Public Policy Commons^™

Institutional Mission Vs. Policy Constraint?: Unlocking Potential, Ellen Hazelkorn

Articles

The research-intensive and competitive knowledge society is putting HEIs (higher education institutions) under the spotlight. While many HEIs around the world do not proclaim or wish to be research-intensive institutions the majority desire to intensify their research activity because it is seen as a sine qua non of higher education. Accordingly, HEIs are busy making critical strategic choices concerning human resources, the research environment, the teaching-research nexus, organisational and management structure, and funding. Governments are also making choices, using policies and financial instruments to help shape institutional mission, priorities and HE systems. But if governments genuinely desire to widen access …

Calculating The Added Costs Of Educating Disadvantaged Students, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Public Policy In Connecticut: Challenges And Perspectives, Gary L. Rose Ed.

Sacred Heart University Press Books

Public Policy in Connecticut examines ten of the key policy challenges that currently confront Connecticut lawmakers. Following an overview essay by the editor, discussing the recent transfer of power to state governments and outlining the policy challenges faced by lawmakers, each of these challenges is taken up in a separate essay by the volume's contributors. The first challenges considered, associated with economic growth, transportation, environmental protection, ethnic diversity, and ethics in politics, affect the Connecticut public at large. The remaining issues discussed are health care, services for the aged, prison overcrowding and recidivism, inner-city education, and higher education affect more …

Estimating The Cost Of An Adequate Education, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

The Cfe Case, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Growth Strategies And Intellectual Capital Formation In New And Emerging Heis, Ellen Hazelkorn

Books/Book chapters

Higher educational institutions are being asked to contribute more effectively and efficiently to economic growth, innovation and intellectual capital. As they do so, the academy has also come under pressure. The content of academic work, the role of faculty, and the balance between teaching, research and service, have, arguably, been restructured, reconfigured and redefined. For academics within traditional universities, pressures for accountability and social relevance have challenged what many valued as ‘their autonomy’. But, for staff within new and emerging HEIs, those formed or reconstituted circa. 1970, there have been different pressures. Many were hired originally as teachers and now …

Challenges Of Growing Research At New And Emerging Heis, Ellen Hazelkorn

Books/Book chapters

Newer institutions are accused of adopting the accoutrements of traditional universities, actively copying their research profile and teaching programmes, and engaging in ‘academic’ or ‘mission’ drift. For others, however, these changes are part of the natural or inevitable process of institutional development and historical change, or a further step in the democratisation of the ‘Humboltian ethic’ (Neave, 2000, p265). If massification and expansion in 1960s differentiated the second stage in higher educational development from its elite origins, then the late 1990s marked the beginning of the third stage. By then, it was clear that a broadly educated population could no …

Patriarchy And Pragmatism: Ideological Contradictions In State Policies, Lily Kong, Jasmine S. Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Theories concerning the state sometimes treat it as a rational system. This paper raises questions about this assumption by examining the coherence of the ideological frameworks underlying state policies in Singapore. The contradictions are shown most clearly when state policies deal with gender issues, especially where they concern women. Through an examination of such policies, we show that, under some conditions, state patriarchy may be subverted by the state's capitalistic developmental considerations. We are aware that patriarchy does not stand or fall by state policies alone, but the following article illustrates how such policies can limit the space for negotiation …

The Mechtech Program: An Education And Training Model For The Next Century, Robert Forrant

New England Journal of Public Policy

The small-firm metalworking industry is routinely characterized by cutthroat competition and fierce privacy. Yet, since the late 1980s, the members of the western Massachusetts chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association have participated in an education, training, and technology diffusion network characterized by a high degree of interfirm cooperation. Hundreds of workers and managers have take part in group training sessions and seminars. The reconstruction of the skill base is central to the MechTech apprenticeship program through which apprentices spend four years in participating firms, exiting the program as licensed machinists, tool and die makers, or moldmakers. In an …

Governing Massachusetts Public Schools: Assessing The 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, John Portz

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 created a number of important changes in public education. In the area of local governance, the act was guided by a corporate model in which authority and responsibilities were reallocated among school committees, superintendents, principals, and newly created school councils. School committees in particular assumed a policymaking role, and superintendents became the chief executive officers of their school districts. This article, based on responses to a mail survey, is an early assessment of the act's governance changes. Superintendents are most satisfied with their role, especially their authority over principals and teachers. School committee …

Umass Chooses A Political Executive: The Politics Of A Presidential Search, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

