The Career and Technical Education (CTE) playbook series has explored strategies and processes states can use to strengthen CTE program quality and provide students with pathways to postsecondary credentialing and middle- and higher wage career opportunities. In the first three CTE Playbooks, ExcelinEd provided a high-level view of how states can…

Educational choice programs--defined broadly as programs that provide parents with financial aid to help their children opt out of the traditional public school system--are a hallmark of meaningful educational reform. Yet despite widespread news coverage of such programs, polls show most Americans are unfamiliar with how educational choice…

This paper focuses on the manner in which governance structure of higher education is re-organized under neoliberalism. It highlights how states have centralized their powers in their relationships with the universities through performance-based accountability; research funding mechanisms; quality assurance; and various administrative mechanisms.…

The authors' discussion will describe how classroom leaders at every academic level can use rubrics as a means of self-assessment. This strategy and the use of the rubric as a tool can help to provide effective feedback that can develop into a constant reflection of how effectively a teacher focuses on student success by means of their…

This paper explores issues of school autonomy within the context of the performative demands of the audit culture. The focus is on a case study of Clementine Academy, a large and highly diverse English secondary school. Specific situated, professional, material and external factors at the school were significant in shaping Clementine's response to…

The primary focus of this qualitative study is an inquiry into three female teachers' experiences as novice researchers. Over the course of an academic year I maintained a focus upon participants' research experiences and their use of time as they conducted research studies. Delving into the temporal constraints that informed participants'…

Background/Context: PISA has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of how to measure student achievement across national school systems with different curricula. Instead of measuring how well students learn what they are taught in each system, it measures a set of economically useful skills that no one teaches. Purpose: The aim is to…

Written for the general public, this article unpacks the "dialogue gap" in education and raises concerns about what can happen when groups dependent on one another are not talking. Part of the problem involves a matter of scale; policymakers rarely talk about children as individuals as opposed to as aggregates. The larger policy context…

Egypt is currently attempting to introduce a greater formative use of assessment while maintaining a public examination system. This study investigates teacher beliefs about the purposes of assessment in Egypt, using the Teachers' Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. The TCoA inventory elicits responses about four main factors: Improvement,…

Top-down accountability policies have arguably had very limited impact over the past 20 years. Education stakeholders are now contemplating new forms of bottom-up accountability. In 2013, policymakers in California enacted a community-based approach that creates the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) process for school finance to increase…

This paper will focus on the shifts in discourses about teacher education and teacher voice within the South African research and policy environment over the last four decades. The alignment of the political and educational agenda in providing resistance to the apartheid system culminated in 1994, the start of the new democracy. The preceding…

Current large-scale assessment and accountability policies in the United States emphasize the need for all students to be appropriately included. However, there are many challenges to effective inclusion. Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit unique social communication and behavior challenges that can hinder their effective…

The most recent research on college-student learning in the US by respected scholars such as Richard Arum, Josipa Roksa, and Ernest Pascarella suggests that the nation's means of ensuring academic standards in US colleges and universities are not working effectively. Like US K-12 education and health care, the US higher education system is…

Today powerful philanthropies exercise considerable influence over U.S. educational policy. Referred to as venture philanthropies (Scott, 2009; Saltman, 2010), foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, have emphasized high-stakes accountability and…

There is growing consensus in states across the nation that the goal of the K-12 education system is to "prepare all students to graduate from high school ready for college and careers". Yet, in all but a handful of states, the priority goals set to drive student performance toward and beyond college and career readiness sputter out…