This article is based on ongoing research in Vanuatu and the wider Pacific. It maps multilevel roles that education and development policy actors, and civil societies in particular, have increasingly been playing in official education and development policy activities. Most recently this has been in relation to the "post-2015" agendas…

Competency-based education is increasingly popular because of the flexibility it provides for students seeking a postsecondary credential. Current federal student aid, however, is geared toward supporting students in traditional, time-based degree programs. This paper discusses why current approaches to federal student aid are not supportive of…

This study draws on institutional theory to examine teachers' and principals' perceptions of new teacher evaluation policies, factors that influence such perceptions and how such perceptions shape the implementation of the policies in Seoul (Korea) and Michigan (USA). The study featured in-depth interviews of 11 elementary school teachers and 4…

This chapter argues that, despite intentions, the way federal financial aid policy is constructed and currently administered can have negative consequences for poor community college students.

This paper examines the way language-in-education policy-making in Vanuatu has dealt with multilingualism at three points in the nation's short history: in 1980, as the country gained its independence from Britain and France; in 1999, during a period of intense change across government departments following the Comprehensive Reform Programme…

In recent years, the idea of the contribution of education to citizenship has been reinitiated. The purpose of this paper is to investigate constructions of citizenship as they are articulated in European policy documents on teacher education. It is indicated that the normative form of active citizenship is put into play through the individual and…

This issue of "Policy Insights" reviews the results from the annual survey, conducted by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), of tuition and fees at public colleges and universities in the WICHE region, and discusses related policy implications. The WICHE region includes 15 states--Alaska, Arizona, California,…

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, speaking at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, called for an open Internet which would make sure that ISPs had economic incentives to build better networks while still protecting consumers and innovators. His specific recommendations were shared with the other members of the FCC in February. One of…

Background: Addressing the limitations of existing Local Wellness Policies (LWPs) and promoting their implementation remain priorities for health and education agencies. One gap has been the absence of a standard assessment to support LWP revision. During planning for an initiative to improve school nutrition and physical education policy, the…

Rhetorical analysis, an approach to critical discourse analysis, is presented as a useful method for critical policy analysis and its effort to understand the role policies play in perpetuating inequality. A rhetorical analysis of Character "Matters!", the character education policy of a school board in Ontario, Canada, provides an…

In this comment, on Terri McCarty's Presidential Address, I focus on her dynamic approach to investigation that contributes to a vibrant and constructively critical exploration of the place of basic research, critical policy analysis, and activism in the anthropology of education and the social sciences more broadly.

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) offers publicly funded vouchers to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250% of the poverty line, allowing them to enroll in participating private schools. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This article…

Drawing on the concept of policy appropriation, this study investigates how different education stakeholders in a rural region of Colombia perceive foreign language education policies, and how these perceptions shape the way they recreate these reforms at the ground level. Contributing to the field of language policy analysis in Colombia and…

This research examines the effects of state laws banning access to in-state resident tuition for unauthorized immigrant students in the United States. These laws were implemented between 2005 and 2012. We evaluate the policy effects on (a) college enrollment, (b) school dropout rates of unauthorized immigrants, and (c) the enrollment of U.S.…

A university professor and high school ESL teacher, both based in Lincoln Nebraska, each write two short essays that detail implications of the Trump administration immigration policies for students, teachers, schools, and communities. The first two dispatches come from the transition period (after Trump won but while Obama still presided) while…