Education has been a priority for Ghana since its independence, with current expenditures representing double the average for Africa and other developing nations. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government aimed to enhance the quality of education and teacher attendance, including improving school infrastructure and providing textbooks and…

In Liberia, recurring school absenteeism and post abandonment are considered critical obstacles to quality education. Although national political actors recognize absenteeism as a major impediment to quality education, studies on the factors influencing teacher attendance in the country, including national policies and practices at the community…

Prior to COVID-19 lockdowns, the Federal Republic of Nigeria had taken measures to improve the quality of education and of teachers' working conditions such as by improving school infrastructure and accelerating teacher training programs, and providing incentive schemes for teachers. While education is free and compulsory, Nigeria reports the…

In Rwanda, over 3.5 million children were estimated to be out of school in 2020 when the country closed all schools as a safety measure against the spread of COVID-19. The government quickly developed a national response plan and started the process of hiring teachers, constructing classrooms and training in-service teachers in remote-learning…

In recent years, many U.S. states have introduced growth models as part of their educational accountability systems. Although the validity of growth-based accountability models has been evaluated for the general population, the impact of those models for English language learner (ELL) students, a growing segment of the student population, has not…

Academic Leadership 2.0 means making an administrative partnership with the faculty the cornerstone of an institution's culture. Administrators have to stop thinking of themselves as operating on a different level from the faculty. The fear many administrators have is that if they demonstrate their willingness to advocate for the faculty, the…

With the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England in the 2011 Education Act, this article considers the future of teacher discipline in England. It provides a critique of the changes to the regulation of teacher misconduct and incompetence that draws on a Foucauldian framework, especially concerning the issue of public displays of…

Jill Chouinard, in her article "The Case for Participatory Evaluation in an Era of Accountability" (this issue, p. 237), may be re-iterating what has often been claimed and arguably is infused already in much of our theory and practice: the value of participatory approaches in some, perhaps many situations. She summarizes these claims eloquently…

Facility managers have questions about sustainability. How do an organization's physical facilities--its built environment--and the management of them, influence the sustainability of the organization or institution as a whole? How important is Facility Management (FM) to the overall sustainability profile of an organization? Facility managers…

This paper provides insight into distributed leadership by contrasting the oppositional messages found in the literature, and by examining differences in the rhetoric and reality associated with its application. Specifically, the treatment of power and accountability within the distributed leadership theoretical framework is difficult to…

Recent advances in our thinking about thinking are brought to bear here in our thinking about school improvement. Some ways in which our thinking hobbles education and educational leadership include: a results bias, a quantification bias, attribution of causality, substitution and intensity matching, predispositions, a confirmation bias, premature…

Ohio's charter-closure law is touted as one of the toughest in the nation because it requires the automatic closure of charter schools that consistently fail to meet academic standards. Ohio's charter-closure law, which became effective in 2008 and was revised in 2011, calls for automatic closure of schools rated in Academic Emergency for at least…

Recent educational reforms in Norway include national tests and monitoring mechanisms to see if key outcomes are being achieved. At the same time, Norway has not established the follow-up mechanisms like high-stakes incentives and rewards that are characteristic of accountability policies in some other countries. As a consequence, one could argue…

The mission and vision of adult education is to provide every individual in Illinois access to Adult Education and Literacy services. In Illinois, more than 1.15 million adults have less than 12 grades of formal education, approximately 2.8 million Illinois residents speak a language other than English in their home, and more than 350,944…

In the United States, federal and state accountability policies put demands on educational agencies that often exceed their capacity. As a result, a variety of educational organizations are contracted to design and implement policy. Programs and services offered by these contractors are not only instrumental in the process of mediating and…