This book offers instructions for school principals, assistant principals, teachers, and district-level administrators for building a comprehensive accountability system that focuses on leadership skills. It presents recommendations for assessing and nurturing teacher performance, setting up balanced assessment and accountability policies, and…

To ensure that school districts and schools meet acceptable performance levels, many school districts and states have enacted various accountability policies. Two of the most controversial approaches to accountability are reconstitutions of schools and state takeovers of school districts and schools. For each approach, this policy brief presents…

One of the main strategies for achieving lifelong learning objectives in Denmark has been to steadily shore up and improve the efficiency of the institutional arrangements for adult learning and to progressively strengthen the arrangements for financing it. Because there has been no attempt to create totally new structures or programs, the trends…

The Sierra Leone National Education Master Plan 1997-2006 deals with all aspects of the formal and non-formal sectors of the education system, providing support for basic education, education for the physically challenged, disadvantaged and gifted learners, women and girls' education, technical/vocational and science education, tertiary education,…

The Council for Industry and Higher Education commissioned a working group called the Widening Participation Group to consider how to make postcompulsory education more accessible to those individuals in the United Kingdom who currently have limited or no exposure to such learning. The group issued a progress report recommending specific actions…

The National Association of State Directors of Vocational Technical Education Consortium (NASDVTEC) supports enactment of legislation that is dedicated solely to vocational-technical education (VTE). NASDVTEC urges the 105th Congress to build on the existing foundation of a strong state role in VTE by drafting legislation that achieves the…

This report analyzes repayment patterns for federally supported student financial aid distributed through the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program (FDLP), which includes an income-contingent repayment (ICR) plan that ties borrowers' monthly payments to income, family size, and loan amount. This report analyzes 3 year usage of ICR in…

This document contains a synthesis paper and four case studies of cooperation with the world of work in vocational and technical education (VTE) in Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Sweden. "Synthesis" (R. Barry Hobart) considers the common social and economic variables affecting VTE in the four study countries. The three case studies…

Recognizing that cross-national information and analysis can contribute to the improvement of policy development related to quality early childhood education and care (ECEC), the Education Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched the Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy in 1998.…

This book analyzes the responses of five states (Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin) to challenges posed by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 to alter state welfare programs and management systems. Using case studies, the book highlights similarities and differences in the states'…

"Contested Ground: Performance Accountability in Adult Basic Education" (ABE) is one of the most important books on adult literacy policy at the turn of the century. In it, Juliet Merrifield examines the critical issues of policy, practice, and theory with which the field is currently consumed. She and her colleagues maintain that the concept of…

A systems approach to changing labor market performance requires a substantial and enduring commitment to the task of change. A systems reform framework has been developed that is based on a dual-customer approach, with a focus on improving labor market outcomes for both low-income people and their employers. The objective is to change the labor…

In 1997, a skills task force began a 2-year process of gathering input from English employers and post-16 education and training practitioners and formulating a national skills agenda. The agenda's goals included instilling a culture of lifelong learning in the United Kingdom, better anticipating the evolving skill requirements of employment, and…

The Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA), a national resource for policy and practice development in post-16 education and training, responds to a government White Paper on higher education's (HE's) future. LSDA believes that policy development across further education (FE) and HE sectors should be coordinated and that the government has…

This paper examines effects of public funding for religious and private schools in the Netherlands and England over the last century. These two countries were chosen because both have religious schools fully funded by the state. The paper shows that state funding has disadvantages and advantages. Funding has been associated with considerable, yet…