Toward A Pragmatic Discourse of Constructivism: Reflections on Lessons from Practice

Although New York's highest court granted children the constitutional right to a meaningful high school education in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York, equitable funding has yet to be implemented. The state of New York continues to stall on revising the funding formula statewide, despite the many indications that this must be done if the state is to satisfy the Court of Appeal's 2003 ruling. Although some factors that affect children's performance in school, such as lead poisoning and poverty, lie beyond the control of the schools, schools are nevertheless required to remediate their effects by providing special education. Equitable funding based on obtaining good educational outcomes for all children would help create conditions under which children could improve their life chances through education. After equitable funding has been obtained, defining the markers of a meaningful high school education will be the next task for school reformers in New York.     

The Impact of a Holistic Conditional Cash Transfer Program in New York City on Parental Financial Investment,Student Time Use,and Educational Processes and Outcomes

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impacts of Opportunity New York City–Family Rewards, the first holistic conditional cash transfer (CCT) program evaluated in the United States, on parental financial investments in children, and high school students' academic time use, motivations and self-beliefs, and achievement outcomes. Family Rewards, launched by the Center for Economic Opportunity in the Mayor's Office of the City of New York in 2007 and codesigned and evaluated by MDRC, offered cash assistance to low-income families conditioned on family investments in three areas: children's education, family preventive health care, and parents' employment. Results that rely on a random assignment design find that Family Rewards resulted in statistically significant increases in parental spending and saving on education for all students, and increased savings for those students most academically prepared at baseline and for girls, as well as statistically significant increases in academic time use and achievement outcomes for these same academically prepared students. There were no impacts on student motivations and self-beliefs. Implications are discussed for conditional cash transfer programs as well as for interventions targeting high-risk children and families.     

Restructuring special education funding in New York to promote the objective of high learning standards for all students

New York has given long and careful consideration to the reform of special education funding in the state. The proposal under consideration, as endorsed by the State Department of Education, is based on a count of all students, as opposed to just special education students, and includes a poverty adjustment. This plan appears to support many of New York's special education reform goals, and it aligns with national trends. However, the decision to maintain separate funding systems for special education students with certain disabilities may conflict with the state's goal of educating students with disabilities alongside their nondisabled peers. Also, it is important to realize that achieving high learning standards for students with disabilities will not simply flow from the planned fiscal reforms; it will require careful consideration to ensure that these students are fully included in the state's system of accountability for all students.     

School infrastructure spending and educational outcomes: Evidence from the 2012 earthquake in Northern Italy

We explore whether investment in school infrastructure affects students’ achievement. We use data on extra funding to state high schools after the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake and apply a quasi-experimental design and an instrumental variable strategy. We find that spending on school infrastructure increases standardized test scores in Mathematics and Italian language, and the effect is stronger for lower-achieving students and in Mathematics. These results provide evidence in favor of a positive impact of capital spending in improving the learning environment and performances of high school students.     

Hope for Children Trapped in Failing Schools: The Promise of Crawford v. Davy

On October 4, 2007, a trial level court in New Jersey dismissed Crawford v. Davy, a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 60,000 schoolchildren throughout the state seeking the court's authority to leave schools that fail to educate their students. By filing suit, plaintiff schoolchildren had hoped to be transferred to an alternative successful public or private school utilizing their pro rata share of state and local school funds to subsidize the transfer. Now, the dismissal of Crawford consigns these children to poor inadequate neighborhood schools indefinitely. If the dismissal of Crawford v. Davy is not reversed on appeal, it will not only extinguish the hope of plaintiff schoolchildren to receive an equal and adequate educational opportunity, but could threaten the right of a thorough and efficient education guaranteed by the State Constitution and reverse gains achieved over the past 40 years in New Jersey's education jurisprudence. This article places Crawford in the context of the state's enduring legal struggle to equalize educational opportunities and discusses its claims and purposes in relation to that history. The article then addresses the significance of the Crawford dismissal on the state's legal precedents, especially rulings in the on-going Abbott v. Burke equity funding litigation. Finally, the article concludes with a prediction of the impact that Crawford's dismissal may pose for the larger equity/adequacy litigation movement playing out across the country. For the moment, the hope of 60,000 plaintiff schoolchildren is diminished. Only time and New Jersey's appellate courts will dictate whether their hope for an equal and adequate education shall survive.     

