Educational Effects of Widening Access to the Academic Track: A Natural Experiment It is difficult to know whether widening access to schools which provide a more academically oriented general education makes a difference to average educational achievement. We make use of reforms affecting admission to the ‘high ability’ track in Northern Ireland, but not England. The comparison of educational ...

Evaluating whether social policies reduce health inequalities is complicated by the fact that these upstream determinants may also change socioeconomic distribution. Failure to account for compositional changes severely bias effect estimation procedure. In this article, we illustrate how a inequality impact assessment of policy (also) distribution produce biased results. First, show why analyse...

This paper summarizes the trend toward introducing markets into the education sector. We begin with a brief history of the market reforms and then review recent policy developments related to vouchers, charter schools, tuition tax credits, and educational management organizations. The internal anatomy of markets are then described, recognizing both the possibility of imperfect competition and o...

Over the past decade, educational leaders in China have maintained that the pattern of social interactions in Chinese classrooms is not conducive to the cultivation of innovativeness and creativity, and that this lack of creativity is a major barrier to China’s global competitiveness. One key response has been the implementation of the 2001 “New Curriculum Reforms” in basic education. In this s...

wo of the most important reforms to American public schooling in this century have been an increase in the minimum school-leaving age and a dramatic increase in expenditures per pupil. The former reform has generally been hailed as a success, given evidence that an extra year of schooling significantly boosts students' earnings later in life. However , evidence on the effectiveness of the trend...

Emiliana Vegas surveys strategies used by the world's developing countries to fill their classrooms with qualified teachers. With their low quality of education and wide gaps in student outcomes, schools in developing countries strongly resemble hard-to-staff urban U.S. schools. Their experience with reform may thus provide insights for U.S. policymakers. Severe budget constraints and a lack of...