Provision Of Public Education Research Articles

Institutions of Public Education

This chapter begins by providing an overview of the rationale for the public provision of education. We confine our study to primary and secondary education. A brief historical account of public education in Australia is offered – which shows that, in a broad sense, institutional possibilities in place today have largely remained unchanged over the last centre – and an initial IPF is constructed. Two case studies are examined to provide insight into the barriers to the creation and destruction phases of innovation within the context of public education. First, we analyse Queensland’s Independent Public Schools (IPS) program using a unique dataset and make findings about the perceived barriers to creation. Second, we consider the “Schools of the Future” reforms in Victoria between 1992-1996 and identify mechanisms of destruction and how it is constrained. A second IPF is constructed. Our focus then turns to the United States, where the differences between charter schools and voucher programs are detailed – using District of Columbia laws to see how these theoretical possibilities have been made concrete in legislation – and briefly consider the institutional possibility of for-profit schools. The chapter concludes by constructing a final IPF.

Challenges and Prospects of Solid Waste Management in Ghana

Urbanization is on the rise in Africa and this trend is expected to continue in the future. Of concern is that the infrastructure and land use planning including for waste management is not coping with the growth of urban areas (around 3.5% annually, highest in the world). This is particularly urgent in the slum areas which constitute a big part of many of the cities and towns in Africa. Environmental sanitation and waste management is aimed at developing and maintaining a clean, safe, and pleasant physical and natural environment in all human settlements, to promote the socio-cultural, economic and physical well-being of all sections of the population. Waste management comprises a number of complimentary activities, the provision and maintenance of sanitary facilities, the provision of services, public education, regulation and legislation supported by clearly mandated institutions, adequate funding, research and development. This paper seeks to focus the challenges and prospects of solid waste management and the legal or policy arrangements available to ensure environmental sustainability.

Cities Drifting Apart: Heterogeneous Outcomes of Decentralizing Public Education

Looking at the decentralized provision of public education in a middle income country, this paper estimates the impact of local autonomy on service quality, finding large heterogeneity in the effect across different levels of local development. Colombian municipalities were assigned to administer their public education service autonomously solely on the basis of whether they exceeded the 100 thousand inhabitants threshold. Exploiting this discontinuity, I estimate the impact that autonomy has had on student test scores across municipalities, using a regression discontinuity design and fixed-effects regression on a discontinuity sample. I find a test score gap arising between autonomous municipalities in the top quartile and those in the bottom quartile of the development range, in a trend that reinforces over time. From analysis of detailed municipal balance sheet data, I show that the autonomous high-developed municipalities invest in education more than the ad hoc transfers they receive, supplementing these with own financial resources.Indicators of municipal administration quality also show significant differences between the two groups of cities, helping to explain the education outcome patterns.

How are private school enrolment patterns changing across Indian districts with a growth in private school availability?

The private school sector in India has grown significantly but the equity implications of this growth are not well understood. Traditionally private schools have been patronised by more educated and better-off families. Evidence also suggests a preference for enrolling male children in private schools. With the growth in the private school sector it is unclear whether these conventional patterns of private enrolment are changing. The (uneven but ongoing) implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act will likely create further opportunities for private school access. If research finds that access to the private sector remains uneven across the society in spite of this growth, then it may offer a note of caution against relying on private provision, and it may also provide an indication of the potentially significant and continued importance of public provision of education. In this paper we use district-level data from 2005–2006 and 2011–2012 to estimate how private enrolment patterns have changed alongside an appreciable growth in number of private schools. While 2011–2012 is too soon to evaluate the impact of RTE (as most states were still drafting rules and regulations) we identify states that eventually adapted clearer RTE regulations to investigate if private school enrolment patterns were changing differently in these states. The data show that a large growth in the private sector has not made patterns of private school enrolment more equitable in rural areas. In urban districts the data indicate a declining caste gap in private enrolment and a decline in the private enrolment gap between poor and non-poor students in states which eventually went on to adopt clearer RTE regulations.

Quasi-State monopoly of the education system and socio-economic segregation in Argentina

This paper analyses the provision of education in Argentina in systemic terms. Using the concept of quasi-monopoly and the notions of exit, voice and loyalty, we study the logic of organization and distribution of students within the educational system. We support the idea that the provision of private and public education makes a coherent whole, where the State plays an active role. We then evaluate the implications of this configuration on the Argentine system in terms of: (a) freedom of choice; (b) productive efficiency; (c) equity; and (d) social cohesion following Levin’s framework. We describe how the Argentine quasi-State monopoly system works as an important device of scarcity administration, increasing socio-economic segregation through its tendency to push the middle and upper-middle classes into private schooling while granting public schooling for the lowest income sectors. Finally, this article lays the foundation for the use of the quasi-State monopoly notion for the study of other educational systems.

