Search

To operationalize the extent to which firms place a strategic emphasis on human capital and human resource management (HRM), we draw on the strategy field's dominant logic theory and on the emerging literature on executive compensation for the heads of major firm functions, such as HRM. Specifically, we investigate whether the pay of human resource executives (HREs) relative to other members of top management teams (TMTs) is related to firm performance. After controlling for the endogeneity of HRE status as one of the highest paid executives on the TMT, we find in a comprehensive sample of the largest US firms that HRE relative pay is positively related to firm financial performance, specifically Tobin's Q. We also find that the relationship of HRE relative pay with Tobin's Q is stronger in relatively smaller and younger firms in our sample. The findings suggest that a strategic emphasis on human capital and HRM leads to higher firm value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), particularly gelatinases (MMP-2/-9), are involved in neurovascular impairment after stroke. Detection of gelatinase activity in vivo can provide insight into blood-brain barrier disruption, hemorrhage, and nerve cell injury or death. We applied gelatinase-activatable cell-penetrating peptides (ACPP) with a cleavable l-amino acid linker to examine gelatinase activity in primary neurons in culture and ischemic mouse brain in vivo We found uptake of Cy5-conjugated ACPP (ACPP-Cy5) due to gelatinase activation both in cultured neurons exposed to n-methyl-d-aspartate and in mice after cerebral ischemia. Fluorescence intensity was significantly reduced when cells or mice were treated with MMP inhibitors or when a cleavage-resistant ACPP-Cy5 was substituted. We also applied an ACPP dendrimer (ACPPD) conjugated with multiple Cy5 and/or gadolinium moieties for fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in intact animals. Fluorescence analysis showed that ACPPD was detected in sub-femtomole range in ischemic tissues. Moreover, MRI and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry revealed that ACPPD produced quantitative measures of gelatinase activity in the ischemic region. The resulting spatial pattern of gelatinase activity and neurodegeneration were very similar. We conclude that ACPPs are capable of tracing spatiotemporal gelatinase activity in vivo, and will therefore be useful in elucidating mechanisms of gelatinase-mediated neurodegeneration after stroke.

Performance management systems have been an inevitable consequence of the development of government research evaluations (GREs) of university research, and have also inevitably affected the working life of academics. The aim of this paper is to track the development of GREs over the past 25 years, by critically evaluating their adoption in the UK and Australian higher education sector and their contribution to the commodification of academic labour, and to highlight the resultant tensions between GREs and academic freedom. The paper employs a literature-based analysis, relying on publicly available policy documents and academic studies over the period 1985-2010. GREs are a global phenomenon emanating from new public management reforms and while assessments of university research have been welcomed, they have attracted critique based on their design, the manner in which they have been applied, and the unintended consequences of their implementation on academic freedom in particular. Consistent with international research on the impact of GREs, Australian research assessments appear to be undoing the academic freedom that is central to successful research. Further empirical research on the impact of GREs on academics is urgently needed.

Education managers are typically inexperienced in and often reluctant to initiate cost-savings actions. Budget cuts may be poorly targeted, and students, particularly economically disadvantaged students, are swept up in the process as collateral damage. In California and Washington, bad budget cutting has already begun. Governors in these two states have acquiesced to employee demands and have protected educator jobs at the expense of students' time to learn. The greatest risk of all is to the past quarter century of efforts to render America's schools more effective. Unless means are identified for making schools more productive, that is, doing better with less, reform momentum is in serious jeopardy. School productivity, measured as educational outcomes divided by labor or financial inputs, has declined dramatically. Indeed, relative to sectors such as communication, finance, manufacturing, and agriculture, the public schools are highly labor-intensive. The productivity picture is made worse by the resistance of schools to augment teachers' efforts with new instructional technologies. In this article, the authors discuss why school productivity matters and offer strategies for improving productivity in times of austerity. (Contains 3 figures.)

