When viewed holistically, Canada lacks a clear and common understanding of the future directions and top priorities of its post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Perhaps as a result, Canada has not yet comprehensively addressed a fundamental question: How does it demonstrate quality in PSE? To answer this question requires clarification of many…

Tennessee is one of 15 states participating in a pilot program to explore new ways to measure school performance under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under NCLB, states are held accountable for ensuring that sufficient numbers of schools' students are meeting state proficiency standards and improving schools that fail to measure up. In…

This report synthesizes what research says works in improving teacher skills and knowledge, what nations that outperform the United States in education are doing, and provides an analysis of newly available data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey and other sources to indicate where the nation stands in building the capacity of educators…

This report discusses findings and implications of a study commissioned by the College Board to inform the development of the Voluntary Framework of Accountability for Community Colleges. CCRC researchers identified the performance indicators that states are already using for their community colleges and interviewed state higher education…

Improving the nation's public schools is one of the highest priorities of federal, state, and local government in America. Recent research has shown that the quality of the principal is, among school-based factors, second only to the quality of the teacher in contributing to what students learn in the classroom. The Wallace Foundation, which has…

This report, part of the Challenge to Lead education goals series, documents graduation rate performance in SREB states. It looks at recent graduation rate increases and the narrowing gap between the regional and national rates. Nearly all SREB states have shown increases -- many leading the national rate of growth. The report shows how black and…

English language learners (ELLs) have typically performed worse academically when compared to their English-fluent peers. Studies point to a number of possible causes for ELLs' poor performance, and offer differing recommendations for how best to educate them. This study by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) demonstrates the significant…

Scotland has a strong learner-centred system of adult literacy and numeracy education. Examination of the Scottish system can usefully highlight the issues associated with application of this approach in adult education more generally. Two important aspects are the need for highly skilled educators and the difficulty of evaluating such systems.…

Private higher education was probably the fastest-growing sector of postsecondary education worldwide at the turn of the twenty-first century. China is no exception. With the recent expansion and differentiation of higher education, private higher education, in conjunction with public higher education, has become a main force for enhancing the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity of growth and value-added modeling to the way an underlying vertical score scale has been created. Longitudinal item-level data were analyzed with both student- and school-level identifiers for the entire state of Colorado between 2003 and 2006. Eight different vertical scales were…

Education and health have shared interests. Unifying these allows schools to become better places to enjoy learning, teaching and working. Health promoting schools have shown evidence of improving the health and well-being of the whole school community. At the European level, the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) network is one of the most…

The author reports the result of a population analysis released by scholars at the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. The scholars say that changing student demographics may prove the most formidable ever for American colleges and universities as well as for public K-12 school systems. They have pointed to the…

In May 2008, the first National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test was administered across Australia to determine the standard of literacy and numeracy achievement of Australia's students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Some students did very well on the tests and some did not. This type of test can tell a great deal about…

This paper builds upon an earlier analysis presented in this journal. Using official figures for school compositions and for outcomes at KS4 from 1997 to 2007, this paper considers each of the annual cohorts of new Academies in England, from 2002 to 2006. It shows that their level of success in comparison to their predecessors, national averages,…

The process of liberalization and globalization of Indian economy has brought new opportunities and challenges in all areas of human endeavor including education. Educational institutions have to adopt new strategies to make best use of the opportunities and counter the challenges. One of these challenges is how to assess the performance of…