In August 2009, the U.S. Department of Education announced opportunities for states and local educational agencies to vie for $3.5 billion in Title I School Improvement Grants targeted at turning around or closing down chronically low-achieving schools. To qualify for a portion of these funds, school districts were required to implement one of…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative continues to move forward. As of October 2010, 37 states and territories made the CCSS the legal law of their land in terms of the mathematics and language arts curricula used in their public schools. Over 170 organizations, education-related and corporations alike, have pledged their support to…

This study examines how the contemporary European policy debate addresses the further development of the quality of teacher educators. A classification framework based on the literature on professionalism was used to compare European and Member State policy actions and measures on the quality of teacher educators through an analysis of seven…

Faced with mounting policy pressures from federal and state accountability programs, school leaders are reallocating curricula, time, even diet in an attempt to boost student achievement. To explore whether they are using test score data to reallocate their teacher resources as well, I designed a cross-case, cross-sectional study and explored…

Accrediting agencies, legislators, pundits, and even higher educational professionals have become enamored with applying the language of continuous improvement to learning outcomes. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges specifically uses the term "continuing improvement" in Core Standard 2.5, one of its…

The Common Core standards released in 2010 for English language arts and mathematics have already been adopted by dozens of states. Just how much change do these new standards represent, and what is the nature of that change? In this article, the Common Core standards are compared with current state standards and assessments and with standards in…

The Bonn Declaration, approved by the 900 participants at the UNESCO World Conference on Sustainable Development, differs from other conference declarations in that it is the first declaration to deal exclusively with education for sustainable development. It received input from official State representatives and, perhaps because of that, it is…

Prison nursery programs allow departments of correction to positively intervene in the lives of both incarcerated mothers and their infant children. The number of prison nurseries in the United States has risen dramatically in the past decade, yet there remains a significant gap between predominant correctional policy in this area and what is…

Background: School tobacco control policies vary widely in their strength, extensiveness, and enforcement. Currently, no standardized method exists to assess the comprehensiveness of school tobacco policies. The purpose of this study was to develop a new practical rating system for school tobacco policies, assess its reliability, and present…

Across Canada there have been numerous recent examples of incidents where the political and ideological interests of provincial governments have run counter to the mandates of school districts. In this pan-Canadian study, focus groups were conducted with school board trustees and school district superintendents to examine the relationships between…

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children's education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in…

This paper reviews the recent history of English education in connection with British state attempts to 'manage diversity'. It offers a new analysis on points of coherence and tension between the role of education and state policies in relation to race and ethnicity. Drawing on the Prevent strategy as an example, the paper highlights the role that…

This book brings together academics and postgraduate students, practitioners and Ministry officials all of whom are wedded to developing an understanding of what is happening to education in the broader Middle East. They cover many countries whilst recognising that many more could have been included. In drawing attention to education in Pakistan,…

This book will reset the discourse on charter schooling by systematically exploring the gap between the promise and the performance of charter schools. The authors do not defend the public school system, which for decades has failed primarily poor children of color. Instead, they use empirical evidence to determine whether charter schooling offers…

This essay is a contribution to the literature of critique of higher education policy and management. It offers a general discussion of problems arising from the proliferation of mechanisms of audit and quality assurance within the context of concerns about dependence on quantitative measures of values. It argues that uncritical dependence on…