The importance of higher education has never been clearer. Educational attainment--the number of years a person spends in school--strongly predicts adult earnings, as well as health and civic engagement. Yet relative to other developed nations, educational attainment in the United States is lagging, with young Americans who heretofore led the…

This report is part of a study of school districts in British Columbia (Canada), and deals with school district ethos--interest in defined focal areas--both as a measure of school district quality and as a potential predictor of student achievement. The study concentrates on one of these focal areas--holding schools accountable through monitoring.…