Horace Mann, the father of American public education, had served as president of the Massachusetts Senate prior to becoming the state's first secretary of education. Since then, as reformers succeeded in removing politics from the sacred groves of academe, appointing a politician to head the state's educational system fell into disfavor. Relatively recently, however, there have been two abortive attempts by politicians to reach the executive pinnacle of public higher education. Both James Collins, in 1986, and David Bartley, in 1991, were defeated in the quest to achieve this goal. Historical understanding of these battles is necessary to comprehend what …

An Implementation Analysis Of The Day Care Law In The National Capital Region, Vicente C. Reyes Phd

Dr. Vicente C Reyes Jr

The implementation of the Day Care Law in the National Capital Region can be better appreciated in the light of the success and failure of the implementing agent of the Law, which is the day care center. The study looks at the status and the strengths and weaknesses of the delivery systems of the day care center. Aside from measuring the influence of the organization and management and the environment of the implementing agencies of the Day Care Law, the study also analyzes the different issues confronting the operations of the day care centers. A look into the nature of …

Rising Temperatures: Rising Tides, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Transboundary environmental problems do not distinguish between political boundaries. Global warming is expected to cause thermal expansion of water and melt glaciers. Both are predicted to lead to a rise in sea level. We must enlarge our paradigms to encompass a global reality and reliance upon global participation.

The Lucille N. Austin Memorial Lecture, October 10, 1995, Augusta Souza Kappner

Books

Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner addresses the trends of the day in social welfare and education policy.

Income And The School Funding Formula: A Contrary View, Ralph Townsend

Maine Policy Review

School funding in Maine remains a controversial and complex issue. Economist Ralph Townsend provides one perspective on this issue in his commentary.

Better High Schools: What Would Create Them?, Theodore R. Sizer

New England Journal of Public Policy

The American desire to improve education has set off a flurry of activity to reform schools. In such a climate of restructuring, Sizer explores what better secondary schools might "look like" if indeed they existed. His consideration of the improved high school is based on five particular conditions — all of which support teachers and students in their engagement with the serious stuff of learning and all of which must exist in one form or another for schools to be effective. The conditions are cast as questions. Sizer locates the responsibility for school reform broadly, from the heart of a …

Parent Involvement In Urban Schools: The View From The Front Of The Classroom, Frances Gamer, Kathleen Mccarthy Mastaby

New England Journal of Public Policy

American educational reform movements focus on efforts to restructure our schools to include all interested parties, especially parents, in the decision-making process. Nowhere is involvement more crucial than in America's inner-city urban neighborhoods. As parents are given a greater voice in their child's school, educators must join them as collaborators. This article identifies elements that impeded parental involvement and recognizes positive and encouraging techniques leading toward successful family-school-community partnerships. An alliance between groups too long seen as opponents rather than proponents must be established.

The Impact Of School Spending On Student Achievement: Results Of Meap Statewide Tests, Robert D. Gaudet

New England Journal of Public Policy

Examining school spending and student achievement as measured by the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program tests on a community-by-community basis indicates that high spending in and of itself does not ensure achievement. While every community must have adequate funding to deliver an acceptable level of education services, there is a wide variation in achievement in similar communities with similar spending. The data suggest that other factors influence outcomes at least as much as spending.

Searching For A Umass President: Transitions And Leaderships, 1970-1991, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article traces the history of the five presidential successions that have taken place at the University of Massachusetts since 1970. No manual or campus report will reveal the one best way to conduct a presidential search. How to do so is not easy to prescribe. Suitably fleshed out, the events surrounding these five searches tell us a great deal about what works and what doesn't. It is one thing to offer case illustrations of past events, another to say how they might be put to use by other people in another era with quite different situations and concerns. In …

Wanted: Live-In Teachers, Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland all have it--a residency requirement--and so does Providence. Having to live in the city for which you work has been deemed to be an important measure in helping to bring people back into the city, and that was the reason it was included in the 1980 Home Rule Charter."

How To Keep Teachers In R.I., Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"Should Providence city employees be forced to live in the city? The Home Rule Charter, adopted five years ago, requires them to do so. The executive secretary of the Providence Teachers' Union states that this requirement should not apply to teachers. But, is dropping the residency requirement the answer to the problem of finding adequate numbers of substitute and full-time teachers?"

Editorial: Handcuffs For Teachers; The Dilemma Of The Experimental School Teacher, Rosemary Bliven, Sybil May

69 Bank Street

Volume 2 Number 2, November 1935

Handcuffs for Teachers by Rose Emery Bliven discusses the "concerted attempt that is now being made throughout the United States to control the teacher..."

The Dilemma of the Experimental School Teacher by Sybil May discusses the similar problem private school teachers have with public school teachers in regard to academic freedom.