The current research is about the financing of school participatory structures, particularly FC / CGDES and CGDES in the commune of Droum, Niger Republic. It essentially aims at determining the explanatory factors of financial gap of these structures that are partnership frameworks between the State, development partners, schools, families and community. To do this, both qualitative and quantitative data have been collected across the questionnaire, the snowball technique, the direct observation. Our analyzes showed the existence of factors which created a financial lack directly hindering the achievement of activities of these structures within schools. Added to this, are internal and external parameters including the reluctance of parents linked to their bad connotation of school of white, local actors strategies of co-optation, etc. The whole of these factors determined the low mobilization of funds for the financing of these structures in Droum.
This study presents a comparative analysis of the devolution of education governance between Makueni County in Kenya and Ontario, Canada, focusing on governance structures, funding mechanisms, and educational outcomes. The paper analyzes the various challenges and opportunities posed by decentralization in both regions, with a focus on differences in administrative resources, the distribution of central funds, and local government performance; Others are more systemic within the childhood education environment, for example Makueni County is still quite a long way behind Ontario in terms of fully (for the most part) functioning decentralized education systems, check out the comparative in terms of sustainable or reliable governance models, funding mechanisms and local autonomy, the other perhaps is regional segregation as certainly Makueni County has some overarching larger issues beyond just early childhood development e.g. the funding issues and deployment issues of teachers, but these perhaps can be attributed to the ongoing issues with devolution within Kenya and indeed with human capital in this region more broadly. Employing a mixed-methods research design including policy analysis, interviews and analysis of secondary data, the study examines the impact of devolution on educational outcomes. Results suggest that Makueni promotes more local participation but faces challenges with institutional functionality and fair financing, contrary to the Model of Ontario, which shows a much higher levels of efficiently, equity and accountability. The paper then ends with policy recommendations for Makueni, and suggesting to implement ones from Ontario´s decentralized system that could be a solution for Makueni missing in governance, financial, and education standards.
This study aims to analyze and compare education financing systems in Finland, Japan, the United States, and Indonesia, with a focus on identifying key characteristics, philosophical differences, and policy implications of each model. The research employs a systematic literature review combined with comparative analysis, using management-oriented indicators including equity, efficiency, governance, and sustainability. Findings indicate that Finland implements a full public funding model emphasizing equity, Japan operates a hybrid model with high transparency, the United States exhibits significant disparities due to property-tax-based decentralization, and Indonesia remains in a transitional phase with challenges in fiscal capacity and governance accountability. The study highlights that successful education financing depends on consistent policy implementation, clear funding distribution formulas, and integrity in governance systems. The results provide actionable policy implications for improving national education financing, including the adoption of needs-based funding formulas, digitalized accountability systems, and diversified funding sources through public–private partnerships. By integrating management and governance dimensions, this study contributes to a better understanding of effective and equitable educational funding practices across diverse contexts.
Education endowment funds are increasingly promoted as sustainable financing instruments to support long-term educational development, particularly within decentralized governance systems. However, empirical evidence on how such funds are governed and implemented at the local level remains limited. This study examines the governance of the Education Endowment Fund in Bojonegoro Regency, Indonesia, focusing on the translation of policy intentions into institutional practices and school-level utilization. Drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews and policy document analysis, the study finds that although the fund operates within a formally structured governance framework, its implementation is characterized by centralized decision-making, compliance-oriented accountability mechanisms, and constrained local agency. Consequently, the fund is largely utilized to address short-term operational needs rather than to advance long-term sustainability objectives. The findings also reveal the importance of informal coordination and adaptive practices in navigating administrative complexity, albeit with uneven outcomes across institutions. This study contributes to debates on education financing governance by highlighting the critical role of local governance dynamics in shaping policy outcomes.
The modern educational prison has no bars. Students attend, comply, pass tests, receive diplomas — and emerge unable to use what those diplomas certify. This paper formalizes that decoupling as CM-001 (Idolatry Failure) in educational governance using the Zero Leap Theory (ZLT) framework. When the Alignment Gate (Φ) closes — through mandatory curricula, high Forced Exposure Ratios (FER), and assessment-driven instruction — the system enters an Idolatry Failure regime: the proxy (standardized scores, compliance metrics) is optimized while the structural target (transferable learning capacity, V_real) drifts. The Structural Delusion Index for Education (SDI_edu) is positive and growing. Internal metrics report success. External audit reveals divergence. This paper is the structural complement of ZLT-P15 (The Credential Standardization Trap). P15 addresses the quadrant where exit is blocked (C → 0): coercion is visible. P16 addresses the orthogonal quadrant: exit is available (C > 0), but Φ has closed. Students remain. Metrics stay green. The structural damage is invisible — precisely because assessment pressure simultaneously suppresses the behavioral signals (dropout, resistance) that would trigger correction. This is the Invisible Prison: a five-criterion observable configuration detectable with existing OECD instruments. Core empirical result: Using PISA 2022 and the OECD Survey of Adult Skills 2023 across 33 OECD countries: ρ(FER, SDI_edu) = 0.795, p < 0.0001. Higher Forced Exposure Ratio is strongly associated with greater proxy/competence decoupling. t-test high-FER vs low-FER countries: t = 4.986, p = 0.0008. Prediction 3 of ZLT-P16 confirmed. The structural triangle: South Korea presents the canonical case of sophisticated proxy/competence decoupling: top-3 PISA globally, 79% school belonging (above OECD average), but 22% life dissatisfaction (above OECD average). In the Survey