Standards-based reform has traditionally focused on K-12 educational systems, but there is growing evidence that it is now affecting early childhood programs. While it is increasingly apparent that standards-based reform has arrived in early childhood, there is a significant gap in our understanding of how these policies are being implemented in…

The first article in this special issue is about the doctoral programs, the suppliers of new doctoral graduates in special education. It focuses on one component of a larger effort, the Special Education Faculty Needs Assessment (SEFNA) project, which investigated many aspects of the supply of new doctoral graduates as well as the demand for new…

In the post-Mao era, the Chinese government carried out a series of education reforms to modernise education provision. This paper explores two related aspects of these reforms through comparative case study research in three different school locations within the same region in China. The first focus is upon system reform initiated through…

Baltimore City's public school system is in crisis. Academically, the school system fails on any number of measures. The city's graduation rate is barely above 50 percent and students continually lag well behind state averages on standardized tests. Adding to these problems is the school system's current fiscal crisis, created by years of fiscal…