Suitable execution of moderation policy is challenging but crucial for the trustworthiness and credibility of internal high-stakes assessment systems. In formal education, policies are rarely implemented as intended. Instead, they are "enacted" in ways influenced by mediating factors including the internal and external contexts of…

Taking the perspective of institutions and the system, Education Policy Outlook 2019: Working Together to Help Students Achieve their Potential, analyses the evolution of key education priorities and key education policies in 43 education systems. It compares more recent developments in education policy ecosystems (mainly between 2015 and 2019)…

This report describes an initiative undertaken from 2016-2017 by the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution and Education International (EI) to develop tools to measure the breadth of learning opportunities to which children and youth are exposed in an education system. The Breadth of Learning Opportunities (BOLO)…

This hermeneutic paper interprets a recent series of reforms to inclusive education policy undertaken by the ministry of education in the province of Alberta, Canada. A 2007 Alberta Education review of the 16,000 student files in the province that school boards had claimed met the criteria for severe disability codification status -- the level of…

For many years, England has been the epitome of high-stakes accountability, often playing leapfrog with the USA. It represents an extreme of centralized surveillance, with schools organized as a quasi-market and supervised through a punitive combination of external inspection, the use of test data to name and shame schools, and ultimately closure…

One of the US Department of Education's key priorities is turning around the nation's persistently low-achieving schools, yet exactly how to identify low-performing schools is a task left to state policy makers, and a myriad of definitions have been utilized. In addition, exactly how to recognize when a school begins to turn around is not well…

Globalization has increased mobility of people, resources, and ideas. It is also affecting how governments think about education and what schools teach to their students. Attributes related to education for a knowledge society, sustainable development, or 21st century skills are parts of current national educational policies and reforms. A…

Typical comparisons of schools in the United States to those in other countries ignore critical factors and overlook potential lessons learned. But here's a book that reveals what the best schools from around the world are doing to educate students for a rapidly changing innovation-based world. Find out that American education has not "gotten…

In order to ensure that American students are competitive with students in other countries, since the 1980s, U.S. policymakers have been trying to improve the K-12 public school system. Recent reform efforts have led to the current high-stakes testing movement, which measures student achievement and school effectiveness mainly by standardized test…

The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 (NETP) presents a model of twenty-first-century learning powered by technology, with goals and recommendations in five essential areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. This article connects NETP ideas in one of these areas--assessment--with those of the Assessment and…

Few documents in higher education have enjoyed the influence or longevity of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the 1960 law that transformed the state's public colleges and served as a blueprint for public systems across the country. Even today, almost 50 years after it was written, the master plan retains a mythic status in…

In this essay, Rosa Bruno-Jofre and George Hills examine two major Ontario policy documents: 1968's "Living and Learning" and 1994's "For the Love of Learning." The purpose is, first, to gain insight into the uses of the term "excellence" in the context of discourse about educational aims and evaluation, and, second,…

The management of change in English and Welsh schools has been an authoritarian affair seeking to impose rather than win consent for new ways of working. While no practitioner should challenge the fact of constant change in natural and social life, school staff have had little choice in the nature and direction of changes that have significantly…

Jeb Bush campaigned for governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in 1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual-track strategy for reforming Florida's K-12 education system: standards and accountability for public schools, choice and options for parents. Florida lawmakers followed those reforms with additional measures.…

President Bush is leaving the White House with a mixed record on higher education. His administration catapulted conversations about holding colleges more accountable for their performance into the national spotlight, and it pressed for some increases in federal spending on student aid and research. At the same time, Mr. Bush faced criticism from…