Language is a form of human capital. Human capital refers to skills an individual needs to succeed within the labor market. Originating from The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 (Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1968), one of many purposes of dual language programs (DLPs) was to provide equal access to classroom…

The OECD has become a major driver of domestic education reforms, especially since the establishment of PISA. However, we know very little about the contextualisation of PISA within the publication output of the OECD, and what ideas of education the IO is spreading. In this article, we explore the entire thematic portfolio of the OECD's education…

This paper provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link…

This article offers a critique of the concept of equality as it informs the White Paper on Adult Education: Learning for Life (2000). It also outlines the extent to which human capital theory can be seen to have effectively colonised lifelong learning from the outset of its adoption by the European Union with highly constraining implications for…

In this article, we illustrate the relationships between Teach For America (TFA) and the deregulation of university-based teacher education programs. We use policy network analysis to create a visual representation of TFA's connections to individuals, organizations, and private corporations who are working to shift the way teachers are prepared.…

The purpose of this article is to discuss how best to finance higher education in low-income countries of sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on benefits and drawbacks of the prevalent models of higher education finance, and lessons to be learned from countries which have seen greater expansion of their higher education systems in recent decades. Two main…

This article probes ways in which the school-choice marketplace as it developed via chartering has not worked as well in practice as many had hoped. It includes reflection on the profoundly different operating principles and theories of action that separate the district and charter sectors in their pure forms. It also offers market-strengthening…

Leadership in the post-incorporation English further education system has not been distributed in nature, but transactional, driven by the external demands of funding and inspection regimes. However, in the light of the current rhetoric of localism in further education policy there is a view that distributed leadership would be an appropriate…

We argue that place-based college scholarships, if designed intentionally and leveraged effectively, can foster local economic development. Since the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, a growing number of communities have applied the place-based approach to investments in human capital through the creation of college scholarship…

This article presents an interview with Terry Grier, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), Texas's largest district. Before taking this post, he had been a principal or superintendent for most of three decades and remains a reformer five years into his leadership. Grier has maintained his passion for improving schools…

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) provided states with newfound flexibility on accountability measures and school improvement strategies. Many policy experts have analyzed states' ESSA plans, which explain how states use their federal funds under various provisions of the new law, as well as the approaches states take to identify and rate…

Education, which has been at the heart of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region's history and civilizations for centuries, has a large untapped potential to contribute to human capital, well-being, and wealth. The region has invested heavily in education for decades, but it has not been able to reap the benefits of its investments.…

In the past several decades, Boston has been a proving ground for new strategies such as mayoral control, charter schools, and expanded access to early childhood education. Located in a state known for rigorous standards and accountability, Boston Public Schools (BPS) has consistently ranked among the top-performing large public school districts…

This paper assesses the degree of equality of educational opportunities across Argentina's public primary schools. The main finding is that there are inequalities between jurisdictions, but even greater inequalities within them, suggesting the existence of serious problems in the distribution of resources at the sub-national level. Following the…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote student achievement and preparation for…