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Preparing students to enter the workforce and attracting and retaining good teachers are Americans' top educational priorities for the next administration in Washington, regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential election, the 2024 PDK Poll finds. While eight in 10 or more Americans pick those two items as priorities, other policy priorities also win broad support. Seven in 10--or more--favor an increased focus on addressing student mental health, helping students who have fallen behind academically, and college affordability. The survey was produced by Langer Research Associates for PDK International, with data collected June 21 to July 1, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a representative, random national sample of 1,009 adults.

Many training initiatives are underway to increase implementation of evidence-based practice (EBPs) in mental healthcare. However, little is known about what types of trainings and supports yield the highest reach and engagement. Supported by a tax-funded, countywide initiative to improve access to quality care for youths, the current mixed methods study evaluates mental health (MH) provider reach, or registering for the training initiative, and engagement, or participation in training activities, for several EBP training and implementation supports. MH providers were offered free 1) formal EBP workshops; 2) a biweekly learning community; 3) individual case consultation; and 4) confidential online clinical feedback system. To register, interested providers (N = 698) completed a web-based assessment measuring clinical practice information, organizational implementation climate, and EBP knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Thirteen providers, selected via purposeful sampling stratified by level of participation, completed semi-structured qualitative interviews. While the training initiative achieved high reach (66% of county agencies had a provider register), far fewer providers engaged substantially in training. Quantitative results indicated that providers whose professional discipline was not psychology, had higher baseline EBP knowledge, more extensive use of common evidence-based strategies, and less extensive use of other therapy strategies, engaged in more training. Rapid qualitative analysis of interviews expanded upon these findings and illuminated provider, organizational, system, practical, and training activity-specific barriers and facilitators to engagement. Findings suggest the importance of identifying strategies for improving provider engagement in training activities beyond workshops. Implications for future research and training initiatives are discussed.

In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, education policy debates have thrust a heightened focus on the provision of adequate school resources and on educator well-being and turnover, concerns particularly critical for school districts that serve large shares of economically disadvantaged students. In this article, we investigate voter and parent support for school spending initiatives in Missouri by analyzing data from two representative statewide surveys, one of the state's voters and one of the state's parents, focusing on total school spending and spending on teacher salaries. Missouri presents an especially salient setting in which to examine issues of equity in school spending, with below-average school spending and bottom-decile average teacher salaries. In this context, we investigate longstanding predictors of school spending support, including political ideology, alongside new hypotheses, including those pertaining to regional spending inequality and differences between voter and parent constituencies. While political ideology predicted school spending and teacher salary preferences, it did so more strongly for voters than for parents, an important consideration amid heightened political tensions in policy debates. Parent preferences, on the other hand, were more likely to be predicted by opinions of local and statewide school quality. Both voters and parents indicated sensitivity to regional spending inequality with respect to total school spending but not with respect to teacher salaries. Collectively, these findings may inform policymaking efforts in Missouri and similar prevailingly conservative contexts to use constituent preferences to guide legislative efforts.

Educational public-private partnerships (EPPPs) promise to increase education access and quality in developing countries, provided they have an adequate design that restricts the distribution of subsidies including targeted programs, centralized controlled enrolment, and accountability. This study investigates the effects of publicly subsidized private schools (PSPS) in Colombia--a type of EPPP program that follows all of these recommendations. We use propensity score and regression techniques to identify PSPS effects on student achievement, measured by national standardized tests. Our results show that Colombian PSPS serve vulnerable students, who are fairly similar to those attending traditional public schools (TPS). Nevertheless, students at PSPS underperform compared to TPS students. Our conclusion suggests that design restrictions may prevent student selection and self-selection, but do not guarantee quality improvement for disadvantaged students at subsidized schools. We also argue that design restrictions for PSPS may not be enough when private providers are scarce or difficult to attract for serving the most disadvantaged population.

Public opinion toward teachers and other public sector workers is an important factor in Ontario provincial politics. This article uses public opinion data to measure, and identify the correlates of, resentment and admiration of these groups, and to identify the relationship between these attitudes and support for political parties in Ontario. Survey data from over 4,000 Ontarians, collected at the time of the 2022 provincial election, show that Ontarians have greater admiration for, and less resentment toward, teachers than toward other provincial government workers. The data also reveal several factors related to these attitudes, including comparative assessments of compensation and workload, and relationships with members of these groups. Finally, the data show that attitudes toward teachers, but not other public sector workers, are related to provincial vote choice, with negative attitudes toward teachers predicting PC Party support. Teachers are clearly a more salient "target" of resentment in Ontario provincial politics. These findings have implications for educational policy and the tactics of teacher unions.

