Civics education in transition: the case of Japan

This chapter describes the study as it was conducted in Japan in three schools: a public, a private, and a university school in Sapporo City, Hokkaido prefecture. The results suggest that the civic education curriculum in all of the schools is based on that outlined in the Courses of Study published by the Ministry of Education. In addition to Civics classes, the curriculum includes school events and student council activities. With regard to the development of civic values, the analysis suggests that in the public and the private school, the implicit values encountered in everyday school life have a greater impact on students than do the explicit values outlined in the school precepts or civic education curriculum. In the university school “acting with decency” is regarded as important, both explicitly and implicitly.     

Some proposals for change to the role of the catholic sector in the Australian school funding policy process

This paper is set against a history of school funding policies in Australia that begins with the first public policy recognition of the disadvantages experienced by government and non-government schools in the 1973 Schools in Australia (Karmel) Report. The paper traces a history of school funding policy linking it with the current backlash against public education and retaliatory backlash constructions of public schools as the new disadvantaged in an increasingly competitive and deregulated school funding policy environment. These backlashes, argued to be against the indiscriminate funding of independent schools policy by several protagonists of public education, are framed in terms equivalent to what Lingard and Douglas (1999) have called ‘recuperative’ politics. From the kind of recuperative statist politics considered in this paper, construing the backlash effects of public and private schools as damaging and unproductive as those emerging from the gender wars in education policy, I propose a move to an Australian school funding arrangement in which all schools, both public and private, are integrated into one deregulated and equally funded sector, as typify diverse school provisions in several OECD polities (Caldwell 2004, FitzGerald 2004).While briefly tracing a school funding policy chronology, this paper also concentrates on the current policy moment in relation to school funding, that signals the end of distinctive public and private education sectors, and in the context of which it argues that private schools should be funded equally to state schools, a trend in evidence since 1996. The focus on the current policy moment entails an abbreviated analysis of the Fitzgerald Report (‘Governments Working Together: A Better Future for All Australians’ 2004), which makes a number of recommendations to the Victorian and other governments in relation to the public funding of all Australian schools¹. The paper addresses the impact of this trend especially on the funding of Australian Catholic schools.     

Effects of differentiated school vouchers: Evidence from a policy change and date of birth cutoffs

This paper studies the effects of an increase in school choice by examining a 2008 reform that made the value of Chile’s (previously flat, universal) school voucher a step function of student income. This policy increased the number of private schools that low income children could access free of charge. I identify the impact of the policy by combining its introduction with variation from a date of birth enrollment cutoff. I show that the differentiated voucher lowered, but only slightly, the probability that students used public schools. Students more likely to move to private schools experienced better school characteristics but no increase in test scores. Further analysis suggests a rise in test scores for students most likely to stay in public schools. These results suggest that the effects of the policy on test scores were caused by responses from public schools, instead of by the re-sorting of students into private schools.     

Policy and Practice of the Decentralization of Basic Education in China: The Shanghai Case

This paper is aimed at exploring distinctive features of the decentralization of basic education in Shanghai by drawing on data from Shanghai Program for International Students Assessment (PISA) 2012. While doing the research for this paper, the author found that from a policy perspective, Shanghai had launched a reform policy aimed at transforming the highly centralized education system. This included a devolution of the decision-making authority to local departments of education and a reduction of control over schools. Private school policies were also initiated with the understanding that private schools ought to enjoy autonomy in almost every aspect of decision-making. From the perspective of practice, decentralization of basic education could be categorized as county-based school decentralization. In such a situation, the county bureaus of education wielded decision-making authority over a number of areas in the public school sector, while gradually devolving some decision-making authority to the public schools themselves; and the private schools enjoyed autonomy within their major decision-making areas. Given both the policy and practice of the decentralization of basic education in Shanghai, some suggestions are provided regarding: (1) how to promote school decentralization, and (2) how to balance it with accountability.     

