This paper discusses a current project to develop open educational resources (OER) for legislative counsel in countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. The project is the latest step in a 20-year old distance education program for those professionals. The paper explores best practices for investment in freely available OER for use by professionals…

The names of operating systems and devices have been on the lips of unlikely people lately. In this day and age, superintendents, state commissioners of education, and even state legislators certainly should understand and care about technical details, but the author is just not used to hearing such things from them. The reason for the…

Several states, including Arizona, have enacted English-only legislation, within the past decade, impacting the schooling of students who are identified as English language learner (ELLS). As a result, ELLS in Arizona are assigned to a prescriptive program--apart from their fluent English-speaking peers--for 4 h a day, during a time "not normally…

This article reports on a study that examined whether the presence of a consolidated governing board for higher education conditions the impact various political factors have on state support for higher education. The existence of a consolidated governing board is shown to significantly alter the politics of the state higher education…

Governments make policy decisions in the same areas in quite different institutions. Some assign policymaking responsibility to institutions designed to be insulated from myopic partisan and electoral pressures and others do not. In this study, we claim that differences in political context and institutional design constrain the policy choices…

How at moments of dramatic change and a shifting social context do political actors alter their public identities? Put differently, how do political figures respond when positions with which they have been closely identified are no longer morally and electorally defensible and must be altered? Responses to identity challenge within institutional…

Institutions build armies of alumni advocates to influence legislators and shape public opinion. This article describes two types of alumni advocacy: grasstops and grassroots. Grasstops advocacy engages smaller, targeted groups of alumni who have a stronger, more influential connection with legislators and other public officeholders. Grassroots…

Redistricting, the redrawing of electoral district boundaries to reflect the latest population counts, occurs for most electoral districts after each decennial census. While normally a topic of concern mainly to politicians and politicos, redistricting can alter the opportunities for representation and policy alternatives. For a number of reasons,…

This article explores the integration of a multiweek legislative simulation with the Blackboard (9.1) Platform in an effort to understand how technology may increase student engagement, collaborative learning, and assessment. We consider the ways in which classroom technologies--blogs and online peer and self assessment tools, in particular--can…

The Benjamin Gilman International Scholarship Program, founded in 2000 as a means to fund study abroad for low-income students, has become the largest federally funded scholarship program for study abroad at the undergraduate level, with more than 2,300 recipients in academic year (AY) 2010-2011. Interviews with former Congressman Benjamin Gilman,…

This paper presents Stan Jones' testimony before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training. In his testimony, he talks about a new American majority of students that is emerging on campuses, especially at community colleges. These students must delicately balance long hours at jobs they must…

What if Stephen Douglas instead of Abraham Lincoln had won the U.S. presidential election of 1860? What if John F. Kennedy had not carried some of the eight states he won by 2 percentage points or fewer in 1960? What if six hundred more people in Florida had voted for Al Gore in 2000? And what if, in that same year, the U.S. House of…

Every two years in the United States, districts in each state elect representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives. The district boundaries are not permanent; rather, they are redrawn every ten years in a process known as redistricting. Mathematics is useful in understanding this important and often contentious process. Redistricting is a…

This article elaborates on parent advocacy groups, a key component in meeting the needs of gifted children. The case for parent groups couldn't be stronger--or more urgent. According to Nancy Green, Executive Director of the National Association for Gifted Children, "Quality gifted education exists in places where there are strong parent groups."…

Oregon's Legislature in 2011 affirmed a clear and ambitious goal for the State, known as the "40-40-20" goal, which states that by 2025 all adult Oregonians will hold a high school diploma or equivalent, 40% of them will have an associate's degree or a meaningful postsecondary certificate, and 40% will hold a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.…