In 2018, thousands of teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona walked off the job to protest low salaries and increase school funding. These strikes were significant because they were statewide and took place in "right to work" states. We analyze news media articles published in these states about the teachers' strikes for insights into how local news media coverage might reflect and shape public opinion about teachers and teachers' work. Using the social construction of target populations as a framework for the analysis, we analyze news media articles within and across the three states. We conclude that the news media coverage of the strikes in the three states diverged from national newspaper coverage in ways that may have increased the general public's support for teachers and the teaching profession in these states during this period. Our analysis provides insights into possible counternarratives that can interrupt neoliberal narratives about teachers and teaching.

This study explores the role of the welfare state in reducing young people not being in education, employment, or training (NEET)s across 15 European countries. Using data from the Survey of Adult Skills in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in combination with the Social Expenditure Database, we conducted cross-national analysis to reveal whether the increase in public social spending moderates the risk of being NEET at a young adult age, especially for socially disadvantaged young people. Our results highlighted that the rise of one percentage point of public social spending per gross domestic product, including social expenditure on education, active labor market, and unemployment, is significantly associated with decreasing the odds of being NEET. Furthermore, these social expenditures appeared to lower the NEET risk given socially disadvantaged backgrounds suggesting that young people with low educational levels, whose parents have low educational attainment levels, non-immigrant families, and females are likely to benefit given the robust social protection system. These findings suggest that public social spending may be an effective investment in promoting the social involvement of young people from socially disadvantaged background.

This article explores the factors associated with support for a merger of Ontario's two publicly funded school systems (secular and Catholic). Drawing upon survey data from over 2,000 Ontarians, it investigates the sociodemographic and attitudinal correlates of opinions toward school system reform. We find evidence that both political attitudes and religious identities are associated with school system attitudes, but that religious identity--specifically Catholicism--has a much more powerful impact. Our findings suggest that coalitions of support and opposition to a school system merger in Ontario are complex and not driven by a single obvious cleavage.

Globally, the increasing cost of university education, growing student enrolments and weak economic of nations have caused a reduction in public funding for university education. This decline in public funding seems to have increased tuition fees, caused deterioration of infrastructure, thereby affecting student access to university education. In the Global South particularly, Ghana and South Africa, there is the quest for universities to widen access. This is as a result of the perceived association of the activities of universities to socio-economic development. However, funds allocated by these governments to the sector is woefully inadequate. The study reveals that public universities in South Africa and Ghana rely on alternative sources such as fees of international students and non-traditional learners to enhance their fiscal strength but this seems inadequate owing to the financial strain that comes with the growth in domestic student numbers.

In the framework of policies against the effects of climate change on public health, mobility policies based on zero carbon dioxide emissions have focused their interest on the implementation of bicycle lanes, the bicycle motor subsidy and restriction of automobiles. In this sense, the objective of this paper has been to establish the reliability and validity of an instrument that measures the perceptions of risk and utility, as well as the intentions of voting in favor of electoral proposals and candidates that support the urban sustainability policy in Subject d mobility. A non-experimental, cross-sectional and exploratory study was carried out with a non-probabilistic sample selection of 250 residents of the metropolitan area of Mexico City. From a structural model. The factors cited were found to correlate positively and significantly, but it is recommended to extend the study to the contrast of the model in other scenarios with local elections and mobility policy based on the use of the bicycle.

Nearly 70 percent of American students enroll in postsecondary education immediately after graduating high school. Yet college and university completion rates remain highly disparate across social and economic groups. White students in the US are 20 percent more likely than Black and Latino students to graduate, and students from high-income backgrounds are roughly five times more likely to graduate than their lower-income peers. As a result, many students leave higher education without a degree, bearing debt that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. The upshot is that much of the $1.7 trillion in student loan obligations today is held by those who cannot afford to repay it--an immediate crisis for millions of individuals and a looming threat to the US economy. How did we arrive at this juncture? And what should we do from here? For this Policy Dialogue, the "HEQ" editors asked Sara Goldrick-Rab and David Labaree to explore the past, present, and future of pressing issues facing American higher education. Goldrick-Rab is professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University as well as President and Founder of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice in Philadelphia. She is also the chief strategy officer for emergency aid at Edquity, a student financial success and emergency aid company, and founder of Believe in Students, a nonprofit distributing emergency aid. Labaree is a past president of the History of Education Society and the Lee L. Jacks Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Their dialogue takes readers on a quick and heady jaunt across time, across the country, and across almost all institutional types in higher education. "HEQ" Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

Currently college promise programs are proliferating in number at the local and state levels. Most promise programs provide financial resources beyond conventional state and federal student aid to students who live in designated places and meet local- or state-defined eligibility criteria.There is an immense variety of models and funding designs for these programs. In this study, we conducted a rigorous content analysis of the public web sites for a diverse subsample of 35 promise programs to explore how college promise programs promote student academic and financial readiness. Although our analysis made it clear that there is more to learn about promise programs, including understanding general administrative processes and program operations, we highlight several design and implementation considerations that may increase the capacity of these programs to promote equity in higher education access and success.

