This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…

The University of St. Francis's College of Business and Health Administration operates a campus business incubator for student and community entrepreneurs. The business incubator is an innovative use of space that supports the economic development of the region and entrepreneurial education that includes for-credit and non-credit programming.…

This article outlines a novel approach for career readiness which embeds a global engagement trip within a social entrepreneurship course. Utilizing an empathy driven approach, the instructional innovation exposes students to social impact and innovation in an entrepreneurial setting, provides an opportunity for rich engagements with social and…

As adult educators recognize the need to incorporate digital skills instruction into their curriculum, the Illinois Digital Learning Lab, managed by Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition, provides a unique professional development opportunity to help educators respond and adapt. The Lab empowers educators to become entrepreneurs, change-makers, and…

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), or drone applications have experienced tremendous growth over the past several years. Their capabilities and technology have penetrated many aspects of the modern world. They are being used for everything from emergency response and agricultural research, to entrepreneur businesses and package deliveries. Experienced…

Providing an in-depth look at the processes, pitfalls, and successes that can emerge from major education reform efforts at the state level, this volume covers the full policy change cycle in the development and transformation of the Illinois principal preparation program. Offering perspectives from the major stakeholder groups involved in…

This book was compiled to provide examples of partnerships between education and economic development agencies and to reinforce, with statistics, the importance of entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy. The first chapter, "Contributions of Small Business and Entrepreneurship Education to Economic Development," by E. Edward Harris,…

Background/Context: Performance funding finances public higher education institutions based on outcomes such as retention, course and degree completion, and job placement rather than inputs such as enrollments. One of the mysteries of state performance funding for higher education is that despite great interest in it for over 30 years, only half…

It is a truism of American social policy that our nation has great success generating innovative programs that improve outcomes for participants--but that we are far less effective at moving from small, "boutique" programs into broadly applied solutions that improve the prospects of large numbers of individuals. This is certainly true in…

The Illinois Community College Board provided more than $3.3 million to community colleges during fiscal year 2009 to support local workforce and economic development services through their Business and Industry Centers. The workforce development activities conducted under this grant include customized job training on campus or on-site at a…

When courts engage in educational policymaking through what is called "public law litigation," they set foot in unsettled territory. Framing the authors' work in legal studies literature, this article relays how one court engaged in a sweeping reform of special education in Chicago and teacher certification in the entire state of…

Recent literature about broadband telecommunications reveals two major areas that are not only globally gaining prominence, but are also demanding urgent attention from a research perspective. One of the key areas is related to the need to spatially evaluate the availability and deployment of broadband services, especially among urban versus rural…

This Brief summarizes a study that examined the origins of state performance funding in six states: Tennessee, Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, Washington, and Illinois. In order to capture a wide range of possible forces at work in the origins of performance funding, the authors selected states that differed in a variety of ways, including when…

The Illinois Community College Board provided more than $3.3 million to community colleges during fiscal year 2008 to provide workforce and economic development services through their Business and Industry Centers. The workforce development activities conducted under this grant include customized job training on campus or on-site at a business;…

In "The Transformation of Great American School Districts", William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of…