of Adult Skills 2023, Korean adults (16-65) score below the OECD average in numeracy and adaptive problem-solving. Among Korean youth (16-24), literacy is above OECD average, but adaptive problem-solving falls below — the structural signature of compliance-type learning: succeeds where assessment trains, fails specifically on transfer competence. Finland is the proof-of-concept: comparable proxy outcomes, SDI_edu near zero, adult skills above OECD average across all three domains including youth 16-24. Two core corollaries derived from CM-001/P75 and I-3/P_SYNTH: P16.C1 (Alignment-Divergence): when Φ < Φ_min, SDI_edu grows monotonically — proxy improves while ρ(proxy, V_real) declines. P16.C2 (Invisible Acquiescence): the conditions that close Φ simultaneously suppress the behavioral signals that would alert the system to its own failure. The prison self-conceals. New constructs: SDI_edu three-layer audit family (SDI-1 within-system, SDI-2 young-adult orthogonal, SDI-3 long-run structural); Compliance Cascade Onset Point (CCOP); Invisible Prison as five-criterion observable state; IAS-CUR v2.1 audit standard; Attribution Inversion Principle (P16.AIP). This Zenodo record includes: ZLT_P16_v2_2_zenodo.pdf — full paper (14 pages, DOI embedded) ZLT_P16_v2_2.docx — Word source ZLT_P16_v2_1_with_appendices.docx — version with embedded figures and Appendices D–F zlt_cur_audit.py — IAS-CUR v2.1 executable audit tool (4/4 canonical tests passing; run: python zlt_cur_audit.py --test) zlt_p16_phase_diagram.py — Phase Diagram Suite: FER vs SDI_edu for 33 OECD countries (run: python zlt_p16_phase_diagram.py) zlt_p16_knowledge_decay.py — Knowledge Decay Index (KDI) exploratory tool with honest null result zlt_p16_ias_cur_interactive.html — IAS-CUR v2.1 interactive browser-based audit (open in any browser, no server needed) 9 companion PNG figures (phase diagram suite + KDI suite) All scripts run in Google Colab without API keys or external downloads. No authentication required. Part of the Zero Leap Theory (ZLT) series. Upstream: ZLT-P75 (CM-001 / doi:10.5281/zenodo.18940742), ZLT-P_SYNTH (I-3, OD-1 / doi:10.5281/zenodo.19498184), ZLT-P15 (structural complement / doi:10.5281/zenodo.18344309). Series root: doi:10.5281/zenodo.18264279. v2.2 changelog: Corrects empirical overclaim on Korea 16-24 youth data present in v2.1. Accurate data per OECD Survey of Adult Skills 2023: literacy above OECD average, numeracy near average, adaptive problem-solving below OECD average. Domain-specific decoupling framing (compliance-type learning fails specifically on transfer competence) replaces the v2.1 maximal claim. Theory, structure, and all other empirical claims unchanged. Companion tools added in this version.
From July 1, 2025, Vietnam will replace its three-tier local government structure with a two-tier model, raising questions about how far legal decentralization can deliver more inclusive and collaborative governance in key sectors such as education. This article uses doctrinal legal analysis to examine the constitutional, organization- al, and fiscal architecture of the reform, focusing on the education decentralization decrees issued by the government. It asks how the two-tier model reallocates powers across the center, province, and commune, whether finance, performance indicators, and data governance rules are aligned with subsidiarity, fiscal equivalence, and trans- parent multilevel coordination, and which combinations of rules create a real scope for collaboration. The analysis finds that inclusive collaboration is most likely where devolved mandates are matched by predictable, equalized funding, clearly specified Education Management Information System (EMIS)-based information flows, and enforceable participation procedures, while ambiguous oversight clauses and frag- mented data systems risk precautionary recentralization, especially in capacity-con- strained provinces. The article concludes by proposing doctrinal benchmarks and a phased implementation roadmap to help policymakers translate the two-tier reform from formal devolution into operational collaboration in the education sector.
In the education decentralization processes, community participation in education governance has been argued to be essential for improving accountability to service beneficiaries. Therefore, this paper examined the perspectives of key actors on the impact of an educational decentralization policy on improving school quality education in Junior High Schools in Ghana. Participants in the study were 54 School Management Committee (SMC)/Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) members, 106 teachers, and 11 head teachers in 11 schools drawn from two districts in the Central Region of Ghana. Teachers filled out questionnaires and interviews were conducted with SMC/PTA members using a semi-structured interview guide and with 11 head teachers. The paper reveals that the education decentralization policy, with community participation at its heart, has given schools some autonomy in their decision-making process. However, the involvement of community members in school activities has been limited mainly to financing, with little emphasis on the decision-making process in school governance. The study recommends that there should be adequate support for communities to become more involved in the decision-making process, especially in implementing the School Performance Improvement Plan for Ghana to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.
The RISE (Research on Improving Systems of Education) Programme political economy team focused on “adoption” (PET-A) examines the political conditions required to put learning at the center of an education system. This work stream has produced 12 historical case studies and three synthesis papers which draw on this rich material. This paper is part of the latter effort and offers a comparative analysis across five of the countries with RISE Country Research Teams (Ethiopia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Vietnam), as well as additional case studies focusing on Chile and Peru. Building on the RISE systems framework (Pritchett, 2015), our political economy analysis incorporates issues of competing interests, power, and political strategy. We focus on the promoters and blockers of learning-oriented education reform and their respective powers and strategies to parse out the political contestations that are endemic to the reform processes that impact system coherence around learning. In this paper, we present a binding constraints framework to explore what a politics for learning might look like and examine areas of intervention that present critical bottlenecks impeding a country’s ability to deliver learning outcomes which, if addressed, pose the potential for large impact relative to other constraints. We draw upon the PET-A country case studies to include analysis of different factions and reform champions within government, including but not limited to the executive office (president/prime minister), Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, competing ministries, decentralized government levels, and local leaders. In doing, we elucidate how politics permeate nearly all accountability relationships in education systems and the likelihood that any given program will positively impact learning.
