Jeb Bush campaigned for governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in 1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual-track strategy for reforming Florida's K-12 education system: standards and accountability for public schools, choice and options for parents. Florida lawmakers followed those reforms with additional measures.…

Digital learning makes possible the "unbundling" of school provisions--that is, it allows children to be served by providers from almost anywhere, in new and more customized ways. At the same time, because it destandardizes and decentralizes educational delivery, digital education is far harder to bring under the yoke of the…

This qualitative case study examines the rationales of the relationship between Arizona State University (ASU)--an American public research university--and Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM), a Mexican private not for profit research university. The focus of the study is to document the different meanings participants attached to the rationales of…

"Politics and the Primary Teacher" is an accessible introduction to some of the thorniest aspects of a primary teacher's role. It aims to support your understanding of the constant changes in education policy, give you confidence to engage critically with current political debates, and consider how you might shape your response accordingly.…

The need for education to help every child rather than focus on average attainment has become a more central part of the policy agenda in the US and the UK. Remedial programmes are often difficult to evaluate because participation is usually based on pupil characteristics that are largely unobservable to the analyst. In this paper we evaluate…

This study provides an objective look at the education policies adopted by the State of Arizona since 2000, describes participants in the policy-making process, and identifies policy options for the future. The framework of the study uses a typology of educational policies with seven categories: school building and facilities, curriculum…

Students who take classes in education departments at universities receive significantly higher grades than students who take classes in other academic departments. The higher grades awarded by education departments cannot be explained by differences in student quality or by structural differences across departments (i.e., differences in class…

Children of immigrant backgrounds--children who are immigrants themselves or were born to immigrant parents--are the largest segment of growth in the U.S. school population. In this exploratory interdisciplinary analysis, Filindra, Blanding, and Garcia Coll ask whether the context of policy and political receptivity, even when they are not…

Just over a decade ago, the Australian Government introduced funding mechanisms which aimed at reducing doctoral candidates' attrition rate and completion times, and increasing reported student satisfaction. Publicly available documents from six universities of three different classifications of universities in five Australian states were analysed…

From the 1980s to the present, educational accountability in the United States has grown dramatically. Such accountability in U.S. school districts, although driven primarily by external demands, has internal manifestations as well. The chapter traces the historical development of internal evaluation in American school districts, then highlights…

Advances in neuroscience, developmental psychology, and program evaluation have been combined to develop a unified framework that provides evidence-based guidance related to early childhood policy. This research shows how insights from the field of economics-- human capital theory and monetary payoffs--also contribute to that framework.…

Teaching policy analysis is compared to teaching research skills. Both involve the selection of an appropriate analytical tool to be used with multiple units of analysis; and in both, the selected instrument must fit the purpose of the analysis or the product is not useful. Policy analysis frameworks characteristically address policy process,…

A record-breaking number of Congressional pork-barrel projects this year has loaded college and university plates with more earmarks than ever before, despite growing worries that the noncompetitive grants undermine the American scientific enterprise, and in spite of promises by some lawmakers to cut back. An analysis by "The Chronicle" shows that…

President Bush is leaving the White House with a mixed record on higher education. His administration catapulted conversations about holding colleges more accountable for their performance into the national spotlight, and it pressed for some increases in federal spending on student aid and research. At the same time, Mr. Bush faced criticism from…

This paper analyses a higher education policy issued in China in 2002: the Quality Assessment of Undergraduate Education Policy. The policy was designed with four main objectives: improvement, compliance, information and accountability. However, it has not completely fulfilled its objectives, especially regarding improvement and accountability,…