对“混合制学校”有关问题的思考

"混合制学校"在办学体制上兼具公办教育与民办教育的双重资源和特点,在管理体制、运作机制和资源品牌等方面拥有比公办学校和民办学校更多的优势,但其发展中所存在的产权关系不明、政策界限不清等问题对教育公平和民办学校发展有负面影响。应进一步完善相关政策法规,推进管理体制和运行机制改革,促进各类体制学校的共同发展。     

Market Forces and Strategic Adaptation: The Influence of Private Scholarships on Planning in Urban School Systems

While the current debate about the effects of vouchers focuses on the effects of private schools on achievement, it is also important to examine how the introduction of need-based scholarships influences change in school systems. This study uses a qualitative method to examine the influence of a privately funded scholarship program on strategic adaptations within urban public and private schools in a major metropolitan area. The study revealed that senior administrators in public and private schools rapidly adapted their strategies to contend with the new program: suburban public schools prevented scholarship students from enrolling; urban public schools increased choices for public school students; and private schools actively recruited students. However, the scholarships had little influence on the ways these administrators viewed school choice.     

Doctoral Programs: What Factors Attract Students

ABSTRACT

The study surveyed (questionnaire) 222 doctoral business students from private and public universities in Northeastern United States. The objective was to identity important criteria used to select a university. In addition, this study compared the responses of students from these schools to determine whether selection criteria differ.

Using a Likert scale of important to unimportant, students from these universities rated ten of the 52 criteria important to their selection. They included: programs, academic reputation, degree marketability, faculty contact time, accreditations, assistantship/campus employment, financial aids, placement reputation, completion time, and library size. However, they rated academic reputation and completion time significantly different. The private school students rated academic reputation significantly (0.00) more important, whereas the public school students rated completion time significantly (0.03) more important.

To attract prospective private school students to public schools, public school administrators would benefit by emphasizing the quality and reputation of its faculty and programs. Private school administrators are likely to attract more students if they are able to improve the quality and increase the quantity of computer facilities. Moreover, they would profit from designing flexible programs and classes that would allow for a more rapid completion time.     

巴西的教育体制

巴西教育目标在于使每个人能成为合格公民且适应其工作,但也存在一些问题,许多学生对学校课程不感兴趣,教学存在质量问题。因此,教育体制要保持与社会需求与时俱进,其关键是如何吸引学生的注意力。     

智利教育券政策述评

1980年,智利开始实施由公共经费资助的政府教育券政策.该政策以弗里德曼的自由市场教育券模式为理论基础,覆盖全国所有的公立和部分私立中小学.教育券政策的实施尽管扩大了学生及其家长选择学校的机会,但研究表明社会经济背景较好的学生才是该政策的更大受益者.此外,在改进学校效益、提高教育质量、促进教育公平等方面,智利的教育券政策也并没有取得预期的效应.因此,有必要重新认识教育券政策的目的与功能,以寻求新的突破.     

Socioeconomic school segregation in a market-oriented educational system. The case of Chile

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the socioeconomic status (SES) school segregation in Chile, whose educational system is regarded as an extreme case of a market-oriented education. The study estimated the magnitude and evolution of the SES segregation of schools at both national and local levels, and it studied the relationship between some local educational market dynamics and the observed magnitude of SES school segregation at municipal level. The main findings were: first, the magnitude of the SES segregation of both low-SES and high-SES students in Chile was very high (Duncan Index ranged from 0.50 to 0.60 in 2008); second, during the last decade, SES school segregation tended to slightly increase in Chile, especially in high schools (both public and private schools); third, private schools – including voucher schools – were more segregated than public schools for both low-SES and high-SES students; and finally, some market dynamics operating in the Chilean education (like privatization, school choice, and fee-paying) accounted for a relevant proportion of the observed variation in SES school segregation at municipal level. These findings are analyzed from an educational policy perspective in which the link between SES school segregation and market-oriented mechanisms in education plays a fundamental role.     

Balanced Development for Provincial-Level Coordination and Higher Vocational Education

Abstract

In the rapid development of Chinese higher vocational education, large gaps have appeared in the scale of development and resource generation among the provinces, among regions in the provinces, and among higher education institutions in the provinces. Balanced regional development and provincial-level coordination have become policy focal points, but a discussion of the relationship between the two has been lacking in the academic world. Based on 2009 data on vocational colleges in China, the quantitative analysis in this paper shows that there is a tension between the governance models of higher vocational education and balanced development of vocational colleges within provinces. Research findings show that school affiliation is related to the ability to attract public funding, appropriations for public schools are significantly higher than for private schools, and tuition for private schools is significantly higher than for public schools; school affiliation is related to output, and the new student registration rate and number of cooperating enterprises is higher for public schools than private schools; and there is a significant positive correlation between the ratio of prefecture-level city schools and the average number of cooperating enterprises for schools in a province, and a significant positive correlation between the ratio of private schools and the average tuition of schools in a province. This paper suggests that to achieve the dual objectives of balance and development, provincial-level governments should adjust their administrations and financing for higher vocational education and decentralize their authority to local governments, in order to build a diverse and flexible new model for higher vocational education governance.     