The decisions that students make about their educational attainment have profound impacts on their future economic, demographic, and social outcomes. These decisions, however, do not happen in a vacuum. There is a long tradition of research that studies inequality in educational decisionmaking and the various factors that contribute to creating, or reducing, this inequality. However, inequality in educational attainment persists. This dissertation takes a multimethod approach to identifying sources of inequality and evaluating policies aimed at reducing it. In three distinct empirical chapters, this dissertation extends the literature on educational decision making, expanding our knowledge of how inequality is created and maintained. The first empirical paper, evaluates two “free tuition” policy designs, informing policy conversations about how to reduce economic inequality in selective college attendance. Proposed “free college” policies vary widely in design. The simplest set tuition to zero for everyone. More targeted approaches limit free tuition to those who demonstrate need through an application process. We experimentally test the effects of these two models on the schooling decisions of low-income students. An unconditional free tuition offer from a large public university substantially increases application and enrollment rates. A free tuition offer contingent on proof of need has a much smaller effect on application and none on enrollment. These results are consistent with students placing a high value on financial certainty when making schooling decisions. The second paper focuses on the role of social context in shaping student decision making. There is a long history of sociological research that identifies the essential role of social forces in shaping educational attainment; however, siblings have been understudied as a direct mechanism contributing to educational decision making, overshadowed by the focus on parents and institutions. Using longitudinal qualitative interviews with 36 high-achieving high school seniors from families with low incomes, I explore the unique role that older siblings play in shaping the postsecondary decision making of their younger siblings. I find that the support provided by siblings is distinct from other social resources. The intensity of the relationship, and the internal and external relevance, or the fact the information shared is recent and personalized to the students’ circumstances, each make this relationship unique. By studying only parents or considering only the role of parent educational or economic circumstances in contributing to inequality, we ignore an important source of heterogeneity in the lives of students from families with low incomes. The final empirical chapter describes gaps in postsecondary educational attainment between urban, rural, and suburban communities using student-level longitudinal data from the full population of Michigan public high school students. Using several recent high school cohorts, I document rates of college attendance, college selectivity, and bachelor’s degree completion overall and within subgroups, providing updated estimates for urbanicity gaps in college attainment. I find that there is less racial and economic inequality in college outcomes within rural areas; however, it does not come from improved outcomes among racially minoritized students or those from families with low incomes. Students in rural areas from traditionally advantaged groups have substantially lower rates of college attainment than their suburban and city peers. Therefore, while media narratives about White, rural students falling behind are not inaccurate, they tell an incomplete story. This chapter highlights some key areas for policy intervention to better target the distinct needs of students.
This paper provides an overview of concepts and methods used in analysis of public school financing in U.S. States. I begin by providing an overview of trends in public school financing in the U.S. and addressing what the research tells us regarding how and why money matters for providing high quality public schooling. Next, I address core concepts for framing the goals of education finance systems in U.S. States -specifically, that the primary goal is to provide all children, regardless of where they reside or attend school -with equal opportunity to achieve a common set of measurable outcomes. Next, I address methods and models for estimating the costs to meet these goals and provide descriptive evidence on where U.S. States fall short of these goals, and models explaining how and why U.S. States fail to achieve these goals. I conclude by addressing how the highly decentralized U.S. system of financing schools would benefit from more national involvement.
This three-paper dissertation studies education systems where decision-making power and funding is shared across different levels of government, their achievement levels and inequality across socieoconomic groups. \nThe first chapter, “Population Density and Educational Inequality: The Role of Public School Choice and Accountability” relates National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test differences to levels of population agglomeration. Using detailed individual level-data, I establish that being in a denser area is associated with an increase in the socioeconomic gap of about 1 percent for each 10 percent increase in density levels. This is robust to the use of a geographic regression discontinuity design that leverages discontinuities in density across neighboring commuting zones. It is consistent with a theory whereby density leads to greater school socioeconomic segregation. The findings underscore that conventional democratic accountability mechanisms are insufficient to overcome this segregation.\nIn the second chapter, “The Quality and Access Tradeoff in Decentralization Reform: Evidence from Education in the OECD and Spain” (co-authored with Susana Cordeiro Guerra) we study the effect of decentralization reform on education outcomes. While there are theoretical reasons for bringing the locus of decision-making closer to citizens, our knowledge of the effects of decentralization is limited. We first draw on a panel dataset from OECD countries to capture changes on where different decisions are made and their effects on outcomes. Decentralizing has a broadly negative effect on quality indicators but a positive effect on access indicators. We test the argument that upon decentralizing, some regional governments have incentives to assert their legitimacy and pursue highly visible and short-term policies, such as expanding access. Exploiting the exogenous timing of decentralization in Spain (in 1980-2000), we find that variation in the degree of regional assertiveness is related to the magnitude and sign of the effects of decentralization. \nThe third paper, “The Relation between Local Financing and Education Outcomes: Evidence from US School Districts” explores the effects of locally raised revenue. I hypothesize that a higher local revenue share will be related to better school performance, as citizens will be more demanding and in control of the school budget. I look at test scores from the 2007 NAEP, with three empirical approaches. First, I exploit changes in house prices during the 2000 to 2007 boom. Second, I use variation from state fiscal regimes; and third, I leverage covariation within a geographic area. Consistently, local revenue share is associated with about .3-.7% SD higher scores per additional percentage point of local revenue share. It is also associated with greater inequality by socioeconomic status. I find evidence that locally financed districts differ by spending more on teacher salaries and less on administration and that Tiebout competition amplifies the effect of local financing. I find no evidence of a relation between local revenue and citizen participation in education governance. These findings suggest an important behavioral dimension of local financing that would support its continued use.
