The Race to the Top Reform Support Network (RSN) designed this toolkit to help States and school districts implement student learning objectives (SLOs) with the highest degree of quality. The toolkit contains templates, guidance documents, sample SLOs and other tools, which States and school districts can select or adapt for their own purposes as…

Race to the Top States offer a wide range of supports for local educational agency (LEA) implementation of one of four school intervention models. Some States allocate resources on a regional basis, while others coordinate resources at the State level. Certain States also use data tools to measure district needs, capacity and progress on key…

Michigan's former governor, John Engler, was naturally attracted to charter schools. He had seen for too long how school districts treated students as their property and the state as an endless funding source, and he wanted that to change. Engler saw the chartering strategy as a politically viable means for gaining leverage over school districts…

This article explores the neo-institutional theory of global policy convergence, or "isomorphism", by comparatively examining one of its most recent manifestations--the global diffusion of national standardised testing--in Australia and Japan. By understanding the particular configurations of national testing as being conditioned by both…

Hearing the national call for higher education accountability, the author of this tripartite article urges university administrators to move towards a more data-driven approach to counseling center supervision. Toward that end, the author first examines a key factor--perceived increase in student pathology--that appears to shape budget and…

One of the main aims of the so-called common "European Higher Education Area" is the creation of a European framework for higher education (HE) qualifications and a network of "quality assurance agencies." In the light of the above processes, recent legislation in Greece on quality assurance in HE and the operation and…

The direction of the UK Government's policy is to remove schools from local authority control, and replace that relationship with private sponsors, undermining their ability, or indeed inclination, to deliver on the "Every Child Matters" agenda, among many others. The author argues that local authorities have much to give and where they…

Despite the growing number of culturally sensitive training models and considerable literature on the importance of training clinicians in larger contextual issues, research examining how students learn to apply these issues is limited. In this participatory action research project, we systematically studied our own process as marriage and family…

It often seems as though many fundraisers are allergic to the concept of measurable performance goals and accountability for development officers. However, goals are critical for individuals and organizations; without them, success can neither be defined nor understood. This article describes how one development shop improved accountability and…

This article presents a policy sociology reflection on Bernard Barker's book, "The Pendulum Swings: Transforming School Reform". The book represents Barker's attempt to intervene in education policy during the lead-up to the 2010 UK general election and is framed by what he imagined might be possible under a new Conservative government.…

This paper argues the need for new ideas to assist in the creation of a new social imaginary post-neo-liberalism to frame rethought educational systems, policy and schooling. This is an attempt to reclaim progressive, democratic and social justice purposes for schooling well beyond dominant human capital renditions. While acknowledging the…

The Prince's Teaching Institute (PTI), which has evolved out of the Summer Schools for English Literature and History which The Prince of Wales inaugurated in 2002, now provides a variety of courses in the major subjects of the secondary curriculum. In partnership with Cambridge University it enables teachers to update and extend their subject…

This paper argues for the importance of ethnography in the conduct of educational research and the ways in which it can threaten, in a good sense, the certainties and dominance of performativity. The paper uses the poetry of Emily Dickinson to signal the importance of indirection in the conduct of ethnographic work and, more specifically, the ways…

This final chapter provides observations about institutional research in community colleges derived from the preceding chapters and the issue editors' own experiences. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this issue, as well as the editors' experiences, suggest several observations about institutional research in community colleges. These include the…

Conceptions of teaching quality and teacher accountability, and the values and assumptions that underpin them, are relatively under-examined by policy makers. We suggest ways in which philosophers might address this deficit, with reference to policy concerns found in the United Kingdom (UK). Further philosophical questions are generated by this…