Milton Friedman and his disciples contended for decades that private markets could deliver better schooling than governments. In the 1990s, this belief was put to the test in the United States by Edison Schools Inc. and other for-profit educational management organizations (EMOs). Edison grew rapidly, running schools in cities across the country. Yet disappointing academic and financial outcomes before long pushed the company and its competitors to the margins. This study documents the expectations of EMO advocates and chronicles the failure of EMOs to live up to these expectations. The failure is explained as the consequence of paradigm encroachment: unbridled confidence in the free-market model obscured the difficulty of achieving, one, sufficient trust in a domain necessarily defined by incomplete contracting; and, two, political support for outsourcing a core civic service. For perspective, this failure is set against the relative success of nonprofit charter management organizations (CMOs) across the United States and of for-profit firms operating under more favorable circumstances in Sweden.

Writing for Diversity explores why assessment matters in the context of school communities and students’ lives. It draws from the initial findings of a multiyear research study on the consequences of writing assessment in New York City’s public high schools and CUNY colleges to explore a) how students experience writing, learning and school; and b) develop a student-centered approach to writing assessment research (using a variety of creative tools). In the introduction, called “People and Places,” I thread research on assessment consequences into a narrative on my experience in schools. In the first chapter, called “Design and Production,” I describe the project, which is intended to support community-driven, student-centered research, with an emphasis on promoting learning and diversity. In the second chapter, “Ethical Aims and Attempts,” I explore the ethical questions that emerged from field research. In the final chapter, called “Diversity as Knowledge,” I analyze the New York City Department of Education and City University of New York’s current methods for sorting and reporting demographic data and describe what I consider a more future-oriented approach to describing people in places (e.g., self-reporting, intersectional methods of analysis). More important, I share what students had to say through the lens of what I consider goals or desirable consequences of writing assessment: student learning and school success, inclusion, equity and access, and the development of capabilities. I close by arguing for writing, teaching and research that reflects present realities and works toward an unknown and more just future.

Since their inception nearly three decades ago, charter schools have played a critical role in the reform of our nation’s public education system. As the charter movement has progressed, many single-site schools have evolved into charter management organizations (CMOs) responsible for operating networks of several campuses with the hope of increasing the number of quality seats available to students and families. Growing to scale is often challenging for single-site schools and small CMOs. In order to execute expansion successfully, this study sought to answer the overarching question, “How does a charter school or small CMO know that it is ready to grow?” The study’s findings demonstrated that, in order to evaluate readiness for scale, charter/CMO leaders must consider several key internal and external factors. The internal factors are: (a) “The Why” (primary reason or motivation for scaling), (b) Organizational Identity, (c) Human Capital, (d) Governance, (e) Fiscal Health, (f) Infrastructure, and (g) Growth Mindset and Strategy. The external factors are: (a) Need and Demand; (b) Funding; (c) Facilities; (d) Political Context, Policy, and Climate; (e) Parent and Community Relations; and (f) Collaboration and Competition Inside and Outside the Sector. The research and findings from this study also informed the development of a workbook for charter/CMO leaders seeking to evaluate their organization’s proficiency in internal factors and optimality of external factors in order to determine their readiness to scale.

The number of schools failing to prepare students for post-secondary life continues to increase; thus, school reform continues to be a pressing concern. Millions of dollars have been spent on school reform initiatives, particularly comprehensive reform such as complete school turnaround. Turnaround efforts include full closure, restarts, and transformation of schools that are currently failing. School turnaround requires the immediate disruption of past practices to establish new practices. These changes require the development of new habits of mind, a refocus on expectations and a re-examination of adult-adult, adult-student, and student-student relationships. For stakeholders, school turnaround is viewed as what happens to them rather than what happens for their benefit. The stakeholders who are the students and teachers within the school are affected in numerous ways by the disruption. This study reviewed literature on turnaround endeavors and pinpointed the important organizational design, traits of leadership, culture and climate, and adult actions that can be leveraged to create comprehensive school turnaround that is sustainable. The findings of this study resulted in the development of a handbook that provides school turnaround leaders with the tools to design a comprehensive turnaround program. This Turnaround Handbook is built on the premise of stabilizing culture and climate within the school to drive change practices that lead to school success. This handbook takes into account the needs of students to have a voice, adults to be supported and developed, and practices to be sustained beyond a finite period of classification as a turnaround school. The significance of this research is that school turnaround leaders can design programs that are sustainable and can significantly improve the lives and educational experiences of those affected by the reform process.