Over the period 2007–2013, a series of undertakings were made to introduce fundamental elements of decentralized education finance to Egypt. In 2009, 8.4M Egyptian pounds (EGP) of the Government of Egypt’s (GOE) budget was decentralized to every primary school in three pilot governorates. By 2013, EGP 1.2B of the GOE’s money had been decentralized nationwide. This paper describes what these undertakings strived to achieve, what specifically was done to achieve these objectives, the degree to which these objectives were achieved, the reasons why they were achieved to the degree they were with particular attention paid to the institutional and political context within which these undertakings unfolded. The account of the technical work that was undertaken to decentralize these funds is important, but more important is the account of the interplay between the technical work, the fact that this work supported a GOE-led initiative, and the volatile political environment—pre-revolution, revolution, and post-revolution Egypt—in which the work was done for it is here where important lessons about reform emerge.
In 2014, the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) held its thirty-ninth annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. The relevance of the host city for much of the research presented at the conference was not lost on most members.A little over forty years ago the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in San Antonio v. Rodriguez [411 U.S. 1 (1973)] that education is not a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. Parents had brought suit arguing that basing school financing on property wealth resulted in the unequal provision of education, presumably a fundamental right. The Supreme Court decision was a close one, at 5 to 4. If the decision had gone the other way, we would likely now have a national education system. Instead, what evolved is a complex system of education policy making, often described as a “marble cake federalism,” where different levels of government intermingle in different ways in policies and programs or as a “Rube-Goldberg-like” machine where complicated hoops and hurdles are required to produce relatively simple policy inputs.Something else has changed in the last forty years. The United States led the world throughout the twentieth century in expanding access to secondary and college education (Goldin and Katz 2000; Goldin 2001) but it is no longer the leader in access—nor for that matter doesit lead in performance. Relative to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, U.S. performance on the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2012) is middling at best, and secondary school completion is similar. And the rest of the world is fast catching up with the United States in college completion. In 1995, the United States ranked first in college graduation among OECD countries. Today, it ranks 19th out of the 28 countries studied (OECD 2014).In addition, the United States—traditionally seen as the land of opportunity—has relatively low educational mobility: The fraction of young adults in the United States with education levels lower than their parents is higher than the OECD average. Indeed, out of the 21 countries included in the analysis, the United States ranks 18th (OECD 2014). Lack of social mobility weakens social cohesion and trust in a society's institutions.Education ranking of countries is more than a simple top ten list. Education quality is a key ingredient for a country's economic growth (Nelson and Phelps 1966; Hanushek and Woessmann 2007). Major national economic policy leaders are increasingly stressing the importance of education for the country's economic well-being (e.g., Bernanke 2007). President Obama warns that “Countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow” (Obama 2011). Indeed, he has called education “the economic issue of our time” (Obama 2010).In a speech on inequality, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen (2014) identifies education as a key “cornerstone” of opportunity affecting intergenerational mobility. She points out that, unlike most other advanced countries, students from low income families in the United States often receive less public education support than students from more advantaged families because school financing is heavily based on subnational (state and local) taxes. The old problem associated with the Rodriguez case emerges again, but perhaps in a broader way. Most of our economic competitors have not only more equal funding but also national systems of education where both education policies, including performance standards and funding, are largely set for the country as a whole.The focus of this essay, as the title suggests, is to advocate for new and renewed efforts in analyzing the dynamics behind shifts in education governance in the United States and their effects on national policies, practices, and performance going forward.Much of the work presented at AEFP conferences evaluates education policies and practices using experimental methods, with random assignment, or rigorous quasi-experimental strategies, such as regression discontinuity designs. This work will, and should, always be a large and important part of AEFP's portfolio. It provides policy makers with valuable information about the likely productivity effects of different courses of action. The extent and ways in which policy makers and other influential parties respond to such information, however, is complicated. And the complications are also worth studying.In short, I am suggesting that it may serve us, and the field, well to broaden our horizon. In some sense, I suggest we revisit some of our earlier roots, and expend greater effort examining cross-level institutional incentives and constraints that affect federal, state, and local policy making, as well as the resources and political pressures at different levels that shape policies and foster or inhibit productive education change. This is a call for more research on the political economy of education policy making.Constitutionally, states control what is taught and who teaches. Curriculum and standards are formally within the purview of the state, as are human capital policies that set teacher and administrator certification requirements, hiring, pay, tenure, and so forth. The traditional federal role has been one of equity with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as its centerpiece. Federal funds have largely been intended to target special services to disadvantaged students without supplanting state and local funds. Accountability exercised by the federal government historically has been pretty much limited to distributional accountability. That is, ensuring that federal funds, which represent a little more than 10 percent of expenditures, are directed to disadvantaged students.The last few years, however, have been a game-changing time for federal education policy in the United States, with major implications for state and local education efforts and their direction. The federal efforts are heavily driven by a recognition of the importance of education policy for national economic objectives, as well as traditional equity objectives. For education researchers, it has been particularly heady because research has played a big role in shaping the thinking behind many of the changes, and continues to do so. The story of the game-changing is familiar to education policy observers, but a quick review of what has happened, and what is still uncertain, may help set the stage for thoughts on where additional research on education governance might be insightful.Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 was the first big game changer for federal education policy since the 1960s and, in many ways, it opened the door for more recent, bolder efforts.The law required states to establish academic performance standards for all students within their state, and to hold schools and school districts accountable for student progress in meeting those standards. Schools not making adequate academic progress faced sanctions. Standards and accountability, once the sole responsibility of state and local education agencies, were now required by Washington, even if many of the details were left to the states. In addition, teachers were expected to meet “high quality” standards, that is, meet state certification requirements. States could opt out of the NCLB requirements but they risked losing federal dollars. Some states balked at the law's provisions, and the increased reach of the federal government, but all eventually signed on. The legislation likely never would have passed without the strong bipartisan leadership of President George W. Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy.The expectation, specified in the law (which is still on the books at the time of this writing), is that all students would reach state-established academic proficiency levels by the 2013–14 school year. It turned out to be a humbling pipe dream.In 2011, about half of the nation's schools did not make adequate progress. Four states had school failure rates approaching 90 percent (Usher 2012). This was in spite of the fact that an easy way to meet the proficiency level was to lower standards. In fact, an analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as the standard, found that not only did states vary in the rigor of their standards, but fifteen states had lowered their standards between 2005 and 2007 to avoid sanctions (NCES 2011). A more recent analysis by Gary Phillips (2014), using international benchmarks, found that the standards gap between states with the highest standards and those with the lowest standards represents between three to four grade levels of performance. He concludes: “50 states going in 50 different directions cannot lead to national success that is globally competitive” (p. 4).But the story doesn't end there—the game changed again. Another set of major education policy shifts emerged in the latter part of the decade and is currently underway, and then another. All are intended to raise education performance nationally. All increase the federal role, and all are designed in ways to induce state cooperation.Under the Obama Administration, teacher policies—traditionally determined by states—took center stage. Three notable teacher policy shifts mark Game Changer 2. The first shifted the focal unit of accountability from schools, as in NCLB, to teachers. The second shifted the basis of teacher quality from input (i.e., qualifications) to output (student performance). The third shifted accountability based on student academic proficiency levels to accountability based on student academic gains. These are major policy changes.The shifts were accomplished through incentive-based reform initiatives developed by the executive branch of the government under the financial challenges of the Great Recession. State and local coffers were coming up short, and education jobs were at risk. The economic stimulus funds (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) provided $100 billion for education support. The funds were critically needed but they came with strings or, at least, a strong expectation that states focus on four priority areas of reform. One key area was “increasing teacher effectiveness” partly through evaluating teachers on the basis of student achievement.1The Obama Administration also used part of the stimulus funds to spur new ways of doing things. A national competition—Race to the Top—was established with $4.35 billion to support states proposing to make dramatic progress on the reform activities. The winners would be the pacesetters of reform. The criteria used to evaluate state proposals gave heaviest weight to reforms focused on “improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance.” Weight was also given to proposals that fully developed and used individual-level longitudinal data systems to track individual student performance gains to inform instructional efforts. At the time the NCLB legislation was passed, only a small handful of states had the data capacity to assess student gains and to link students to their teachers. By 2011, it was different. Since 2005, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded more than half a billion dollars to states to develop individual level longitudinal education data systems. The number of states able to link student data with their teacher increased from four in 2005 to forty-four in 2011.Most states, hungry for financial support, competed to be bold reformers of human capital policies, an entrenched policy area that was traditionally mired in politics, complex sets of state laws, and practices heavily shaped by local collective bargaining agreements. To ensure that real reform would occur, state proposals had to be endorsed by state officials, local administrators, and unions. Eleven states and the District of Columbia were winners in the first two rounds of the competition and an additional seven states won awards in 2011.2 In all, nearly 40 percent of states competed and won, thereby accepting the human capital reform challenge.New changes emerged in 2011, again with incentives provided by the executive branch to induce state pursuit of favored policies. A divided U.S. Congress was unable to come to agreement on reauthorization of NCLB, and many schools and districts were facing serious sanctions for not achieving the performance levels specified in NCLB. The Obama Administration agreed to grant states waivers from key provisions in NCLB law but, again, there were strings attached. In exchange for relief of some of the terms of NCLB, states had to propose a plan in line with the Administration's reform agenda. Again, key among the items was evaluating teachers, in part, on the basis of students’ test scores. By August 2012, thirty-three states had been granted waivers. Many waivers expired at the end of the 2013–14 academic year, and the U.S. Department of Education granted extensions to states for another year on the basis of reform progress. Indeed, seven states that had been especially successful with developing teacher evaluation systems were eligible to apply for a fast-tracked extended renewal through 2018–19. In effect, many states are continuing to negotiate their education policies with the executive branch of the federal government.Although the financial incentives and waivers, combined with tough economic times, help explain why states were willing to take on the thorny problem of teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation, they do not explain why the Obama Administration focused laser-like on teachers.The policy emphasis shift from schools to teachers was driven largely by research findings that began emerging in the mid-2000s—findings that are difficult to dismiss. Numerous studies by different researchers, utilizing data from different states using different tests and in different policy of this research has been by AEFP key findings are the most important school student performance. to the and by more studies that teacher quality for a of the in student performance than other school findings also that teachers have effects on and of their students and productivity among teachers is In a Hanushek that teachers the top of the performance are for about a year and a half of academic gains for their teachers the produce only about a half year in teacher effectiveness within schools is at as large as the between Again, since studies have found in teacher effectiveness within schools that are often than the between studies based on longitudinal data from states the teacher do not represent teacher quality percent of a school is for and academic and heavily in teacher and higher has but research the are not as strong as For teachers over their first years of the to to out by about year In short, the findings suggest that we have traditionally a large part of our instructional dollars on or that to have little on student performance as traditionally and findings policy If teachers are the of large in student we to teachers. are the making the most in The large in productivity among teachers an that doing much is, are not as traditional human capital policies in education to if the is as large as the between schools, basing policies on performance will much of the in by the policy initiatives described a strong emphasis on teacher performance between and 2012, more than states legislation annual of teachers, based partly on student test and the to key such as 2012). effects were In 2007 in for percent of teachers in their third year of in 2012, this to percent In the last few years, of states have changed These changes are in a large by the Education of the are also in the in brought that protected teachers from and thereby students’ state to an equal The were heavily based on research findings about teacher The found the research and ruled for the A case is making its way through the in has also about ways to develop both through programs and in this area is and often For a random of for school teachers, a target that we might would be likely to from no on teacher