Transitions between education cycles represent one of the greatest hazards for girls in their educational journey throughout the developing world. It is not uncommon across sub-Saharan Africa for girls' secondary enrollment rates to drop 75% from primary enrollment rates. Between the secondary level and the tertiary level, enrollment rates often…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) has many opportunities to apply expertise and creativity to the solution of perplexing human problems. It is much more rare, however, to find oneself at the nexus of a set of opportunities that make it possible to make a greater contribution than the original objective. Macedonia's commitment to…

Technology has dramatically changed the world--now almost anyone can "move" at Internet-speed; people who were marginalized are able to find information on acquiring micro-loans to start businesses, and villages previously unconnected to the telecommunications grid now have affordable cell phone access. As technology becomes easier to…

From 1979 to 2002, Afghanistan was in a near constant state of war and exhibited some of the lowest levels of development in the world. While local conflicts and Taliban remnants continue to challenge Afghanistan's reconstruction and stabilization, significant progress has been made since the 2001 U.S. led invasion and subsequent fall of the…

This publication is intended for three primary audiences: international development professionals who want to define "workforce" for program design purposes, those who seek information about field activities, and those who want to reflect on the implementation of successful, high impact programs--whether they were broad-based or…

This evaluation of progress in tackling the problems of access, quality, equity and completion of primary and secondary education examines the results of an alliance between the Coffee Growers Committee of Caldas (CGC) and the Department of Caldas, Colombia. The evaluation team employed a retrospective approach to understanding the social,…

Many countries that have undergone expansion of access to public education still face significant disparities in school enrollment and attendance rates at sub-national levels, and fail to reach a high proportion of children who are outside of the government system. Completion and student learning have also continued to be system-wide challenges…

This document summarizes the results obtained by the AprenDes project in 2004, the project's first year of implementation. It provides the principal findings on program performance from a baseline in May 2004 to the end of the school year (late October 2004). Progress on a number of project objectives related to decentralized school- and…

The purpose of the Community Learning and Information Center (CLIC) project was "to accelerate economic, social and political growth by providing residents in twelve underserved Malian communities with access to easily accessible development information and affordable access to information and communication technology (ICT), high-value…

This paper reports that the basic opportunity to learn does not exist in many countries, and that a concerted management focus to assure that schools provide basic elements of an opportunity to learn (OTL) could potentially yield big improvements in learning. The paper assesses: (1) what basic factors create the opportunity to learn; and (2) to…

The New Horizons for Primary Schools (NHP) was implemented in 72 government schools in Jamaica, from 1998-2005. The program provided support to schools on the basis of needs identified through the preparation of a School Development Plan (also called a School Improvement Plan). This independent evaluation report first compares the schools in the…

Recognizing the diversity of models and strategies for private sector participation in education that have emerged in Latin America, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) requested the Academy for Educational Development (AED) to conduct research with leaders in the public and private sectors in several countries. While…

In 2004, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Educational Quality Improvement Program 2 (EQUIP2) began investigating community-based schools as a mechanism for reaching the underserved populations. The team identified nine models that successfully organized schooling in regions least served by the formal education…

This case study describes the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), which was formed to explore ways to help children from its rural development program gain access to improved education. Working mainly in rural areas, BRAC focused on improved quality through improved education service delivery, management detail, and finance. While…

This manual provides a step-by-step methodology for promoting community participation in improving learning in local schools. The Civic Engagement for Education Reform in Central America (CERCA) School Report Card (SRC) approach empowers local school communities to gather information on the quality and conditions of teaching and learning in their…