The editors have collected original papers dealing with the impact of commissions on educational policy and reform. This book is a combination of the perspectives of practitioners directly involved with writing or reacting to commission reports, and scholars analyzing the significance and impact of educational policy. Chapters are written by some of the country's leading authorities on education. This book will prove to be a valuable resource for educators, administrators, political scientists, sociologists, and others interested in the state of education. Includes a foreword by Paul E. Peterson of Harvard University.

Encyclopedic review about gender and its impact on American higher education across historical and cultural contexts. The contributors describe the ways in which gender is embedded in the educational practices, curriculum, institutional structures and governance of colleges and universities. Topics included are: institutional diversity; academic majors and programs; extracurricular organizations such as sororities, fraternities and women's centers; affirmative action and other higher educational policies; and theories that have been used to analyze and explain the ways in which gender in academe is constructed.

Lance D. Fusarelli examines the relationship between the charter school and voucher issues: To what degree does political support for charter schools - from a coalition of teacher associations, school board groups, superintendents, and voucher advocates - slow or even stop the forces for vouchers? Or, do these coalitions, which successfully pushed charter school legislation through the legislature, actually fuel the fires of privatization? Charter schools legislation has enjoyed bipartisan support precisely because the threat of vouchers is so great. And, contrary to the strategy of voucher opponents, the spread of charter school increases, rather than alleviates, the push for vouchers.

The passage of the Education Improvement Act (EIA) of 1984 was transformational for the state of South Carolina. The Act sought to address growing concerns about the state’s lagging economic competitiveness and its long record of low academic achievement among students from underserved communities. To address these challenges, a cross-sector coalition led by then Governor Richard W. Riley successfully made the public case for bold, comprehensive, and rapid reform. How did they do it? How did passage of the EIA become a people’s movement? A People’s Movement to take a fresh look at the EIA — and in the process discovered that the “playbook” used by Governor Riley and his leadership team in the early 1980s remains relevant today.

This is an assessment of the reluctance of American education institutions to undergo change and reform at a time when it is considered necessary. The lack of public confidence in educational institutions is discussed along with the subsequent consequences.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A study of large-scale education reform in five different settings: England, New Zealand, the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Manitoba, and the US state of Minnesota.

The mission of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is to establish "high and rigorous standards for what teachers should know and be able to do, to certify teachers who meet those standards, and to advance other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools." In response to a request from the U.S. Congress, the National Research Council developed a framework for evaluating programs that award advanced-level teacher certification and applied that framework in an evaluation of the impacts of the NBPTS. Specifically, this book addresses the impacts on students, teachers, and the educational system in this country. Assessing Accomplished Teaching finds that teachers who earn board certification are more effective at improving their students' achievement than other teachers, but school systems vary greatly in the extent to which they recognize and make use of board-certified teachers. Many of the questions on the evaluation framework could not be answered because the data have not been collected, and the report makes recommendations for the kinds of research that are needed to fully evaluate the impacts of board certification by the NBPTS.