or student 2011). States, and began in to link effectiveness to programs for both accountability and By 2014, states teacher performance data of with their teacher is on both what as well as to for research is in the or of and associated a A recent review by National for of Education found that, there is teacher programs are important for teacher effectiveness in the more research is needed to their In the what is is that some teachers are more than and are to develop more of teacher effectiveness using of the last decade of education reform in the United States has led to agreement among policy on at two reform and academic standards. and what is taught are both The focus on teachers was we are with what in the standards (i.e., the and performance that NCLB required standards, but as by the were states. In addition, the accountability provisions in NCLB presented States were their standards and the public and the federal government a or for their Changer this problem by to establish national standards in and for State Standards that are with international are the of reform. At a they the basis for state policies and state accountability policies. they would have little President of the State Board of it we from the of state standards academic standards so do policies to student and school accountability. many other policies be and including state instructional and college teacher and other the federal government could not establish national standards for the states, but it did their by points to states that standards in the to the and by favored in for states that the National Association and the of State had led the of the standards in and control their with a to the of the standards but support from the and was large and The provided support and over in financial support to help states work on standards. The also to political support for the standards by to key institutional the political including teacher the of and the National Education the U.S. of and political on the right and and influential state the federal government did not financial support for the of national standards, it did support the of for states to 2011, states and the District of Columbia had the standards, and did so states did The however, is a target as is in at a handful of states that are to or the standards. The to teachers of the has also as well as the to to be is the federal control in is seen as an by the federal government that is likely to lead to greater federal control over instructional and the of individual student the teachers and their about for teacher a the standards in the those of most states. is a may an even in teacher effectiveness than we currently In addition, to be teacher and instructional are not fully in The of has for a on and its in has support for the such as the passed a in the in its and it as an effort by a of are for the are for the will all this are we and what we will be the for education quality and education and eventually for increased national economic and national social and economic the last two or the role of the executive branch of the federal government in education policy making increased political under the leadership of George W. George W. and have to this in ways the of national education standards and a national system for educational accountability, even the U.S. such to the states. At a the of the federal and state levels of government are currently in in and and will take in to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the Congress where many recent policies, such as annual student as an by the federal executive branch that be that affect the governance of education in the United States serious and is at AEFP could a number of research associated with the political economy of U.S. education and in ways to the and on education governance would in focus and from much of our and important work evaluating education practices and policies, but it would this It would help us the dynamics of reform in the United economy in the of a policy research and they for analysis and of come to The first three focus on what we might call the political economy of education information the education policy and policy These are especially key as education policies have shifted from education policies to policies using relatively performance The on the role of to what and in what ways, information about the of education performance affect policy findings about different to student performance (e.g., teacher policies, policies, and graduation more or less or influential in different ways, at the state, and local policy In what ways do of information and to that information states with different political or economic to what extent do standards and performance information state and local spur through competition and another there an of that, under strong information to education To what extent do political leaders to performance information in ways that might affect its to the what are the and that for education reforms at different levels of government and different what are the of different going The role of is among the most to are a major political at the national and state policy and a policies at the local level through collective are but have in important areas of education policy are the most important school input affecting student performance. are in the difficult of the of all their it is increasingly that some teachers are much more than from on an earlier were
The decentralization of school governanceâoften blended with market dynamicsâhas become a prominent strategy for lifting the performance of urban schools. This approach rests upon several assumptions, primarily that freedom from bureaucratic regulation will strengthen teacher community and result in more effective allocation of instructional resources. But do small autonomous high schools host such favorable social-organizational features? What drives collaborative relationships among teachers in decentralized schools? And do these relations help to account for between-school and between-teacher variation in teacher trust and shared responsibility for student learning? To examine these core questions I draw on social network theory as a theoretical frame and build from the literature on the social organization of efficacious schools. Survey data were collected from 392 teachers in 20 small site-managed charter and pilot high schools located in Los Angeles. First, I used p2 network modeling to determine the extent to which a teacherâs position in the school organization and personal characteristics predicted their instructional support relationships. Second, to examine the influence of these instructional support relationships on a teacherâs perceptions of normative culture in their schools, I estimated hierarchical linear models (HLM) estimating collective responsibility and relational trust as functions of teacher position in the school organization, teacher personal characteristics, and teacher- and school-level network measures of the instructional support relationships.Teachersâ choice of colleagues to whom they turn for support to improve their teaching practice reflected not only leadersâ efforts to shape teacher collaboration, but also preferences for forming ties with a colleague based on their personal characteristics. Teachers were more likely to seek advice to improve their teaching practice from colleagues who taught the same subject. However, teachers were less likely to seek advice from the more experienced teachers in the school. The likelihood of an instructional advice relationship was greater when teachers were of the same race. Teachersâ perceptions of normative culture were influenced by the distribution of these social resources in the school, in that uneven distribution of advice and support relationships was detrimental for a sense of shared responsibility for student learning but conducive to a high level of trust in the group. For individual teachers, their collaborative activity conditioned the perceptions further: those teachers most often approached for support by colleagues held weaker perceptions of the groupâs overall shared responsibility. This approach advances the study of teacher professional community to incorporate the âdyadâ as a focus, honing in on an essential building block of cohesive social organizations. The study also demonstrates meaningful variation among teachers within the same school in how they perceive normative culture. The findings contribute to the literature on teacher professional community and have implications for policymakers, districts and school leaders.
