Tax Burden and the Mismeasurement of State Tax Policy

Tax Burden, defined as the ratio of total tax revenues over personal income, is frequently used to measure state tax policy. The authors analyze the empirical relationship between changes in Tax Burden and changes in tax policies from 1987 to 2000 using states’ forecasts of revenue impacts of new tax legislation. Their two major findings have important implications. First, they demonstrate that income-induced, nontax policy changes are a significant determinant of changes in Tax Burden. These income effects are likely to cause misinterpretation when Tax Burden is used as a variable in economic growth regressions. Second, they estimate that approximately half of the total variation in Tax Burden is due to changes in nontax policy factors. This finding quantifies the extent of the “mismeasurement” problem that has been discussed, but not analyzed, in previous literature. In concluding, the authors promote the use of alternative approaches for estimating the economic effects of taxes.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Leading school networks, hybrid leadership in action?

A range of different constructs are used to describe and define the way that leadership operates in education settings. This range can be presented as binary categories of leadership, in which either one, or the other form of leadership is preferred, but not both. An example of this is the contrast made between solo and distributed leadership. A more sophisticated alternative has been proposed, which is to consider leadership as a hybrid activity, one which entails a range of approaches inspired by varying ideals. Taking this ‘hybrid’ notion of leadership this article explores the nature of leadership in networks of schools. Illustrated with data from three case studies of school networks this article highlights some of the issues and tensions in the enactment of the hybrid forms of leadership encountered in these networks. This article concludes with some reflections on the adoption of hybrid notions of leadership in researching and enacting educational leadership and specifically on the place of school networks in that consideration

The restructuring of schooling in England: the responses of well-positioned Headteachers

Research to date about the English government’s policy to make schools independent of local authorities (LAs) has looked at the ‘macro’ level of national policy and at the ‘micro’ level of the institution. The study of which this article is a part, explores changes at the ‘meso’ level – the locality. The article analyses interviews in three LAs with 15 headteachers whose schools were well positioned locally. We sought to understand how and why they responded to the changing policy environment. We applied Bourdieu’s concepts of forms of capital to model the relationships between schools and to ground explanations of their responses as positioning themselves in the local field. The article develops this general approach by identifying the varieties of capital available and actually possessed. The most important was categorization as a result of the inspection process. Many of the headteachers felt impelled to lead their schools into various associations with other schools. Some individuals were becoming notably more powerful in their competition arenas. The power of these elite schools to further accumulate advantage and the withdrawal of the LA role as an arbiter of conflict between schools in the interests of the whole community are discussed

Crime among irregular immigrants and the influence of internal border control

Both the number of crime suspects without legal status and the number of irregular or undocumented immigrants held in detention facilities increased substantially in theNetherlands between 1997 and 2003. In this period, theDutch state increasingly attempted to exclude irregular immigrants from the formal labour market and public provisions. At the same time the registered crime among irregular migrants rose. The 'marginalisation thesis' asserts that a larger number of migrants have become involved in crime in response to a decrease in conventional life chances. Using police and administrative data, the present study takes four alternative interpretations into consideration based on: 1) reclassification of immigrant statuses by the state and redefinition of the law, 2) criminal migration and crossborder crime, 3) changes in policing, and 4) demographic changes. A combination of factors is found to have caused the rise in crime, but the marginalisation thesis still accounts for at least 28%. These findings accentuate the need for a more thorough discussion on the intended and unintended consequences of border control for immigrant crime

Documenting the Unauthorized: Political Responses to Unauthorized Immigration

Cultural prejudice rather than self interest is the conventional wisdom for why voters respond negatively to immigration. Using a new measure of unauthorized immigrants based on self-reported invalid social security numbers, we show that voters' responses are more nuanced than mere prejudice against minorities. Using county level data from the U.S. state of Georgia, we find that voters in counties with above median levels of unauthorized workers are more likely to support the Republican party. We also find that wealthier counties and wealthier voters are most likely to respond negatively to the unauthorized. Our evidence warns against arguments that depict opposition to immigration as motivated solely by xenophobia and cultural fears among lower income whites

Exploring professional knowledge-building through an inter-school visits programme

“The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Improving Schools, 14 (1), 2011, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2010: on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/”This paper explores the learning arising from a pilot inter-school visits programme in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Teachers from two schools undertook a series of visits with the aim of developing learning and teaching in their schools. The pilot sought to understand ways in which such a collaborative visits programme could be used to build professional knowledge across school boundaries. It suggests that such knowledge- building is the precursor to a change of practice. An investigation of the literature reveals potential issues in making tacit knowledge visible and in recording teachers’ learning so that it can contribute to a developing professional knowledge base. The paper discusses how these issues manifested themselves in practice and offers a framework for professional learning visits which underlines the continuous nature of professional learning, the need for reflection to decode what has been learned and the need for active and continuing participation by host and visitor in order to effect a change in practice. It concludes by considering the challenges of a full visits’ programme and how such a programme may be used to strengthen teachers’ capacity for innovation.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio