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The Afterschool Alliance's fourth edition of "America after 3PM" provides a detailed accounting of the circumstances and conditions of U.S. children during the hours of 3 to 6 p.m. and compares afterschool program participation and unmet demand statistics for 2020 with results from 2004, 2009, and 2014. It identifies trends in afterschool program offerings, parent satisfaction with their child's afterschool program, and overall parent perceptions of afterschool programs. Additionally, this report looks at traditionally marginalized communities, including children in low-income families and children of color, to examine opportunity gaps. The need for increased investment in afterschool is especially urgent with the coronavirus pandemic forcing many schools to move to a distance-learning model or operate on a hybrid schedule of in-person and virtual classes. The October 2020 survey of parents found that more than 3 in 4 agree that Congress should provide additional funding for afterschool programs to help provide a supervised, enriching environment during virtual school days. [For the 2014 edition, see "America after 3PM: Afterschool Programs in Demand" (ED611371). Additional funding for this report was provided by the Altria Group.]

In this brief, authors Michael Ettlinger, Jordan Hensley, and Julia Vieira analyze how much the governments of different countries spend, and on what, to illuminate the range of fiscal policy options available and provide a basis for determining which approaches work best. They report that the United States ranks twenty-fourth in government spending as a share of GDP out of twenty-nine countries for which recent comparable data are available. The key determinant of where countries rank in overall government spending is the amount spent on social protection. The United States ranks last in spending on social protection as a share of GDP and twenty-second in per capita spending. The United States ranks at or near the top in military, health care, education, and law enforcement spending. Measuring government spending by different methods and including tax expenditures does not appear to significantly alter the conclusion that the United States is a low-tax, low-spending country relative to the other countries examined, particularly when compared to its fellow higher-income countries. [This paper is an evolution of a previous work, "Comparing Public Spending and Priorities Across OECD Countries" (ED606844).]

Every week in the United States, nearly 11 million children younger than age 5 are in some type of child care arrangement. On average, these children spend 36 hours a week in child care. While parents are children's first and most important teachers, child care programs provide early learning for millions of young children daily, having a profound impact on their development and readiness for school. For many parents, one of the initial shocks in becoming a parent is discovering the high price of child care. "Parents and the High Cost of Child Care: 2013 Report" uses 2012 data to show the average fees families are charged for legally operating child care centers and family child care homes in every state and the District of Columbia. The report looks at why child care is so expensive and families' options for paying for child care. The following tabular appendixes are included: (1) 2012 Average Annual Cost of Full-Time Care by State; (2) 2012 Ranking of Least-Affordable Child Care for an Infant in a Center; (3) 2012 Ranking of Least-Affordable Child Care for a 4-Year-Old Child in a Center; (4) 2012 Ranking of Least-Affordable Child Care for a School-Aged Child in a Center; (5) 2012 Average Child Care Center Costs and Median Housing Costs by State; (6) 2012 Average Annual Costs of Full-Time Child Care in a Center and Public College Tuition and Fees by State; (7) 2012 Average Costs for Center-Based Care for an Infant Compared to Varying Poverty Levels; (8) 2012 Average Costs for Center-Based Care for a 4-Year-Old Compared to Varying Poverty Levels; (9) 2012 Average Costs for an Infant in a Family Child Care Home Compared to Varying Poverty Levels; (10) 2012 Average Costs for a 4-Year-Old in a Family Child Care Home Compared to Varying Poverty Levels; (11) 2012 Ranking of Affordability of Center-Based Care for Single Mothers; (12) 2012 Urban-Rural Cost Difference for Center-Based Care, by State; and (13) 2012 Urban-Rural Cost Difference for Family Child Care, by State. A list of resources for families and a glossary are also provided. [For the 2012 report, see ED559910.]