美国纽约市公立中小学教育质量的影响因素浅析

本文分析了影响纽约市公立中小学教育质量的因素有学生、教师及行政人员教科书、纽约市联合教师工会、联邦政府和州政府的教育法等。     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

School Efficiency and Student Subgroups: Is a Good School Good for Everyone?

State and federal accountability reforms are putting considerable pressure on schools to increase the achievement of historically low-performing groups of students and to close test score gaps. In this article, we exploit the differences among the large number of elementary schools in New York City to examine how much schools vary in the efficiency of the education they provide to subgroups. In addition, we examine the extent to which observable school characteristics can account for the variation that exists. We find that New York City elementary schools vary in how well they educate poor students compared to nonpoor students and Asian and White students compared to Black and Hispanic students. The disparities in school efficiency measures between boys and girls are lower than for the other subgroups. There is no conclusive evidence about which school resources and characteristics are associated with more or less efficient education across all subgroups.     

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.     

省域高等教育财政差异实证分析

本文运用基尼系数计算出我国31个省份的生均经费差异呈现扩大趋势,而来自于公共财政的预算内生均事业费差异更为显著。在落实财政教育投入4%目标的大背景下,建议增加各级政府特别是中央政府和省级政府高等教育财政供给的总量,颁布国家高等教育公共财政投入基本标准,提高生均经费拨款基数,设立专项资金化解金融机构的贷款风险等,尽快扭转省域高等教育财政不平衡、不协调、不可持续的态势。     

The public-private division of responsibility for education

In this chapter “private” schools are defined as those that were privately founded and are privately managed; they usually have some private funding, although in some cases considerable funding and control come from the government. The size and nature of the private sector is viewed as stemming from excess demand for education due to limited public spending (i.e., these are students who would prefer to use the public schools but are involuntarily excluded and pushed into the private sector); differentiated demand due primarily to cultural heterogeneity (i.e., these are students whose differentiated tastes along religious, linguistic or ethnic lines lead them voluntarily to choose the private sector even if a public school place is available); and the supply of non-profit educational entrepreneurship (e.g., founders who start schools to maximize religious faith or believers, rather than profits) by competing religious organizations. The impact of public policies, including public educational spending and private subsidies, is also considered.     

重大公共卫生事件下小学德育现状与思考

德育工作是学校教育的重中之重,此次重大公共卫生事件给小学德育带来了一定的影响。为了解重大公共卫生事件期间小学生的品德状况以及教师的德育工作实施状况,对东部、中部、西部地区的1472名小学生和207名教师开展问卷调查。调查结果显示,小学生具有一定的公民素养、健全的人格品质和积极的理想信念,但存在信息素养缺失、职业认知模糊...     

Political preferences and public funding of tertiary education during the economic crisis

This article analyses how political preferences, which are co-determined by the beliefs of decision-makers and influences of interest groups and the general public, affect the decisions to maintain or cut public funding for tertiary education during the economic crisis. Our sample included 29 European countries which we divided into two groups depending on the level of public funding for tertiary education before the crisis, which we used as a measure of revealed political preferences. We then observed the differences in changes in public tertiary education funding during the crisis between these two groups of countries using five different indicators. Three of the five indicators show that countries with a stronger political preference for tertiary education public funding cut their spending on tertiary education to a lesser extent (or even increased spending) during the economic crisis.     

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.     

