In response to the shifting educational landscape and the growing emphasis on responsibility and quality, quality assurance systems in higher education have experienced significant modification throughout time. These systems are essential for assuring the delivery of high-quality educational programmes and preserving the standing and reputation of…

Higher education is facing increasing expectations on accountability, better quality, outcomes and social relevance. Recruitment of academic staff is often considered the single most important component in creating a successful university. This paper describes a model for proactive strategic recruitment that can be seen as a way to improve…

The purpose of this report is to profile a selection of emerging approaches to judging quality in higher education that represent a range of stakeholder interests and perspectives. This report is divided into three sections. "Quality Assurance at a Crossroads" highlights perceived challenges for the U.S. accreditation system in a…

The goal of this toolkit is to shed light on the importance of authorizing nontraditional charter schools and how the challenges of authorizing nontraditional schools manifest in practice, as well as to provide action steps for authorizers and school leaders who are able and eager to lead the field on these complex issues. The toolkit contains the…

This toolkit informs school leaders about the authorizing challenges they may confront, illustrates opportunities and options for school leaders to navigate the authorizing process, and shares useful frameworks for considering the benefits and trade-offs of these options. The toolkit contains the following sections: (1) Strategies &…

One of the greatest promises of the charter school movement has been the potential to create diverse school models to meet the varied needs of children, families, and communities. As policy makers and charter leaders have recognized the need to hold charters accountable for strong performance, however, there has been a move towards more…

Last fall, researchers at Bellwether Education Partners began research on how standard authorizing practices could discourage or disadvantage charter schools with nontraditional models, such as dual language immersion, Montessori, and competency-based education models. Throughout the course of their research, the authors spoke to dozens of school…

Sense-making is a process of engaging with complex and dynamic environments that provides organisations and their leaders with a flexible and agile model of the world. The seven key properties of sense-making describe a process that is social and that respects the range of different stakeholders in an organisation. It also addresses the need to…

In recent years, governmental policy changes have exerted significant impact on the structural transformation, role diversity and commercialisation of national quality assurance agencies in many nations. Due to policy change, ongoing structural transformation and emerging roles, four national quality assurance agencies in Australia, Japan,…

As full-time virtual learning moved from the fringe to the mainstream in mid-March 2020, onlookers expressed concerns about access for learners and accountability for the learning itself. Concerns have not applied only to full-time virtual schools, however. Alternative schools that serve students who have dropped out or transferred from…

This article discusses the tension between quality assurance and quality enhancement in engineering education at a programme level. It acknowledges that accreditation has evolved for many years, but does not agilely support innovation or implement changes in educational programmes. Existing quality assurance systems, institutional collaboration…

A recent report offers a how-to guide for reform advocates interested in removing communities' democratic control over their schools. The report explains how these reformers can influence states to use the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Title I school improvement funds to support a specific set of reforms: charter schools, state-initiated…

As states continue to grapple with the most appropriate ways to hold schools accountable under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), there is a lack of consensus on how alternative settings should fit into accountability systems and whether those systems should be separate from or included in accountability systems for traditional schools. The…

Discussion of alternative education is growing across the country as states and districts look for ways to better serve students whose needs are not met in traditional high school settings. Alternative settings, however, vary greatly in how they operate, whom they aim to enroll, and the methods they use to educate students. The variation of…

For much of the last two decades, beginning with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002, the top political leaders have shown concern about children stuck in failing public schools. NCLB required districts to do something -- not enough, but something -- about those schools. Millions of children still languish in low-performing schools,…