Over one third of students in the U.S. who started college in 2012 did not enroll in the fall immediately following their high school graduation. Despite the prevalence of delayed college enrollment, however, little is known about the reasons for the delay and the consequences for academic and labor markets outcomes. Conventional human capital theory suggests that formal education should precede work in order to maximize the period of benefiting from the returns of investment in education. As such, the reasons for students delaying their college enrollment are still unclear. Usually, it has been perceived either as an irrational behavior, or a constrained behavior caused by the imperfect market. The first chapter of this dissertation provides an overview of the studies that explain the phenomenon of delay, and I conclude that financial constraint is not the only explanation. Students might rationally adjust the timing of enrollment to maximize their welfare, based on their personal capabilities, preferences, and economic conditions. Factors such as behavioral bias and sociological constraints also influence students’ educational decisions. Based on the theoretical framework proposed in the first chapter, it is predominantly believed that college enrollment could be countercyclical, especially for students who are financially constrained. The second chapter takes advantage of a natural experiment and discovers one of the factors that causes college enrollment delay: the housing market boom. I use the Education Longitudinal Survey: 2002 and the Building Permit Survey to estimate the effect of local housing market booms on college enrollment timing. I find that an additional 100 increase in the annual change of building permits leads to 0.24 percentage-point increase in enrollment delay for male high school graduates. However, the temporary delay in transition to college that is caused by a housing boom does not necessarily decrease the college enrollment rate eight years, but it makes returners less likely to enroll in four-year colleges. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the third chapter of this dissertation examines the characteristics and earnings trajectories of delayers and the effects of this choice on academic and labor market outcomes. Propensity score matching results show that delaying college enrollment decreases individuals’ likelihood of enrolling in college, and increases their tendency to enroll in two-year colleges if they return to school. The results also demonstrate that, consistent with the study’s descriptive results, the early earnings benefits that are experienced by delayers diminish after their mid-20s and turn to significant losses over time. Oaxaca decomposition results indicate that differences in student characteristics only explain one third of the pay gap between the two groups; 60% of the pay gap is explained by delayers’ reduced likelihood of attending and obtaining a degree at a four-year college.

伍國雄. / 論文(博士)--香港中文大學敎育學部, 1998. / 附參考文獻. / 附英文摘要. / Available also through the Internet via Dissertations & theses @ Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Wu Guoxiong. / Lun wen (Bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue jiao yu xue bu, 1998. / Fu can kao wen xian. / Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.

This dissertation study focuses on upper secondary technical and vocational education (TVE) in China. It empirically examines the characteristics of TVE participants and the labor market impacts of participating in upper secondary TVE relative to attending general high schools. Using nationally representative datasets from China, this study has found that compared with individuals who attended general high schools, participants of upper secondary TVE tend to be from relatively disadvantaged family background. The negative association between family background and TVE participation is more pronounced for female TVE students. There is some evidence that girls are more likely to attend vocational education, especially the elite secondary specialized schools. Students of secondary specialized schools are from relatively selective family backgrounds compared with students of the other types of upper secondary TVE. In terms of labor market impacts, the study has found positive effects of attending upper secondary TVE on earnings, employment rate, and the likelihood of working full-time and working under formal contract. The effects are concentrated among females and students of secondary specialized schools. Considering that females are more likely to attend TVE, and that female TVE participants are more likely to come from less selective family background, the larger positive effects of attending TVE relative to general high schools among females may indicate improvement in equality both across genders and within females.

This dissertation examines how teachers and their allies utilize agency and draw on social capital to ignore, modify and altogether undo reforms. Focusing on 10 schools in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, this study investigates the mechanisms employed by teachers, principals, and school administrators across the city to counter a single teacher salary reform and maintain the status quo. This topic is explored in a study combining a mixed methods research methodology that includes analysis of interviews, teacher salary data, policy documents, and observation. The analysis is framed in theories of social capital, power, and human agency as well as in the application of literature on transnational policy borrowing and lending. Through these theoretical lenses, this research contributes to scholarship on the nature of human agency, the impact of professional vitality and resiliency of conviction on resistance to change, and role that stratification and inequality play in shaping the lives of teachers. The study illustrates the endurance of longstanding norms and social hierarchies within the teaching workforce in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan; it shows how salary reforms can challenge longstanding views around teacher compensation norms; and finally, it further advances the argument that the transfer of global teacher policies from one context to another will necessarily result in a process of local adaptation, and one that may yield unintended consequences.

