Politics and Governance of Basic Education

Politics and Governance of Basic Education
Author: Brian Levy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-09-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 019882405X
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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. All over the world, economic inclusion has risen to the top of the development discourse. A well-performing education system is central to achieving inclusive development - but the challenge of improving educational outcomes has proven to be unexpectedly difficult. Access to education has increased, but quality remains low, with weaknesses in governance comprising an important part of the explanation. The Politics and Governance of Basic Education explores the balance between hierarchical and horizontal institutional arrangements for the public provision of basic education. Using the vivid example of South Africa, a country that had ambitious goals at the outset of its transition from apartheid to democracy, it explores how the interaction of politics and institutions affects educational outcomes. By examining lessons learned from how South Africa failed to achieve many of its goals, it constructs an innovative alternative strategy for making process, combining practical steps to achieve incremental gains to re-orient the system towards learning.

The Politics of Education in Developing Countries

The Politics of Education in Developing Countries
Author: Samuel Hickey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 019883568X
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This book focuses on how politics shapes the capacity and commitment of elites to tackle the learning crisis in six developing countries. It deploys a new conceptual framework to show how the type of political settlement shaptes the level of elite commitment and state capacity to improving learning outcomes.

Who's in Charge Here?

Who's in Charge Here?
Author: Noel Epstein
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2004-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 081579665X
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A Brookings Institution Press and the Education Commission of the States publication Behind the scenes, a revolution is taking place in primary and secondary education. Once thought sacrosanct, the principle of local lay control has come under growing attack. In the 1970s and 1980s, governors sought greater influence by promulgating academic standards and even taking over failing schools. Mayors soon followed, with some wresting control of struggling local school systems. Atop this, the president and Congress greatly extended their reach into U.S. classrooms with enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which requires annual reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8, tougher yardsticks to measure whether pupils are making sufficient progress, and penalties for schools that persistently fall short. The result is a spider's web of responsibility. It is difficult, if not impossible, to figure out where accountability lies. Not only have municipal, state, and federal authorities reasserted control over the separate education government that the nation long ago created, but an array of other institutions—including the courts, community-based organizations, and education management companies—are also deeply involved in school decisions. These trends have created a growing gap between those who make education policy and those responsible for the results. What's more, they have contributed to widespread confusion about how to fix public education. In Who's in Charge Here? some of the finest minds in education cut through the confusion to analyze key issues such as the Constitution's role in allocating responsibility for education, the pros and cons of growing federal control, how to ensure a supply of talented teachers for the underprivileged, the impact of the school-choice movement, and the expanding non-academic role of schools. Other chapters explore the history of U.S. education governance and propose principles for creating a new system that especially benefits the children who are most in need. The question of who should be

The Governance of Basic Education in the Eastern Cape

The Governance of Basic Education in the Eastern Cape
Author: Zukiswa Kota
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:
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The Eastern Cape province experienced extensive governmental re-organisation following South Africa's 1994 democratic transition. This entailed significant structural consolidation in the provincial government, and the integration of a disparate set of political and administrative actors under the stewardship of the African National Congress (ANC). This process has had a profound effect on the province's capacity to shape and implement policy, especially in institutionally fragmented sectors such as basic education. Employing the political settlements framework to characterise the province's governance transformation, we describe how historical patterns of clientelism were transplanted into a post-apartheid political and administrative settlement, resulting in considerable intra-party cleavages amongst the political elite and impeding the growth of a rule-compliant, insulated and performance-driven bureaucracy. This has been particularly acute in the education sector, which has seen chronic leadership instability, politicisation and financial mismanagement, and which has compromised the cohesion and integrity of provincial school oversight and policy management.

Routes to Reform

Routes to Reform
Author: Ben Ross Schneider
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2024-02-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197758878
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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The key to sustained and equitable development in Latin America is high quality education for all. However, coalitions favoring quality reforms in education are usually weak because parents are dispersed, business is not interested, and much of the middle class has exited public education. In Routes to Reform, Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning--especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political--are possible. Several Andean countries and state governments in Brazil achieved notable reform since 2000, though on markedly different trajectories. Although rare, the first bottom-up route to reform was electoral. The second route was more top-down and technocratic, with little support from voters or civil society. Ultimately, by framing education policy in a much broader comparative perspective, Schneider demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, but rather--due to the emptiness of the education policy space--on more micro factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

Reinventing Public Education

Reinventing Public Education
Author: Paul Hill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2009-02-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0226336530
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A heated debate is raging over our nation’s public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education altogether with a voucher system for private schools. Combining decades of experience in education, the authors propose an innovative approach to solving the problems of our school system and find a middle ground between these extremes. Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction. In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met. While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America’s schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.

