A new option that allows students to choose which of their test scores to send to colleges has generated renewed criticism of the College Board. College Board officials tout the option, called Score Choice, as a way to ease test taker anxiety. Some prominent admissions officials have publicly described Score Choice as a sales tactic that will…

Based on two years of extensive data collection in four urban elementary schools, this paper examines the role of principals in the implementation of the Together Initiative (TI), a school reform model for schools labeled low-performing per state accountability standards. The reform model aims to increase school autonomy from district mandates and…

The logic of political economy depends on a domestic metaphor, using the "oikos" or household as a model for the "polis." Historically, this metaphor has imagined citizens as the children of a paternal state. However during the 2008 housing crisis, this metaphor was turned upside down, depicting citizens as the parents of infantile state…

Much of the Northwest Region (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington) is rural in nature. A characteristic of the extractive economies such as timber, agriculture, mining, and fisheries is that they are generally located in small communities isolated by distances. While schools in these communities face the same challenges as those in…

This article discusses the UK government's consultations on skills policy and further education funding. Adult learning has, throughout the years, been subject to endless strategies and proposed plans--but none of these has fully realised its potential. There are two contrasting attitudes to the outlook for further education and, indeed, the…

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) has focused on a small but vital set of accreditation issues for the past ten years. Most were selected because they are at the heart of accreditation (student achievement, relationship with government). Others were selected because they represent major expansions of accreditation activity…

The costs for providing medical school education and services in Vietnam's universities continue to increase. Through a collaborative project between the Government of the Netherlands and Vietnam's Ministry of Health, a five year experimental program to develop in-country capacity and reduce the dependence upon a foreign medical service delivery…

Although many of the recommendations in "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education" (the Spellings Commission report) have still to be implemented, policy makers' insistence that American colleges and universities measure student learning outcomes in a way that permits comparisons seems unlikely to go away. Nor…

As the student success movement has come of age at America's community colleges, much effort has gone into state-level reforms coupled with college-level efforts, on the theory that relying on individual institutions alone to bring change at scale across states and the nation will take too long and cost too much. But if centralized authority is…

Higher education accreditation, created to help safeguard the quality of academic programming, has instead become a kind of insider's game that protects American colleges and universities from close scrutiny, when not pressuring them to become more politically correct. In this article, the author presents a survey of the sorry current state of…

Traditionally, academic freedom has been understood as an individual right and a negative liberty. As William Tierney and Vincente Lechuga explain, "Academic freedom, although an institutional concept, was vested in the individual professor." The touchstone document on academic freedom, the American Association of University Professor's (AAUP)…

Education in Central Eurasia has become one of the services most affected by corruption. Corruption in academia, including bribery, extortion, embezzlement, nepotism, fraud, cheating, and plagiarism, is reflected in the region's media and addressed in a few scholarly works. This article considers corruption in higher education as a product of…

Swedish folk high schools previously held an autonomous position with their own courses, specially trained teachers and the teachers' association. With the introduction of market-like structures in adult education a variety of providers including folk high schools have become involved in the competition for public and private educational…

The long history of volunteerism in America has its roots in colonial religious and educational enterprises. From the beginning, colleges and universities have been independently governed rather than subject to national or state control. This autonomy is a uniquely American tradition. Over the centuries, the work of academic governing…

Council for American Private Education (CAPE) is a coalition of national associations serving private schools K-12. "Outlook" is published monthly by CAPE. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Education Secretary Meets with Private School Leaders; (2) "Waiting for Superman" Sparks National Debate; (3) Neighborhood…