Shortages in the teaching subfields of math, science, special and bilingual education have been one of the most persistent problems in teacher labor markets. This problem is in part due to the single salary schedule by which most public school teachers are paid, and which usually only gives pay increases for years of experience and additional credentials. However, in recent years, to combat shortages a minority of school districts have begun to offer additional financial incentives to teachers in shortage-fields. However, there has been little rigorous empirical evidence on whether these incentives are effective for changing labor market outcomes. Utilizing an Instrumental Variables Difference-in-Differences model with a novel instrument, I estimate whether districts that provide such incentives report better recruitment conditions and experience higher rates of retention of shortage-field teachers than comparable districts that do not offer incentives. I find positive and statistically significant impacts on retention. Findings are discussed in terms of estimated incentive magnitudes, as well as in light of a document review of collectively bargained contracts from districts that provide shortage-field incentives.

This dissertation was designed to provide an example of an application of the ingredients method of cost-effectiveness analysis of Talent Search, a nation-wide federally-funded program that targets low-income students who promise to be the first generation in their families to attend college. The program serves students in grades 6 to 12 to increase the rates of high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment. Because Talent Search is a multi-site and a multi-output program, the analyses allowed for the exploration of two complexities in conducting cost-effectiveness analyses: site-level variation within a program and combining multiple outcomes to evaluate a program's efficiency. My results show that variation in costs, cost-effectiveness ratios, and benefit-cost ratios was wide across sites. This suggests that future work should include site-level analyses to provide a range for a program's costs and cost-effectiveness and to provide policy relevant site-level examples of the resources utilized to implement a program. Because the outcomes of Talent Search have monetary values in the labor market, I combined the program's impacts on high school completion and postsecondary enrollment to estimate the additional income generated by the program. These findings suggest that the benefits of Talent Search outweigh the costs on average. However, the variability I find across sites illustrates that more investigation and development is needed to improve the productivity of the program and to reduce inequities across sites. Four important contributions were made with this work: it provides an in depth example of applying the ingredients method to a complex program, it suggests that future work should include site-level analyses, it indicates that retrospective work is limited and future work should be devoted to incorporating the ingredients method contemporaneously into impact evaluations, and it informs policymakers about the cost-effectiveness of Talent Search and the ways in which cost-effectiveness varies across sites.

Decision making is the essence of an administrator's job. While planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting are the basic traditional "functions" of management, each of these clearly involves decisions---decisions as to which plan to implement, what goals to pursue, and how best to achieve the desirable ends. / Empirical findings support the hypothesized relationship between perceived external environments by individual school administrators and the types of decision-making models they adopted in schools. In particular, the level of perceived constraint from the external environments' 'linguistic orientation' and 'resource policy' greatly influences the types of decision-making models chosen by individual administrators in schools. Furthermore, the pattern of adopting decision models in a perceived less-constrained environment (i.e., demography and resource policy) correlates with the pattern in a perceived highly constrained environment (i.e., social values, funding, and linguistic orientation), except for the environment of 'control'. This suggests that the decision-making experience gained from a less-constrained environment can serve as a reference frame for the highly constrained environment. Supplementary interview data support the validity of the self-reported decision-making questionnaire. / Given the fact that little is known about how issues arising from external constraint affect the administrative decision-making process, this study focuses specifically on their intricate relationships to broaden our understanding on the ever-expanding arena of administrative decision making in a turbulently growing working environment. / In the past, schools were instrumental in maintaining the existing social order, and as such, they were kept in status quo. However, the globalized reform movement has vastly reshaped schools' external environment, compelling the whole education system to undergo radical change as well. In this context, school administrators have to be more proactive to the changing environment to ensure the viability of their schools. / This research investigates the relationship between the perceived external environment by individual school administrators and the decision-making models they adopted in schools. This study adopts the construct of Lam (1985) which delineates the perceived external environment into four domains: political, economic, social, and cultural domains. Factor analysis on local data yielded six external variables, namely, demography, funding, linguistic orientation, social values, control, and resource policy, and these were perceived to exert varying degrees of constraint in the operation of schools. Issues arising from these external variables were identified. The conceptual rationale and procedures of resolving the issues constitute the basis of pinpointing the decision-making models that school administrators adopt. / Law Chan Fai. / "November 2005." / Adviser: Nicholas Sun Keung Pang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4053. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 200-217). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

