the impact of increases in Federal student aid and higher education funding, such as the recently proposed American Graduation Initiative (AGI), on the outcomes of community colleges, including enrollments, list and average tuitions, and educational quality. We develop a reduced form model of state-level education policy in which state policy makers, who have objectives that differ from those of Federal policy makers, respond to changes in Federal policies. Our empirical specification treats state and institutional variables as endogenous; we interpret the coefficients as measuring the responses of state and institution officials to changes in Federal policies. We simulate the effects of AGI and find little evidence that states recapture Federal education resources. AGI would have a significant effect on educational quality but a limited effect on enrollments. An equivalent increase in Federal student aid would have greater impact on access and enrollments, but decrease educational quality.     

The emergence of a market-driven funding mechanism in K-12 education in British Columbia: creeping privatization and the eclipse of equity

Since 2002, British Columbia’s education system has undergone extensive change following amendments to the BC School Act (Bill 34). This article presents a critical analysis of policy changes to the K-12 education finance system, particularly the expansion of the legal capacity of school districts to create ‘school district business companies,’ a phenomenon that is unique within Canada. These companies enable public school districts to establish for-profit companies that operate at arm’s length from the school board, yet generate revenue from private sources to supplement government operational grants. This shift occurred in parallel with fiscal restraint measures that centralized control over the level of government funding while downloading inflationary and new costs to school boards. The result has been structural funding shortfalls for school districts across the province. Structural funding shortfalls, coupled with a push toward market-driven revenue generation, signaled to school districts that they needed to become more financially self-reliant. The authors argue that efficiency and adequacy (defined in financial terms) have eclipsed equity as priority values in BC education, and that ‘creeping privatization’ is undermining public support of public education. For the most part, these substantive changes have failed to stimulate a mass public outcry, and organized resistance comes from public sector unions.     

Achieving inclusion? Effective resourcing of students with special educational needs

In line with the increasing policy emphasis on inclusive education, there is now a greater focus on how best to provide for students special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream schools. However, there is little consensus internationally as to the most equitable way in which to support these students. Despite ongoing evaluations of the existing funding structures, there has been little discussion to inform future changes and ensure an equitable distribution of resources. This paper examines the system of SEN funding in Ireland during a period of policy change. Using data from a National Survey of Schools, we examine the profile and distribution of students across different school contexts to assess the extent to which the existing funding model targets those most in need. Findings show that the current through-put funding system broadly targets students with SEN but in any new model, there is room for greater differentiation in the allocation of funding, particularly within disadvantaged school contexts. The paper highlights the need for further discussion around how we conceptualise special education in mainstream education. We argue for greater emphasis on student outcomes and school accountability where SEN funding is received to support students.     

Governors Make the Grade: Growing Gubernatorial Influence in State Education Policy

Since the 1970s, American governors have become increasingly active in education politics. Where they once told state education chiefs to “make me the best education governor ever,” they now demand control of state boards of education, push for state control of school funding, and urge statewide standards for teacher evaluation. This article surveys the growth of gubernatorial interest in education in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida. It argues that sustained financial pressure on state budgets and widespread calls for educational equity have undercut both school districts and legislatures as effective arbiters of education policy. These twin pressures have forced governors, who have a statewide political constituency and are responsible for the state budget, to accept greater control over education policy.     

Community College Governance,Funding, and Accountability: A Century of Issues and Trends

Community colleges in America are now very visible and highly respected institutions of higher education. More than 1,000 community colleges in all 50 states now comprise nearly 25% of all colleges and universities in the U.S., with over 6.5 million students, or about 45% of all college students.

State and local governance and coordination of community colleges vary from single-state governing boards to minimal state control and strong local governing boards. The relative degrees of state and local control of community colleges generally “follow the money,” in that accountability to state and local governing board and state legislatures is generally about proportional to the funds provided by each level of government.

Funding for operational support of community colleges comes primarily from state and local governments, with considerable federal support for grants and subsidized loans to students. In 2000–2001, the largest proportional funding sources for community colleges were: state governments (44.6%), local governments (19.5%), tuition and fees (19.5%) and the federal government (5.4%). State lotteries in at least 38 states represent a relatively new source of funds for community colleges, often in the form of student scholarships.

