Author: Kenneth R. Feinberg Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1610390768 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Agent Orange, the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, the Virginia Tech massacre, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Deep Horizon gulf oil spill: each was a disaster in its own right. What they had in common was their aftermath -- each required compensation for lives lost, bodies maimed, livelihoods wrecked, economies and ecosystems upended. In each instance, an objective third party had to step up and dole out allocated funds: in each instance, Presidents, Attorneys General, and other public officials have asked Kenneth R. Feinberg to get the job done. In Who Gets What?, Feinberg reveals the deep thought that must go into each decision, not to mention the most important question that arises after a tragedy: why compensate at all? The result is a remarkably accessible discussion of the practical and philosophical problems of using money as a way to address wrongs and reflect individual worth.
Author: Bruce D. Baker Publisher: Harvard Education Press ISBN: 1682532445 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
In Educational Inequality and School Finance, Bruce D. Baker offers a comprehensive examination of how US public schools receive and spend money. Drawing on extensive longitudinal data and numerous studies of states and districts, he provides a vivid and dismaying portrait of the stagnation of state investment in public education and the continuing challenges of achieving equity and adequacy in school funding. Baker explores school finance, the school and classroom resources derived from school funding, and how and why those resources matter. He provides a critical examination of popular assumptions that undergird the policy discourse around school funding—notably, that money doesn’t matter and that we are spending more and getting less—and shows how these misunderstandings contribute to our reluctance to increase investment in education at a time when the demands on our educational system are rising. Through an introduction to the concepts of adequacy, equity, productivity, and efficiency, Baker shows how these can be used to evaluate policy reforms. He argues that we know a great deal about the role and importance of money in schools, the mechanisms through which money matters for student outcomes, and the trade-offs involved, and he presents a framework for designing and financing an equitable and adequate public education system, with balanced and stable sources of revenue. Educational Inequality and School Finance takes an issue all too often relegated to technical experts and makes it accessible for broader public empowerment and engagement.
Author: Clinton Born Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1475856709 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 187
Book Description
Reducing School Expenses: Containing Insurance Costs, Funding Capital, and Tackling the Challenges presents pragmatic strategies and evidence-based solutions to reduce school expenses; contain health insurance, pension, and risk management costs; and fund capital projects.With robust state-specific data on numerous subjects, discerning readers can investigate and compare local and state tax systems along with primary and secondary school funding schemes, particularly in regard to state fund distribution systems, basic plus categorical aid formula variables, and capital funding means. The text offers policymakers and school officials research-supported recommendations to tackle critical funding issues, such as overall escalating costs, spiraling special education expenses, tax reform, unfunded and underfunded mandates due to state and federal laws, and sustainable adequate and equitable funds for primary and secondary education. This book empowers aspiring and practicing public, nonpublic, and charter school leaders who steward school district fiscal resources with realistic suggestions to navigate the unsettled world of school finance.
Author: Irwin Kirsch Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319259911 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 508
Book Description
Across the country, our children are beginning life from very different starting points. Some have aspirations and believe they can be achieved. For too many others, aspirations are tempered, if not dashed, by the sobering realities of everyday life. These different starting points place children on distinctly different trajectories of growth and development, ultimately leading to vastly different adult outcomes. How did we get to a place where circumstances of birth have become so determinative? And what must we do, within communities and across our country, to better equalize opportunity for more Americans – both young and old? The editors of this volume contend that if, as a nation, we do nothing, then we will continue to drift apart, placing an unsustainable strain on the nation’s social fabric and the character of its democracy. Consequently, understanding the dynamics governing the distribution and transmission of opportunity – and transforming this understanding into policies and programs – is critical for not only the life outcomes of individual Americans and their children, but also the country as a whole. The goal of Educational Testing Service’s Opportunity in America initiative is to explore these powerful dynamics and to describe and convey them in a way that advances the national conversation about why we must take action – and how best to do so. This volume contains 14 chapters, including an epilogue, written by leaders from a range of fields including education, economics, demography, and political science. Collectively, they not only illuminate key aspects of the problem but also offer suggestions of what policies, programs, and changes in practices could begin to reverse the trends we are seeing. Written in an engaging style, this volume constitutes an essential foundation for informed discussion and strategic analysis.
Author: R. Craig Wood Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429829809 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
Money and Schools explains and demonstrates the relationship between money and equality of educational opportunity in a way that is clear, precise, and engaging. Grounded in research and best practices, this book provides a broad overview of school finance, budgeting, and resource allocation, an understanding of the underlying economic, social, legal, and political principles that drive how schools are funded, as well as a detailed examination of day-to-day funding operations. Rich pedagogical features include chapter opening challenges, chapter drivers, point/counterpoint discussions, case studies, and recommended resources. This accessible and engaging book offers strong connections to real-world experiences and detailed information on pre-K–12 funding history, concepts, and current operations for both aspiring and experienced education leaders in school budgeting, finance, and resource management courses. New to this edition: Coverage of environmental sustainability and other emerging trends in this unprecedented uncertainty of schools' economic and social environment. Updates to references and overall funding changes since the previous edition. Revised end-of-chapter activities and additional resources that are aligned with the key concepts and content of each chapter. Updated supplemental downloads, including editable PowerPoints.
