The question of quality has become one of the most important framing factors in education and has been of growing interest to international organisations and national policymakers for decades. Politics of Quality in Education focuses on Brazil, China, and Russia, part of the so-called emerging nations’ BRICS block, and draws on a four-year project to develop a new theoretical and methodological approach. The book builds a comparative, sociohistorical, and transnational understanding of political relations in education, with a particular focus on the policies and practices of Quality Assurance and Evaluation (QAE). Tracking QAE processes from international organisations to individual schools, contributors analyse how QAE changes the dynamics in the roles of state, expertise, and governance. The book demonstrates how national and sub-national actors play a central role in the adaptation, modification or rejection of transnational policies. Politics of Quality in Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of comparative and international education, as well as educational policy and politics. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351362528, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

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.

Education systems and textbooks in selected countries of the Middle East are increasingly the subject of debate. This volume presents and analyzes the major trends as well as the scope and the limits of education reform initiatives undertaken in recent years. In curricula and teaching materials, representations of the "Self" and the "Other" offer insights into the contemporary dynamics of identity politics. By building on a network of scholars working in various countries in the Middle East itself, this book aims to contribute to the evolution of a field of comparative education studies in this region.

After decades of such 'inputs' as how many books are in the school library and the number of computers in the classroom, American education is shining a spotlight on results.

Understanding the politics of Higher Education is becoming more important as the sector is increasingly recognised as a vital source of innovation, skills, economic prosperity, and personal wellbeing. Yet key political differences remain over such issues as who should pay for higher education, how should it be accountable, and how we measure its quality and productivity. Particularly, are states or markets the key in helping to address such matters. The Handbook provides framing perspectives and perspectives, chapters on funding, governance and regulation, and pieces on the political economy of higher education and on the increased role of external stakeholders and indicators.

School boards are fighting for their survival. Almost everything that they do is subject to regulations handed down from city councils, state boards of education, legislatures, and courts. As recent mayoral and state takeovers in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York make abundantly clear, school boards that do not fulfill the expectations of other political players may be stripped of what few independent powers they still retain. Teachers unions exert growing influence over board decision-making processes. And with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government has aggressively inserted itself into matters of local education governance. B esieged is the first full-length volume in many years to systematically examine the politics that surround school boards. A group of highly renowned scholars, relying on both careful case studies and quantitative analyses, examine how school boards fare when they interact with their political superiors, teachers unions, and the public. For the most part, the picture that emerges is sobering: while school boards perform certain administrative functions quite well, the political pressures they face undermine their capacity to institute the wide-ranging school reforms that many voters and local leaders are currently demanding.

Since the early 1990s, the federal role in education—exemplified by the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)—has expanded dramatically. Yet states and localities have retained a central role in education policy, leading to a growing struggle for control over the direction of the nation's schools. In An Education in Politics, Jesse H. Rhodes explains the uneven development of federal involvement in education. While supporters of expanded federal involvement enjoyed some success in bringing new ideas to the federal policy agenda, Rhodes argues, they also encountered stiff resistance from proponents of local control. Built atop existing decentralized policies, new federal reforms raised difficult questions about which level of government bore ultimate responsibility for improving schools. Rhodes's argument focuses on the role played by civil rights activists, business leaders, and education experts in promoting the reforms that would be enacted with federal policies such as NCLB. It also underscores the constraints on federal involvement imposed by existing education policies, hostile interest groups, and, above all, the nation’s federal system. Indeed, the federal system, which left specific policy formation and implementation to the states and localities, repeatedly frustrated efforts to effect changes: national reforms lost their force as policies passed through iterations at the state, county, and municipal levels. Ironically, state and local resistance only encouraged civil rights activists, business leaders, and their political allies to advocate even more stringent reforms that imposed heavier burdens on state and local governments. Through it all, the nation’s education system made only incremental steps toward the goal of providing a quality education for every child.