Many of the earliest public junior colleges charged no tuition, especially in California in the early 1900s. Now many community college students pay $3,000 or more per year in tuition and fees, and recent annual tuition increases in many states have been in double digits. This is a troubling trend that threatens to reduce access to higher education for poor people.     

大学生党员在高校思想政治教育工作中的作用研究

高等学校历来把学生的思想政治教育工作作为学校发展培养人才的重点工程,特别是16号文件出台以来,思想政治教育工作方法的创新和成果的巩固变得尤为重要,而大学生党员是高校学生群体中的先进分子,他们的言行举止对广大学生具有极强的示范作用,因此,创新高校学生党建工作,加强对学生党员的教育管理,发挥学生党员的先锋模范作用,对促进高校大学生思想政治教育的完善具有深远意义。     

韩国、马来西亚、菲律宾三国私立高等教育经费政策研究

韩国、马来西亚和菲律宾等国的私立高等院校所占比例均在85%以上,在校生数占一半以上,高者达74%。这与所在国的高等教育发展政策、经费政策和管理政策是分不开的,其政府实施的经费资助政策更是私立高等教育发展、稳定与否的"晴雨表"。三国私立高等教育发展变化显示,私立高等教育发展与政府的经费政策,尤其是多元化教育投入有着很强的联系。     

Increasing Completion and Cutting Costs: An Examination of How the Flipped Classroom and One-Room Schoolhouse Models Benefit Community Colleges

Community colleges continue to operate in a society of accountability and efficiencies. Throughout the country, states have implemented performance-based funding and completion agendas while also tightening or restricting funding for higher education. The state of Ohio has implemented one of the boldest performance funding plans in the country while also mandating that higher education institutions limit spending and lower costs to students. This article explores how Central Ohio Technical College has implemented the flipped classroom and one-room school house models in college-level mathematics courses and how both models of instruction can help community colleges increase successful completion rates to meet performance-based funding completion metrics while also limiting instructional cost.     

Latinx Parents’ Literacy Practices and Concientización in Petitioning Their Local School Board Regarding Funding Priorities

A case study of a Latinx parent-school engagement program is presented illustrating how immigrant parents became collective political actors providing input into their California school district’s formulation of its Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP). The LCAP was part of newly adopted statewide Local Control Funding Formula policy providing supplemental funding to schools in support of services needed by students who were identified as low-income, English Language Learners (ELLs), and foster-care. The study investigated how Latinx parents developed a face-to-face understanding of the LCAP policy and planning process, and their rights and collective power as advocates for their children’s education. Focused attention is given to one parent group advocating for summer academic programs and how parents negotiated rhetorical and linguistic formulation of arguments in their letter petition to the local school board. In so doing, parents drew on their cultural funds of knowledge and developed sensitivity to the communicative practices of school boards, and to the need of parents to present their voice and stances persuasively and assertively indicative of their rights as community members. The study helps ground theories of political action in the face-to-face world of parent engagement programs.     

What is the evidence on the impact of Pupil Premium funding on school intakes and attainment by age 16 in England?

The use of targeted additional funding for school-age education, intended to improve student attainment, is a widespread phenomenon internationally. It is slightly rarer that the funding is used to improve attainment specifically for the most disadvantaged students – often via trying to attract teachers to poorer areas, or encouraging families to send their children to school. It is even rarer that funding is used to try and reduce the attainment gap between economically disadvantaged students and their peers, and almost unheard for the funding to be intended to change the nature of school intakes by making disadvantaged students more attractive to schools. These last two were the objectives set for Pupil Premium funding to schools in England. The funding started in 2011, for all state-funded schools at the same time, so there is no easy counterfactual to help assess how effective it has been. The funding is a considerable investment every year and it is therefore important to know whether it works as intended. This paper presents a time series analysis of all students at secondary school in England from 2006, well before the funding started, until 2019, the most recent year for which there are attainment figures. It overcomes concerns that the official attainment gap between students labelled disadvantaged and the rest is sensitive to demographic, economic, legal and other concurrent policy changes. It does this by looking at a stable group of long-term disadvantaged students. It is argued that this group would have attracted Pupil Premium funding if it had existed in any year and under any economic conditions. After 2010, these long-term disadvantaged pupils became substantially less clustered in specific schools in their first year and throughout their remaining school life. This improvement cannot be explained by economic or other factors used in this paper, and so it looks as though the Pupil Premium has been effective here. The picture for the attainment gap at age 16 is more mixed. It is partly confused by changes in the grading of assessments in 2014 and again from 2016. The reasons why the improvements are less clear than at primary school are discussed, and they involve the nature of evidence available to secondary schools to help them improve the attainment of their most disadvantaged students.     