Becoming a Modern Public Research University: The Postwar Challenges of Rutgers and Penn State, 1945-1965

Both Rutgers and Penn State Universities developed into modern research universities in the two decades after World War II. This paper describes how both overcame uncertain relations with their respective states and relatively weak financial support. Both evolved a significant share of the public provision of higher education. And both also strived to establish a reputation for quality undergraduate education. For research, it was necessary to obtain the resources to compete for grants in the federal research economy. Continuation of the advances made in these decades have allowed both institutions to solidify their standings among the top 40 American research universities.

Funding Long-Term Care In Canada: Issues and Options

Canada's aging population is likely to result in increased health and long-term care (LTC) costs. It is estimated that between 2012 and 2046, LTC cost liability could reach almost $1.2 trillion. Many Canadians are unaware of the potential burden of LTC expenditures, and there is no consensus on who should pay for them. There are four possible options: (1) general tax revenues; (2) social insurance (employer/employee contributions); (3) private purchase of LTC insurance; and (4) private savings. This paper reviews these options as they have materialized to date in Canada and other countries. Despite the growing acuity of this issue, it seems unlikely that a universal, publicly funded approach to LTC will emerge in Canada. It is clear that federal and provincial/territorial governments must continue to explore policy options for LTC funding including public education, prevention and mitigation strategies and provision for tax-sheltered savings specifically for LTC.

Awareness of nutrition problems among Vietnamese health and education professionals.

Professionals who provide nutrition education and consulting to the public are encouraged to take into account the health, environmental and social contexts that influence health-related attitudes and behaviours in the population. This paper examined the awareness of shifts in population health outcomes associated with the nutrition transition in Vietnam among university nutrition lecturers, health professionals and school education professionals. Most of these professionals held accurate views of the current population health issues in Vietnam. However, they differed in their awareness of the seriousness of overweight and obesity. Although the majority indicated that the prevalence of obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) had increased, nearly half believed that the government should complete its attempts to control undernutrition before trying to control obesity. More health professionals believed that food marketing was responsible for the growing prevalence of children's obesity, and more of them disapproved of the marketing of less healthy food to children. In contrast, the university nutrition lecturers were least aware of food marketing and the seriousness of obesity. Of the three groups, the university nutrition lecturers held less accurate perceptions of nutrition transition problems and their likely drivers. There is an urgent need for greater provision of public nutrition education for all three groups of professionals.

Introduction to the symposium on equality of opportunity and education

Equality of opportunity is an ideal that finds a place in almost all theories of a just society. This ideal is also prevalent in our own political discourse, especially in debates about education policy. Given the myriad and significant dimensions of individual and collective well-being that flow from education – including health and access to health care, rewarding employment, income, leisure time, and civic participation – equality of opportunity matters deeply in the education realm. And it is within this realm that the meaning of this ideal is perhaps most deeply contested. How should limited educational resources be distributed to best honor equality of opportunity (e.g. by merit, by need)? What inequalities in educational opportunity, if any, are permissible? Can equality of educational opportunity be secured when large inequalities in educational inputs and outputs remain in place? The papers in this symposium focus on different dimensions of these questions. This symposium is part of a larger multi-year project at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford, funded by the Spencer Foundation, which examined the relationship between the ideal of equality of opportunity and the public provision of education. The impetus for this issue, and the larger project of which it is a part, is that despite widespread agreement that equality of opportunity is an essential ideal, its meaning, goals, and application to education are highly contested. Gaining greater clarity about this fundamental ideal is especially urgent given mounting evidence about the increasing scope of income and wealth inequality, and the role of educational disparities in exacerbating those inequalities. The symposium begins with a paper that enters the debates about the conceptual meaning of equality of opportunity of education and proposes a framework to remedy confusion surrounding the ideal. In this paper, ‘What is Equality of Opportunity in Education?’ Hugh Lazenby distinguishes equality of opportunity through education from equality of

Educational inequality among Chinese urban schools: the business ethics of private schools

This study explores the institutional history of the urban school system in Chinese cities and tries to explicate the complex social, economic, political and institutional forces over recent decades that help to create such a divergent pattern among urban schools. To do so, it first reviews the origins of modern Chinese education, market reform in 1980s and 1990s, an increase of migrant workers in big cities, and subsequent institutional changes in Chinese urban schools. A key characteristic of Chinese urban schools is unequal provision of public education between legal residents and migrant workers. The state has played a crucial role in the change of Chinese urban schools by allowing private schools for the children of migrant workers. Private schools, focusing on a manufacturing model of reducing costs and streamlining the education production process, are highly profitable businesses. However, the business ethics run contrary to the values of public education, ignoring necessary educational conditions and the bond between teachers and students in the process of education. Private schools for migrant students, therefore, stand in sharp contrast to the good public schools that are mainly for city residents.

