This paper makes the case for managed expansion of secondary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa. The great majority of secondary age African children remain excluded from access to good quality secondary schooling. Increasing numbers are graduating from primary schools where enrolments are rapidly growing as a result of successful Education for All…

This document describes the contributions made by the Primary Education Quality Improvement Program (1996-1999) to the broad goals of improved access, equity, and quality in girls' primary education in Pakistan. In Balochistan, the largest but least developed province of Pakistan, an innovative approach to educational development was successfully…

The purpose of the study reported upon in this paper was to determine what graduates of a teacher education program designed to prepare teachers who will work toward goals of equity and social justice were encountering in their schools and how they felt they were doing with regard to these aims and why. Eleven graduates in their second, fourth or…

The Office of Civil Rights (2001) and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Antunez, 2003) mandate that language proficiency and academic achievement be measured in order to provide equal educational opportunities to English language learners and have an accountability system for their language and academic growth. The Cognitive Academic Language…

In developed countries like the United States and Britain, the continuing challenge for educators is to sort through the choices of an all-you-can-eat school system and teach the basic skills. Despite so-called universal education, an alarming number of people still fail to reach even basic levels of literacy. The "literacy hour" was…

In this article, the author attempts to enter the charter school dialogue by looking at the new charter school movement through an anti-essentialist social movement and new social movement lens. In the anti-Western new social movement conception there are no set patterns to how movements manifest themselves, or how they were intended to manifest…

This paper investigates the educational development in the Middle East and North Africa, drawing on data from different international and national institutions. The paper begins with a review of similarities between countries within the region, and continues by investigating the situation of basic education, literacy rates and quality of…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls for 100% proficiency in reading and mathematics by 2014. The mandate thus transforms reading and mathematics into high-stakes subject areas. This quantitative cross-sectional study examined legislated testing mandates in relation to burnout subscales, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal…

Preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a reading methods course learn how literacy instruction is a political act that can affect children's opportunities. Through discussions and readings, they learn how the ways in which they teach reading to children make a difference in their subsequent access to knowledge. Through a practicum experience…

This paper quantitatively analyzes the incidence of public education spending on the poor in developing countries by using the results of standard benefit-incidence studies and additional national data. Although there is considerable variation across studies, it is found that public education spending generally does not favor the poor, but it does…

Although many factors combine to make a successful school, most people agree that quality teachers and school principals are among the most important requirements for success, especially when success is defined by the ability of the school to raise the achievement of its students. The central question for this study is how the quality of the…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Early Childhood Education at a Crossroads: Access to Preschool Has Come a Long Way, but Critical Choices Lie Ahead (Deborah Stipek); (2) Bridging the…

This bulletin represents an innovation in U. S. Office of Education procedures in the writing of publications, since it has been produced by the cooperative effort of 12 students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, and their instructor in English. Because of the many requests from seventh- and eighth-grade rural school pupils for a brief…

The world has made great strides in providing primary education to the poor, and the donor community has financed much of the effort. However, the standardized achievement tests developed in many countries show unbelievably low outcomes. One of the reasons why such is happening to many countries is that their schools' have lower time on task.…

One of the challenges that we currently face in achieving universal education is how do we ensure that girls, who have missed the school bus or simply got off the bus too early, can still realise their right to quality basic education? This paper reviews several key education initiatives implemented in the last decade to reach out to the…