No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy, 1965-2005

No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy, 1965-2005
Author: Patrick J. McGuinn
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2006
Genre: Education
ISBN:
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Education is intimately connected to many of the most important and contentious questions confronting American society, from race to jobs to taxes, and the competitive pressures of the global economy have only enhanced its significance. Elementary and secondary schooling has long been the province of state and local governments; but when George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, it signaled an unprecedented expansion of the federal role in public education. This book provides the first balanced, in-depth analysis of how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law. Patrick McGuinn, a political scientist with hands-on experience in secondary education, explains how this happened despite the country's long history of decentralized school governance and the longstanding opposition of both liberals and conservatives to an active, reform-oriented federal role in schools. His book provides the essential political context for understanding NCLB, the controversies surrounding its implementation, and forthcoming debates over its reauthorization. how the struggle to define the federal role in school reform took center stage in debates over the appropriate role of the government in promoting opportunity and social welfare. He places the evolution of the federal role in schools within the context of broader institutional, ideological, and political changes that have swept the nation since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, chronicles the concerns raised by the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, and shows how education became a major campaign issue for both parties in the 1990s. McGuinn argues that the emergence of swing issues such as education can facilitate major policy change even as they influence the direction of wider political debates and partisan conflict. McGuinn traces the Republican shift from seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education to embracing federal leadership in school reform, then details the negotiations over NCLB, the forces that shaped its final provisions, and the ways in which the law constitutes a new federal education policy regime - against which states have now begun to rebel. and that only by understanding the unique dynamics of national education politics will reformers be able to craft a more effective national role in school reform.

Dynamics in Education Politics

Dynamics in Education Politics
Author: Hannu Simola
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2017-03-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113508422X
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Dynamics in Education Politics: Understanding and Explaining the Finnish Case introduces a new theoretical framework characterised as Comparative Analytics of Dynamics in Education Politics (CADEP). Albeit the topicality of comparative research is obvious in the current era of global large-scale assessment, with its concomitant media visibility and political effects, comparative education is still suffering from certain methodological deficits and is in need of robust theorisation. Focusing on relational dynamics between policy threads, actors and institutions in education politics CADEP seriously considers the phenomena of complexity, contingency and trans-nationality in late-modern societies. In this book CADEP is applied and validated in analysing the "Finnish Educational Miracle" that has been attracting attention in the educational world ever since they rocketed to fame following the PISA studies during the 2000s. This book will open up opportunities for mutual understanding and learning rather than just celebrating the exceptional circumstances or sustainable leadership. Areas covered include: The analytics of dynamics in education politics The dynamics of policy making and governance The dynamics of educational family strategies The dynamics of classroom culture It is vital for humankind to be able to learn from each other’s successes and failures, and this applies in education, too. This book is thus a valuable read for anyone interested in the education system and wanting to shape the learning environment.

Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century

Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century
Author: Paul Manna
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-01-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0815723954
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A Brookings Institution Press with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress publication America's fragmented, decentralized, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance is a major impediment to school reform. In this important new book, a number of leading education scholars, analysts, and practitioners show that understanding the impact of specific policy changes in areas such as standards, testing, teachers, or school choice requires careful analysis of the broader governing arrangements that influence their content, implementation, and impact. Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century comprehensively assesses the strengths and weaknesses of what remains of the old in education governance, scrutinizes how traditional governance forms are changing, and suggests how governing arrangements might be further altered to produce better educational outcomes for children. Paul Manna, Patrick McGuinn, and their colleagues provide the analysis and alternatives that will inform attempts to adapt nineteenth and twentieth century governance structures to the new demands and opportunities of today. Contents: Education Governance in America: Who Leads When Everyone Is in Charge?, Patrick McGuinn and Paul Manna The Failures of U.S. Education Governance Today, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli How Current Education Governance Distorts Financial Decisionmaking, Marguerite Roza Governance Challenges to Innovators within the System, Michelle R. Davis Governance Challenges to Innovators outside the System, Steven F. Wilson Rethinking District Governance, Frederick M. Hess and Olivia M. Meeks Interstate Governance of Standards and Testing, Kathryn A. McDermott Education Governance in Performance-Based Federalism, Kenneth K. Wong The Rise of Education Executives in the White House, State House, and Mayor’s Office, Jeffrey R. Henig English Perspectives on Education Governance and Delivery, Michael Barber Education Governance in Canada and the United States, Sandra Vergari Education Governance in Comparative Perspective, Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley Governance Lessons from the Health Care and Environment Sectors, Barry G. Rabe Toward a Coherent and Fair Funding System, Cynthia G. Brown Picturing a Different Governance Structure for Public Education, Paul T. Hill From Theory to Results in Governance Reform, Kenneth J. Meier The Tall Task of Education Governance Reform, Paul Manna and Patrick McGuinn