In the last quarter-century and especially the last decade, testing and accountability have come to dominate education policy at the state and national levels. The common concern about the effects of such testing is that it reshapes teaching in the classroom. But such claims do not look at the evidence of deeper classroom structures (the mix of…

Morrissey, Leikes, and Cochran (this issue) raise concerns about potential negative effects of state pre-kindergarten (pre-K) on the early care and education system. To put their study in context, I reviewed national demographic and enrollment trends. I found little evidence of negative effects from state pre-K policy. One reason may be that…

The federal No Child Left Behind Act and previous performance-based accountability policies are based on a theoretical assumption that sanctions will motivate school staff to perform at higher levels and focus attention on student outcomes. Using data from Chicago, this article draws on expectancy and incentive theories to examine whether…

Articulation agreements have been part of the American educational scene for well over 100 years. Initially implemented as a tool for more effectively and efficiently delivering liberal educations, they became more common as the numbers of community colleges grew during the 1960s and 1970s. During the mid-1980s, the universal education promise of…

Since 1995, efforts to prohibit affirmative action have intensified, perhaps most strikingly in higher education. In 1996, California voters adopted Proposition 209 (Prop. 209), an amendment to the state constitution that banned both discrimination and affirmative action programs that give preferences to groups or individuals based on their race,…

This article is a policy analysis that considers how the policy option of using federal programs to promote educational choice was proposed and debated in the 106th and 107th Congresses. This debate was part of the reauthorization of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) between 1999 and 2001. Over the past 20 years,…

Bettina Cass, with Deborah Brennan, Ilan Katz, Catherine Thomson and Deborah Mitchell, and 10 Partner Organisations in NSW and South Australia, are undertaking a three-year ARC Linkage Grant project on "Young Carers: Social Policy impacts of the caring responsibilities of children and young people". Located at the Social Policy Research…

This paper compares how educational reform documents in Korea and the U.S.A. conceptualize teachers and teacher education and examines how, if at all, the discourses of one country appear to influence those of the other. Special attention is paid to the ways in which reform documents incorporate different conceptions of professionalism in framing…

Development literature suggests that private schools serving the poor are not part of the solution to meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education. The study conducted a census and survey of schools in notified slums of Hyderabad, India, to contribute to the sparse literature on the nature and extent of private…

This article considers the impact of recent policy designed to define the roles and responsibilities of special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCos). The international drive towards the inclusion of children with special educational needs within the mainstream has led many schools to reconsider their structures and practices. In the UK, the…

This special issue deals with the identification and remediation criteria/practices employed in several countries regarding learning disabilities (LD). An analysis of the identification criteria suggests that most countries follow early law mandates of the United States (e.g., PL 94-142) regarding the definition of the disorder and use the…

The long-sustained effort of conservatives and their think tanks and media outlets to win support for school choice, market forces, and privatization schemes in education is paying off. But it is encountering steady resistance from the public education establishment and its supporting teachers' unions. Actions, reactions, strategies, and the…

In the last 15 years, agri-environmental programmes in Australia have been underpinned by a neoliberal regime of governing which seeks to foster participation and "bottom-up" change at the regional level at the same time as encouraging farmers to become entrepreneurial and improve their productivity and environmental performance without…

In at least 44 states across the country, students are logging in to learn at all times of the day and night--accessing courses they might otherwise be unable to take, interacting with students they might otherwise never know, and working with highly qualified teachers they otherwise could not access. In these and countless other ways, online…

Policy discussions about teacher quality and teacher "shortages" often focus on recruitment and retention of young teachers. However, attention has begun to focus on the incentive effects of teacher retirement benefit systems, particularly given their rising costs and the large unfunded liabilities. In this paper we analyze accrual of…