Using interest group theory and the idea of public policy development and application following sequential stages, explores how key decisions were made about establishment and implementation of Australia's controversial national quality assurance program for higher education. Explains how Australia came to introduce a quality assurance program…

How can one be conclusive about something which has not yet happened? How can one come to conclusions about something as insubstantial as the medium-term future? Nonetheless, some common themes have emerged from the Spring Colloquium, as well as from earlier work in the "Teaching 2020" project, which seem to indicate a possible context for the…

Most educators in the United States have had to confront the changed reality brought about by the federal reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This represents a set of initiatives that can radically transform the federal role in policing and controlling core aspects of…

This collection brings together many of the world's leading sociologists of education to explore and address key issues and concerns within the discipline. The thirty-seven newly commissioned chapters draw upon theory and research to provide new accounts of contemporary educational processes, global trends, and changing and enduring forms of…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Bush Budget Proposes Spending Freeze for U.S. Department of Education: Title I, Striving Readers, Statewide Data…

The ways that teacher education is distinctly different from the other activities of higher education and is subject to greater external management and control are explored. The case is made that coercive external intervention damages quality and that the profession has the capacity for quality control. (Author/MT)

The Holmes Group Report takes on faith the primacy of teacher quality and fails to question how curricular, instructional, and administrative considerations contribute to educational outcomes. Differentiated staffing is not new, only the names are different. Reform proposals constitute a major political debate over the role of public education.…

Social divisions of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and religion constitute a structure of power disparities that influences the form and content of literacy programs in developing nations. Adult educators have a social responsibility to identify how literacy activities may be reinforcing unjust or unequal societies. (SK)

The federal government has had a small role in financing education since the adoption of the Constitution. The federal politics of education should be studied because such study illustrates and furthers conceptual analysis, information is abundant and accessible, the federal politics of education represents a singular set of institutions, and the…

Californians have identified the health of public education as top priority. The legislature's search for accountability (focused on student assessment) has not been based on a cohesive school-improvement model. Legislators must work with educators to reexamine the entire education system. Educators must push for rational policy. (MLH)

Examines the relationship between Greece's Ministry of Education and its institutions of higher education, noting that coordination of this relationship is important for both the academic institutions and the state. Argues that the Ministry of Education exercises control of higher education through laws and regulations, intervening in…

On the silver anniversary of the U.S. Department of Education, participants on all sides of the perpetual debate over the proper role of the federal government in education are taking its survival for granted. The Cato Institute this year issued its customary biennial call for Congress to demolish the department. Based on interviews with some of…

Genealogies, or histories of the present, create critical spaces to remind us of the non-necessity of that which we consider necessary to our lives (Burchell 1993). Further, genealogies of governmentality attempt to create this space with a focus on how conduct is conducted. In this paper I suggest that genealogies of governmentality are one way…

At a time when most American states have embedded an initial certification test into their teacher preparation programs, Canadian educational authorities are faced with a choice: to test or not. One province, Ontario, has experimented with a standardized entry-to-the-profession testing instrument. For three years, 2002-04, teacher candidates were…

Saudi Arabia has been developing at breakneck speed since the end of World War II, when oil production transformed this country of Bedouins into one of the richest polities in the world. Its higher-education system, however, has not kept pace. The Ministry of Higher Education was not established until 1975, and its task was to educate a population…