Public investment in education and training occupies an important proportion in Vietnam public budget, approximately 20%, equivalent to 5% GDP. Public investment in education and training has many positive benefits and impact on the economy and society by contributing to economic growth, by improving the national productivity, people's qualification and intellectual level well as reducing unemployment, poverty in a country. On the basis of an empirical analysis in Vietnam, this paper proposes several relevant recommendation for Vietnam government to improve the performance of public investment in education and training by making contribution to ensure suitable investment structure as well as uphold important role of education and training to the development of the economy and society.

Limited research has been done to date on the extent of public funding of Open Educational Resources (OER) within basic education (K-12 equivalent) in South Africa. As claims have been made about the potential cost reductions that come with using OER, this study aimed to establish a benchmark of public spending on educational resources, uncover how much is being spent on OER and assess cost-savings of OER adoption. A desk review and document analysis of official information sources on South African basic education was conducted to develop a conceptual understanding of funding allocations the South African government uses for educational resources. A review of publicly available government reports and budgets showed that there is insufficient information at this time to determine how much is being spent on OER specifically or to act as a benchmark for potential cost savings of OER. This study highlights the information gaps which would need to be filled in order to make claims about OER and their potential as cost savers.

Over the last few decades, the active promotion of or government acquiescence in a surge of private higher education (PHE) has become a common phenomenon globally. This study examines the specific contributions and pitfalls of private higher education institutions (PHEIs) using questionnaires, interviews and documentary analysis as data gathering tools. The findings reveal that private higher education is perceived as having significant contributions to make in addressing the wider demands of access and gender parity, and local and economic development. However, the sector is equally liable to a wide range of pitfalls related to its poor image, substandard quality, illicit behaviour and prohibitive regulations. It argues that if the current deficiencies of the sector are to be addressed in a meaningful way, more needs to be done in terms of enhancing the capacity of institutions, enforcing the rule of law and engendering public support through improved delivery and image.

This paper examines what it means to be an activist and to do activist work in the Australian contemporary university. In a context of globalisation, massification and marketisation, what does academic or scholar activism look like? In a time of political uncertainty about fee deregulation, further cuts to public funding and changes to the income-contingent loans scheme, what does it mean to be an activist or to do activist work? And what happens when activist attention turns to the higher education sector and the operations of the university? This paper examines these broad questions at an intimate level, presenting a reflective narrative of an individual career in academic activism marked by a long-standing scholarly interest in the nature and work of universities, academic and professional roles, teaching experience in multiple disciplines and involvement in union representation. In this paper, the reflections of an individual academic activist, Rosie, are embedded in a contextual discussion of university governance, regulatory and auditing frameworks, the academic workforce, gender inequality, and learning and teaching in higher education in Australia.

K-12 Illinois public school facilities need to be repaired and rebuilt. The County School Facility Occupation Tax (CSFT) was made law in 2007 in Illinois to help provide funding for Illinois public school facilities. This single case study, qualitative research, outlines findings from 86, face-to- face, phone and email interviews and approximately 79 documents analyzed related to the CSFT in initiative in Mary County, (a pseudonym) Illinois. Through interviews and analyzed documents, five themes emerge related to why the CSFT did not pass on Election Day in Mary County in 2011. Themes ranged from lack of collaboration among school officials and use of the CSFT revenue unclear, to a lack of consideration of others, no opportunity for input and distrust of the process. With such a need for new and improved school facilities and the added burden of school funding being such a confusing and misunderstood topic, school leaders must find ways to effectively communicate with and encourage voters to pass school funding initiatives like the CSFT sales tax.

Public investments in repairs, modernization, and construction of schools cost billions. However, little is known about the nature of school facility investments, whether it actually changes the physical condition of public schools, and the subsequent causal impacts on student achievement. We study the achievement effects of nearly 1,400 capital campaigns initiated and financed by local school districts, comparing districts where school capital bonds were either narrowly approved or defeated by district voters. Overall, we find little evidence that these school capital campaigns improve student achievement. Event-study analysis focused on the students actually affected by large campus renovations also generates very precise zero estimates of achievement effects. Thus, U.S. school capital campaigns financed by local districts--the predominant method through which facility investments are made--may be a limited tool for realizing substantial gains in student achievement or closing achievement gaps. [This article was published in "Journal of Public Economics," v140 p13-29 Aug 2016.]

This article examines the policy construction of leadership at all levels in Scottish education. In the current reforms 'leadership at all levels' is being used to mobilise support around changes to the role of the headteacher and of the local authorities (LAs) to bring about greater system alignment. From a critical policy analysis six themes are reported on: (1) Social Justice Ideology and the Equity Agenda -- Perception Versus Reality?; (2) Mobilising Support for Reform -- Managing Perceptions of the Public?; (3) Mobilising Support for New Governance -- Managing Perceptions of the Teaching Profession?; (4) Mobilising Support for Restructuring -- Managing the Middle Tier?; (5) Mobilising Support for Empowerment and Collaboration -- Leadership at all Levels?; (6) Policy Rhetoric Versus Practice Realities -- System Alignment through Empowerment?

Understanding the funding requirements of public institutions starts with recognizing them as state assets with capacity to meet state needs, especially those that disproportionately serve underrepresented, low-income, or rural student populations and adult learners. As policy makers wrestle with resource allocation decisions under unfavorable conditions, they could benefit from an evidence-based framework designed to help them recognize and consider the level of public support necessary to provide for the most basic of institutional funding requirements. Such a framework would offer insights that help policy makers avoid making decisions that contribute to institutions drifting toward fiscal peril. It would also encourage a strategic conversation about which institutions are addressing state priorities and the level of funding needed to ensure that they are able to continue doing so (Prescott et al., 2021). This article summarizes findings from a white paper drafted by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems for a series on public finance of higher education sponsored by the State Higher Education Executive Officers national association (2020). The paper also proposes a framework for thinking about institutional budgets and their basic foundational costs (Prescott et al., 2021).

After fifty years of almost continuous economic growth in Thailand, it is now possible to reevaluate the developmental process of the education system. Until now, the structural indicators of education development that have been mainly used are the level and pace of the increases in public expenditure on education, the effect of increasing enrolment on social mobility, and the private and public distribution of investment in education. The impact of these factors undeniably offers a better understanding of the quantitative advances in education. However, the dynamics of the education system nowadays encounter structural limits related to both the integration of what is now widespread education within the social structures and Thailand's contribution to globalization. As a result, the contribution of education to the growth regime is increasingly questioned. The aim of this paper is to use a historical approach to explore this evolution. Theoretical and historical perspectives are combined within a quantitative history methodology, drawing on new time-series.

On September 22-24, 2013, the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Catholic Education hosted a conference on Catholic school financing on the Notre Dame campus, which drew experts on the subject from across the United States. This author, because of her roles as a Board Member of the Board of Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Chicago, chair of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Board, and member of the Executive Committee, was most interested in learning about public funding options that might be pursued for Chicago's Catholic schools. A recent study showed, not surprisingly, that the financial picture is worrisome for some of their schools, with operating expenses being much higher than in the era when schools were staffed primarily by members of religious orders. Some parishes are unable to provide the levels of financial support that they historically allocated to the parish school. Parents are sometimes unable to afford a tuition rate that would realistically cover school costs. Conference panel presentations offered useful information about the progress of school choice initiatives happening in various states, and the public funding sessions of the conference identified some strategies for building support for school choice. The conference emphasized coalition-building as critically important in states that have been convinced to adopt school choice legislation.

This article contains transcripts of a panel presentation from the 2013 Catholic Higher Education Collaborative conference, held on September 22, 23, and 24 at the University of Notre Dame. The panelists (Scott Jensen, Doug Tuthill, and Patrick Wolf) discussed current progress around the country in publicly-created, private school choice options for children in K-12 schools. In states that offer these options, parents have available either voucher programs or scholarship tax credit programs. How individual states were handling these options were discussed, with a major focus on what Florida was doing. Also highlighted was educational attainment. Research shows that the longer you stay in school, the extent to which you hit key benchmarks, such as high school graduation, college enrollment, college graduation, a whole slew of quality of life indicators improve for you--longevity, health, likelihood of intact marriage, likelihood of avoiding incarceration, lifetime earnings--all of these things are higher for people who have higher levels of educational attainment. Private school choice delivers a variety of educational benefits to students under many circumstances. It tends to spur effective public schools to improving slightly, parents love them, and they tend to enhance and not undermine the public purposes of education.