The management of change in English and Welsh schools has been an authoritarian affair seeking to impose rather than win consent for new ways of working. While no practitioner should challenge the fact of constant change in natural and social life, school staff have had little choice in the nature and direction of changes that have significantly…

This policy brief, a quick look at some aspects of the debate, illustrates the differences in New York City public schools that would result when layoffs are determined by seniority in comparison to a measure of teacher effectiveness. Due to data limitations and an interest in simplicity, this analysis employs the value added of teachers using the…

The paper seeks to understand how higher education policy from the European Community is defused and transferred to Armenia, a developing country. Particularly, this study aims to delve deeper in the actual implementation process of higher education reforms in Armenia through teachers' perceptions. The findings mainly reveal that teachers do long…

Innovation is the key to productivity growth and prosperity. Most empirical cross-country analysis of the determinants of innovation focus mainly on developed countries. The objective of this study is to fill this gap in the research and analyze the determinants of innovation in transition countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.…

Merit pay programs for educators--sometimes referred to a "pay for performance"--attempt to tie a teacher's compensation to his/her performance in the classroom. While the idea of merit pay for classroom teachers has been around for several decades, only now is it starting to be implemented in a growing number of districts around the…

On February 2, 2010, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings and a task force composed of leading education policy experts released proposals on how to expand school choice to increase equity and create a market within the public sector for school quality. The first of a series of Brown Center reports on rethinking the federal role in…

This paper critically discusses the educational policy trajectories of Singapore and Cambodia in an era of globalization. Drawing upon David Johnson's five metaphors to describe the historical and political forces that shape educational policy trajectories, the paper argues that Cambodia's current educational policy trajectory is characterized by…

There is significant interest in reforming retirement plans for public school employees, particularly in light of current market conditions. This article presents an overview of the various types of state regulation of public pension plans that affect possibilities for reform. Nearly all of the various approaches to public pension plan protection…

This study extends recent findings of a relationship between the relative age of students among their peers and their probability of disability classification. Using three nationally representative surveys spanning 1988-2004 and grades K-10, we find that an additional month of relative age decreases the likelihood of receiving special education…

New public governance emphasises less state, more market and more hierarchy as the cornerstones for effective steering of higher education institutions. Based on an explorative analysis of qualitative and quantitative data of fourteen German and European economics departments, we investigate the steering effects of six new public management…

Over the past decade, there has been a deepening interest in youth and adult postsecondary transitions, be these from school to work or from high school to college. This work, based on a wealth of evidence and numerous programs, has developed a variety of best practices for improving students' transition experiences and success in the workforce,…

For the National Center to Improve Policy and Practice in Special Education Professional Development, a group of district administrators recently completed an analysis of state policy on induction and mentoring. State policy is important because it helps districts design and deliver induction programs and supplements local resources that are made…

In light of the recent bans on affirmative action in higher education, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of alternative admissions policies on the persistence and college completion of minority students. I find that the change from affirmative action to the Top 10% Plan in Texas decreased both retention and graduation rates of…

Policy sociologists typically research at large scale. This paper presents an example of a policy analysis which illuminates how policy is embedded in single incidents, lives and places. The case in point concerns the policy fetish for "closing the gap and raising the bar". This rhetoric is taken to mean improving the learning of all…

The reduction of transaction costs is a commonly mentioned yet rarely elaborated goal for aid effectiveness in educational development. The casual use of the concept of transaction costs conceals which costs may be reduced, which costs are required and, indeed, what transaction costs actually are. Examining issues related to harmonizing the…