This year's submission of consolidated state plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) revealed two things: New ideas made it to the table, and many people--including those who had not before engaged in education policy conversations--contributed to the process. What is still hazy as the dust settles is whether this…

School vouchers are defined as certificates of government funding that are allocated to students and intended to defer the cost of tuition at a private school of the student or the student's parents' choice. With strong views on opposing sides, the issue of school choice and the corresponding use of vouchers has certainly been catapulted into the…

Internal governance in West African universities is faced with considerable government participation in the performance of their traditional functions. External governing relationship is a function of government policies of the institutions and their commitments to stakeholders. The pressure to "deliver the goods" in good quality as well…

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery. Yet the "hollowing out" of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished…

This article explores how new public management policy ideas and technologies circulating in the globalised education space have been re-contextualised in the re-design of the Italian Higher Education System. In doing so, it uses the governmentality studies as a sensitising framework to problematise what we term here as the "calculative and…

The high-stakes accountability policies that stemmed from NCLB and Race to the Top required minimum group sizes in order for school performance to be analyzed through state accountability formulas. Small rural schools have frequently been left out of this equation due to a lack of consistently reportable aggregate groups and subgroups. The…

In 2015, the British government implemented a national Baseline Assessment policy for children at the start of their Reception Year (aged 4-5 years) in England. Adding further assessment to the national Early Years Foundation Stage, the Baseline policy was predicated on reform for improved school accountability, with a focus on measurement of both…

We develop a new measure of relative debt transparency by comparing the amount of state debt reported in the annual Census survey and the amount reported in the statistical section of the state Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). GASB 44 requires states to start reporting their total debt in the CAFR statistical section in FY 2006.…

The author is disappointed to hear about the feedback that several states have received from the United States Department of Education (USED) regarding the proposed additional indicator of school quality and student success for grades 3-8. The "equity indicator" has been used in Wyoming and Utah for several years and there is substantial…

Schools across the nation know the importance of student achievement; which is at the core of teaching and learning. Here in Texas, we have an accountability rating system that helps gauge how well students are doing annually. Texas accountability system is based on a system of indexes that provides an all-inclusive assessment of the performance…

Since the 1990's, schools across the United States have been held accountable for increased student learning. Increased use of growth-based accountability models and a lack of clarity on what each model measures have resulted in a need for additional research focused on the real-world implications for teacher agency and school accountability. The…

The Every Student Succeeds Act grants states more authority over their accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind, but have they seized the opportunity to develop school ratings that are clearer and fairer than those in the past? This new analysis examines the plans submitted by all fifty states and the District of Columbia, and whether…

Data quality has become a pressing issue for many campuses in recent years, as colleges struggle to extract timely, accurate, and consistent information from ever-proliferating institutional data sources in order to meet strategic decision-making and accountability demands. In this mixed methods study, a survey and semi-structured interviews were…

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) grants states more authority over their school accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hence, states have an opportunity to design improved school rating systems. Three of the most important improvements that states can make are to ensure that their accountability systems: (1)…

This research study was completed to explore the perceptions of teachers who have experienced online and hybrid teaching platforms in the United States. The purpose of the study focused on the satisfaction and success of students from the viewpoint of the teacher. Social Interdependence Theory, and Social Constructivist provided the theoretical…