This important book provides African American parents with the knowledge to diversify K-12 school choices beyond traditional neighborhood public schools in order to optimize the educational chances of their own children, and it will help educators and policymakers to close the black-white academic achievement gap throughout America. Closing the K-12 achievement gap is critical to the future welfare of African American individuals, families, and communities-and to the future of our nation as a whole. The black-white academic achievement gap-the significant statistical difference in academic performance between African American students and their white peers-is the single greatest impediment to achieving racial equality and social justice in America. Black Educational Choice provides parents, citizens, educators, and policymakers the critical knowledge they need to leverage the national trend toward increasing and diversifying K-12 school choice beyond traditional neighborhood public schools. Parents can use this information to optimize the success of their own African American children, while policymakers and educators can apply these insights to help close the black-white academic achievement gap throughout America. The book collects the interdisciplinary, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic perspectives of education experts to address the questions of millions of anxious African American families: "Would sending our children to a private school or a charter school significantly better their chances of closing the achievement gap and becoming successful individuals? And if so, what kinds of challenges would they likely experience in these alternative educational settings?" Contributions from distinguished scholars and their apprentices from education and other diverse fields in the social and behavioral sciences

Many institutions facing dwindling state and government funding often rely on the patronage of others in order to establish monetary security. These donations assist in the overall success and development of the institution, as well as the students who attend. Facilitating Higher Education Growth through Fundraising and Philanthropy explores current and emergent approaches in the financial development and sustainability of higher education institutions through altruistic actions and financial assistance. Featuring global perspectives on the economics of philanthropy in educational settings and subsequent growth and development within these environments, this book is an exhaustive reference source for professors, researchers, educational administrators, and politicians interested in the effects of altruism on colleges and universities.

This book introduces theories and practices for using assessment data to enhance learning and instruction. Topics include reshaping the homework review process, iterative learning engineering, learning progressions, learning maps, score report designing, the use of psychosocial data, and the combination of adaptive testing and adaptive learning. In addition, studies proposing new methods and strategies, technical details about the collection and maintenance of process data, and examples illustrating proposed methods and software are included. Chapters 1, 4, 6, 8, and 9 discuss how to make valid interpretations of results and achieve more efficient instructions from various sources of data. Chapters 3 and 7 propose and evaluate new methods to promote students' learning by using evidence-based iterative learning engineering and supporting the teachers' use of assessment data, respectively. Chapter 2 provides technical details on the collection, storage, and security protection of process data. Chapter 5 introduces software for automating some aspects of developmental education and the use of predictive modeling. Chapter 10 describes the barriers to using psychosocial data for formative assessment purposes. Chapter 11 describes a conceptual framework for adaptive learning and testing and gives an example of a functional learning and assessment system. In summary, the book includes comprehensive perspectives of the recent development and challenges of using test data for formative assessment purposes. The chapters provide innovative theoretical frameworks, new perspectives on the use of data with technology, and how to build new methods based on existing theories. This book is a useful resource to researchers who are interested in using data and technology to inform decision making, facilitate instructional utility, and achieve better learning outcomes.

College cost per student has been on the rise at a pace that matches ? or exceeds ? healthcare costs. Unlike healthcare, though, teaching quality has declined, and rapidly rising costs and declining quality are not trends easily forgiven by society. The College Cost Disease addresses these problems, providing a behavioral framework for the chronic cost/quality consequences with which higher education is fraught. Providing many compelling insights into the issues plaguing higher education, Robert Martin expounds upon H.R. Bowen?s revenue theory of cost by detailing experience good theory, the principal/agent problem, and non-profit status. Reputation competition dominates higher education. Students and their parents, and public opinion in general, associate higher tuition with higher quality and greater accolades; price is used as a proxy for quality only when consumers are uncertain about quality prior to purchase. Higher education services are the most complex types of ?experience goods?; a service whose quality can only be determined after a purchase has been made. Applying formal economic theory to higher education, Robert Martin examines how and why attempts to control costs are controversial and the damaging effects these controversies have on institutions? reputations. Arguing that the college access problem cannot be solved until colleges and universities find a way to control their costs, this book brings to the fore the leading ideas that will bring about much-needed budgetary reform in higher education.Governing boards, administrators and faculty members should find much to think on and learn from here; parents, students, alumni and taxpayers will find the research and conclusions alarming, though eye-opening.

This book meets a demand in the science education community for a comprehensive and introductory measurement book in science education. It describes measurement instruments reported in refereed science education research journals, and introduces the Rasch modeling approach to developing measurement instruments in common science assessment domains, i.e. conceptual understanding, affective variables, science inquiry, learning progression, and learning environments. This book can help readers develop a sound understanding of measurement theories and approaches, particularly Rasch modeling, to using and developing measurement instruments for science education research. This book is for anyone who is interested in knowing what measurement instruments are available and how to develop measurement instruments for science education research. For example, this book can be a textbook for a graduate course in science education research methods; it helps graduate students develop competence in using and developing standardized measurement instruments for science education research. Science education researchers, both beginning and experienced, may use this book as a reference for locating available and developing new measurement instruments when conducting a research study.

