Creating A High Quality Education Policy System

This book explores how to shape a high-quality education system in contemporary China’s education policy system. The high-quality education system includes several dimensions, such as teacher ethics, school–family cooperative system, teacher promotion, the balanced compulsory education system, the integrated rural and urban education, pre-schoolings, special education system, diversified high school system, vocational education, world-class universities, minority group education, private education, off-campus training, and online education system.

This book highlights decisions governments have to make about their public education systems, the options they have before them and the consequences of their decisions. As well as covering issues such as values, curriculum, teacher training, structures and so on, the book addresses education planning for epidemics, pandemics and disasters. Education systems provide the foundations for the future wellbeing of every society, yet existing systems are a point of global concern. Education System Design is a response to debates in developing and developed countries about the characteristics of a high-quality national education service. It questions what makes a successful system of education. With chapters that draw on experience in education systems around the world, each one considers an element of a national education service and its role in providing a coherent and connected set of structures to ensure good education for all members of society. Key topics include: Existing education systems and what a future system might look like Inclusion and social justice Leadership and teacher education Policy options, and the consequences of policy changes This book suggests an education system be viewed as an ecosystem with interdependencies between many different components needing to be considered when change is contemplated. It is a vital book for any stakeholders in educational systems including students, teachers and senior leaders. It would be particularly useful to policy makers and those implementing policy changes.

Quality and Qualities: Tensions in Education Reforms is a provocative call for understanding and further exploring the elusive concept of quality in education. Although education quality has acquired high priority in the past few decades, the multiplicity of conceptualizations of quality also reflects the concerns and foci of multiple stakeholders. Coming to an understanding of quality education involves careful analysis of the context from which any particular reform or program emerges and of the continuing struggle to define and achieve it. Two main questions persist: who benefits from particular policies focused on quality? And what are the potential tradeoffs between a focus on quality, equitable distribution of education, and inclusion of various traditional expectations? This book explores notions of quality as understood within various systems of national, formal, and nonformal education. Also it considers the tensions that arise with the introduction of new standardized notions of quality in relation to international measures and educational reforms in developing countries. In all cases, specific national issues and concerns compete with global agendas.Challenges to quality that are given particular attention in the book chapters include changing definitions of quality, high expectations for education and issues with implementation, and the introduction of English as a means to achieve quality in a globalizing world. Special attention is also given to possible actions that support a more equitable education without ignoring the requisite of quality. The final chapter suggests three models/choices for seeking higher quality and guiding the educational future of nations.

This book concentrates exploring the landscape of private education in contemporary China, including pre-schools, compulsory education, high schools, and higher education. Both the developmental opportunities, problems, and strategies in regard to shaping the promotion of China’s private education are examined in this book. The intended readers are scholars and researchers who are interested and work in research of the private education in Chinese context.

Between the State and the Schoolhouse examines the Common Core State Standards from the initiative's promising beginnings to its disappointing outcomes. Situating the standards in the long history of state and federal efforts to shape education, the book describes a series of critical lessons that highlight the political and structural challenges of large-scale, top-down reforms. Education policy expert Tom Loveless argues that there are too many layers between the state and the classroom for a national standards approach to be effective. Specifically, he emphasizes the significant gap between states' roles in designing education policy and teachers' roles as implementers of policy. In addition, he asserts that top-down policies are unpredictable, subject to political and ideological pressures, and vulnerable to the pendulum effect as new reforms emerge in response to previous ones. One of the most ambitious education reforms of the past century, the Common Core aimed to raise student success, prepare larger numbers of students for both college and careers, and close achievement gaps. Yet, as Loveless documents, a decade later there remains a lack of significant positive impact on student learning. Between the State and the Schoolhouse marks an important contribution to the debate over the standards movement and the role of federal and state governments in education reform.

This book highlights decisions governments have to make about their public education systems, the options they have before them and the consequences of their decisions. As well as covering issues such as values, curriculum, teacher training, structures and so on, the book addresses education planning for epidemics, pandemics and disasters. Education systems provide the foundations for the future wellbeing of every society, yet existing systems are a point of global concern. Education System Design is a response to debates in developing and developed countries about the characteristics of a high-quality national education service. It questions what makes a successful system of education. With chapters that draw on experience in education systems around the world, each one considers an element of a national education service and its role in providing a coherent and connected set of structures to ensure good education for all members of society. Key topics include: Existing education systems and what a future system might look like Inclusion and social justice Leadership and teacher education Policy options, and the consequences of policy changes This book suggests an education system be viewed as an ecosystem with interdependencies between many different components needing to be considered when change is contemplated. It is a vital book for any stakeholders in educational systems including students, teachers and senior leaders. It would be particularly useful to policy makers and those implementing policy changes.

Education Policy Analysis 2005-2006 includes articles on achieving quality, equity and efficiency in higher education; the growing international market in higher education; valuing teachers; formative assessment and gender differences and mathematics: performance.

Public universities are in crisis, waning in their role as central institutions within democratic societies. Denunciations are abundant, but analyses of the causes and proposals to re-create public universities are not. Based on extensive experience with Action Research-based organizational change in universities and private sector organizations, Levin and Greenwood analyze the wreckage created by neoliberal academic administrators and policymakers. The authors argue that public universities must be democratically organized to perform their educational and societal functions. The book closes by laying out Action Research processes that can transform public universities back into institutions that promote academic freedom, integrity, and democracy.