The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a regional economic grouping of 15 countries whose common vision is to promote economic, social and political development and growth. Arguably, sustainable growth can be realized if there is equal access to all positions of power and influence in the area, but an investigation of 117…

The provision of customized black and minority ethnic (BME) leadership courses and programmes is one of the measures being employed to address the under-representation of teachers and school leaders from minority ethnic backgrounds. This strategy has always attracted controversy as opinions have been divided about its value and benefits. Yet there…

This brief describes the prevalence of highest-performing teachers in ten purposely selected districts across seven states. The overall patterns indicate that low-income students have unequal access, on average, to the district's highest-performing teachers at the middle school level but not at the elementary level. However, there is evidence of…

This appendix describes the methods and provides further detail to support the evaluation brief, "Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?" (Contains 8 figures, 6 tables and 5 footnotes.) [For the main report, "Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers? NCEE…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975 has made a profound impact on millions of children with disabilities who now enjoy their right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE). It is the goal of national policy, endorsed by Congress, to ensure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic…

This article examines the access policies in Portuguese higher education, from the 1974 revolution to the present. Recently, under the simultaneous pressure of a declining birth rate and increasing financial stringency, higher education institutions, both public and private, have started to compete for students, while responding to increasing…

Since 1965 the federal government has attempted to provide low socioeconomic status students with equal access to postsecondary education through the Higher Education Act and its multiplicative programmatic efforts. Implemented as one such program in 1998, the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, has been…

While significant progress has occurred over the past several years regarding the expansion of the quantity and quality of after-school opportunities, the ambitious idea of "after-school for all" remains a distant goal. In this commentary, we push beyond some of the numbers to take a close look at questions related to access and equity,…