The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to chart the direction of the country's colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos highlighting the…

This non-affirmative, bridging research program sees education as deliberation-based activity. Non-affirmative education is critical regarding policies and cultural practices, yet being mindful that education preparing for life, work and agency in democratic societies must create spaces for growth that are not only socialization or transformation…

The environment in which school leaders and teachers work is shaped by educational policy. Policy is, in turn, derived from the dominant political ideologies at any particular time. The interrelationship between ideology and policy shapes both the overall organization of education and the operational practices and procedures of staff in schools…

The paper identifies three tools that support the administrative instrument of a state-based curriculum commission: compartmentalization, licensing, and segmentation. These tools channel the state's curriculum-making towards forms of symbolic rather than regulatory action. The state curriculum becomes a framework for the ideological governance of…

It is not a surprise that presidents of American colleges formed an association. What is cause for wonder is why it took them so long. By 1869, there were 563 colleges in this nation. Yet not until 1914 did a handful of presidents feel the need to band together and found the Association of American Colleges (AAC). The Association of American…

How do policymakers craft policies, particularly centered on the Common Core State Standards, to be more resilient and less likely to disintegrate during enactment? Researcher Jonathan Supovitz in "Slowing Entropy: Instructional Policy Design in New York City, 2011-12" examines the design of a New York City Department of Education policy…

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008) is a global effort to promote the equal and active participation of all people with disability. Australia ratified this convention, which means that it is committed to promoting, protecting, and ensuring that people with disability are given full equality under the…

This paper considers the challenges faced by contemporary Catholic Education systems with particular reference to the contrast between the prevailing neo-liberal agenda and gospel values. It explicates this contrast from the perspectives of current critiques of the influence of the new manageralism in education and relevant literature on Catholic…

This document is the first in a series of working papers that elaborate on a framework of four key stages in moving toward a common definition of English learner (EL), as described in the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) publication, "Toward a "Common Definition of English Learner": A Brief Defining Policy and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of principals in light of public management reforms taking place in the German educational system and in reference to the empirical patterns uncovered by the papers contained in the Special Issue. Policy makers have created new expectations and new technologies that seem to suggest to…

The recent progress of "co-operative schools" both confirms and disrupts many assumptions surrounding contemporary compulsory schooling. The term itself refers to an eclectic array of schools, both primary and secondary, of which there were, by June 2012, almost 300 in England that have adopted co-operative values, in terms of…

The Biennial Report presents a selection of UNESCO-UNEVOC's activities during 2014 and 2015. The activities contributed to UNESCO's sectoral priorities and programmatic objectives and assisted Member States to provide equitable, inclusive and quality education and promote lifelong learning for sustainable development. Importantly, the selected…

Ask Antonio White what he thinks of Race to the Top--President Barack Obama's signature K-12 initiative--and the Florida teacher will tell you the competitive-grant program is a "difficult pill to swallow." Merit pay for teachers based partly on student test scores is "a joke," he says. He's also not a fan of expanding charter…

New Labour's extended schools initiative added to existing models of community schooling. The paper identifies the key principles behind extended schooling, making comparisons with historical models and contemporary trends in community education. Part one examines New Labour's use of extended schools to deliver their social policy agenda. Part two…

In this article, I present six English teachers' perceptions of the dialogue used by principals and superintendents to communicate policy mandates in their schools. I wanted to learn about the ways in which the discourse employed by these two kinds of policymakers influenced English teachers' experiences as professionals and how these policies and…