The U.S. federal government has played a growing role in setting nationwide education policy since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. This Act, along with the 'Equality of Educational Opportunity' report commissioned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, led the U.S. Office of Education to pursue a policy agenda…

The paper analyzes how street-level bureaucrats construct and activate the intersectoral network induced by the implementation of the "Bolsa Família" Program (BFP) in a region of extreme poverty in Brazil. BFP is a federal cash transfer program with conditionalities, benefiting 13.8 million families. Based on the educational…

Governments all over the world have been improving their educational sector through funding programs aimed at reducing the financial burden on parents, increasing access and quality to education. The government of Ghana in 2017 switched policy to a free senior high school policy to reduce poverty by finally eliminating the financial burdens…

To compete for decent-paying jobs, today's students--particularly those coming from low-income families--need more than a high school education. In fact, the odds of living in poverty can be reduced by 20 to 30 percent with some college attendance or by earning an associate's degree rather than a high school diploma or equivalency. However, public…

If there are areas that have received significant impacts of ICTs, education is one of them as ICTs have stimulated major differences in the teaching approaches and the ways students learn (Yuen, Law, & Wong, 2003); however, World Bank unexpectedly excludes ICT from the key focus areas in their ESS 2020, a guideline that may be adopted by…

In the United States, adult and workforce education (AE) seems to be located, simultaneously, both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Ongoing shifts in national economic demands and changes in requirements for training and education have brought learning in the adult years into the federal public policy arena. Sometimes referred to as lifelong…

In the article the involvement of Federal government into adult education is analyzed; the nature and extent of legislative measures taken in order to improve the quality of adult education in the USA is investigated. [For the complete Volume 12 proceedings, see ED597979.]

As immigration has reached historic numbers in the United States, immigrant children have become an integral part of the national tapestry. While immigration has grown across all post-industrial nations, inequality has risen at a steep rate on a variety of indicators, including income distribution, child poverty, residential segregation, and…

A major challenge for education policymakers and educators globally is the strong and persistent impact of student socio-economic status (SES) on learning. This is a challenge that will not be addressed solely by school-focused reform. However, one policy initiative that could make a positive difference in this regard, and could bring other…

This article is concerned to respond to recent UK governments' attitudes to teachers, who are predominantly women, and who are denied a voice and sense of professionalism. It looks to the role of teacher research in school decision-making, including school improvement, historically in England, which set a pioneering example in years before the…

Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers, and the promotion of competition are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school…

Educational disadvantage is an essentially contested, political concept. At the same time there is a "phoney consensus" surrounding the issue, i.e., policy debates on the topic often fail to reflect this contestation. This lack of awareness of the political context to the debate is evident in relation to the targets and measures set for…

Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a federal program to provide additional assistance to academically struggling students in high-poverty areas, has long contained a provision called the "supplement-not-supplant" requirement. This provision was designed to ensure Title I funds were spent on extra educational services…

This paper explores understandings of gender equality and education and the nature of global goal and target setting, drawing on empirical data collected in central and local government departments in Kenya and South Africa reflecting on their implementation of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, concerned with poverty, MDG 2, concerned with…

Voucher programs and their supporters have had a tough last few years. The Florida Supreme Court declared vouchers in that state unconstitutional in 2006. Three years later, the Arizona Supreme Court did the same. In 2007, voters in Utah handed a resounding defeat to a voucher program there. In 2009, the U.S. Congress refused to continue funding…