二战至20世纪末美国国际学生政策变迁

本文对第二次世界大战结束至20世纪末期间美国的国际学生政策变迁进行了阐述和分析。《富布赖特法案》标志着美国政府开始长期资助各国学生赴美留学,之后,针对不同的学生类型设立了F、J和M三类学生签证,规范了国际学生签证的有效期,但对国际学生加强监控的政策却由于教育界的抵制而不了了之。在政策环境和主要行为主体的相互作用下,经过若干次调整和巩固,美国的国际学生政策体系逐渐健全起来。     

A multilevel analysis of late entry in Nigeria

This paper explores how factors operating at the state and community levels are associated with the prevalence of late school enrolment in Nigeria. We investigate the following three research themes. First, whether late entry varies across states and across communities and how much of this variation can be explained by the composition of communities and states. Second, whether community wealth and state wealth are stronger predictors of late entry than household wealth. Third, whether wealth has different effects on the probability of late school entry in different states and in different communities within states. Using the 2010 Nigeria Education Data Survey, and a three-level multilevel logit model, we show that a substantial proportion of the variation in late school entry is explained by community- and state-level factors. We further find that children living in specific communities in Nigeria may face a double disadvantage in terms of on-time school enrolment. In these communities, not only is there a large proportion of children entering school late, but also household wealth has strong effects on the probability that a child is sent to school on on time. These communities could be targeted for educational interventions aimed at promoting on-time school enrolment.     

2.4 The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

There has been a significant growth of educational appropriations every year in the Sixth Five-Year Plan period. The previous funding for education started from a very low base, however. There were massive amounts of money the government owed the schools [in terms of the development of education]. In recent years, there are many changes in the constitution and content of school operational cost. Consequently, the increased funds are mostly disbursed as salaries, thus proportionately reducing the percentage used to pay for school operational costs. In many general secondary schools the percentage of operational costs constitutes less than 20 percent of the total educational funding. Adding to this are inflation and a higher norm of traveling expenses. Funds for school operations become even more stringent. Little has been done in the construction of "three rooms" (i.e., laboratories, instrument storerooms, libraries, and reference rooms), and books and instruments are in severe shortage. We have not yet fully resolved the problem of dilapidated buildings, and are not able to acquire enough desks and chairs for the students.     

心理咨询--高校思想政治教育的新途径

目前，心理咨询活动已经在我国广泛开展，并形成了一定规模，全国各省市的大学几乎都开办了心理咨询服务点，前去咨询的学生越来越多，作用越来越大。心理咨询是高校思想政治教育的重要组成部分．是新形势下实施高校思想政治教育的新途径。     

Do tuition fees affect the mobility of university applicants? Evidence from a natural experiment

Several German states recently introduced tuition fees for university education. We investigate whether these tuition fees influence the mobility of university applicants. Based on administrative data of applicants for medical schools in Germany, we estimate the effect of tuition fees on the probability of applying for a university in the home state. We find a small but significant reaction: The probability of applying for a university in the home state falls by 2 percentage points (baseline: 69%) for high-school graduates who come from a state with tuition fees. Moreover, we find that students with better high-school grades react more strongly to tuition fees. This might have important effects on the composition of students across states.     

Inclusive education for students with refugee experience: whole school reform in a South Australian primary school

In recent years, there has been an increase in students with refugee experience in the UK, the US, Europe and Australia. These students face many barriers to education, and appropriately educating this diverse student population presents many challenges to schools and education departments. We argue that a whole of school approach that includes school structures, culture and pedagogy is needed to provide equity for students with refugee experience. This approach to reform requires that the ‘structures and programs [that] are designed for a dominant group’ (DETE, South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework, South Australia 2001), and which disadvantage minority groups, are challenged and changed. Implementing such change raises many practical difficulties, and there are few documented examples of good practice. This prompted the authors’ ethnographic study of a South Australian primary school, with a New Arrivals Program, which positions itself as taking a whole of school approach to educational reform for refugees. This paper reports on the structural changes the school has implemented in its class organisation, staff roles and curriculum. We consider the effects of government funding and neoliberal education policy on these reforms.     