Poppema, M., Verger, A., Novelli, M., Altinyelken, H.K.
School-based management (SBM) has been on the educational reform agenda of International Organisations (IOs) since the 1990s and is regarded as the most radical form of educational decentralisation.Although the models might differ, the main rationale given for the implementation of SBM is that by enhancing the participation of local stakeholders, decentralisation will lead to more efficient services and boost educational achievement.Most analysis of SBM programmes (SBMPs) evaluate the functioning of the programmes and their main outcomes.In this chapter, the focus shall be placed on the specific political and economic context that gave rise to the two first SBMPs in the Global South, namely, the Autonomous Schools Programme (ASP) in Nicaragua and the EDUCO Community-Managed Schools Programme in El Salvador.They were implemented at a time when major (post) conflict transformation processes in Central America (CA) were driven through the direct intervention by the Unites States (US) and their Agency for International Development (USAID).Since then, these SBMPs have been implemented in countries where IOs have great leverage, as in (post-) conflict countries (Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc.) or in countries that are undergoing significant political, social and economic change.Next to USAID, the World Bank is the major promoter of SBM and has continuously expanded its support for this kind of decentralized reform.A review of World Bank's lending portfolio over the years [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006] shows that SBM projects amount to US$1.7 billion, representing approximately 18 per cent of total education financing (Barrera-Osorio et al. 2009).The EDUCO programme in particular has been cited as the best practice, arguing that the project was built on the experience of at least 500 community-run schools operating in conflict-affected areas in the 1980s.'When the country emerged from war, the new Ministry of Education launched Education with Community Participation (EDUCO), a programme that gave these schools official recognition and financial support.' (UNESCO 2011, p. 224).This appreciation has been highlighted in all the World Bank documents on the topic (see Jimenez et al.
Egypt, currently in the throes of major political change, will likely undergo various reforms in the next few years. Some reforms are likely to give local entities, including schools, greater control over education finances. In 2007, the Government of Egypt began to decentralize some non-personnel recurrent finances from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to lower-level jurisdictions using a number of simple and transparent enrollment- and poverty-based funding formulas. By 2010, a sizable amount of capital expenditure was also being transferred to lower levels of the system via similar equity-based funding formulas. Prior to these formula-based decentralization efforts, a large amount of education-related non-personnel recurrent finances had been moving from the MOF to the muderiyat. Analysis of these latter allocations reveals that they are highly inequitable on an inter-governorate per-student basis, ranging from EGP 966 per student in New Valley to EGP 25 per student in 6th of October. This paper examines the nature and potential causes of this inequity and puts forth a way in which these funds could also be transferred using an equity-based funding formula that “holds harmless” those muderiyat that would lose absolute amounts of money under a more equitable distribution scheme.
Emerging economies are building up their education systems by overcoming the major challenges of finance, infrastructure and planning and control of resources and internal processes through ‘school-based management’ reforms. To achieve relative competitiveness, school management must deal with these challenges. Governments consider decentralization as an indispensable step in efforts to provide quality education. Many successful schools set up committees and undertake improvements in planning. The Indian school education sector is not an exception. This study sought to explore the nature of planning function being practiced at the school level as a source of competitive advantage. A sample of 188, among the population of 557 secondary schools in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh in India, was selected through stratified sampling. The primary responses were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to the respective school heads and analyzed with chi-square and simple descriptives. Decentralization is a management strategy which demands flexible implementation with a balance between the autonomy and the characteristics of its beneficiaries. Improvement of the quality of education needs the functioning and management of schools to improve. The findings indicate that the planning framework is either nonexistent or inactive in a majority of public sector schools. The inclusion of community members in school management is comparatively better in the public sector schools run by the State government of Andhra Pradesh than those run by private managements. The academic, infrastructure and financial planning activities are highly centralized, giving no scope for innovation and autonomy at the school level.
This is a study of financial disparities in primary and secondary education in OECD countries that have a relatively large population and a school finance system with decentralized features. These countries include the United States, Britain, Australia, Spain, Canada, and Japan. There are two major research questions: What are the trends in disparities in per-student education spending during the 1990s and early 2000s period? What government policies or factors may explain these trends? Common statistics such as the coefficient of variation, the restricted range, the federal range ratio, and Gini coefficient are used to measure disparity in per-student spending. Sub-national data for this study are obtained from published government sources. There are three major findings: (1) there was a general trend towards a reduction in inequity in per-student education spending in these countries; (2) this equalization trend was associated with a variety of financing policies implemented in these countries; and (3) a larger share of regional government funding relative to the share of local government funding, intergovernmental transfer, and the design of school funding formulas are crucial factors for enhancing equity in education funding. The policy towards centralization in education finance system also appears to be an important factor in financial equalization.
