In an effort to ensure standard levels of college preparedness among incoming students, some states or systems have adopted common admissions policies applicable to first-time, first-year students seeking admission at a four-year, baccalaureate institution. While some states allow individual institutions to have autonomy over additional…

Dual enrollment courses provide students with the opportunity to access advanced learning experiences, earn high school and college credit simultaneously, and possibly lower their tuition burden toward a postsecondary degree. State policymaker interest in dual enrollment is driven by its potential to smooth transitions between high school and…

How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of career teachers' benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R's of pension funding: "redistribution," "return," and…

This 50-state comparison assesses the K-12 school safety policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The information presented in this interactive resource gives an overview of relevant laws in each state and does not reflect how these laws may interact with other state or federal policies. The interactive resource does not include…

This interactive resource provides information on state private school choice policies specific to vouchers, education savings accounts and scholarship tax credits. It highlights the various ways in which states approach specific private school choice policies. It is worth noting that some states have more than one private school choice program.…

There is little evidence about the origin of the phrase una faccia, una razza (one face, one race). However, its use signifies numerous shared elements in the cultures of Italy and Greece. In both countries, adult education emerged within the critical paradigm whereas vocationalism is currently the leading force of adult education policy…

Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools that receive public funds. They operate under a written contract with a state, district, or other entity (referred to as an authorizer or sponsor). Charter school laws vary from state to state and often differ on several important factors, such as who may authorize charter schools, how authorizers…

New Public Management (NPM)-inspired higher education (HE) governance has become increasingly topical in recent years. However, while existing research provides an overall understanding of relevant changes, it does not offer a complete analysis of complex governance and falls prey to deterministic and relatively narrow ideological impositions.…

This interactive resource provides a comprehensive summary of the various entities that make up postsecondary governance ecosystems in each state and the District of Columbia. It also: (1) Focuses on and provides in-depth information about statewide coordinating boards/agencies and governing boards. If statewide boards do not exist, then…

Thirty years after the demise of the Soviet bloc, there still persists a rhetoric of differentiation and a discursive polarisation between the Western and the non-Western educational thinking and practices. This rhetoric overshadows a potential similarity, or homogeneity, between the dominant and several marginalised contexts. Regional, local and…

Sound educational policy recommendations require valid estimates of causal effects, but observational studies in physics education research sometimes have loosely specified causal hypotheses. The connections between the observational data and the explicit or implicit causal conclusions are sometimes misstated. The link between the causal…

The introductory article of the GSE special issue 'PISA for scandalization, PISA for projection: the use of international large-scale assessments in education policy making' contextualises the four articles of the special issue in the broader context of comparative policy studies in education. It reflects in particular on the question of why…

Understanding how key governance roles are structured and relate to each other helps clarify complex systems for policymakers. Every state has the same or similar policymaking roles; however, each of the roles operate differently in the context of each state's governance model. This interactive resource provides a national overview of the key…

A continued gap exists in student achievement between Indigenous and non- Indigenous students in the British Columbia school system. This article analyzes the balance of success and failure of the Accountability Framework, a provincial program designed to increase graduation rates in the province. In order to understand the successes and failures…

Various changes in the spheres of education policy and school management over recent decades have sparked a renewed interest in the issue of school culture and its potential to understand processes of leadership and academic performance. What are the contributions and potentialities of organizational culture for understanding school organizations…