近年我国普通高等学校教育经费投入构成比例探析——基于《中国统计年鉴》（2001—2012年）的数据验证

我国普通高等学校教育经费投入主要由国家财政性教育经费投入、社会教育经费投入以及受教育者个人教育经费投入构成。在我国普通高等学校教育大众化进程中,尤其是1999年高校大规模扩招以后,我国总教育经费投入和普通高等学校教育经费投入均呈现明显增长趋势,但后者较前者增长缓慢,同时在我国普通高等学校教育经费投入内部构成比例关系中,国家财政性教育经费投入所占比例体现为逐步下降后逐步上升趋势,社会教育经费投入所占比例呈现为稳定上升经跌降后缓慢下降趋势,受教育者个人教育经费投入所占比例表现为逐步上升趋势。通过对我国普通高等学校教育经费投入构成比例及其变化趋势的数据验证可以为我国普通高等学校教育经费投入体系的科学构建提出有效的参考。     

Negotiating teacher professionalism: governmentality and education reform in Hong Kong

This research investigates how the Hong Kong state controls and disciplines the education sector through the regulation and manipulation of discourses. The authoritative narratives are that some schools are failing the students and parents for not being able to provide quality education, and that these schools are not subject to public scrutiny while spending public money. This article seeks to understand the role of such narratives in neoliberal politics and the marketisation of education which lead to governance in the form of initiatives in school quality assurance mechanism; how different actors (Education Bureau, Professional Teachers' Union and individual teachers) are involved in the process; how they negotiate this governance of education; how such governance transforms the self-perception of teachers as well as the perception of teachers by others; and how teachers interpret, appropriate and resist such discursive power.     

公共财政为什么要资助民办教育?

政府对民办教育提供财政资助在全国各地有广泛的实践,但其中的政策逻辑却一直没有得到系统阐述。本文对支持和反对政府资助民办教育的政策观点进行了全面的梳理,从公共利益的视角讨论了政府对民办教育提供财政资助的合理性与必要性,构建了以"学生权利保障性型财政资助"、"学校成本分担型财政资助"和"办学绩效导向型财政资助"为主要内容的公共财政资助民办教育的基本政策框架,并以浙江省的典型政策实践为例对上述制度设计进行了深入的讨论。     

Strategic interaction among public school districts: Evidence on spatial interdependence in school inputs

This paper provides evidence on strategic interaction among public school districts in Massachusetts. The open enrollment program in Massachusetts is unique in testing the strategic competition thesis because it allows students to attend public schools located outside their home district. For each student who transfers out, funds are deducted from the sending district's local aid distribution and added to the receiving district's local aid. Thus, school districts no longer have the assurance of a ready supply of students and funding, instead they have to compete with neighboring districts, and enact strategies that will help retain as well as attract more students. A spatial econometric framework is applied to disentangle the correlation due to strategic interaction from the one that is simply due to spatially correlated error shocks. The results show that public school districts respond positively to the expenditure decisions of neighboring districts, thereby acting strategically when setting their own spending levels.     

Evaluating state funding for gifted education programs

As a follow‐up to a previous article in which Baker and Friedman‐Nimz (2002a) recommended that gifted education advocates should focus on improving state funding of gifted education, this article provides an overview of state school finance policies for gifted education and frameworks for evaluating those policies. The frameworks are then applied for evaluating state school finance policies as of 1998–99 and state aid allocated to local districts for gifted education in 2000. In that year, only Florida provided both sufficient and equitable support for gifted education, assuming general education conditions to be adequate as well as equitable in that state. Gifted education funding in Virginia, while less adequate than supplemental funding in Florida, continues to be a model of equitable distribution.     

Measuring the effect of charter schools on public school student achievement in an urban environment: Evidence from New York City

This paper uses student level data from New York City to study the relationship between a public school losing enrollment to charter school competitors and the academic achievement of students who remain enrolled in it. Geographic measures most often used to study the effect of school choice policies on public school student achievement are not well suited for densely populated urban environments. I adopt a direct approach and measure charter school exposure as the percentage of a public school's students who exited for a charter school at the end of the previous year. Depending on model specification, I find evidence that students in schools losing more students to charter schools either are unaffected by the competitive pressures of the choice option or benefit mildly in both math and English.