In mid 1997, Indonesia was seriously affected by the Asian economic crisis. This quickly spread into monetary, political, and social crises. Following a new presidential appointment, pressures and demands from the grass-roots to reform government systems become stronger and more persistent. Several provinces, particularly those having rich natural resources, pressed for greater autonomy. They felt that their natural resources were being taken by the central government but only a small part came back to them. If the central government did not respond to their pressures and demands, they threatened to proclaim independence from Indonesia. <br><br>Education in Indonesia has been a decentralized system since the issuance of Law Number 22/1999 on Local Government. This law was reviewed in 2004 and became Law Number 32/2004 on Local Government. The essence of Law Number 22/1999 was that education was devolved mostly to local government which in Indonesia is at the district level. As a consequence, education was no longer dominated by the central government; local government had voices in policy, planning, management, finance and delivery of education. Law Number 32/2004 revised some earlier decisions and provided more authority to Provinces. <br><br>Despite an initial impression that the Ministry of National Education (MONE) has real power, its reach is limited and constrained by political and bureaucratic structures and the capacity of those working in the system at all levels. It is worth noting that the MONE’s role is rendered even more complex by the fact that education in Indonesia falls under three ministries: MONE, Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) and Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA). While MONE has the responsibility for coordinating education, each ministry has its own political and administrative agenda and processes, complicating the already complex and demanding tasks associated with decentralization. <br><br>Implementation of education decentralization in Indonesia is not easy because of its political dynamics and geographic and administrative complexity. The dynamics and complexity of Indonesia can be seen in its demography – population size and variations in density and ethnicity, and its geography – the 13,000 islands causing serious communication problems. From the political perspective, issues such as bureaucratic complexity, complex processes of decentralization due to it being driven by political and donor forces, and implementation complexity involving a range of actors and arenas have also contributed to the challenges. From the administrative view point, the challenges included rapid implementation (big bang), simultaneous political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization, and delays in establishing legal frameworks stipulating the divisions of obligatory functions between central, provincial, and district levels. In addition, the lack of capacity amongst local managers to do their jobs created real problems at the district level. <br><br>Decentralization of education in Indonesia has brought a lot of changes and one of the most important of them is community participation in education. The community must now take part in the quality improvement of educational services, which includes planning, monitoring, and evaluation of educational programs through Boards of Education.<br>
An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive. Instead they respond to policies with a combination of modified residential choice and political choice of tax levels. The highly stylized decision models of most existing analyses, however, lead to concerns about the policy evaluations. In our general equilibrium model of residential location and community choice, households base optimizing decisions on commuting costs, school quality, and land rents. With both centralized and decentralized employment, the resulting equilibrium has heterogeneous communities in terms of income and tastes for schools. This model is used to analyze a series of conventional policy experiments, including school district consolidation, district power utilization, and different equalization devices. The important conclusion is that welfare falls for all families with the restrictions in choice that are implied by these approaches.
The 1971 ruling of the California Supreme Court in the case of Serrano v. Priest initiated a chain of events that abruptly ended local financing of public schools in California. In seven short years, California transformed its school finance system from a decentralized one in which local communities chose how much to spend on their schools to a centralized one in which the state legislature determines the expenditures of every school district. This paper begins by describing California's school finance system before Serrano and the transformation from local to state finance. It then delineates some consequences of that transformation and draws lessons from California's experience with school finance reform.
Since the endorsement of a socialist market economy in 1992 in the 14th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, self-financing and fee-charging principles have been widely adopted, and finally legitimized in China's higher education system. However, refonns in China's post secondary education, mainly privatization and tuition fee hikes, have produced some serious controversies and concerns among students, parents, and international education researchers. This article delves into the issues of post secondary education refonn in China and brings into attention problems that occur when policies are institutionalized in a centralized decentralization setting. Depuis l'adhesion a une economie de marche socialiste au 14e Congres national du Parti communiste chinois, les principes d'autofmance et de privatisation ont ete adoptes partout, et finalement legitime dans le systeme d'education tertiaire en Chine. Neanmoins, les refonnes dans le systeme d'etude post-secondaire chinois, surtout dans la privatisation et dans la hausse des frais de scolarite, ont provoque de serieuses controverses et des soucis chez les etudiants, parents, et chercheurs intemationaux sur l'enseignement. Cet article etudie les problemes de reforme au niveau post-secondaire en Chine et attire l'attention sur les problemes qui surviennent lorsque les politiques se font institutionnalisees dans un milieu de decentralisation centralisee.
What is best strategy to reach the Millennium Development Goal of basic education for all will depend on the specific country context.This paper introduces an input-output method to estimate the financial inputs required to achieve the MDG for primary education and an additional target of enhancing access to secondary education. 1As such the approach followed here is not new, but the innovative element is combining educational demand and supply variables considering both cost dimensions and quality of services as measured among others through test scores (outcomes), quality of school inputs and the nature of delivery of services (privatepublic, centralized or decentralized).We take the following analytical steps: (i) define a production function for specific education outputs (enrolment), (ii) isolate the main determinants of such output (considering both demand and supply factors); (iii) estimate costs per unit of producing such output, and -based on estimated elasticity's and unit costs ensuing from the education production function -(iv) calculate the financing needs of reaching key education goals.We find that determinants of access to schooling are significantly different for urban and rural and for poor and non-poor children.Furthermore, the determinants also differ when referring to access to primary or secondary education.Quality of school inputs does matter in all cases though to varying degree.Particularly, class size, shares of trained teachers and greater school autonomy (in hiring teachers and managing schools) are relevant.Quality of education outcomes, i.e. test scores, while very poor in Ecuador does not seem to influence school enrolment.The upshot is that with a more cost-effective use of resources for primary education, the MDG target of 100% of net primary school enrolment in urban areas is within reach in a period of 4 to 5 years at virtually no additional budgetary cost.Meeting the target for the rural population seems more complicated.In secondary education, important progress can be made to reach a target of 70% net enrolment (with important expected positive externalities for economic growth) by enhancing the share of trained teachers, expand coverage of school demand subsidies and improve class infrastructure.This target is within reach for the poor and non-poor urban population by 2007 at an estimated additional cost of 1 Vos is with the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague and the Free University Amsterdam.Ponce is with FLACSO-Ecuador and is also a PhD candidate at ISS.