Educational Leadership talks with four experts in the fields of education policy and finance about how schools can weather the current financial crisis. Michael A. Rebell focuses on the recession and students' rights; Allan Odden suggests five steps schools can take to improve in tough times; Anthony Rolle describes the tension between equity and efficiency; and James W. Guthrie spells out where schools will--and won't--get the most for their money.

If one relies on newspaper headlines for education funding information, one might conclude that America's schools suffer from a perpetual fiscal crisis, every year perched precariously on the brink of financial ruin, never knowing whether there will be sufficient funding to continue operating. Budgetary shortfalls, school district bankruptcies, teacher and administrator layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, pension system defaults, shorter school years, ever-larger classes, faculty furloughs, fewer course electives, reduced field trips, foregone or curtailed athletics, outdated textbooks, teachers having to make do with fewer supplies, cuts in school maintenance, and other tales of fiscal woe inevitably captivate the news media, particularly during the late-spring and summer budget and appropriations seasons. Yet somehow, as the budget-planning cycle concludes and schools open their doors in the late summer and fall, virtually all classrooms have instructors, teachers receive their paychecks and use their health plans, athletic teams play, and textbooks are distributed. Regrettably, this story is seldom accorded the same media attention as are the prospects of budget reductions and teacher layoffs. For a variety of reasons, from one year to the next, schools almost always have more real revenue for each of their enrolled students. For the past hundred years, with rare and short exceptions and after controlling for inflation, public schools have had both more money and more employees per student in each succeeding year. Teacher salaries have increased more than 42 percent in constant dollars over the past half century, while educators' working conditions, health plans, and retirement arrangements have become ever more commodious. Moreover, school-related revenues and employment levels have increased even when the economy (as measured by Gross Domestic Product or GDP) turned down, unlike what typically happens in sectors such as manufacturing and retail sales, where recessions trigger cutbacks in personnel and profits. Now, local school funding is apparently more secure than ever before. For the first time in history, the federal government has assumed a dramatic new school-funding role, that of banker of last resort, providing stopgap revenues to the nation's schools during economic downturns. The Obama administration's unprecedented injection of billions in federal funding for schools likely ensures that education's resource cushion will continue for at least the current downturn and possibly for much longer. (Contains 5 figures.)

One hundred fifty years ago, cotton was considered as the king of all United States' agricultural exports. Cotton's dollar value far exceeded that of any other mid-19th-century United States trade item, much more than tobacco, fish, forest products, raw materials for manufacturing, or manufactured items. Indeed, in the mid-19th century, cotton was sufficiently large in terms of export value as to render the soon-to-emerge Confederacy the fourth largest economy in the world, behind only England, France, and what would soon come to be known as "Union States." However, at its agricultural outset, cotton had a large downside, too. Through a series of connected conditions, Black Belt (cotton growing) counties, and the states of which they are a part, have been economically handicapped ever since the initiation of cotton growing. The interaction of wide-scale commercial cotton farming, the primitive economic conditions that it reinforced, the institution of African slavery, and the growth and ideological hegemony of southern aristocratic culture condemned the Black Belt (which was named originally for the dark, loamy soils of central Alabama and only later for its racial composition) to seeming perpetual poverty. The authors discuss cotton's connection to slavery and its lasting legacy of poverty. One of the key implications of this article is that Black Belt counties confront shortages of resources and human and community capital that has the potential to create a perpetual cycle of poverty. (Contains 9 figures and 3 tables.)

