Recent efforts to reform urban high schools have been marked by the pursuit of ever-increasing accountability policies, most notably through the use of high-stakes standardized testing, mayoral control, and secondary school exit exams. "Urban Youth and School Pushout" excavates the unintended consequences of such policies on secondary school…

Over the last few years, state accountability systems across the country have directed an increasingly bright light at the problem of chronically underperforming schools. The problem is hardly new, but the sheer number of failing schools facing takeover and restructuring is unprecedented. This crisis is rapidly becoming the leading concern of the…

As the Obama Administration wrestles with the impending reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the continuing need for education reform, Eugene Hickok provides an insider's account of this historic legislation. A former key player in the Department of Education during the Bush administration, Hickok describes how Bush's education…

Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers. For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? "Democratic Discord in Schools" features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to…

"The Infrastructure of Accountability" brings together leading and emerging scholars who set forth an ambitious conceptual framework for understanding the full impact of large-scale, performance-based accountability systems on education. Over the past 20 years, schools and school systems have been utterly reshaped by the demands of…

The "ETF Yearbook 2012" continues the tradition of highlighting a thematic field of particular importance to the work of the European Training Foundation (ETF). The theme of this yearbook is evaluation and monitoring of vocational education and training (VET) systems and the role of evidence-based policy in VET reforms in ETF partner…

The overall aim of this volume of essays is to honor Frank B. Murray's commitments to empirically-based quality assurance and to the development of increasingly effective systems of quality control in educator preparation programs. As the editors approached the authors with the invitation to contribute an essay, two characteristic aspects of…

In the push to bring data to bear on all of the important education issues of the day, one essential fact is often overlooked: Not all indicators are created equal. This book provides a comprehensive approach for understanding how statistical measures of achievement are developed, evaluated, and interpreted. Given the extent to which…

Educators and policy makers in the United States have relied on tests to measure educational progress for more than 150 years. During the twentieth century, technical advances, such as machines for automatic scoring and computer-based scoring and reporting, have supported states in a growing reliance on standardized tests for statewide…

In 1999, a declaration formalizing "the European process" was signed at and informally named for Europe's oldest university: Bologna. "The Bologna Process" has transformed higher education in Europe. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the ability of America's higher education system to position the…

"Leadership for Quality and Accountability in Education" addresses the interconnected issues of quality and accountability in the education system and provides a coherent framework within which these issues can be analysed. The authors outline the significance of promoting quality in all educational establishments and go on to discuss "why"…

This book begins with the claims of policymakers and explores charter schools at each stage of the policymaking process, from legislation to implementation. Powers carefully and thoroughly examines how features of schools' policy contexts shape the ways that charter school reform unfolds at schools, providing a nuanced portrait of the schools…

This book is designed to help educational leaders, decision makers, and teachers wade through the complexities of aligning technology planning with learning goals. Organized around a problem-solving model based on solution fluency, the authors outline how to: (1) Address state, regional, or provincial standards; (2) Improve test scores--Meet…

Adult and continuing education has the dual function of contributing to employability and economic growth, on the one hand, and responding to broader societal challenges, in particular promoting social cohesion, on the other. Companies and families support important investments that have, to date, ensured important growth in both skills and the…

Standards-based education (SBE) has been the dominant educational reform movement since the early 1980s, reinforced by federal and state accountability systems. This book examines the efforts of educational leaders in implementing SBE to improve student achievement in a variety of demographic contexts but with common challenges. Four stages of SBE…