The infrastructure for arts and cultural support in the United States is complex and adaptive. Citizens who enjoy the arts can choose from a wide array of drama, visual and media arts, dance, music, and literature available in formal and informal settings--theaters, museums, and concert halls, but also libraries, schools, places of worship, open-air venues, restaurants or nightclubs, and, via technology, at home or on the move. In the last two decades, the number of arts and cultural organizations has grown, even as revenues from sales and attendance have risen to all-time high levels. In the following chapters, this monograph identifies three basic types of financial support for the arts: (1) direct public funds awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and by state, regional, and local arts agencies; (2) funding from federal departments and agencies other than the NEA; and (3) private sector contributions, which make up the lion's share of contributed income for arts organizations. This third revenue stream flows from individual and corporate donors and from charity foundations, and it flows more smoothly because of incentives in the U.S. tax system.

The Committee for Economic Development (CED) has a decades-old commitment to quality early childhood education. CED Trustees have always been in the forefront of the effort to promote early learning and development for all children. Over recent years, the case for investment in the early years of childhood has become stronger and more urgent. Scholars from several disciplines have learned more in fields that range from the first stages of development of the brain to the demonstrable life-long consequences of past high-quality investments in young children. Accordingly, the Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education reconvened to accumulate this knowledge, and to explain it to the newest generations of business leaders. CED continues to believe that these human investments are among the most important that the nation can make, and that the business community should take the lead in making this case to both policymakers and the public at large. (Contains 3 figures and 74 endnotes.)

In the last 50 years, more than half of America's sustained economic growth was created by the five percent of the workforce who create, manage, and maintain the processes and products of innovation: engineers, scientists, and advanced-degree technologists. America's science, technology, and math workforce is aging while jobs requiring specialized training are growing at five times the rate of other occupations. The supply of new workers in these fields is struggling to keep up with demand, and women remain severely underrepresented. Women make up half of the population and are a largely untapped resource that could prove essential in maintaining the technological competitiveness of the United States. This paper offers suggestions on how this country can begin to close the gender divide in science, technology, engineering, and math. (Contains 50 endnotes.)

At the heart of progressivism is the belief that government--not big government, or small government, but effective government--has a critical role to play in ensuring the well being of its citizens. Public spending serves an important function in pursuing economic growth objectives while ensuring that gains are widely distributed to promote broad-based increases in living standards. But governments' relative fiscal positions, how much they spend, and the composition of that spending is likely to make a difference in achieving these objectives. Member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--an international organization consisting primarily of developed, free-market economies--vary significantly in (1) their relative fiscal positions, or deficits and surpluses; (2) their amount of public spending; and (3) how they allocate spending across different categories to reflect priorities. This descriptive study examines how OECD countries have addressed the current economic situation through their fiscal balance sheets, and then goes on to consider similarities and differences in public spending across OECD countries through the prism of economic and social objectives. Countries are compared according to three relative measures of government spending: spending as a share of GDP, spending per capita, and spending by category as a percentage of total government expenditure.

This report highlights the history and importance of public education in the United States, dating back to its establishment as a necessary institution for the young republic and Horace Mann's efforts to promote a common school for all. The report focuses on how and why the U.S. system of public education came into being; the six core public missions that public schools have been expected to fulfill, such as unifying a diverse population, preparing people for democratic citizenship, and ensuring equal opportunities for all children; and why these missions are relevant today and why the nation must maintain them while pursuing reforms to help all schools live up to these core ideals. (Information and Data sources are referenced by page.)

This document examines the need to reform education in America. The goal of the United States is to double the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates with bachelor's degrees by 2015. A core set of recommendations are reviewed: (1) Build public support for making science, technology, engineering and math improvement a national priority; (2) Motivate U.S. students and adults to study and enter science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers, with a special effort geared to those in currently underrepresented groups; (3) Upgrade K-12 math and science teaching to foster higher student achievement; (4) Reform visa and immigration policies to enable the United States to attract and retain the best and brightest science, technology, math and engineering students from around the world to study for advanced degrees and stay to work in the United States; and (5) Boost and sustain funding for basic research, especially in the physical sciences and engineering.

