Increasing higher education attainment is becoming a global goal. From the United States to the European Union to China, places around the world are setting goals for how many college and university graduates they want to have.  And as the numbers of students enrolling in higher education are going up, so are the numbers who [...]

Kindergartners in Georgia — many of whom don’t yet read — could soon play an important role in deciding which teachers get raises or get fired. Under a new pilot program, 5-year-olds will be guided through a survey that includes such statements as “My teacher knows a lot about what he or she teaches” and [...]

To earn a teaching license in most states, candidates must pass a handful of exams — largely multiple-choice — that test basic skills and knowledge of specific subjects. Some states also include tests that focus on teaching strategies. One state, Montana, requires no tests at all, just graduation from a teaching program. This pathway to [...]

In 2009, the federal government made an unprecedented investment in the country’s lowest-performing schools when it sent them $3.5 billion with an order: turn things around. Sufficient time has now passed for researchers and policymakers to begin examining how well the School Improvement Grant program (SIG) is working. So far, the evidence has been largely [...]

How is math teacher training in Norway different from that in Singapore? What about Botswana or Chile? A group of international researchers headed up by a team at Michigan State University set out to answer those questions in 2006. The result is a six-year, 17-country study that tries to zero in on what countries can [...]

Is it worth it for California to invest in higher education? That’s the central question posed by a new report examining the state’s spending on its university system and how much graduates end up contributing back to the state budget. The answer? “A resounding yes,” said Michele Siqueiros, executive director of The Campaign for College [...]

The national push to increase the number of Americans with college degrees is enriching at least one key beneficiary: the College Board, the nonprofit organization best known for administering the SAT. Eleven states and the District of Columbia have each agreed to pay the College Board anywhere from several hundred thousand dollars to more than [...]

If your child’s teacher seems a little bit on edge this year, it might not be your imagination. Education reforms now going into effect in Indiana, and similar ones sweeping the nation, are targeting something many Americans consider to be strictly off-limits: their paychecks. The laws passed in 2011 and being implemented over the next [...]

CAWKER CITY, Kan. — Barbara Palen works her way around her classroom at Lakeside Middle School in this tiny farming community (population: 469) some three hours northwest of Topeka. The 14 fourth-graders are starting a new math unit, and Palen wants to know how their parents use measurements. One boy quietly offers that his dad, [...]

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana is poised to dramatically overhaul the way it determines whether educators are qualified to become principals. Starting in the fall of 2013, Indiana will abandon its mostly multiple-choice test for the administrator license required to become a principal or vice principal. Instead, the new test will feature “real practical, applicable scenarios—case-study kinds of [...]

INDIANAPOLIS — Armed with clipboard and pencil, John Somers, an associate professor of teacher education, watches over a group of sixth-graders and two teachers-in-training at an Indianapolis elementary school. “A small concert hall has 98 seats and seven rows,” one aspiring teacher from the University of Indianapolis tells the children. “How many seats are there [...]

At a middle school in a rural area in China’s Yunnan Province devoted to educating the area’s ethnic minorities, many of the students have a fairly simple career goal in mind: they want to get a job performing traditional minority dances, which would almost certainly place them smack dab in tourist venues. In addition to [...]

INDIANAPOLIS — Any number of educators—principals, personnel directors, superintendents—can be called upon to evaluate teachers. But one school district in Indiana, Anderson, has decided that another group has perhaps the best expertise to judge quality teaching: other teachers. This type of peer review is catching on nationally but is rare in Indiana. That might soon change. [...]

INDIANAPOLIS — Reform: There is perhaps no idea more embraced in education circles nationally—and especially here. Indiana is in the midst of a massive education reform effort that includes the creation of vouchers, increasing the number of charter schools and adopting a new system to hold schools accountable. For the first time, that includes taking control of [...]

Add one more point of critique to New York City’s Teacher Data Reports: experts and educators are worried about the bell curve along which the teacher ratings fell out. Like the distribution of teachers by rating across types of schools, the distribution of scores among teachers was essentially built into the “value-added” model that the [...]

New York City schools erupted in controversy last week when the school district released its “value-added” teacher scores to the public after a yearlong battle with the local teachers union. The city cautioned that the scores had large margins of error, and many education leaders around the country believe that publishing teachers’ names alongside their [...]

Greece will receive a second bailout from the European Union—to the tune of €130 billion ($173 billion)—as part of a deal reached by Eurozone finance ministers on February 21st. Last week, the Greek government passed new austerity measures, making even deeper cuts to the country’s public sector. Thousands of Greek citizens have taken to the [...]

LANGFANG, China — Hundreds of private colleges and universities have opened in China in the past decade in response to soaring demand for higher education in the world’s most populous nation. The growing private sector fills a niche in a market long dominated by public universities. The private schools offer millions of students a no-frills [...]