This book provokes a re-examination of how expert knowledge, not practitioner know-how, has come to dominate how Americans judge and improve schools. It depicts the English tradition of school inspection to provoke the invention of better ways for judging and knowing schools in America. Data were gathered by observation of 39 local and national…

The performance of national education systems is a growing concern in many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. This book focuses on the assessment of school performance in seven countries: England, France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The research questions include: Why are schools…