Since the 1960s, there have been continuing federal efforts to bring reform to scale in high-poverty elementary and secondary schools across the U.S. This paper traces the evolution of these efforts and discusses their impacts on achievement outcomes. Drawing on evidence from meta-analyses of the Title I evaluation literature and the Comprehensive…

Presents a brief, personal account of the author's experiences as a 12-year-old teacher in Cuba's literacy campaign of 1961. (AEA)

Provides a 20-year retrospective view of the development of Cuban education; examines the broader aspects of the system and details its accomplishments as well as some of its problems. (AEA)

An examination of the origins, objectives, and response to the Soviet Union's widespread reform of higher education suggests that, if fully enacted, the reform could provide a quite different and powerful system. (MSE)

These papers, delivered at the 1981 World Assembly of the International Council on Education for Teaching, reflect the theme of the conference: provision of basic education for all persons, focusing particularly on policies and situations in developing nations. The 14 presentations were from nine nations: (1) "Curriculum Materials for Basic…

The success or failure of educational reform is discussed using Public Law 94-142 as a case study. Constraints on reform arise from the dominant ideology. Education is fundamentally a dependent institution, and efforts to reform it become an attempt to resolve issues in the broader social domain. (FG)

This article discusses the comprehensive secondary schools which have so far been created in West Germany. It points out the ways they differ from English comprehensive schools, summarizes research results, and looks at teacher training needs. (SJL)

The author reviews the changes in China's educational policy since the downfall of the "Gang of Four," emphasizing the nation's return to stricter academic standards and credentialing. (SJL)

The author surveys the era of science innovation initiated by a bonanza of National Science Foundation funding from 1956 to 1976. He looks at the methods and materials that were developed and considers the extent to which this unprecedented national effort met, or is still pursuing, its goals. (Editor/SJL)

The thesis of this paper is that achievement tests have changed their primary function from serving as indicators of educational accomplishments to becoming instruments of educational policy, and have thus come to be regarded as effective means of altering educational achievement and productivity. This assertion is explored by using examples of…

The nature of Federal and state initiatives with respect to multicultural education is examined, and guidelines and standards for the preparation of school personnel are reviewed. Federal initiatives have focused on preschool, elementary, and secondary education, and states have generally followed the Federal lead through state grants to implement…

This report on current research at Sweden's University of Linkoping on the dynamics of technical progress, social change, and continuous educational reform focuses on the four major sub-studies that, with a number of more limited surveys, make up the project on Technology and Science in School and Society: Education, Training, Subsequent Training.…

During the period from 1949 to 1984, industry's share in the national economy of the Peoples' Republic of China rose from 30 percent to 60 percent. Despite raising literacy over the same period from 20 percent to over 75 percent, the Chinese educational system has failed to keep pace with the economy's rapidly expanding need for trained…

This booklet examines national and state educational reform in the 1990s, noting the ways in which performance assessment is being presented as a mechanism of reform. Three reform initiatives are examined: national education goals, standards, and reform legislation. In conjunction with these reform movements, new methods of assessment are being…

This paper examines lifelong learning and its relation to education and training reforms in New Zealand. First, a description is provided of the objectives and characteristics of the lifelong learning movement, suggesting that its beginnings were as a working class movement for social change and economic advancement, and that its programs are…