In Part I of this continuous improvement brief on selection, UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership researchers and UIC Ed.D. program administrators describe the development of an admissions process to the EdD in Urban Education principal preparation program to assess characteristics associated with school leader success. [For Part II of this…

In the second of two continuous improvement briefs on selection, UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership researchers and UIC Ed.D. program administrators describe how they build program capacity to assess & measure the characteristics they associate with school leader success. [For Part I, see ED622510.]

This paper is written for state educational agency (SEA) leaders who are considering the benefits of collaborative benchmarking, and it addresses the following questions: (1) What does benchmarking of best practices entail?; (2) How does "collaborative benchmarking" enhance the process?; (3) How do SEAs control the process so that "their" needs…

Many school districts struggle to recruit sufficient high-quality principals for their schools. A variety of conditions contribute to this challenge, including the retirement of the baby boom cohort and diminishing interest in administrative careers due to the expanded responsibilities of school principals. In response, districts enact a range of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the policy process that led to the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the United States and the Bush Administration's role in this process. Design/methodology/approach: The research design is historical and archival. A description of the NCLB Act is given and the major provisions and…

Statewide exit examinations play an important role in discussions on school effectiveness. Referring to educational governance concepts, this paper presumes a relation between varying organizational structures of statewide examinations across states, and heterogeneous effects on school actors. It is assumed that their ability to affect work in…

"Absorptive capacity" is a frequently used term amongst development practitioners in education. It is adopted by some as a reason for caution over scaling up aid. Others are of the view that absorptive capacity is an excuse by some donors for not delivering on their Education for All financing commitments. Drawing on interviews with…

This article introduces the special issue of "Prospects" on "Aid effectiveness in education". It brings together case studies of attempts in several very different contexts to improve the effectiveness of the use of aid in the education sector. By drawing on the historical evolution of the new paradigm over the last 20 years, the authors make the…