For decades, policy makers, advocates, and researchers have been engaged in efforts to make educational opportunity more equal for students from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. A great deal of research has been conducted on their efforts; however, there is some disagreement on the extent to which the research has been…

The Committee for Economic Development (CED) is pleased to present these research findings regarding ways to reform student financial aid. In 2012, CED released "Boosting Postsecondary Education Performance"--calling on business to become active advocates at the state level for broad-access institutions that are so vital to the nation's economic…

This brief provides five recommendations for reforming the college financial aid system. Five principles for reform are presented: (1) The purpose of federal financial aid is to ensure that individuals who can benefit from college and would not otherwise attend are able to enroll. (2) Efforts to reform financial aid must limit the unsustainable…

Decades of research have provided strong evidence of what an integrated early childhood system should look like. Several groups, including the Alliance for Early Success, have outlined research-backed state and local policies that can move systems closer to meeting this goal. In fact, many states and communities across the country have already put…

When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became law in 2002, it provided large sums of money to states for education. The program also had very strict performance requirements, including a 2014 deadline for all students to be proficient in mathematics and language arts. To provide some relief from the provisions of NCLB, the Obama administration…

This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as "catalyst data" and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case…

In this essay, the authors explore trends in intergovernmental relations (IGR) by analyzing recent education policies--No Child Left Behind Act, Common Core State Standards, and local empowerment policies. Identifying a resurgent role for local actors in education policy, the authors argue that recent federal efforts to exert more control have in…

In this opinion piece, Michael Toscano writes that his criticism of the Common Core State Standards ultimately has very little to do with their innate quality, but rather that their relation to other social spheres is disordered. He refers to the full reordering of American education away from families and local communities--which he states are…

Well before President Barack Obama vaulted early childhood learning to the top of the education agenda in his recent State of the Union address, states were taking steps to bolster their own preschool programs. More than a dozen states--including some, such as Hawaii and Mississippi, that have had no state-financed preschool programs in the…

Even though 34 states and the District of Columbia have No Child Left Behind Act waivers in hand, many of them are still negotiating with the U.S. Department of Education over their teacher evaluation systems--a crucial component if they want to keep their newfound flexibility. More than six months after waiver recipients turned in their…

Congress's role in defining and promoting equality of educational opportunity has evolved over the past 55 years since "Brown v. Board of Education." Most recently, all three branches of the federal government have focused more on equality of educational opportunity for "individual" students rather than for protected…

California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas enroll close to 40 percent of the nation's public school students. The importance of these "Mega-States" goes beyond the sheer size of their population. They now serve more than half of the nation's English language learners (ELL), as well as some of the largest concentrations of children from…

Last summer, California and Massachusetts became the sixth and seventh states--along with Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maryland--to send a resolution to the U.S. Congress calling for a constitutional amendment to (1) end the court's extension of personhood rights to corporations, and (2) enable the government to definitively…

Central banking in the United States has a long and controversial history dating back to the earliest days of the republic. One of the most widely presented arguments against a central bank has been that the U.S. Constitution does not expressly grant the federal government power to charter a bank. Recently, this issue has received new scrutiny in…

Securing a higher level of performance in all schools in all settings has been a major priority of governments in Australia for nearly 40 years. With the first decade of the 21st century drawing to a close, a sense of urgency has grown. The Australian federal government is seeking an education revolution through an unprecedented partnership with…