"Turnaround" has become the new buzzword in education. From states and districts paying for principals to be trained as turnaround specialists to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's call to turn around the country's 5,000 lowest-performing schools, the concept of rapid, large-scale reform in individual schools--not just incremental…

For the past twenty years, the training of teachers in England has consisted of little more than instruction in 'delivering' the National Curriculum. In this piece, Derek Gillard argues that there are now encouraging signs of a resurgence of interest in the history of education. He reviews the new edition of Clyde Chitty's "Education Policy…

This article argues that the work of school principals in South Africa is shaped by two major sets of constructs or "landscapes": the literature on leadership and management which provides particular constructions of the field and its changes; and the terrain of new policy frameworks adopted after apartheid to transform the education…

Today, teachers complain about the lack of physical education time and the lack of physical education programming. In addition, a great deal of time is spent advocating the relationship between "healthy mind-healthy body." Today's drive to show a relationship between physical fitness/activity and academic achievement is really not different than…

Every child gets assigned to a public or private school chosen by some adult. The question is which adult should hold that authority by law and exercise it in practice. Our Federal Constitution recognizes the authority of custodial parents; but our systems of tax-based schools effectively dethrone working-class parents and the poor; most of whose…

Asked to review the four articles that appear in this special issue of "Educational Psychologist," these authors discuss the articles in alphabetical order, describe their major arguments, analyze strengths and weaknesses from their perspective, and provide some considerations. The analysis section about each article brings their…

The rise of the research center has changed the landscape of U.S. research enter-prise. It has also created a number of evaluation challenges, particularly when considering strategically focused, multifaceted cooperative research centers (CRCs). The author argues that although recent CRC evaluation efforts have gone a long way toward meeting the…

When an editor sanctions a set of authors to expound on what they believe is blighting the world of education, who can be sure of what they are likely to suggest? Not surprisingly, in the present instance the authors of the six papers in this collection have seized on the freedom they have been granted and have outlined a range of afflictions. The…

A growing chorus of critics--legislators, governors, alumni, students, parents, trustees, and others--is pressuring colleges to increase "accountability" and "transparency." The critics want colleges to measure whether they are actually achieving their core missions, especially educating undergraduates, and to give people the facts about what they…

The emergence of "managerialism" in the governance and direction of UK higher education (HE) institutions has been led by government demands for greater accountability in the quality and cost of universities. There is emerging anecdotal evidence indicating that the estimation performance of HE spreadsheets and regression models are poor.…

This paper critiques the notion of community capacity building (CCB) and the way it is increasingly being invoked in social policy as a way of tackling disadvantage. The paper argues that CCB and a number of its derivative terms are not as straightforward as they appear. Superficially, CCB presents as a useful way of approaching school and…

Across the broad spectrum of disciplines and departments within higher education, it sometimes feels like there is little that unites them. They talk about silos, they bemoan divergent and fragmented efforts, and they refer frequently to "them" and "they," regardless of where they are on the organizational chart. However, there is one topic that…

Federal policies intended to promote educational equity, especially through state accountability mechanisms, have mobilized efforts to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. Although these efforts have met with some success, achievement gaps remain. The authors argue that local cultures of teaching practices and decision making continue…

In this article, the authors talk about National Education Association (NEA) leadership's decision to side with corporate reformers rather than with teachers. While the authors agree with the NEA leadership in its argument that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act "is not working" and is "an unfounded, unfair, and unattainable…

Annual student testing may make it possible to measure the contributions to student achievement made by individual teachers. But would these "teacher value-added" measures help to improve student achievement? I consider the statistical validity, purposes, and costs of teacher value-added policies. Many of the key assumptions of teacher value added…