It has become increasingly clear that education is a site of conflict. This essay examines the ideological positions that now dominate educational reforms and suggests a number of roles that critically democratic educators should play in confronting these reforms. It then details the contributions that the authors included in this special issue…

Physical education teachers and programs are affected by increasing accountability demands. The purpose of this article is to explain Ohio's journey from advocacy for state physical education academic content standards to state-level policy that led to the development of state-wide assessments and data reporting on each school's report card. The…

Including growth models based on student test scores in teacher evaluations effectively holds teachers individually accountable for students improving their test scores. While an attractive policy for state administrators and advocates of education reform, value-added measures have been fraught with problems, and their use in teacher evaluation is…

The consideration of the impact of the dissertation services industry on the academy is a welcome piece by Jeffry L. White. White raises interesting questions and calls on educators and researchers to think deeply about the role they play in encouraging or combating the use of this industry by graduate students. In this piece, I respond to White's…

This narrative study explores accountability and care in the stories of an exceptional teacher, Marsha Ethridge, who taught more than 46 years in one low-socioeconomic community. While there has been an abundance of research related to teachers' stories of accountability conducted in the last 20 years, much of it reflects accountability imposed on…

At this age of accountability, it is acknowledged that assessment is a powerful lever that can either boost or undermine students' learning. Hitherto, much of the regular institutional and instructional practices show that assessments remain inhibitory or void rather than constructive as these lack the assessment formative aspect. This denotes…

The central purpose of this article is to explore research, issues, and perspectives on the implementation of service learning programs to improve student achievement in at-risk student populations. The implementation of service learning programs takes place within multiple contexts and across several terrains. The complexities of implementing…

In March 2013 the government announced that it was to provide funding to improve provision of Physical Education and sport in primary schools in England. Entitled The Primary Physical Education and Sport Premium, this ring-fenced annual funding has been allocated to schools that are free to choose how the money is spent but are accountable for its…

This study explores difficulties in the conceptual positioning of the higher education performance indicator of qualification completion within a standard logic model taken from the public sector performance literature, involving inputs, processes, impacts and outcomes. Organisations are held to be more accountable for the delivery of outputs than…

This article synthesises the role of evaluation at the municipal, school, classroom and parental levels of governance, and discusses the results of the articles appearing in this special issue. The discussion concerns the role of evaluation in school governance, the value of evaluation for local school development, the constitutive effects of…

This qualitative multiple-case study focused on administrators who are educational leaders at four separate schools in a school district located in a rural area of the State of Pennsylvania. The problem addressed was a lack of formal education and training in the field of special education among public school administrators. Administrators often…

This report provides an overview of the current financial health of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) funded higher education sector in England. This does not include directly funded further education or other colleges, or alternative providers of higher education. The analysis covers financial results for the academic year…

As charter school authorizers and states have increased performance expectations and grown less hesitant to close failing schools, "authorizer shopping" has emerged as a growing threat to overall charter school quality. Authorizer shopping happens when a charter school chooses or changes its authorizer specifically to avoid…

This document records testimony from a hearing held to learn what actions the Department of Education intends to take to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act and to help ensure the department acts in a manner that strictly adheres to the letter and intent of the law. Under the new law, authority over accountability, teacher quality, and school…

The "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) replaced the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB) in December 2015, substantially changing the federal role in education and how schools across the country will be held accountable. For state policymakers, designing new ESSA-compliant accountability systems is a significant…