abstract: This research examines data exchange between city departments and external stakeholders; particularly, why city departments have different capacity to access data from departments in the same city, other public agencies, private and nonprofit organizations. Data access is of theoretical interest because it provides the opportunity to investigate how public organizations and public managers deal with a portfolio of relationships in a loosely structured context characterized by dynamics of power and influence. Moreover, enhancing data access is important for public managers to increase the amount and diversity of information available to design, implement, and support public services and policies. Drawing from institutionalism, resource dependence theory, and collaboration scholarship, I developed a set of hypotheses that emphasize two dimensions of data access in local governments. First, a vertical dimension which includes institutions, the social environment - particularly power relationships - and coordination mechanisms implemented by managers. This dimension shows how exogenous - not controlled by public managers - and endogenous - controlled by public managers - factors contribute to a public organization’s ability to access resources. Second, a horizontal dimension which considers the characteristics of the actors involved in data exchange and emphasizes the institutional and social context of intra-organizational, intra-sectoral and cross-sectoral data access. Hypotheses are tested using survey data from a 2016 nationally representative sample of 500 US cities with populations between 25,000 and 250,000. By focusing on small- and medium-sized cities, I contribute to a literature that typically focuses on data sharing in US large cities and federal agencies. Results show that the influence of government agencies and the influence of civil society have opposite effect on data access, whereas government influence limits data access while influence from civil society increases capacity to access data. The effectiveness of coordination mechanisms varies according to the stakeholder type. Public managers rely on informal networks to exchange data with other departments in the city and other governmental agencies while they leverage lateral coordination mechanisms - informal but unplanned - to coordinate data access from nongovernmental organizations. I conclude by discussing the implications for practice and future research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Public Administration and Policy 2018

No description available.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been implementing the Healthy Marketplace initiative in the market setting of developing countries since 1997. This initiative forms part of the Healthy Cities strategy and is reinforced through the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. The WHO Food Safety Division has indicated that every city in the WHO Healthy City program will eventually also have a Healthy Marketplace program. This is despite the absence of any published guidelines for facilitating program implementation, a clearly articulated Healthy Marketplace concept, and a dearth of meaningful program evaluations. This thesis set out to explore the views and experiences of in-country stakeholders involved in a Vietnamese Healthy Marketplace program. It also set out to examine the roles and perceptions of experts engaged in the design and delivery of programs across the developing world. Through an iterative and post-positivist research methodology, this inquiry collected and analysed data from five key sources: documents, detailed questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and observations and reflections. The findings revealed that various and even conflicting program concepts and aims existed across and within groups, having significant implications for practice. The settings approach was not the dominant approach to health promotion in the Vietnamese market, but rather a 'top-down' topic-based approach dominated as the mechanism for program delivery. Consequently, numerous challenges have been identified for Healthy Marketplace policy and practice. The challenges are prefaced on the adoption of a settings approach, and include the need for : market communities to set their own agendas; the program target audience to be redefined; increased power sharing across stakeholders; the re-education of professionals; the sharing of knowledge; and the adequate resourcing of Healthy Marketplace programs / Master of Science (Hons)

Thesis (D.Min.)--Liberty Theological Seminary and Graduate School, 2007.

<p>This is a case study of the planning and building of a new IT education facility when thedepartment of Media Technologymoved its operation to Flemingsberg and the main campus, due tothe termination of Campus Haninge at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. The study isbased on a case study an on administrative material from the process such as emailscorrespondences, policy documents, contact reports etc. The material is analysed using qualitativecontent analysis and the different observations done are distilled into four recommendations,aimed at being able to contribute to a improved process in similar future situations, whereverneeded.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1973. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-151). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-184). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.