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RESEARCH, REPORTS AND PAPERS
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| The Two Tracks of School Reform |
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MICHAEL J. PETRILLI |
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For
two decades now, education reformers have promoted a two-track strategy
for improving our schools. The first track is standards-based: Set
clear, high expectations in core academic subjects; test students
regularly to see which schools and students are clearing the bar; and
hold schools (and perhaps also educators and pupils) to account for the
results. The second reform track is school choice: Allow parents to
select among a wide array of education providers, encouraging
innovation along the way. We have argued for years that these two
tracks are interdependent — even codependent. Let us explain:
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FULL PAPER >>
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School choice and accountability: putting parents in charge
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| CENTREFORUM |
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Education
is too important to be delivered without scrutiny. Parents, the
government, further and higher education institutions and employers all
have a right to know how pupils and schools are performing. There is
good evidence to suggest that the accountability system boosts school
and pupil performance; another reason why external stakeholders are
so supportive of its existence. No one wants to return to the situation
that pertained in England until the 1980s where only teachers knew –
and were deemed to have a right to know – what went on in the classroom.
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FULL PAPER >>
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Rising Tide |
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CAROLINE HOXBY
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The
most scathing critique of voucher programs and charter schools is that
they may bleed traditional public schools of their best students and
most active parents, leaving the children who are left behind even
worse off. Moreover, as the students leave, taking their per-pupil
funding with them, the public schools will find themselves stripped of
the human and monetary resources necessary to answer the call of
competition. “Skimming,” the term of art for this hypothetical
phenomenon, may lower overall achievement, as the downward spiral of
the public schools swamps any gains made by the students who take
advantage of school choice.
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FULL PAPER >>
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To improve schools, let teachers run them
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DAVID OSBORNE
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Walk
through a typical public school, and you see students, sitting in rows
of identical desks, listening to teachers talk. Unless the teacher is
particularly inspiring, half of the students are zoning out. This isn’t
just a problem for teachers, half of whom leave the profession within
their first five years. It’s also a problem for their pupils:
Disengaged teenagers do not make the best students. Now imagine if
students were instead encouraged to work on projects they chose:
building robots, writing plays, researching why bees are dying off by
the millions.
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FULL PAPER >>
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The poor are voting with their feet for private schools
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PRASHANTH PERUMAL
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The
problem with public schools, one is often told, is the lack of
sufficient administrative supervision required to bring accountability
to the system. Funds to aid learning are often misappropriated,
children’s learning outcome is abysmally poor, and teachers that sleep
and make merry in their classes are far too common in Indian public
schools. It is not as if researchers on education do not recognize
these problems, but the solutions they offer are often simply
wrongheaded. With the release of the Annual Status of Education Report
(ASER) 2014 last week, the chorus to improve teaching standards and
accountability in public schools has once again begun.
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FULL PAPER >>
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CCS RESEARCH
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Regulatory Structure of Higher Education in India
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CENTRE FOR CIVIL SOCIETY
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This
report analyses the current regulatory framework of higher education in
India and highlights areas that require important policy reforms in
order to encourage greater private participation. This participation
would eventually lead to a more competitive environment in the higher
education sector and foster growth, which is needed to achieve the
target of 10% increase in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) set by the 12th
Five Year Plan (FYP). India has one of the largest higher education
systems in the world, primarily dominated by private players who
account for 60% of the total institutes and 64% of total enrolment of
students. The higher education sector in India has a three-tier
structure comprising the university, college and course. This forms a
vital link with the regulatory structure, and with accreditation
agencies playing the key role in maintaining quality and standards in
this sector.
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FULL PAPER >>
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RTE 2.0
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CENTRE FOR CIVIL SOCIETY
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With
the objective of shifting regulatory focus towards some of the above
issues, Centre for Civil Society brought together some of India’s
eminent educationists and thought leaders to identify specific
amendments to the RTE Act, which would ensure quality education for all
in India. Key concerns regarding the structure and impact of the RTE
were discussed, and based on this, recommendations for amendments to
the RTE Act 2009 have been drafted. RTE 2.0: Building Consensus on
Amendments truly aimed at weeding out the pain areas in the existing
scheme of things, finding out what works and what doesn’t, and
introducing actual amendments to the text of the Act.
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FULL PAPER >>
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The
paper seeks to define social audit, following which it will undertake a
study of certain provisions of the Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE) so as to identify the social audit
requirements of the Act. In order to do so, a study of previously
employed social audit models/ frameworks across the livelihood sector
will be conducted by studying the social audit of the MNREGA scheme.
Case studies of education sector social audit models across Bhutan and
Brazil will follow the cross-sectoral analysis. All parameters so
derived will then be further built upon by a ground-level study of the
stakeholders- primarily students, parents and teachers- and their
expectations of the education system. The final product of the paper
will be a comprehensive set of parameters for social audit in the
education sector, derived cumulatively from the aforementioned methods.
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