Turning around schools (and neighborhoods?): School improvement grants and gentrification

Most funding intended to close gaps in K-12 education targets schools, rather than students directly. We investigate whether household sorting in response to changes in K-12 school funding inhibits spending from reaching targeted students with a case study in Metro-Nashville Public Schools of the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, which invested $7 billion in the nation’s lowest-achieving schools between 2009 and 2016. Using a boundary-discontinuity difference-in-differences design and home sales data, we estimate that households were willing to pay more than three times the average per-pupil grant award to live in SIG school zones. Neighborhoods zoned for SIG schools experienced moderate income and racial integration following funding receipt. However, evictions in these neighborhoods increased by 35%, and non-white enrollment at SIG schools declined by 15%. Our findings illustrate a major limitation of place-based public good provision: sorting may displace the initially targeted population.     

The Heterogeneous Non-resident Student Body: Measuring the Effect of Out-Of-State Students’ Home-State Wealth on Tuition and Fee Price Variations

More than 40 years of research has found a positive relationship between increases in the proportion of non-resident students enrolling in an institution and increases in the tuition prices this institution charges to these same students. Notably, this line of research has consistently treated this non-resident student body as if they constitute a homogeneous group in terms of their socioeconomic well-being, when in reality these students come from states with differing levels of socioeconomic prosperity. Notably, given that tuition and fee charges to non-resident students are market-based, institutions charge what out-of-state students are willing to pay. Under this rationale, it follows that the wealthier the student body of an institution is, the more institutions will be able to charge them in terms of tuition and fees for their education. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it offers a method to measure the level of wealth of the non-resident student body enrolling at an institution considering the level of wealth of these students’ home states, therefore creating a measure of heterogeneity of the non-resident student body. The second purpose is to evaluate whether this measure of heterogeneity is associated with larger increases in the net tuition and fee prices charged to these students compared to the increases related to the homogeneous structure that ignores these students’ home-state wealth. This twofold purpose was addressed utilizing a dataset built from regional, state, and institutional information of 1743 public and private not-for-profit 4-year institutions across the contiguous United States. Since all the outcome variables were found to be spatially dependent, spatial econometrics techniques were employed for model estimation. Results corroborated that treating non-resident students as a homogeneous structure rendered downwardly biased estimates of institutions’ abilities and/or decisions to set higher or lower tuition and fee prices compared to the estimates obtained using the heterogeneous structure. Considering current general disinvestment of states in higher education, the analysis of factors driving non-resident tuition and fee price-setting has become especially relevant for public policy officials and decision-makers at both the institution- and state-levels. Accordingly, this study examines a critical issue in the finance of higher education—the setting of institutional tuition and fees for non-resident students.     

Intention or in tension? Recent education reforms in South Africa

The major restructuring of the entire education system in South Africa has produced considerable policy tensions and contradictions. In the light of recent legislation, this paper examines the consequences of the Education Department's attempting to serve the demands for equity in terms of resource allocation and reprioritisation within and between provinces, while simultaneously on a micro school-based level attempting to insert a particular school culture (governance, funding, curricula, conditions of service and so on) across schools that were previously extremely disparate in terms of the elements referred to above. This attempt at equality in the face of the equity drive has considerable consequences for the delivery and provision of education services. The paper discusses these and analyses the policy-making domain which has produced somewhat contradictory outcomes.     

Teacher education reform: Issues of equity and accountability

Recent policy changes in teacher education have had a significant impact on equality of educational opportunity for the teaching profession. Improving standards of excellence in the school system while at the same time insuring equality of opportunity has become a major concern. The policy maker interested in promoting equality of opportunity will have to balance the need for teacher quality with the notion of equity. This paper examines some of the policy changes in teacher education and focuses on how they impact the recruitment and retention of minority students.