During a typical week, as many as 14 million children and youth across the United States lack adult supervision during non-school hours. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the lack of structured and supervised afterschool programs in American communities contributes to a higher incidence of drug and alcohol use and delinquent or criminal behaviors. The growing attention to afterschool issues among municipal leaders is a reflection of increasing public support for expanded learning opportunities for America's young people. With the establishment of the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families (YEF Institute), the National League of Cities (NLC) has positioned itself to assist municipal officials in their efforts to increase the availability and improve the quality of expanded learning opportunities for children and youth in urban communities. Eight cities were selected through a competitive process to participate in the Municipal Leadership for Expanded Learning Opportunities (MLELO) technical assistance project. This report focuses on the accomplishments of the eight cities, the lessons they learned, and recommendations for other municipal officials embarking on this work. Each city story ends with "leadership keys" that were instrumental to that city's success and that other communities can replicate as they seek to improve and expand local afterschool programs. Appended are: (1) Team Contacts; (2) Collaborating Organizations; and (3) Resources. (Contains 12 footnotes and 12 resources.)

This report summarizes responses to a public opinion survey designed to reveal attitudes towards secondary education in other countries and compares these with attitudes in the United States. The survey was conducted in the United States and 11 other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED). The other countries were: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The survey asked questions related to six broad areas of concern: (1) the importance of subjects taught in schools, (2) the importance of schools developing certain personal and social qualities or aptitudes in students, (3) confidence that the subjects are taught well, (4) confidence that schools have a major effect on the development of personal and social qualities, (5) the important practices to emphasize in order for schools to achieve their goals, and (6) the importance of decision making at the school level. The report includes a narrative summary of responses, as well as a statistical analysis of the information collected from each country illustrated through 12 tables and 29 graphs. (MJP)

The experience of the Canadian provinces with large-scale testing programs is reviewed to suggest answers to questions currently discussed in the United States regarding the proposed national system of achievement testing. In the Canadian provinces, tests are linked to provincial curricula. Standards and assessments are not set by experts with no direct responsibility for implementing curriculum and instruction, but are prepared with the cooperation of teachers and administrators. Assessments cover broad subject areas and monitor the overall education system, and examinations certify individuals' mastery of specific high school courses. The provinces have not found it necessary to attach high stakes to all tests. Examination results are used in conjunction with teacher-assigned grades, and assessments have no consequences for individual students. Safeguards have been developed for each type of test; and provincial school funding formulas, which are independent of the testing process, tend to level resources among schools within a province. Most Canadian educators and the public support the testing programs, but they have no hard evidence that the programs lead directly to improved instruction. Appendixes list characteristics of the provincial programs, participants in site and telephone interviews, and major contributors to the report. Fourteen tables provide information about the testing programs. (Contains 8 references.) (SLD)

Policymakers worldwide are trying to figure how best to organize, govern, and support their education systems. They must manage multiple goals, such as workforce development, nurturing knowledgeable citizens, and ensuring educational opportunity. Some countries approach these issues with a public investment in teacher professionalization and a focus on equity of student outcomes, while others use a market-based, privatization approach to education. In this SCOPE brief report, Frank Adamson compares pairs of countries using these two different approaches. The data suggest that the education sector is better served by a public investment approach that supports each and every child than by a market-based, competition approach that creates winners and losers. While competition might work in sports leagues, countries should not create education systems in which children lose in the classroom. Adamson explains how and why some children can lose in a privatized system and makes recommendations to ensure that all children receive equitable, high quality educational opportunities. [This brief presents key findings and policy recommendations from the book, "Global Education Reform: How Privatization and Public Investment Influence Education Outcomes" (ED574655).]