Financial management principles presented in story format. In this "True Story of Cinderella and How she (Really) Became a Pricess" the fairy tale that one gets ahead with the wave of a magic wand is replaced by sound financial advice.

This edited volume proposes that the phenomenon of private sector, financialized higher education expansion in the United States benefits from a range of theoretical and methodological treatments. Social scientists, policy analysts, researchers, and for-profit sector leaders discuss how and to what ends for-profit colleges are a functional social good. The chapters include discussions of inequality, stratification, and legitimacy, differing greatly from other work on for-profit colleges in three ways: First, this volume moves beyond rational choice explanations of for-profit expansion to include critical theoretical work. Second, it deals with the nuances of race, class, and gender in ways absent from other research. Finally, the book's interdisciplinary focus is uniquely equipped to deal with the complexity of high-cost, low-status, for-profit credentialism at a scale never before seen.

The financing of higher education is undergoing great change in many countries around the world. In recent years many countries are moving from a system where the costs of funding higher education are shouldered primarily by taxpayers, through government subsidies, to one where students pay a larger share of the costs. There are a number of factors driving these trends, including: * A push for massification of higher education, in the recognition that additional revenue streams are required above and beyond those funds available from governments in order to achieve higher participation rates * Macroeconomic factors, which lead to constraints on overall government revenues * Political factors, which manifest in demands for funding of over services, thus restricting the funding available for higher (tertiary) education * A concern that the returns to higher education accrue primarily to the individual, rather than to society, and thus students should bear more of the burden of paying for it This volume will help to contribute to an understanding of how these trends occur in various countries and regions around the world, and the impact they have on higher education institutions, students, and society as a whole. With contributions for the UK, USA, South Africa and China this vital new book gives a truly global picture of the rapidly changing situation

Universities were once ivory towers where scholarship and teaching reigned supreme, or so we tell ourselves. Whether they were ever as pure as we think, it is certainly the case that they are pure no longer. Administrators look to patents as they seek money by commercializing faculty discoveries; they pour money into sports with the expectation that these spectacles will somehow bring in revenue; they sign contracts with soda and fast-food companies, legitimizing the dominance of a single brand on campus; and they charge for distance learning courses that they market widely. In this volume, edited by Donald G. Stein, university presidents and others in higher education leadership positions comment on the many connections between business and scholarship when intellectual property and learning is treated as a marketable commodity. Some contributors write about the benefits of these connections in providing much needed resources. Others emphasize that the thirst for profits may bias the type of research that is carried out and the quality of that research. They fear for the future of basic research if faculty are in search of immediate payoffs. The majority of the contributors acknowledge that commercialization is the current reality and has progressed too far to return to the ""good old days." They propose guidelines for students and professors to govern commercial activities. Such guidelines can increase the likelihood that quality, openness, and collegiality will remain core academic values.

Explore this controversial approach to education, its practical applications, successes, and failures in a straightforward guide that covers every facet of the issue, from for-profit schools to outsourcing of school management to vouchers. The book covers everything from school vouchers to little-known market-based educational reforms like for-profit management of public schools, commercialism in the classroom, philanthropic tuition sponsorships, faith-based charities, educational tax credits, corporate curriculum, and advertising as well as exclusive agreements between companies and schools. It includes case studies of two well-established voucher systems: the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the private national voucher policy in Chile, a program started in l973. The book also includes a chronology, directories, bibliographies, and other reference content. Coverage of private curriculum efforts, outsourcing, the role of teacher unions, and the emergence of for-profit schools Provides a directory of organizations, associations, and government agencies involved with private choice, vouchers, and market-based educational reforms

Philanthropy and American Higher Education provides higher education professionals, leaders and scholars with a thoughtful, comprehensive introduction to the scope and development of philanthropy and fund raising as part of the essential life and work of colleges and universities in the United States.

A volume in Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society Series Editor: Curry Stephenson Malott, Queens College/CUNY Who should read this book? Anyone who is touched by public education - teachers, administrators, teacher-educators, students, parents, politicians, pundits, and citizens - ought to read this book. It will speak to educators, policymakers and citizens who are concerned about the future of education and its relation to a robust, participatory democracy. The perspectives offered by a wonderfully diverse collection of contributors provide a glimpse into the complex, multilayered factors that shape, and are shaped by, institutions of schooling today. The analyses presented in this text are critical of how globalization and neoliberalism exert increasing levels of control over the public institutions meant to support the common good. Readers of this book will be well prepared to participate in the dialogue that will influence the future of public education in this nation - a dialogue that must seek the kind of change that represents hope for all students. As for the question contained in the title of the book--Can hope audaciously trump neoliberalism?--, Carr and Porfilio develop a framework that integrates the work of the contributors, including Christine Sleeter and Dennis Carlson, who wrote the forward and afterword respectively, that problematizes how the Obama administration has presented an extremely constrained, conservative notion of change in and through education. The rhetoric has not been matched by meaningful, tangible, transformative proposals, policies and programs aimed at transformative change. There are many reasons for this, and, according to the contributors to this book, it is clear that neoliberalism is a major obstacle to stimulating the hope that so many have been hoping for. Addressing systemic inequities embedded within neoliberalism, Carr and Porfilio argue, is key to achieving the hope so brilliantly presented by Obama during the campaign that brought him to the presidency.

