The Survey of Schools: ICT in education commissioned in 2011 by the European Commission took place between January 2011 and November 2012, with data collection in autumn 2011. This article presents the main findings of the Survey based on over 190,000 questionnaire answers from students, teachers and head teachers in primary, lower and upper secondary schools randomly sampled. The article details the analytical framework design and the survey methodology implemented. It then presents the main ‘state of the art’ indicators that have been built, concerning ICT infrastructure and access to it, frequency of students' ICT based activities during lessons, level of teachers' and students' confidence in their digital competences, their opinion about using ICT for teaching and learning, and the school strategies to support ICT integration in teaching and learning. The article also presents the main findings of the exploratory part of the analysis, introducing the concepts of digitally supportive school, digitally confident and supportive teacher and digitally confident and supportive student, estimating their respective proportion at EU level on average and by country and investigating whether high percentage of digitally supportive schools include high percentages of digitally confident and positive teachers and students. A few recommendations for policy making at European, national, regional/local and institutional levels conclude the article.

Responding to calls from the president of the United Sates and the Business Roundtable, business leaders have become increasingly involved in setting the education reform agenda. Using five interest group theories and longitudinal data; the authors examined the formation, agenda setting, and maintenance of an organization of business leaders. Moderate support was found for each of the theories. Analyses further revealed that policy interests and to a lesser degree, functional interests were important to the formation and activity of the interest group. To forge successful partnerships and to implement effective reform, educators, policy makers, and researchers must better understand the motives and actions that impel business involvement in education

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The results of il dct;lilcd study undcrtahcn in Michigan to dctcrminc the impxt of the Chapter 2 block grant in it> first two yxrs 01 implemcnt;ition. IWQ-198.3 ;md 198.L 198-l. ;1rc summarized in this ;Irticlc. Following ;t discussion of ch;mgcs in intcrgovcrnmcnt;lI rckltionships th;kt resulted lrom Ch;ytcr 2. m;lior ht;ltc dcckion~ ;lnd xtions that ccntercd on the hloch gr;mt progr;lm ilrc dcscrihed. Gener;ll ;md spccillc imprekon~ of the impact of Chapter 2. h;wd on ;,n in-depth study 01 nine public xhool districts ;IINI l'our non-public schools. compriac the m;ljor portion or the ;Irticlc.

and Taewan Kim Korean Educational Development Institute Using a quasi-experimental time-series design and employing a multiple regression technique, we examined the fiscal impacts and redistributive effects of the recently enacted federal education block grant on Michigan's 525 K-12 school districts. Two important policy questions were addressed: Are resource allocations for targeted school districts likely to be affected by the adoption of different federal grant mechanisms? If so, will there be a shifting of resources away from or toward these districts? We found that the movement to the block grant mechanism resulted in a definite shift of funds away from former Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) districts, districts with high proportions of poverty children, highly urbanized districts, and large districts toward smaller and rural districts. The implications of these changes in federal policy are discussed.