Author: William J. Mathis Publisher: IAP ISBN: 1681235056 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 720
Book Description
Over the past twenty years, educational policy has been characterized by top?down, market?focused policies combined with a push toward privatization and school choice. The new Every Student Succeeds Act continues along this path, though with decision?making authority now shifted toward the states. These market?based reforms have often been touted as the most promising response to the challenges of poverty and educational disenfranchisement. But has this approach been successful? Has learning improved? Have historically low?scoring schools “turned around” or have the reforms had little effect? Have these narrow conceptions of schooling harmed the civic and social purposes of education in a democracy? This book presents the evidence. Drawing on the work of the nation’s most prominent researchers, the book explores the major elements of these reforms, as well as the social, political, and educational contexts in which they take place. It examines the evidence supporting the most common school improvement strategies: school choice; reconstitutions, or massive personnel changes; and school closures. From there, it presents the research findings cutting across these strategies by addressing the evidence on test score trends, teacher evaluation, “miracle” schools, the Common Core State Standards, school choice, the newly emerging school improvement industry, and re?segregation, among others. The weight of the evidence indisputably shows little success and no promise for these reforms. Thus, the authors counsel strongly against continuing these failed policies. The book concludes with a review of more promising avenues for educational reform, including the necessity of broader societal investments for combatting poverty and adverse social conditions. While schools cannot single?handedly overcome societal inequalities, important work can take place within the public school system, with evidence?based interventions such as early childhood education, detracking, adequate funding and full?service community schools—all intended to renew our nation’s commitment to democracy and equal educational opportunity.
Author: Dana L. Mitra Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000576108 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Educational Change and the Political Process brings together key ideas on both the system of educational policy and the policy process in the United States. It provides students with a broad, methodical understanding of educational policy. No other textbook offers as comprehensive a view of the US educational policy procedure and political systems. Section I discusses the actors and systems that create and implement policy on both the federal and the local level; Section II walks students through the policy process from idea to implementation to evaluation; and Section III delves into three major forces driving the creation of educational policies in the current era—accountability, equity, and market-driven reforms. Each chapter provides case studies, discussion questions, and classroom activities to scaffold learning, as well as a bibliography for further reading to deepen exploration of these topics. This new edition will explore recent Trump-era and post-Trump era US politics and policy changes as well as the politics of race.
Author: Mara Casey Tieken Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469618494 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
From headlines to documentaries, urban schools are at the center of current debates about education. From these accounts, one would never know that 51 million Americans live in rural communities and depend on their public schools to meet not only educational but also social and economic needs. For many communities, these schools are the ties that bind. Why Rural Schools Matter shares the untold story of rural education. Drawing upon extensive research in two southern towns, Mara Tieken exposes the complicated ways in which schools shape the racial dynamics of their towns and sustain the communities that surround them. The growing power of the state, however, brings the threat of rural school closure, which jeopardizes the education of children and the future of communities. With a nuanced understanding of the complicated relationship between communities and schools, Tieken warns us that current education policies--which narrow schools' purpose to academic achievement alone--endanger rural America and undermine the potential of a school, whether rural or urban, to sustain a community. Vividly demonstrating the effects of constricted definitions of public education in an era of economic turmoil and widening inequality, Tieken calls for a more contextual approach to education policymaking, involving both state and community.
Author: Justin A. Collins Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1610487559 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
The school finance debate has profoundly shaped the educational reform landscape over the past four decades. Most conspicuously, judges level billion dollar decrees based on scant and conflicting findings. This book sought to explore whether school funding practices satisfy the equity and adequacy standards delineated by policymakers and judges, and demanded by the broader public. A funding formula myopia, the book argues, has left student engagement largely overlooked. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that vast funding enhancements have introduced disappointing outcomes results. The book argues the front of the classroom must become and remain the epicenter of reform activity: and that transforming instructional and engagement behaviors are effort-intensive endeavors that very little in pecuniary terms. In the end, an eye on the student engagement/pedagogical ball over the long run will deliver the results that cash infusions simply cannot. The book concludes by documenting how educational leaders can go about driving such desirable learning/instructional behaviors, and the quantified test score gains that can be expected to follow.
Author: Kenneth R. Feinberg
Author: Bruce D. Baker
Author: Clinton Born
Author: Irwin Kirsch
Author: R. Craig Wood
Author: William J. Mathis
Author: Karen DeMoss
Author: Dana L. Mitra
Author: Mara Casey Tieken
Author: Justin A. Collins