Public service reforms often provoke political backlash. Can they also yield political benefits for the politicians who champion them? We study a Wisconsin law that weakened teachers' unions and liberalized pay, prompting mass protests. Exploiting its staggered implementation across school districts, we find that the reform cut union revenues,…

This article focuses on political education, a vital but neglected component in histories of education within South Africa's liberation movement in exile during the 1970s and 1980s. The article shows how in conditions of exile the idea of political education as a forward-looking, home-bound form of education was counterposed to a notion of…

In this essay, place-based education is discussed within a social theoretical context. In particular, place-based education in social studies is advanced as a panacea for the depoliticization of the U.S. populace at "the end of history." The argument is twofold. First, it suggests politicizing potential in place-based social studies…

In an earlier essay in the Reviewing Policy section of this journal, I examined many of the major arguments for social justice teacher unionism. This combines both more traditional union concerns over wages, working conditions, professional autonomy, and respect with a much more concerted focus by unions on social justice issues in schools,…

An expansive study shows how politics can work for, not just against, efforts to improve America's schools. The education reform project has always been about making America's schools more effective for the children who attend them. In "Making Politics Work," authors Paul T. Hill and Ashley E. Jochim show that this project cannot succeed…

Post-COVID-19, is education losing its special status as a policy domain more insulated from partisan politics than other policy areas? Indeed, a community's political makeup influenced its schools' pandemic learning modality, but did it predict other aspects of educational operations? We studied the role of Republican vote share, race, markets,…

Between 2011 and 2015, at the dawn of the global financial crisis, Spain went through severe austerity measures that led to social unrest and to the emergence of new expressions of collective action. In the educational field, teachers' unions and grassroots movements organised against the neoliberal and neoconservative policies promoted by the…

The implementation of global teacher and school evaluation reform has often been contentious, in ways that differ according to national context. Teacher trade unions have frequently been active opponents of reform but their strategies and motivations have been relatively little studied. This article examines evaluation reform in Greece and the…

Higher education seems to be in a perpetual state of 'crisis'. The many hundreds of books and papers containing this specific, or other relevantly similar expressions, convey a sense of fear and angst. Yet, what are these various crises about, and which values and beliefs are seen as threatened or 'under attack'? This paper will provide an…

A major reform of teacher training has been underway for the past three decades in French-speaking Belgium, in response to the low quality of teacher training and the consequences for school teaching and learning deemed to be in deep crises. Using a number of eclectic methods (metaphors, typologies, timelines, network maps), we map controversies…

The literature on higher education includes a substantial genre devoted to the theme of crisis. While higher education is not alone in this, higher education researchers and writers all too often reach for the language of crisis to describe what they are experiencing or finding. Crises are identified at institutional, disciplinary, national and…

In today's competitive and complex environment, school leaders require social influencing skills to mobilize schools to enable them to adapt to change. The schools' openness to change (SOC) is affected by the direction and strength of relationships between teachers and principals in the school. In particular, the political skills of school…

The term "governance" is one of the most widely applied concepts in education policy and research. Yet its meaning has changed over space and time both analytically and normatively. This history is a complicated one marked by both shifts and continuations in the politics of language and the development of unique intellectual histories…

This paper examines the political implications of China's Gaokao reform on the education system and its profound impact on Chinese students. It starts by exploring the historical background of China's educational reform, focusing on the development and changes of the Gaokao system through a comprehensive review of literature, analysis of policies…

What would it take to truly close the vast opportunity gaps in pre-K-12 public education in the United States--far beyond the weak standard in common use of "adequacy" based on test scores? This report presents findings from the North Carolina part of a national costing-out study called the "Price of Opportunity," which seeks…