While there is a wealth of research on school finance equity and adequacy, and school finance theory clearly documents differences between the two concepts, no study has examined whether the reforms engendered by each approach actually differ in terms of resource distribution. The present study examines the issues using district-level data on expenditure by function from two, large national data-sets: the US Census of Governments School System Finance File F-33 (1972-2002) and the National Center for Education Statistics' Longitudinal School District Fiscal-Nonfiscal File (1990-2000). A difference-in-differences estimator with state and year fixed effects indicates that both court-mandated equity and adequacy reforms decrease resource inequities. However, estimates based on data from the F-33 file show negligible differences between equity and adequacy reforms, while estimates based on data from the Fiscal-Nonfiscal File indicate adequacy reform does not decrease horizontal inequities as much as court-mandated equity reform. To explore these contradictory findings, we implement a two-stage regression approach that examines whether court-mandated adequacy reform is associated with a state funding mechanism accounting for certain educational needs of students. Court-mandated adequacy reform does not result in the allocation of additional resources to low-income districts when compared with states under court-mandated equity reform. We conclude that, contrary to school finance theory, resource distribution patterns following court-mandated equity and adequacy reforms are not statistically different. (Contains 7 tables, 1 footnote, and 14 notes.)

Educational research and professional practice, though assuredly capable of providing reciprocal benefits one to the other, have, nevertheless, evolved into decidedly different activities. Increasingly, each has a separate and defensible technical basis. Doctoral programs in education should honor and reflect, not conflate, the differences. The Ed.D. is now deserving of prominent billing as the degree of choice for education practitioners.

A nationwide strategy for improving Ed.D. programs is needed to overcome two important dilemmas that are typical in schools of education: low academic status for Ed.D. programs and an overreliance on tuition as a source of revenue. Other major hindrances are the lack of agreement about research-based standards, a weak alignment with other elements of educational reform, and fuzzy accreditation standards. The authors then discuss two broad strategies for reversing the downward spiral in educational leadership programs: a compact among elite schools of education to improve their Ed.D. programs and a National Academy of Educational Leadership. For both strategies, the authors explore lessons from a range of analogies drawn from experience both in the United States and internationally.

This article asserts that although there has been a consistently increasing demand on both the national and state levels for alignment of resources (inputs) to improved student outcomes (outputs), the lack of a systematic and well-defined policy portfolio has limited reform effectiveness. This article specifically examines the overreliance on standards and curriculum as reform mechanisms and the often distracting and unproductive judicial interventions connected to equity and adequacy litigation. (Contains 1 table, 10 figures, and 2 footnotes.)

The inadequacy of present-day public school financial and performance reporting restricts policymakers. With existing spending and activity information now generally available, public officials can determine only overall education resource levels and make allocative decisions only among gross input categories such as relative amounts of labor and materials. If policymakers knew with greater precision for what activities school resources were actually employed and could systematically link resources to results, the consequence might well be greater (a) knowledge regarding schooling and progress toward an "education production function," (b) distributional equity of educational resources, and (c) opportunity for informed public discussion of education. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Beginning in the late 1960s, and accelerating unabated through to the present, plaintiffs have filed more than 125 court cases questioning the constitutionality of school district and school spending levels. Much of the litigation, particularly early on, centered on the issue of funding "equity." Few would seek to deny American public school students access to the courts when inadequate school funding threatens their chances for achieving academic, and ultimately economic, success. But the contemporary school-finance movement is becoming a self-serving cause whereby plaintiffs have gained relatively uncontested judicial access to the policy process. In this article, the authors examine this trend which is threatening to erode public interest in and support for K-12 education policy. Specifically, they examine the often faulty procedures used to prove a lack of adequacy to the courts and set forth three recommendations by which adequacy-driven reform and cost modeling strategies can become more effective: (1) invest in research; (2) raise the standards; and (3) change the venue from the courthouse to the statehouse.

This article contends that a new concept of education finance has emerged in response to substantial alterations in the U.S. education policy environment. The major distinction between modern and old is that the latter was principally concerned with arrangements of inputs in K-12 schooling. The former, modern-era education finance, is concerned with relationships of inputs to schooling outcomes. This modern education finance paradigm provokes a need for (1) research and data extending into the operations of education itself, not just financing; (2) far more fine-grained information than now exists regarding education inputs, throughputs, and outputs; (3) cohesive concepts for linking these data elements with one another to better understand their interactions; (4) an expanded set of outcome measures; (5) information about how previously public sector, dominant-education offerings interact with expanded private market conditions; and (6) better linkage between K-12 and postsecondary data and analyses.

