With the second-round deadline for federal Race to the Top Fund grants less than six weeks away, states are rushing to raise the stakes on their education reform plans as they fight over the remaining $3.4 billion in prize money. But in doing so, states from Massachusetts to Colorado are tangling with their teachers' unions as they test how far…

With the conclusion of the second round of the federal Race to the Top competition, states across the country--winners and losers alike--are vowing to move forward with ambitious plans to reshape teacher-evaluation systems, fix struggling schools, revamp antiquated data systems, and make other changes aimed at raising student achievement. Yet…

"Economy, Work and Education: Critical Connections" addresses effects of neoliberal capitalism in particular regard to work and education. The book elaborates key aspects and problems of generalized policy models of knowledge-based economies and learning societies in contexts of liberalized firm action, accelerated competitiveness and labor market…

The French Government has had a paradoxical relationship with globalization. Globalization is perceived as both a threat to react against and a cradle for new policy ideas. French policymakers have a love-hate relationship with the European higher education reforms that started in the 1990s, a mixed sentiment that French singer Serge Gainsbourg…

University rankings have gained popularity around the world, and are now a significant factor shaping reputation. This book is the first comprehensive study of rankings from a global perspective, making an important contribution to our understanding of the rankings phenomenon. (Contains 17 figures, 17 tables and 4 illustrations.)

This paper presents the history of the competition First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics organized by Poland, its development from a national workshop in 1991/92 to an international competition nowadays and its organization, as well as the results obtained by the participants. (Contains 1 table.)

In this essay, Johannes Giesinger comments on the current philosophical debate on educational justice. He observes that while authors like Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz develop a so-called adequacy view of educational justice, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift defend an egalitarian principle. Giesinger focuses his analysis on the main objection…

Bistrategic resource control entails using both coercive and prosocial strategies in competition for resources. The present study sought to clarify whether bistrategic involves more than simply using both strategies some of the time. Examining 88 preschoolers' coercion and prosociality over an entire school year, results showed that coercive…

For administrators, teachers, students and their families in some districts, summer isn't what it used to be. Trying to stem a "summer slide" of learning loss by students and also to avoid having to build more schools to cope with overcrowding, districts are operating on year-round schedules that shorten the traditional summer vacation…

The proposition that competition will spur public schools to perform better is now familiar to most Americans and self-evident to many. It is a compelling idea. While much attention has focused on student performance in charter schools, a distinct and important policy question relates to how increased competition from charter schools affects the…

One of the pillars of the educational voucher system is that competition among schools to attract students would improve the quality of the education. Surveys to parents and previous work suggested that families rank the distance of the school from their home as the most important factor for choosing a school. They also suggest that parents…

Computer games have become a highly popular form of entertainment and have had a large impact on how University students spend their leisure time. Due to their highly motivating properties computer games have come to the attention of educationalists who wish to exploit these highly desirable properties for educational purposes. Several studies…

In response to the global competitiveness in higher education, the government, in recent years, has encouraged Taiwan colleges and universities to seek international accreditation, which raises several questions, such as jurisdiction over national accreditation, a single set of standards for local and global quality assurance, demand for the…

This article presents the author's response to Strathdee's "Reply to O'Neill: The privatisation of public schooling in New Zealand." Strathdee has alerted the editors to a basic arithmetic error in the author's paper (O'Neill 2011, 24). He also makes substantive criticisms. Strathdee's criticisms focus on the two cases that are used to…

This article evaluates the impact of competition on the performance of Italian schools. The study is based on policy experiments developed in 2000 by the Lombardy Regional government which introduced a voucher plan to encourage families to enrol their children in private schools. After this intervention, many other Regions launched similar…