There is a legitimate need for data on the performance of higher education institutions. It is important for the institutions themselves, as well as their stakeholders, including society. The use of indicators that measure the effectiveness or quality of education is increasing as there is much demand for more evidence-based evaluation and…

Global university rankings seek to illustrate the performance of institutions on an international level and are used by many institutions to help them to reach strategic goals, as such, they have become synonymous to some as an indicator of quality and desirability. As global university rankings become further embedded as a basis on which…

School ratings are a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. educational system. Alongside state-mandated measures of school performance, non-state organizations such as GreatSchools.org and Niche have created consumer-oriented systems of school ratings that draw on publicly available information about schools. Claiming the purpose of their rating systems…

State chiefs have new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act, but their formal powers are still limited. Despite these constraints, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) analysis finds that chiefs can make a difference by wielding their powers strategically, to build coalitions and persuade others. While turnover in the…

Many organizations have a tendency toward misalignment of "authority," "responsibility," and "accountability" that causes poor decision-making. There are natural consequences that result, similar to touching fire and getting burned. When those key elements are not properly aligned, the organization can experience…

Paul Leather is New Hampshire's deputy commissioner of education. In this article he writes that he believes education policymakers over the past few decades have made two critical decisions that have had deep, deleterious effects on the overall public education system. First, by demanding that each school be evaluated based on a single externally…

Accounts and analyses of vocational educators' practice, provided through the contributions to this special issue, illustrate how centrally-generated and prescriptive policies and practices and those teachers' reactions to them have come to characterise contemporary vocational education. The application of often centralised institutional…

This report depicts the experience and perspectives of 100 Brazilian international students who responded to CBIE's "2014 International Student Survey".

What are the key ethical issues involved in conducting archival research? Based on examination of cases and interviews with leading archival researchers in composition, this article discusses several ethical questions and offers a heuristic to guide ethical decision making. Key to this process is recognizing the person-ness of archival materials.…

This paper describes how a locally developed school ranking system affected student enrolment patterns in British Columbia over time. In developing an annual school "report card" that was published in newspapers and online, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute created a marketplace for school choice by devising an accountability scheme…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…

The pseudonymous "Great Teacher" deliberately decided to lower his teaching standards in order to raise his scores on the "Student-Generated Numerical Evaluation Form" (SNEF), achieving an ulterior goal and unfortunately proving SNEF-critics right on all counts. This article relates why he eventually decided to sacrifice pedagogical quality to…

Freshmen are more concerned about academic quality and affordability than they have been in decades, according to an annual survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. Sixty-three percent of students said academic reputation was a very-important factor in selecting a college, an…

The prevailing view among leaders in the university community is that America is not investing enough in higher education. A recent survey of the American economy by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) echoed that concern. After all, college graduates are dramatically more productive than those without higher education…

Image assessment in higher education and procedures for conducting image assessments are discussed. Image assessment is the process of finding out what others think about an organization. It is proposed that when image assessments are approached objectively, the results can help determine constituent needs, anticipate vocational trends, survey…