As the demand for skilled labor continues to rise, the College Completion agenda has become more important than ever in our higher education discussion and policy. The agenda has created an atmosphere of support for evidence-base policies that improve completion rates and promise gainful employment. As such, my dissertation explores two potential solutions to meet the shortage of college graduates and examines the academic and labor market outcomes of students engaged in these paths. These solutions include transfer from four-year to two-year colleges and providing financial incentives for summer classes. These strategies have the potential to help students with graduation and become competitive in the job market. My dissertation also has important implications for colleges and policy makers that work with non-traditional students and especially those with financial constraints. My dissertation is structured as follows: Chapter one explores student transfer from four-year to two-year (4–2) college and how improved academic match through transfer can benefit individuals. Facilitating student transfer from two-year to four-year institutions has been a focus of research and policy in recent years. Much less attention has been given to the phenomenon of four-year to two-year (4–2) college transfer. About 16 percent of students who begin in a four-year college transfer to a two-year college within six years. I develop a stylized model to explain how 4–2 transfer among struggling students can increase academic match and academic and labor market outcomes. Using public higher education data from one small state and using distance to the closest two-year college as an instrumental variable, this paper examines the effects of 4–2 transfer on “struggling” students, those who earned less than a 3.0 grade point average in the first term. Results indicate that these 4–2 transfer students are more likely than similar non-transfer students to attain two-year college credentials (including associate degrees and long- and short-term certificates); the gain is concentrated in women who tend to enroll in health-related programs. What is more, struggling students who transfer to two-year colleges and are sensitive to the IV are no less likely than struggling non-transfer students to earn a bachelor’s degree. Early employment outcomes also indicate that the labor market does not penalize 4–2 transfer behavior. Female 4-2 transfer students actually are more likely to be employed than other female non-transfer students. Male transfer students, however, suffer a wage penalty from transferring without ever completing a degree. Falsification tests show strong first stage results and no correlation between distance and socioeconomic indicators, which supports the use of distance as an instrumental variable for 4–2 transfer status. The findings indicate that 4–2 transfer can improve college completion for students struggling in four-year institutions. Chapter 2 discuss an understudied solution to completion – summer enrollment. Despite rich evidence on the benefit of summer enrollment at the K-12 level, the college completion literature has so far focused on college readiness, remediation, and financial aid, and has largely overlooked the potential benefits of taking summer courses among college students. Academic momentum theory suggests that summer enrollment may increase credit accumulation and retention and thus increase the rate of college completion. Using proximity to the closest four-year college as an IV, I analyze public higher education data from an anonymous state to examine how enrolling in summer credits can impact college outcomes and the mechanisms by which it may do so. I find that summer enrollees who live closer to a four-year institution in the sample had higher bachelor’s degree completion rates than summer non-enrollees. Summer enrollees also returned to college at a higher rate and completed more credits in the following fall without compromising their grade point averages. Encouragingly, students with lower first-term grade point averages benefitted more from summer enrollment. When summer enrollees reached the labor market, they had higher employment rates six years after initial enrollment. Conditional on employment, earnings were equivalent among summer enrollees and non-enrollees. These findings indicate that summer enrollment benefits students through retention, which leads to higher rates of completion and employment. The results suggest that colleges may want to seek opportunities for increasing summer enrollment, and they have implications for the current method of Pell Grant allocation, which privileges the fall and spring terms over the summer term. Chapter 3 answers the question of whether financial aid for the summer leads to enrollment, completion, and earnings gains. Despite being the largest source of financial aid to low-income college students, the Pell grant has one major limitation: if students enroll in two semesters full-time, they will not have any tuition support for the third semester of the same academic year. The year-round Pell (YRP) was implemented in the academic years 2009-10 and 2010-11 to provide a second Pell grant to students who enrolled in more than 24 credits prior to the third semester and in at least 6 credits during the third semester. My paper is the first to employ a difference-in-difference approach to examine the completion and labor market outcomes resulting from the YRP using a state administrative dataset from a community college system. I find that for each $1,000 of additional YRP grant funding, summer enrollment increases by 28 percentage points and associate degree completion rate increases by 2.4 percentage points, with these gains primarily benefitting adult students who enrolled at age 20 or above. Given that the federal government is considering reinstating the YRP, my research is timely in providing insight into the efficacy of the YRP.

Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2007 / The focus of this study was to ascertain whether public schools in Mopani District accounted properly for the finances they were entrusted with. The aspect of accountability is one of the key principles of good governance that the South African government, through the constitution, and legislation like the Public Finance Management Amendment Act (No. 29 of 1999) continues to promote. Financial accountability at schools is becoming a more serious issue in view of the fact that government has assumed responsibility for funding schools from public revenue. Since the revenue is derived from taxpayers’ money, it is only logical that financial accountability be enforced. In this study, financial accountability was conceptualised as a three-phase process. The first phase sought to find out whether the schools presented formal financial statements and reports to structures such as the School Governing Body, parents and Circuit Offices. The second phase of financial accountability related to the assessment of the reports submitted by schools, to establish their correctness and reliability. Assessment could be by way of parents’ engaging with the reports in a meeting or by auditing. The last phase of financial accountability was about the provision of feedback. Here it was established whether action was taken against schools which did not present reports or whether those that presented reports were given some kind of feedback. Based on a sample of 358 parents, 149 schools and 24 education officials, it emerged that although a significant percentage of schools complied with financial reporting prescriptions; the state of assessment of financial reports was deficient. A report which is not assessed is worse than no report. The results also indicated that feedback was not given to schools. Recommendations aimed at improving the financial accountability of the schools were made at the end of the study.