Discusses the legacy of Toronto Canada's North York Board of Education's commitment to design quality, embodied in a series of schools from the 1990s. Several school designs, photographs, and floor plans are included, illustrating the Board's desire to combine durability and user satisfaction by embracing architectural quality. (GR)

This document discusses the importance of data-quality and presents three simple steps that can help lay the framework for an over all data-quality strategy. The first step is to ask some rather simple questions, such as: (1) How much data does the organization have, how fast is it creating new data, and how many redundant copies are there?; and…

Since the 1980s, dozens of Chinese government documents on teacher education reform have been published. These documents have influenced the direction of teacher education change in China and will continue to do so in the years ahead. The first wave of documents focused on recovering the teacher education system. A second wave centered on building…

Over the past 20 years, home visitation has emerged as the flagship program through which many states and communities are reaching out to new parents.The presence of bills to advance home visitation in Congress and in state and local legislatures, and the fact that several states and counties are moving forward with comprehensive plans and…

In an increasingly competitive economy, the capacity for self-motivation, problem-solving skills and an ability to think critically are core graduate attributes. However, the capacity to create an educational environment that develops and harnesses such skills is a distinct challenge as resources become increasingly restricted. Geographical Skills…

This paper explores the relationship between changing forms of the governance of education and the growth and uses of data in the context of England--a context that can be described as the most "advanced" in Europe in terms of data production and use. The paper links the shifting relations between the central department of education…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

This paper addresses human resources utilization at the university environment. We address the design issues of e-learning courses that can capture the teacher knowledge. The underlying objective is that e-learning is a key knowledge and major resources for many universities. Therefore, the design of e-learning should be an important part of the…

This article inquires into the "calculative practices" that are used to regulate quality in higher education. After providing a historical snapshot of the antecedents of quality regimes, I discuss university ranking systems (league tables) and the UK's Research Assessment Exercise. I ask two questions: first, what do the visibilities of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the introduction of a quality assurance system in a new, private university in Syria, and considers the extent to which the theoretical model based on institutional theory and isomorphism is reflected in practice. Design/methodology/approach: A five year longitudinal study which reviews the design,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to question the appropriateness of a proposal for a new European Qualifications Framework. The framework has three perspectives: historical; analytical; and national. Design/methodology/approach: The approaches are diverse since the first insists on the institutional and decision-making processes at European…

Many higher education institutions have implemented a learning management system (LMS) to manage online learning and teaching, with varying levels of support provided to staff and students, but often there is little subsequent investigation into the quality of the online sites or the use made of the support structures provided. This paper presents…

Low student learning is a common finding in much of the developing world. This paper uses a relatively unique dataset of five semiannual rounds of standardized test data to characterize and explain the short-term changes in student learning. The data are collected as part of the quality assurance system for a public-private partnership program…

Charter schools offer choice to parents who would otherwise be constrained to having their children attend a residentially assigned traditional public school. The number of charter schools has increased steadily in the last decade, reflecting their popularity with parents and the general public. They vary substantially in their missions, the…

E-learning in the European Higher Education Area has stampeded its way to the foreground of the Quality Assurance (QA) forum, and has become a key issue among quality assurance agencies and institutions in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Because internet-based learning is currently such a relevant topic, there is a dire need for the…