Conventional wisdom suggests that Latin American countries reformed public education in the 1990s in response to a crisis of coverage and quality. Yet, in terms of access, Latin American countries had achieved relatively high enrollment and completion rates by 1990. With regard to quality, there was simply no high-quality evidence showing weak or…

This policy profile on education in Kazakhstan is part of the Education Policy Outlook series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Building on the OECD's substantial comparative and sectorial policy knowledge base, the series offers a…

In PISA 2009, Finland and Singapore were both ranked high among the participating nations and have caught much attention internationally. However, a secondary analysis of the means for Reading achievement show that the differences are rather small and are attributable to spurious precision. Hence, the two nations should be considered as being on…

The 46th Annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public Schools reveals that Americans say they know a lot more this year about the Common Core State Standards than they indicated a year ago, and they like it a lot less. Americans also say local school boards should have the greatest influence in deciding what is taught in the…

The Department of Education and Training ('the Department') engaged Deloitte Access Economics to undertake research into the drivers of school quality in Australia, with the goal of expanding the evidence base available to the Department in analysing, evaluating and developing school policy. In particular, this work provides a new empirical…

Prepared for a Strategic Education Governance learning seminar, this working paper analyses the ways in which the Dutch government tried to reach overarching goals in education, in a system characterised by a high degree of distributed autonomy of education institutions and the participation of multiple actors, and consequently a government highly…

This article shares the author's vision for a more responsive education system. States can create a more agile, more American, system of governance that eliminates impediments to improvement, empowers schools to innovate, and uses data to help families find the right schools for their children. The author presents four proposals that would move…

Norway has seen major changes in the field of educational assessment over the past decade, following the 2001 '"PISA shock" that stimulated reform of the entire primary and secondary education systems: new outcome-based curricula with cross-disciplinary basic skills were accompanied by major revision of assessment regulations,…

In the twenty years since independence, new Eurasian nation-states of the former Soviet Union have introduced major changes to the way students are admitted to institutions of higher education. Azerbaijan (1992), Uzbekistan (1993), Kazakhstan (1999), Russia (2001), Kyrgyzstan (2002), Ukraine (2004), and Georgia (2005) have all created new state or…

This country review offers an independent analysis of major issues facing the use of school resources in Portugal from an international perspective. It provides a description of national policies, an analysis of strengths and challenges and options for possible future approaches. The analysis focuses on the process of decentralisation of school…

Key system challenges identified by the Abu Dhabi Education Council provided the impetus for an aggressive strategic plan as necessary guidance and support for the development of the P-12 education system to contribute to advancing its positioning in the global knowledge economy. For the Abu Dhabi Education Council, the analysis served as a tool…

It's no surprise that, 28 years after the publication of "A Nation at Risk," school-reform efforts have generated so little effect. The nation's schools have proven, over the past century, adept at resisting change. Recent attempts to inject accountability and innovation have brought an important opportunity. No Child Left Behind helped…

As Sweden drew nearer to the 2006 national election, two themes emerged in the educational debate: a concern for order and discipline in schools, and the ambition to raise educational levels of achievement. The objective of this article is to locate these two themes within a broader framework of understanding by: 1) discussing examples of how the…

Uses data from 39 countries to analyze how various institutional features and policies affected student performance on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. Students in countries with centralized exams, little teacher/union influence on budgets, and larger shares of private-school enrollments had significantly higher TIMSS scores.…