Research in the context of decentralization has primarily focused on the role of school-based actors in improving educational outcomes for students in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The role of the "middle tier," such as subnational staff at the regional or district levels of educational leadership within the education…

International assessments inform education policy debates, yet little is known about their floor effects: To what extent do they fail to differentiate between the lowest performers, and what are the implications of this? TIMSS, SACMEQ, and LLECE data are analyzed to answer this question. In TIMSS, floor effects have been reduced through the…

There exists no unified measurement framework that encompasses and integrates schooling and learning deficits--arguably the two most important education challenges in most developing countries. This article offers a methodology that fills this gap. Using the notions of age-appropriate grade, actual grade, and effective grade for a school-age…

This article sheds light on the implications of the imposition of decontextualized hegemonic narratives around gender and sexuality on Arabic-speaking countries and the appropriation of intersectionality as a tool for resistance and consciousness raising by NGO-ized educational programs, as well as the importance of combining both intersectional…

During the early Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union used adult literacy education to wield influence in "Third World" countries. Frank C. Laubach, the "Apostle of Literacy," wrote prolifically about adult literacy and conducted and advised literacy campaigns in more than 100 countries, yet his work is understudied…

The autonomous global system of science, grounded in collegial networks of scientists, publishing, and cross-border papers, is expanding rapidly and spreading to a growing number of countries. Strong national science systems have emerged outside Euro-America. Yet the multipolarization of economic capacity and scientific output plays out within a…

In developing countries, teachers are often hired on a temporary basis and work in multiple schools to increase their earnings. However, the implications of these flexible contractual arrangements on the quality of K--12 education remain little explored. By using unique data from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a cross-subject analysis with student fixed…

The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) purports to benchmark developing country education systems against global best practices. SABER covers 13 topics, called "domains," and has produced over 16,000 indicators of what the Bank considers best practice and applied them in over 130 countries. Yet this…

Although a large number of students around the world attend vocational schools, there is little evidence about what factors matter for learning in these schools. Using data on approximately 1,400 vocational students in one eastern province in China, we employ a student fixed-effects model to identify whether teacher enterprise experience, direct…

Despite substantial growth in private schooling in developing countries, there has been little attention paid to the question of how public schools are experiencing and responding to competition in these contexts. To address this research gap, I collected primary survey data from two districts in Nepal and used descriptive and logistic regression…

The provision of toilets and menstrual supplies appears to be a promising strategy to promote adolescent girls' school attendance and performance in less developed countries. In this article, we use the first round of the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Survey (MSAS) to examine the individual- and school-level factors associated with…

This article examines cross-country variations in adult skills inequality and asks why skills in Anglophone countries are so unequal. Drawing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's recent Survey of Adult Skills and other surveys, it investigates the differences across countries and country groups in inequality in both…

Since the 1940s, the concept of community participation has framed, mobilized, and legitimated national development agendas in the Singida Region of rural central Tanzania. Based on 19 months of ethnographic and archival research, this study examines the forms of community participation elicited through state and international development…

This article investigates the association between studying with a contract teacher and a student's academic outcomes, using data from five Francophone African countries for two grade levels and two subjects. Based on this analysis, the evidence for or against this form of teacher hiring is inconclusive. The results indicate that these…

Educational development organizations and related global movements emerged and expanded during the twentieth century. Today, most activities in the educational development field are characterized by a scientific outlook that schooling can be transformed using measurable and generalizable knowledge, and most of its leaders believe that experts can…