El estudio del derecho fiscal nacio frente a la necesidad de establecer un justo equilibrio entre la capacidad economica de cualquier empresa y la normatividad fiscal que rige a las misma, sin embargo hoy en dia en nuestro pais la carga fiscal es de las mas altas en el mundo. Es por eso que el principal objetivo de la presente obra es el estudio de los derechos y beneficios fiscales del pais para facilitar la compresion de las materias del derecho fiscal, impuestos y de comercio exterior. En el ambito laboral, los estudiantes, los profesionales y, desde luego, los empresarios conoceran los derechos y beneficios que le otorgan las diferentes disposiciones fiscales como los son la ley, reglamentos, reglas miscelaneas, facilidades administrativas, decretos asi como criterios normativos fiscales.

A nivel mundial, los sistemas de pensiones se encuentran en crisis debido a que sus regimenes y beneficios consideraron una situacion distinta a la actual. Fenomenos como el envejecimiento poblacion, aumento de la esperanza de vida, el aumento del trabajo informal, subempleo, auto empleo, entre otros factores han agravado esta situacion. En Mexico, en 1995 y 2007 se reformaron las legislaciones del IMSS e ISSSTE siguiendo los parametros internacionales. En estas dos decadas transcurridas desde las reformas, los resultados continuan siendo deficitarios, es por ello que la autora analiza la problematica y explora a traves de un esquema de politica comparada los sistemas de pensiones reformados en America Latina y en los institutos de pensiones estatales en Mexico. En esta obra el lector podra conocer la situacion particular que guarda cada sistema de seguridad social en America Latina y Mexico, con ello obtendran un panorama actual del sistema pensionario con la informacion necesaria para conocer la problematica. La autora pretende crear conciencia sobre la situacion economica nacional e internacional que presentan los sistemas de pensiones y establece pautas reales hacia posibles soluciones que otorgarian viabilidad financiera a estos sistemas de seguridad social.

Joining the debate about the role of scholarship and research at American universities, this book examines contemporary academic issues, such as the evolution of postmodern concepts of scholarship, scholarship in the late age of print, and incentives for promoting grant writing and scholarly publishing. Contributors, including provosts, faculty development professionals, administrators, editors, and scholars, debate the impact of the German system of research-based graduate study and its faith in the ideal of pure research on American scholarship. Several contributors contend that the legacy of privileging pure research over applied research and pedagogy provides an inadequate model today. Teaching, conducting applied research, and writing works for broad audiences are undervalued, they claim, at many universities. As scholarship becomes more specialized, scholarly writing has become so specialized that few outside the specific discipline can read or understand it.

This volume continues the challenge to the concept of pure research and atheoretical teaching. Contributors demonstrate how postmodern theories and social and economic problems are working to explode the myth of disinterested research. The book goes on to analyze how academics can grapple with the social, political, moral, and pedagogical issues confronting society. It also considers the impact of new technologies, such as online databases and electronic journals, on scholarship. Current research suggests that only 10 to 20 percent of the nation's faculty produce the scholarly literature. This volume explores the changes that could help faculty find their voices as scholars, researchers, and grant writers.

This book presents expert analysis on how the remarkable rise of mass schooling was funded during the nineteenth century. Based on rich source materials from rural Swedish school districts, and drawing up evidence from schooling in countries including France, Germany, England and the U.S., Westberg examines the moral considerations that guided economic practices and sheds new light on how the advent of schooling did not only rest upon monies, but also on grains, firewood and cow fodder. Exploring school districts' motives and economic culture, this book shows how schooling was neither primarily guided by frugal impulses nor motivated by a fear of the growing working classes. Instead, school spending served multiple purposes in school districts that pursued a fair and reasonable economic practice. In addition to being a highly-detailed case study of Sweden 1840 - 1900 this book also entails a broadening of the theoretical horizon of history of education into social, agrarian and economic history in a wider context. With a focus on different systems of school finance, this work reveals a key change over time: from a largely in-kind system supporting schools in an early phase, followed by an increasingly monetarized, depersonalized and homogenized system of school finance. Boasting an interdisciplinary appeal, this will be a welcome contribution of interest to scholars in the fields of education history, sociology, and economics.