Universities are organizational structures with individual activity mixes or strategies that lead to different performance levels by mission. Evaluation techniques based on performance indicators or rankings risk rewarding just a specific type of university and undermining university diversification: they usually introduce homogenizing pressures…

By applying the concepts, practices, and limits of the theories of global governance of education, this study tries to reveal the characteristics of education for all (EFA), the millennium development goals (MDGs), and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) from the dimensions of norms and rules, accountability, transparency, participation, and…

The Australian Government provides basic operating grants to universities, which are used to teach domestic undergraduate students. It imposes a productivity offset on the grants to encourage improvements in university productivity. But it is not transparent and does not vary across universities. Thus, universities have little incentive to improve…

In daily patient-history taking and diagnosis practice, doctors ask questions to gather information from patients and narrow down diagnostic hypotheses. Training medical students to be efficient problem solvers through the use of questioning is therefore important. In this study, the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) and lecture-based…

This study compared five common multilevel software packages via Monte Carlo simulation: HLM 7, M"plus" 7.4, R (lme4 V1.1-12), Stata 14.1, and SAS 9.4 to determine how the programs differ in estimation accuracy and speed, as well as convergence, when modeling multiple randomly varying slopes of different magnitudes. Simulated data…

Transformation of post-socialist educational systems is perhaps one of the most interesting and at the same time underestimated in its importance, developments in the history of comparative education. After the three decades of post-socialist development one can note significant differences between the countries which once had identical or very…

Under the current Denver Public Schools (DPS) transportation policy, students are eligible for transportation if they attend their designated neighborhood school and live a specified distance from that school -- more than 1 mile away for elementary school, 2.5 miles for middle schools, and 3.5 miles for high school. A multitude of exceptions exist…

State education rankings published by "U.S. News & World Report," "Education Week," and others are based partly on achievement tests, which measure student learning, and partly on other factors not directly related to student learning. These rankings are aggregated in a way that provide misleading results by: (1) ignoring…

Policymakers and professional educators attempt to be good stewards of public funds while simultaneously raising expectations for student outcomes that reflect academic excellence in the public school system. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficiency of Texas public school districts and the factors influencing the inefficiency of…

This article reports on the experiences of teachers at a small rural school located in the North Coast region of New South Wales in Australia who participated in a school improvement project based on an approach developed over many years by David Townsend and Pam Adams in Alberta, Canada. The project involved monthly meetings between the teachers…

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) Office of Inspector General (OIG) annual plan identifies the audits, inspections, and other activities that the OIG intends to undertake to assist the Department in fulfilling its responsibilities to America's citizens and students. OIG's FY 2022 Annual Plan details the assignment areas and resources…

Objectives: Care efficiency of family can be determined by many factors such as mental and physical health status of family members and their socioeconomic situation. Raising children with disabilities is a burdening and stressful situation for their caregivers. This article examines determinants of care efficiency in a group of Polish parents…

Autonomisation, allowing public organisations greater freedom from central control, has been extensively debated in the public policy literature as a means of increasing their efficiency and effectiveness. The government of Vietnam has adopted autonomisation as a key policy in reforming public service delivery. This paper investigates the…

Technical efficiency is the ability of a firm to produce its maximum output using a set of inputs or to minimise the use of its inputs to produce a certain level of output. When a firm is operating at its most efficient, operating costs can be minimised, profits maximised and competitiveness improved. This study investigates the role of a firm's…

This article explores the deployment of numerical criteria in the practices of steering by presenting a local case of governing early childhood education (ECE). In this case, a specific numerical tool for governance, namely, child-staff ratio is used in various ways in the everyday life of preschools. This paper uses data from interviews of…