Policy Analytics, Household Informedness and the Collection of Household Hazardous Waste

Proper collection of Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) is an important action to support environmental sustainability. We investigate the role of household informedness , the degree to which households have the necessary information to make utility-maximizing decisions, as they relate to participation in HHW collection programs. We find two factors that influence household informedness: the provision of public education about HHW and environmental quality information. We conducted an empirical study on HHW collection in California to obtain statistical evidence on the effect of these factors on the amount of HHW collected. The findings of this policy analytics study improve our understanding of how household informedness influences household decision-making in participating in HHW collection programs. This study is useful in the guidance it offers to devise new information policies to maximize households’ participation in HHW collection program.

The Cost of Decentralization: Linguistic Polarization and the Provision of Education

In this paper we argue that different preferences in a decentralized system lead to under provision of public goods. We analyze the provision of public primary education in nineteenth-century Prussia which was characterized by a linguistically polarized society and a decentralized education system. Using unique county-level data on education spending we show that linguistic polarization has a negative impact on local spending. Instrumental variable estimates using distance to the eastern border suggest that the relationship can be causally interpreted. Exploiting a reform of education spending, we show that centralization increases the provision of primary education relatively more in linguistically polarized counties.

이중언어강사의 역할, 만족도 및 문제점에 대한 탐색: 서울다솜학교를 중심으로

The purposes of this study were to examine of role performance of bilingual lecturers in Seoul Dasom School established for the provision of public education to immigrated youths and to explore the measures of effective utilization of immigrated bilingual lecturers. For these purposes, a survey was conducted for the whole students, general teachers of Seoul Dasom School, and bilingual lecturers who had working experiences in there. A focus group interview was conducted as well. As a result, bilingual lecturers of Seoul Dasom School played various roles such as cooperative teaching, counseling supports, life guidance, interpretation/translation, Korean guidance, mother tongue guidance, school affairs, etc. after the period of voluntary adaptation. Both general teachers and students appeared to satisfy with the performance of bilingual lecturers, although there were some differences in role sectors. However, bilingual lecturers appealed their excessive job criteria and wanted to have opportunities of training to learn subjects and professional counseling so as to acquire professional knowledge and skills. In addition, they felt uneasiness toward employment contract renewed every year. For the better utilization of bilingual lecturers in Dasom School, above barriers need to be improved.

OFERTA PÚBLICA EDUCACIONAL E O BACKGROUND FAMILIAR: EVIDÊNCIAS PARA AS MICRORREGIÕES BRASILEIRAS DE 2000 E 2010

O estudo busca avaliar a oferta dos serviços públicos educacionais nos ensinos fundamental e médio das microrregiões brasileiras no período de 2000 e 2010, bem como averiguar suas relações com a mobilidade intergeracional educacional. Para tanto, emprega-se duas estratégias empíricas aplicadas aos dados do censo escolar e dos censos demográficos. Na primeira, por meio da análise envoltória de dados (DEA), estima-se o índice de cobertura educacional (ICE), baseado na abordagem de Puig-Junoy (1999). Os resultados sugerem que o nível de cobertura educacional, tanto do ensino médio quanto do fundamental, apresentou uma melhoria no período estudado. A segunda visa aplicar um modelo econométrico embasado em Ferreira e Veloso (2003), no qual sugerem que microrregiões com maior eficiência quanto à oferta pública de educação apresentam maior mobilidade intergeracional educacional.

DOES TRADE-OFF BETWEEN CHILD QUANTITY AND CHILD QUALITY EXIST IN MALAYSIA?

This paper analyzed whether the child quantity-quality (CQQ) trade-off is applicable in the case of Malaysia. Utilizing the instrumental variable (IV) method, our analysis produces results that are consistent with the hypothesis that the trade-off is unlikely to be applicable to Malaysia as a whole due to the generous public provision of education. However, the results show that the CQQ trade-off exists for the high-income group. Taken together, if both a larger stock of human capital and population are desired, the government should continue to provide education for its people while at the same time maintain policies that stimulate growth.

