The field of education has been shaken by announcements from prominent foundations (Annenberg Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, and Atlantic Philanthropies) that higher education will no longer be a high-priority funding area, due, in part, to a lack of measurable results (Marcy, 2003). Similarly, the nonprofit sector has been taken aback by an…

Values and realities may have difficulty coexisting on a college campus. What is expressed in an institution's mission and what actually occurs may be far apart. In some instances, the academic values incorporated within a mission and the realities of implementation operate in completely separate channels and rarely interact. In other cases, the…

Mandates through legislative and policy changes for increased student outcome accountability have intensified demands for meaningful school reform and an emphasis on scientifically based practices. However, there continues to be a major disconnection between an ever-growing body of research on effective educational practices and what is actually…

This article presents the closing address delivered by Sir John Daniel of UNESCO at the Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) General Conference on "Incentives and Accountabilty: Instruments of Change in Higher Education," which was held at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris on…

In this paper the author examines the implementation of key performance indicators in Canadian post-secondary education institutions. More specifically he charts their implementation from the perspective of students and the effect they have on the quality and delivery of education. Key performance indicators (KPI) in Canada are administered by the…

Increasing attention on quality assurance, a decentralisation of responsibilities and need for quantitative data in accountability and decision support led to the development of a student satisfaction monitoring instrument at Utrecht University (UU). Initially marketing worked as a catalyst activity to prove the added value. At a later stage the…

Critics of "No Child Left Behind" judge that it oversimplifies the influence of social context and the place of socially ascribed traits, such as social class, race, and gender, in determining achievement. We hold that this is especially likely to be true with regard to gender-related group effects and gender-implicated interaction…

Vocational schools in Germany are currently undergoing administrative reform. The main idea behind this reform, taken from the administrative paradigm of New Public Management, has been to grant schools extended autonomy but to make them more accountable for their results. Critics emphasize that such reform tends to reduce school administration to…

Before districts worry about spending more on professional development, they must look closely at what already is being spent. A careful analysis may show the district is spending more than leaders think, but their efforts may be fragmented and unprioritized. A budget analysis is the first step in being able to allocate resources for the maximum…

This article is a response to Fierros and Blomberg's article on "Restrictions and Race in Special Education Placements in For-Profit and Non-Profit Charter Schools in California." It compliments these scholars for confirming through their findings that ethnically diverse students with special education needs endure segregationist…

This article discusses the current role of the principal, how the role has changed, and how it should change. It also suggests that the principal shortage is an unintended consequence of these changes. In a national study, practitioners identified 45 descriptors of the principal's role. The analysis of the descriptors revealed four themes: role…

This article will set the context of democratic leadership in Scandinavian countries. This concept will be discussed in a dual perspective. On the one hand there are pressures to transform the governing of the schools towards a more "rigorous" form of New Public Management (NPM) with models of leadership/management from the world of…

This article examines ethnographic data that show Belgian adolescents of Moroccan descent stylizing Standard Dutch. Analysis addresses the importance of this variety in Belgian-Flemish society and in the school these boys attended, and shows how in interviews with Moroccan boys the hegemonic status of this variety is generally accepted. In…

Research literature highlights the principal as central to teacher evaluation. However, principal reports do not provide adequate information to document teacher quality. Good teacher evaluation adds multiple data sources such as client surveys, peer reviews of materials, and pupil achievement data, which vary by teacher and setting. Principals…

After a decade or so spent largely on setting academic standards against which to hold schools accountable, states are themselves being held accountable for helping schools figure out how to meet them. The result is a huge leadership challenge. With few or no added resources, state education agencies are retooling to provide more technical support…