The Executive Director, Education, for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, describes several shortcomings of large comprehensive high schools. Argues that small schools, be they public, private, or charter, offer a viable alternative to the problems of large schools if they have right essentials such as strong leadership and autonomy.…

Briefly examines trends and changes in Latin American education policies in 1990s and provides overview of related articles. Examines various education reforms seeking to advance system accountability and promotion of school autonomy; identifies strategies used to implement these goals. Concludes reforms had "very limited positive…

This article describes the process of theoretical reflection that preceded the development and empirical verification of a model of "effective school improvement". The focus is on basic mechanisms that could be seen as underlying "getting things in motion" and change in education systems. Four mechanisms are distinguished:…

An exchange of flexibility for accountability placed the responsibility for being accountable at the campus level. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

Foster anchors his analysis of educational leadership by situating the function of schooling as bureaucratic control over individuals. Within the context of schools as a systemic, rule-bearing institution, Foster challenges the work of educational leaders. Are educational leaders virtuous and free or are they mere agents of the state? Foster pits…

The introduction of subject benchmarking led to fears of increased external intervention in the activities of universities and a more restrictive view of institutional autonomy, accompanied by an undermining of the academic profession, particularly through the perceived threat of the introduction of a national curriculum for higher education. For…

This article explores the ways in which policy-makers in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia understood the charter concept when adopting charter legislation. Drawing on literature on policy formation, the paper traces both the creation of the charter law in each state, and the underlying rationales that led policy-makers to support the legislation. The…

In this article, the author describes how the quest for external funding has dominated academic science and argues that today's scientists should think about pledging allegiance to traditional academic values. Enthusiasm for the pre-Cold War model of the university can probably not be justified in utilitarian terms or explained as a consequence of…

In recent years, the predominance of the nation-state as the sole arbiter of curricular matters has eroded. New actors and organizations, especially local schools, have acquired greater discretion over the definition of school subjects and curricular emphases. This study investigates whether and how different patterns of educational governance…

This article discusses Iraq's Ministry of Education's freedom to call the shots a year after a U.S. led coalition took charge of rebuilding their school system. The U.S. Agency for International Development has rejected requests by the press for the monitoring and evaluation documents on Creative Associates International. The Coalition Provisional…

This article focuses on methods of funding allocation and quality assurance as prominent levers of change in higher education reform today. It is their interplay which forms the main components of coordination frameworks. The arguments for more market or new forms of state intervention can only be understood in the context of such a framework.…

Accountability, autonomy, and choice play a leading role in recent school reforms in many countries. This report provides new evidence on whether students perform better in school systems that have such institutional measures in place. We implement an internationally comparative approach within a rigorous micro-econometric framework that accounts…

The objective of the study is to provide a comparative analysis of how school autonomy is implemented in 30 countries of the Eurydice Network at this time and to gain a fuller understanding of the processes that have led to the devolution of decision-making powers to schools and how schools are held accountable for their responsibilities to higher…

In China, the central government has released a series of key policy initiatives over the last twenty years to foster decentralisation of control over higher education, giving prominence to discourses of increased autonomy for both universities and academics. This article reports findings of an empirical study of changing autonomy in Chinese…

Improving education outcomes is important for Germany's long-term economic performance and social cohesion. While student achievement is above the OECD average in science and at the OECD average in reading and mathematics according to the 2006 OECD PISA study, weaker students tend to do badly by international comparison and socio-economic and/or…