The U.S. Department of Education's proposed guidelines for awarding $4 billion in Race to the Top Fund money send a strong message that any state hoping to land a competitive grant should expect to allow student test scores to be used in decisions about teacher compensation and evaluation. The draft plans outlined by department officials last…

Federal education officials will face a variety of obstacles in running a $650 million innovation fund, from an expected flood of applications and concern about favoritism in picking winners, to skepticism about the government's ability to drive innovative change in education. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education--which last month offered…

This article examines the opinion of experts who are first-rate specialists in their fields and can provide accurate and objective information about these issues. An expert survey was conducted by the Russian State Social University in seven federal districts, twenty-five regions of the country. The survey was participated in by 309 experts…

Opponents of non-state schooling--especially faith-based schools--contend that society is fragile, constantly in danger of splintering along ethnic, social class, and religious lines, and that only the common public school operated by government can create national unity and mutual tolerance. Confessional schools are a constant threat to the…

In September 1931, the Communist Party Central Committee, the highest political authority in the Soviet Union, declared that "single person rule" ("edinonachalie") should prevail in the administration of schools. The history of approximately 100,000 school directors in the 1930s was shaped by a rapid expansion in numbers as…

In the last two decades, educational and curricular reforms in Hong Kong have been designed to prepare students for the challenges of the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty from the UK to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. This paper focuses on students' and teachers' attitudes towards a multicultural music education, which includes…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a collaborative effort between the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) that is developing core K12 standards in English-language arts and math. The current patchwork of state standards makes it difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate student…

Claims that emotional well-being is synonymous with successful educational practices and outcomes resonate with contemporary political portrayal of well-being as integral to "social justice". In Britain, diverse concerns are creating an "ad hoc" array of therapeutic interventions to develop and assess attributes, dispositions and attitudes…

Discussions about freedom of speech and academic freedom today are about the limits to those freedoms. However, these discussions take place mostly in the higher education trade press and do not receive any serious attention from academics and educationalists. In this paper several key arguments for limiting academic freedom are identified,…

It is the aim of this article to contribute towards an understanding of why Scandinavia and England have achieved very different levels of social integration in their state school systems.

Charismatic as well as politically astute, Ton Nu Thi Ninh is a patient woman--up to a point. As a high-ranking member of Vietnam's Communist Party, and regarded as the most powerful woman in the country, she had to be. But for far too long Ms. Ninh has watched the abysmal state of Vietnam's higher education handicap the country's future…

The tendency to construct grand narratives makes participants in education politics unaware of the particularities of marginalized fields such as music education. One prominent reason for this trend is the discrepancy between the values underpinning education politics and the values of higher music education. This article discusses this problem by…

This article addresses accountability issues that affect music education policy and implementation in the neoliberal education system. Using examples from education reform in Ontario, Canada, the author argues that two forms of accountability imbalances fostered by the neoliberal state--hierarchical answerability over communicative reason and…

This author begins by mapping the policy changes of the past 20 years that have occupied and changed the educational terrain in New Zealand. Fundamentally, the reform of education was premised on ideological conjecture that some changes (structural, administrative, pedagogical and managerial) were required, and that these changes would deliver…

Special educational policymaking is a discursive struggle, a power/knowledge interplay constituted within a realm of contradictory beliefs, values and discourses that frame the context within which the education of disabled children is envisioned and realised. The prevalent policy landscapes are precarious and ever-changing, as different…