Classroom teachers are among the few remaining employee groups whose evaluations and remuneration are generally unrelated to their performance. However, it is difficult to appraise a teacher's effectiveness by achievement of pupils because learning is not under an instructor's complete influence. New measurement techniques are emerging, however, that offer a prospect of discerning how much an individual teacher's instructional efforts contribute to learning. This article identifies impediments to implementing "value-added" testing, recommends a development effort to address unresolved issues, and specifies components of a proposed Education Professions Performance Development Act that could direct federal resources. These recommendations include alterations to No Child Left Behind Act regulations to further a fair and accurate teacher assessment and reward system based on performance.

This essay describes significant legal and policy system changes in America's 50-year crusade to curtail or eliminate racially segregated public school. In hindsight, a more forceful initial policy system stance regarding judicial enforcement might well have resulted in greater desegregation success. However, after 5 decades of judicial and operational compliance trial and error, United States public schools presently appear almost as racially segregated as before the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954, 1955). In effect, over the 50 years since 1954, the nation has ricocheted from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to Brown and, practically if not constitutionally, back to Plessy. The contemporary cause of school segregation rests more with income and housing patterns than with explicit apartheid policies. Regardless of cause, however, even if there now exists something much closer to equal educational opportunity than was true 50 years ago, there clearly is not anything close, nationally, to racial parity of educational achievement. Mindful of the remaining achievement gap, this article posits that it is time to reconsider past policies built almost exclusively around busing and achieving physical mixes of Black and White students. Instead, it is now time to rely on new strategies involving elevated expectations, explicit learning standards, notions of financial "adequacy," and effective accountability. In effect, it is time to measure racial policy progress by student successes, not by transportation and school resource processes.

A Nation at Risk (NAR; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) proclaimed in 1983 that U.S. K-12 educational achievement was on a downward trajectory and that American technological and economic preeminence was consequently imperiled. Both assertions were incorrect. American education achievement was not then declining and the nation's economy continues today as the most powerful in the world. Despite being wrong on these measures, NAR motivated much that is right for American Education. The report propelled a move from measuring school quality by resources received and onto a plane where performance is judged on outcomes students' achieve. This article asserts that this shift in the education appraisal paradigm is likely, in the long run, to render the nation's education system more effective for students and more useful for the larger society. Hence we arrive at a major postulate with which this article is concerned, "Can a report that is wrong result in new policy conditions that are right?" However, we raise a larger issue. NAR also contributed forcefully to a vastly enhanced federal government presence in American education. A centuries-long American tradition of state plenary authority and local operating discretion is now giving way to a pressing national uniformity of federally imposed accountability requirements. Whether or not this will prove a fruitful long-run avenue is less clear.

Responds to Goodlad's article, arguing that the institutional regard in which schools of education are held and their long-run operational prospects cannot be separated from broader policy issues (e.g., the education system's accountability and incentive agreements). Only the development of an empirically based ability to discern good teaching can elevate the profession and future fortunes of schools of education. (SM)

Public control of the schools has steadily eroded in recent years. Population growth and widespread consolidation of school districts, depoliticization of school board elections, adoption of the business model of professional school management, development of a multilevel school bureaucracy, and unionization of teachers all have combined to substantially lessen public control of the schools. Two approaches to reforms that may help restore public control are now being considered: (1) reduction of the size or redefinition of the basic management unit of schooling in order to restore personal contact between administrators and the public and (2) introduction of market choices or measures designed to increase direct citizen participation in school decisionmaking. An experimental school voucher plan that allows parents to choose the school their children will attend is now being tested in the Alum Rock district near San Jose, California. Another plan being tried in Florida makes each school site responsible for its own budgeting and accounting and provides an elected Parent Advisory Council to advise the principal. Although it is still too early to evaluate either experiment, both of these reform efforts seem to promise ways to increase public control of the schools. (Author/JG)