Once the world leader in educational attainment, the United States has slipped well into the middle of the pack. Countries that were considered little more than educational backwaters just a few years ago have leapt to the forefront of student achievement. There's no shortage of factors for America's educational decline: budget cutbacks,…

This document presents the technical appendices that accompany the full report, "High School Choice in New York City: A Report on the School Choices and Placements of Low-Achieving Students." The appendices include: (1) The Shrinking Pool of Level 1 and Level 2 Students; and (2) Supplemental Tables and Figures. [For the full report, see…

School choice policies, a fixture of efforts to improve public education in many cities, aim to enable families to choose a school that they believe will best meet their child's needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education's high school reform…

Ethical dilemmas at the community college often pose a choice between options equally grounded in the core values of the institution. These dilemmas often emerge from disputes that are complex, dynamic, and politically volatile. We review the development of one such dispute to show how our understanding of institutional core values is often only…

A range of imperatives underpin university selection practices. These include demonstrating merit based on prior academic achievement and supporting successful graduate outcomes in the professions and in broader fields of endeavour. They also include improving diversity of participation and equality of educational opportunity. Selection for…

University admissions tests should predict an applicant's ability to succeed in college, but how should this success be defined and measured? The status quo has been to use 1st-year grade point average (FYGPA) as the key indicator of college success, but a review of documents such as university mission statements reveals that universities expect…

New York City's elite public specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous college preparatory education to the City's most academically talented students. Though immensely popular and highly selective, their policy of admitting students on the basis of a single entrance exam has been heavily criticized. Many argue, for…

This article presents the findings from the evaluation of the pilot of a new entry qualification for school principals in South Africa. The programme, Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) School Leadership, had networking as a distinctive feature, and this article examines candidates' perceptions and experiences of networking as a leadership…

Over the past two decades, inner-city communities have witnessed double-digit joblessness among an increasing number of residents who are relegated to the status of the "permanent" unemployed or the permanent underclass. These residents cannot hope to be competitive in a changing and evolving labor market. Relying on public assistance, low-wage…

Grades are important for admission of students in most higher education programs. Analyzing admission and student performance data at a major Norwegian business school, we find that the grading practice of teachers at regional colleges sending students to the school is affected by the average performance of the students being graded. Teachers at…

The concept of validity, as described in the literature, has changed over time to become a broad and rather complex issue. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if practice has followed theory, or if there is a gap between validity in theory and validity in practice. It compares the theoretical development of the concept of validity with the…

Background: By a 5-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 declared that voluntary public school integration programs were unconstitutional. Citing the prospective harm that students and their families might incur from being denied admission to the high school of their choice, the…

Since most states adopted college- and career-readiness standards, about one million new teachers have graduated from teacher preparation programs in the United States. With five years lead time on incorporating new standards into policy and practice, this year the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has expanded its policy analysis to…

In 1962 the Swedish Parliament decided on a school reform. Meritocracy and equal opportunity were important goals. However, these ideals were not applied to elementary school teacher education, where a sex quota policy favoured male applicants. In the parliamentary debate, a woman member of the Right Wing Party raised objections to the policy. A…

In Philip Pullman's dark matter sci-fi trilogy, there is a golden compass that in the hands of the right person is predictively powerful; the same was supposed to be true of the SAT/ACT--the statistically indistinguishable standardized tests for college admissions. They were intended to be reliable mechanisms for identifying future trajectories,…