In the U.S., white parents may choose to send their children to private schools in response to the local concentration of minority schoolchildren, commonly referred to as "white flight". This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing new evidence on white flight from the data set High School and Beyond (HSB). I find that a…

Public financing of education in the developing world context combines public and private funds, and the utilisation of fees is seen as a way of complementing state resources. In South Africa the new government in 1994 permitted schools to charge fees, a policy that has provoked much controversy. While different aspects of this policy have been…

This article looks at one of the dominant themes of English education over the past twenty years. It examines the various ways in which privatisation has affected schools and schooling since the early 1980s. It may no longer be possible to indulge in a blanket defence of the public sector; but we do at least have to recognise that privatisation in…

This article comments on international consequences of performativity cultures and curriculum standardization, focusing particularly on the situation in England. It highlights the divide between youth culture and school learning, and the particular damage for poorer students. It argues the impact of the English performativity regime on teacher…

Schools and teachers in England have found themselves coerced into a situation where high-stakes testing, scrutiny of "performance" and the generation of data for competitive league tables have dominated the educational experience of young people. There is a growing recognition from all quarters that this model is failing and that…

The National Challenge, whereby all secondary schools had to attain 5 A*--Cs by 2011, was launched in June 2008. In this article, Richard Riddell outlines the main provisions of the National Challenge, which he characterizes as shallow, mechanistic and playing an old "performativity" tune. Although the new benchmark will be achieved by…

A number of school choice advocates claim that there is a research consensus indicating that vouchers for private schools lead to higher academic achievement. The authors review and critique these local studies of voucher programs, contrasting them with findings from larger-scale analyses of nationally representative samples of public and private…

The demand that today's schools shall produce better educational outcomes of their pupils is stronger than ever before, especially in front of the background of our globalized, competitive world. Past and current research has supported the hypothesis that the teacher is the most important ingredient in the educational process. As the Detroit…

Adult and Organizational Learning and Policy Development in Environments of Gray The purpose of this study was to describe, analyze and provide an understanding of the values that influence state legislators' decision-making as it relates to appropriations, tuition and fees, and financial aid for public postsecondary education in Idaho. The study…

"Sound-Bite Saboteurs" examines the emergence of a multifaceted, multimedia culture that encourages the use of sound bites to silence one's opponents at the expense of democratic deliberation and debate. No simple partisan phenomenon or mere attempt to "spin" a particular issue, sound-bite sabotage is, the authors argue, a…

CIRCLE Working Paper #72 addresses whether efforts to systematically incorporate media into school curricula increases several elements of civic engagement, including students' media use, political knowledge or their sense of being able to understand and influence politics (internal political efficacy). In "The Classroom-Kitchen Table…

A world policy agenda for gender equality in education now exists, realising the idea of earlier reformers such as Kartini. This agenda, however, makes assumptions that are strongly contested by research and policy debates in national forums. This essay urges shifting the framework of gender analysis to global scale. It outlines what is involved…

This article will examine a little known but long-standing group, the Lisle Fellowship, that endeavored to open the world to college students and foster international understanding--or "world-mindedness," as the organization's founders called it--ultimately with the goal to contribute to the ideal of world peace. It will also, in…

The Bologna Process is one of the major developments to have taken place in higher education in recent centuries. It has had an impact beyond European borders and repercussions in other parts of the world. Ibero-America has also sat up and taken note, even though scholars agree that there would be difficulties with its direct implementation in the…

This paper aims to analyze the effects of certain characteristics of the educational systems on the social composition of schools. After accounting for significant effects of schools' social composition on student outcomes (this is confirmed on the basis of a multilevel analysis), we explore the impacts of distinct components of what we name…