The concept of street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980, 2010) examines the form and extent discretion takes in teachers' and other public policy enactors' work and how they negotiate their way through sometimes contradictory policy imperatives. It provides a framework for straddling top-down and bottom-up perspectives on policy making. In this…

Summer learning loss--decreased academic performance following an extended school break, typically during the period after one grade ends and before another grade starts--is a well-documented phenomenon in North America, but poorly described in sub-Saharan African contexts. In this article, we use the term "grade-transition break" loss…