America's fragmented, decentralized, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance is a major impediment to school reform. In this important new book, a number of leading education scholars, analysts, and practitioners show that understanding the impact of specific policy changes in areas such as standards, testing, teachers, or…

The decade 1980-90 saw a spate of educational reconstruction occurring simultaneously in many countries. This book argues that the school restructuring of the past 10 years has been called the "education-reform movement," but that term is somewhat misleading. The current reform efforts seem to aim primarily at the control and governance of both…

Across the educational systems of the world, few issues have received more attention in recent years than the problem of ensuring that elementary and secondary-school classrooms are all staffed with adequately qualified teachers. The objective of this report is to present the results from a collaborative, comparative study, that examined the…

The papers in this book discuss the goals and constraints facing institutions of higher education in Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union countries. In the European Union countries budgetary pressures and the increasing number of students attending institutions of higher education have resulted in serious financial difficulties for many…

The essays in this volume seek to elucidate the policies and processes whereby groups of students in 15 (mainly industrialized) countries are designated as special, and differential treatment is legitimated, organized, and financed. Essays and authors are as follows: "An Overview of Experience in Fifteen Countries" (W. Donovan, A.…