Adequacy as a concept or philosophy has recently emerged as part of school finance literature and policy in South Africa. Broadly defined as sufficient input levels to ensure student achievement of learning goals, adequacy has roots in school finance litigation in the United States of America. A review of school finance literature shows different…

Space counts in college. "Brown" and the many higher education cases leading to that important legal decision were about place: where Negro schoolchildren would be allowed to attend school or whether Black students could attend white law schools. The issue of place has also been contested in other college settings, such as whether institutions can…

According to a report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE), a nonprofit organization that promotes public policies that enhance higher education opportunity, 250,000 prospective students were locked out of college in 2003-2004 because of increased tuition or reductions in admissions and course offerings. The…

To what extent have Canadian schools incorporated notions of multiliteracies into their curricula and instruction? What pedagogical options are implied by a multiliteracies perspective? How might consideration of multiliteracies affect policies and practices at various levels of the educational system--ministries of education, faculties of…

Promoting student access to the general education curriculum remains a focus of the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This article examines educational practices that promote such access for students with mild mental retardation, overviews issues pertaining to the implementation of supplementary aids and…

Back in November, voters in the North East of England overwhelmingly rejected the move towards an elected regional assembly. The scale of the defeat (three to one) of a Government-backed scheme was a rude awakening for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the range of regional agencies created since 1997. After all, it was felt that the…

Will recent federal policy changes succeed in improving the quality of education policy research? One explanation for the limited supply to date of high-quality evaluation evidence in education is limited demand, owing perhaps, in part, to market failure for both education outcomes and education research. In the market for education outcomes, the…

Using data from Thailand's National Labor Force Surveys, this paper describes changes in the distribution of educational attainment among young men and women, and assesses changes in the returns to schooling. The results show that the average educational attainment of the population increased between 1985 and 1998, and that the inequities in…

The relation between teaching and research is a defining feature of a modern university and of academic identity. Many universities claim a close relation between the two as well as a strong critical orientation. Yet the gap between claims and practice in higher education appears to be widening as government and institutional policies increasingly…

The demand for child care in the United States continues to grow, but child care workers' wages remain minimal. Using examples within New Jersey, the author demonstrates how low wages impact child care quality and are directly related to the effects of the competitive marketplace. Various historical, regulatory, and cultural contexts also…

Over the past few decades, in many western countries with large immigrant populations, inequalities in education relating to ethnic background have increased. Interventions traditionally consist of selective compensatory arrangements that focus on instruction in the second language--especially in early stages of schooling--and the treatment of…

This article starts by putting the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) into a general context of privatisation. It is noted that the privatisation process is in many cases complex and not only about full-scale privatisation of schools. The growing trade in education must be seen in this context. GATS is not an agreement which deals with…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has strongly influenced European education policy and the entire global neo-liberally toned discourse that nowadays prevails in the implementation of national education policy and educational reforms. The educational policy governance of the OECD is based on overall and supranational…

A large portion of the early childhood literature in the area of cultural, racial, and linguistic diversity addresses the practices of institutions for young children, immigrant/refugee parents' understandings of their situation, and provides recommendations for more inclusive practices. This body of literature has proved very useful in bringing…

Charter laws have been the reform debate's path of least resistance. But the combination of regulatory barriers, open admissions, lack of consumer sovereignty, preferential funding of traditional public schools, and political control of prices means that charter laws may be irrelevant as reform catalysts, or worse. Even the strongest charter laws…