Leadership gurus often put creating a "shared vision" at the top of their pyramid of what successful leaders do. These visions are best when they are an anchor or a North Star -- unwavering goals that the district works toward. Author Jon Saphier proposes this North Star for districts: Make every school an engine for continuous…

Quality's appeal resides in the genetics of Australia's national training system and its early 1990s development. Deploying Bacchi's application of contested concepts, problem representation and their place in public policy development and implementation, it is argued that quality plays an important systemic transactional function. In addition to…

In 2005, the Task Force on Charter School Quality and Accountability issued "Renewing the Compact," a position statement for the charter school sector that presented recommendations for achieving the goals of growth and quality. This report evaluates the sector's progress on those goals and recommends bold actions to capitalize on its…

This second edition policy brief revisits the long and storied literature on whether money matters in providing a quality education. It includes research released since the original brief in 2012 and covers a handful of additional topics. Increasingly, political rhetoric adheres to the unfounded certainty that money does not make a difference in…

There is much to welcome in Doug Richard's independent report on the future of apprenticeships. The Richard review offers proposals for redefining and improving the quality of apprenticeships, and for focusing them more on the needs of employers. But will the proposals work, if adopted, and what will be the impact on adults? For this article, the…

Launched in January 2010, the MySchool.edu.au website, which ranks and compares schools on the basis of standardised literacy and numeracy tests, has been the subject of intense media coverage. This article examines 34 editorials focused on MySchool, published from October 2009 to August 2010, and identifies three key narratives in operation,…

Over the past 10 years increasing numbers of charter schools have been considered a viable option for many students seeking to obtain a quality education. Public charter schools and their administrators and teachers are obligated to follow the principles enshrined in federal mandates, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement…

Nearly thirty years after the Cold War era commission's report titled "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform," educators and historians must evaluate its relevance and its contribution to the shifting educational paradigm in the United States.

This study examines how the contemporary European policy debate addresses the further development of the quality of teacher educators. A classification framework based on the literature on professionalism was used to compare European and Member State policy actions and measures on the quality of teacher educators through an analysis of seven…

This study is the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's first review of the quality of state U.S. history standards since 2003. Key findings include: (1) A majority of states' standards are mediocre-to-awful. The average grade across "all" states is barely a D. In twenty-eight jurisdictions--a majority of states--the history standards earn Ds or…

This policy brief revisits the long and storied literature on whether money matters in providing a quality education. Increasingly, political rhetoric adheres to the unfounded certainty that money doesn't make a difference in education, and that reduced funding is unlikely to harm educational quality. Such proclamations have even been used to…

Good teaching matters. There is persuasive evidence that students benefit from high quality instruction and that these benefits are cumulative for students who have good teachers for several years. Teacher effectiveness matters so much that low-income students lucky enough to have three very good teachers in a row in elementary school earn test…

The 2010 elections were good for Republicans in Ohio, who have traditionally supported the expansion of charter schools (and choice broadly). The authors were hopeful as lawmakers and the governor set about removing caps on charter schools, lifting the e-school moratorium, and suggesting other legislative changes that would improve charter quality…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced increasing pressures to provide accountability data and consumer information on the quality of teaching and learning. Existing ratings and rankings of HEIs tend to neglect information on student learning outcomes. Instead, they focus on inputs, activities and research outputs, such as resources…

This paper responds to Resolution 9.05 Fall 2007, calling for an update of the Academic Senate's 1996 paper Program Review: Developing a Faculty Driven Process in the light of recent accreditation changes and other emerging issues. This paper has been written to expand on the best elements of the 1996 paper and to stand on its own without…