California ended 40 years of reliance on categorical funding for schools when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law on July 1, 2013. LCFF intends to enhance services for high-needs students through new flexibility, targeted student funding, and local accountability. Two years into LCFF implementation,…

This paper examines the key aspects of stakeholder engagement that can strengthen the design, implementation and sustainability of outcomes-based funding policies. We seek to help policymakers understand the prevailing starting-point attitudes of institutional stakeholders, primarily college and university administrators, faculty and staff, and…

This article discusses a community music project in rural East Timor. Australian musician Gillian Howell lived for three months in the isolated town of Lospalos as an Asialink artist-in-residence, where she worked with local community members and visiting Australian musicians to share music and ideas, and to communicate across cultures. Three…

As readers of "Assessment Update" know, the call for assessment is sweeping over the globe, so much so that faculty and administrators are finding it difficult to ignore it--though many may wish they could. Unfortunately, awareness does not lead to an increase in assessment implementation because fear of assessment is still widespread. The push…

In the international higher education environment there is evidence of continuing growth and interest in creative and performing arts programs. While there is similar growth in the creative industries sector where these students will seek to develop a career, as well as further validation of the importance of creativity in the future workplace,…

Jumpstart is a growing literacy program that is now active in 17 states in addition to the District of Columbia. The Jumpstart Model pairs children of low-income families with college mentors in the child's typical learning environment. Despite the prevalence and importance of Jumpstart, little has been written about either the general model of…

The Second Half Program (SHP) is an educational sports program running in Brazil. It began in 2003 and was one of the Olympic educational proposals described in the Rio 2016 Olympics bid. Using sport as a tool, the SHP aims to deliver moral education and to promote citizenship in order to counteract "social exclusion" and "social…

The design of the national qualifications framework (NQF) in Lithuania started in 2006. The NQF was officially approved by the government decree in May 2010. This article explores the influence of the processes of institutional change on the reform of the national system of qualifications in Lithuania through the implementation of the NQF, looking…

Programme evaluation is essential for quality assurance in education. In this paper, we describe our evaluation strategy for the first year of a new medical programme. Although we used multiple methods in the evaluation, the use of the focus group method was core. This paper reports our experiences of focus groups for this purpose. We describe the…

Gender equality in education has held a prominent position in global policy making over the last decade through international frameworks and declarations such as the Dakar framework of Action on Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper draws on interviews conducted with participants who hold a gender brief in…

In the winter of 2008, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) released reports examining the impact of national and state accountability systems on curriculum, instruction, and student achievement in Rhode Island and Illinois. Using classroom observations and interviews with school administrators, instructional specialists, teachers, parents, and…