WHY DOES CHILD LABOR PERSIST WITH DECLINING POVERTY?

We develop a dynamic overlapping generations model to highlight the role of income inequality in explaining the persistence of child labor under declining poverty. Differential investment in two forms of human capital—schooling and health—in the presence of inequality gives rise to a nonconvergent income distribution in the steady state characterized by multiple steady states of relative income with varying levels of education, health, and child labor. The child labor trap thus generated is shown to preserve itself despite rising per capita income. Policy recommendations include public provision of education targeted toward reducing schooling costs for the poor or raising the efficacy of public health infrastructure. (JEL I1, J2, O1, O2)

The Differential Effect of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) on States’ Contributions to Education Funding in States with Binding School District Tax and Expenditure Limitations

I examine the effects of state‐imposed binding school district tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on states’ shares of total education funding after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Binding TELs restrict school districts’ abilities to raise additional revenue and increase expenditures. Using a state‐level panel dataset from 1992 to 2009, I find states that imposed binding school district TELs have at least 4.3 percent point higher state shares of total education funding relative to states without binding school district TELs after the passage of NCLB. This suggests state governments intervened by increasing funding assistance to school districts. NCLB was a fiscal shock to state governments’ finances and this shock was an unintended consequence of the interaction between binding school district TELs and an underfunded federal mandate. As a result, there was an expansion in the role and influence of states in the provision of public education after the passage of NCLB.

Living with autism spectrum disorder in Hanoi, Vietnam

There is limited understanding of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Vietnam. This ethnographic study aimed to explore how ASD is represented and managed in the cultural, social and economic contexts of Vietnam, and describe the experiences of families with children with ASD in Hanoi, Vietnam. This study was conducted from 2011 to 2012 in Hanoi and employed a range of methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews with 27 parents of children with ASD and 17 key informants, and online survey. This study found that within Hanoi, Vietnam, ASD has been culturally and socially constructed as a ‘disease’, ‘karmic demerit’ and ‘family problem’ rather than a life-long developmental disorder that needs support from government. Children with ASD and their families experience various forms of stigma and discrimination. There are limitations in assessment and diagnosis of ASD. Parents of children with ASD have little access to services for their children, and the limited political and economic supports exacerbate their difficulties. This study highlights some of the ways in which the understandings and management of ASD vary cross culturally. It also suggests further attention is required to the provision of appropriate public education, low cost interventions and support for family advocacy groups.

In Search of the State: A Ethnography of Public Service Provision in Urban Niger

This study explores public health and education provision in Niamey, the capital of Niger, by merging the ethnographic study of public services with an anthropological analysis of the state and of local politics. Based on anthropological fieldwork carried out in a group of neighbourhoods in the periphery of Niamey, the study highlights the political dimensions of public service provision in a local arena where international development interventions and national plans meet local realities and where a wide range of actors and institutions, dis-courses, meanings, and practices are mobilized in the offering of and the regulation of access to public services. It focuses on the political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of public service provision, too often hidden behind contemporary buzzwords of development such as community participation and decentralization that dominate global debates about education and healthcare in developing countries. The study brings forth the strategies of urban resi-dents in dealing with daily challenges in the consolidation of service provision and in educa-tion and health-seeking trajectories. It shows that access to a satisfactory treatment of illness or a successful school career is premised on the ability to navigate on the medical and educa-tion markets, which are made up of a plurality of providers and of official and unofficial costs and transactions. Further, these public services engage different actors such as commu-nity committees, traditional chiefs, local associations, the municipality and elected municipal councillors, emergent leaders, NGOs, and international development aid. The study demon-strates that despite the uncertainty of state support in health and education provision and a widespread dissatisfaction with these public services, the image of the state as service pro-vider is reproduced on a day by day basis through local efforts at securing public services.

Lifelong education and learning, societal project and competitive advantage: tensions and ambivalences in policy and planning of educational change in Portugal

Both the Portuguese appropriation of the lifelong learning policy proposed by the European Union since the mid-1990s and the definition of adult education policy in Portugal were based on a discourse that emphasised an ‘unacceptable educational deficit’ for democracy. The role of the State in the governance of the public provision of adult education was linked to its disengagement or precarious contractual involvement in the same. In this article, we discuss developments in adult education and training policy from the mid-1990s to 2010 in terms of an ambivalent policy dynamic and orientation of educational change, examining how a civil society organisation used adult education as a tool for rural development, to support the economy and individual resilience in the face of socio-economic weaknesses and risks.