The growth of private higher education has come as a surprise to most governments, which have tried to catch up in their regulatory and funding policymaking. In China, Malaysia and South Africa they have given legal recognition to previously disallowed private higher education and this has helped to fuel its subsequent growth. Some governments encourage private higher education in order to help to meet the rising demand for higher-level qualifications, and also to provide their "public service" counterparts with further challenges to improve their market responsiveness and overall efficiency and effectiveness. Such private entities tend to be highly reliant on income from tuition fees and similar student charges for their business models and lack the capability or funds to engage in research, a function increasingly confined in most countries (other than the United States) to well-established public universities. In the United States, reliance on tuition fee income and other student charges has led to persistent violations by for-profit providers, such as paying admissions tutors a commission to enrol students who have little or no ability to benefit from the education provided. This has led to a toughening of federal rules. In the United States, private institutions include some of the longest-established and most prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and this is also the picture in Japan and Chile. They possess large research and endowment funds and do not depend on tuition fees as their only or primary source of income. Long-established private universities of this kind have been rarely "for-profit", at least in a formal sense. Government regulation usually requires them to adopt a charitable-like "non-profit" structure in order to obtain tax advantages, even if they are business-like and quite commercial in their operations. These not-for-profit institutions cannot be organised to benefit private interests, their assets must be permanently dedicated to charitable purposes, and net earnings cannot be distributed to owners or shareholders. While international expansion of private higher education is occurring, most such provision is local, not least because local regulation and control remain significant barriers to such growth, even where individual countries' regulatory environment becomes more favourable. This paper explores different categories of private providers and their characteristics: not-for-profit private higher education institutions and for-profit institutions, including various types of for-profit institutions. (Contains 8 endnotes.)

To date, much thinking about research measurement and evaluation has been concentrated in the biomedical and health sciences. However, there is increasing recognition that funders of public research--in areas ranging from music to microbiology or from economics to engineering--need to justify their expenditure and demonstrate added value to the community. Furthermore, they need to be able to engage with stakeholder communities in illustrating the research process as well as the outcomes of research.

Two significant challenges hamper analyses of collective choice of educational vouchers. One is the multi-dimensional choice set arising from the interdependence of the voucher, public education spending, and taxation. The other is that household preferences between public and private schooling vary with the policy chosen. Even absent a voucher, preferences over public spending are not single-peaked; a middling level of public school spending may be less attractive to a household than either high public school spending or private education coupled with low public spending. We show that Besley and Coate's (1997) representative democracy provides a viable approach to overcome these hurdles. We provide a complete characterization of equilibrium with an endogenous voucher. We undertake a parallel quantitative analysis. For income distributions exhibiting substantial heterogeneity, such as the U.S. distribution, we find that no voucher arises in equilibrium. For tighter income distributions, however, a voucher arises. For example, with the income distribution of Douglas County, Colorado, where a voucher was recently adopted, our model predicts a positive voucher. Public support for a not-to-large voucher arises because the cross subsidy to public school expenditure from those switching to private schools outweighs the subsidy to those that attend private school without a voucher.

A study was conducted to examine the following questions: (1) How does the United States compare with Japan, West Germany, and Sweden on the basis of indicators of quality of life?; (2) How does the United States compare on the basis of economic performance since l960?; and (3) What appears to be the relationship in the four countries between the nature of the public sector and economic performance? The study drew on the universe of relevant data on indicators of quality of life and economic performance. The results of these comparisons were then used to examine the proposition that an increasing share of an economy devoted to government spending will act as a deterrent to economic progress, that is, that prosperity can be stimulated by less government involvement. The following were its major conclusions: (l) on the basis of 17 measures of quality of life, the U.S. performance was worst, whereas Sweden's performance was the best; (2) on the basis of 17 measures of economic performance, the United States again scored last among the four countries, and Japan's performance was the best; (3) during the period studied, the growth of civilian government in the United States also lagged behind that of the other three nations; and (4) the United States particularly lags behind these three commercial rivals in the share of its economy devoted to public investment for infrastructure. (A four-page reference list is found at the end of the study.) (NLL)