试论民办学校独立董事制度： 价值内涵、可行性及框架设计

董事会是学校法人治理结构的核心。董事会能否发挥应有作用，关键在于其是否具备独立性与公 正性。以探索建立民办学校独立董事制度的国家政策为指引，审慎移植来自上市公司独立董事的制度经验， 民办学校引入独立董事制度有充分的必要性和可行性。其价值在于推动民办学校办学规范化、治理专业化， 强化公益性、增强公信力。分类管理背景下，应以新修订的《中华人民共和国民办教育促进法》及其配套政策 正式实施为契机，在《中华人民共和国民办教育促进法实施条例》修订、民办教育地方立法和学校法人治理结 构优化过程中，加快推动民办学校引入独立董事制度，建立包括选任机制、权责配置、运行机制和保障机制在 内的民办学校独立董事制度体系，助力举办者控制型董事会向以独立性为核心特征的董事会转型。     

Responses of private and public schools to voucher funding

The post-communist Czech Republic provides a laboratory in which to investigate possible responses to the adoption of universal education vouchers. Private schools appear to have arisen in response to distinct market incentives. They are more common in fields where public school inertia has resulted in an under-supply of available slots. They are also more common where the public schools appear to be doing a worse job in their primary educational mission, as demonstrated by the success rate of academic secondary schools in obtaining university admission for their graduates. Public schools facing private competition improve their performance. They spend a larger fraction of their resources on classroom instruction and significantly reduce class sizes. Furthermore, Czech public academic secondary schools facing significant private competition by 1996 substantially improved their relative success in obtaining university admissions for their graduates between 1996 and 1998. The rise of private schools, however, also spurred maneuvering by the administrations of public schools to preserve these schools’ entrenched position, pointing out how important it is that any voucher system be simple and leave as little opportunity as possible for discretionary actions on the part of implementing officials.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

教育券：教育领域的双赢政策——美国教育券实例分析

义务教育阶段公立学校的教育质量一直是包括美国在内的许多国家的问题，美国实施教育券改革带来的外部竞争促使公立学校进行改革，同时也发展了私立学校，是教育领域的双赢政策。     

Iranian EFL teachers’ effectiveness of instructional behavior in public and private high schools

Over recent decades, educators have recognized the crucial importance of teaching environment and contextual factors in teaching and learning outcomes. Public and private schools are among those teaching contexts that have been in competition for teaching quality and effectiveness for many years. This study investigated the effectiveness of some English teachers in these two school contexts in a foreign language setting, Iran. Seventy-six public and private high schools in a small city in Iran were selected, and their English teachers’ performance was evaluated by an external observer and self-evaluation using a high-inference observation instrument and a questionnaire. The result of the data analysis showed that English teachers who worked in private schools were more effective teachers than their colleagues in public schools. The results also revealed that teacher effectiveness and their years of teaching experience and age were weakly but significantly related. Furthermore, it was found that teachers’ type of university degree and the location of schools (disadvantaged vs. privileged areas of the city) were not related to teachers’ effectiveness.     

The relative effectiveness of private and public schools: evidence from Kenya

ABSTRACT

This paper estimates the relative effectiveness of private and public primary schools in Kenya using data from 4,433 Grade 6 schoolchildren. Using ordinary least squares as a baseline model, we use the proportion of private schools in a district as an instrument in a Heckman two-stage correction framework, as well as propensity score matching models to correct for selection bias. There is a positive private school effect across all models. In the corrected models, we find that private school pupils outperform their public school counterparts by between .24 and .52 standard deviations.     

The private problem with public service: rural teachers in educational markets

Staffing rural and remote schools is an important policy issue for the public good. This paper examines the private issues it also poses for teachers with families working in these communities, as they seek to reconcile careers with educational choices for children. The paper first considers historical responses to staffing rural and remote schools in Australia, and the emergence of neoliberal policy encouraging marketisation of the education sector. We report on interviews about considerations motivating household mobility with 11 teachers across regional, rural and remote communities in Queensland. Like other middle-class parents, these teachers prioritised their children's educational opportunities over career opportunities. The analysis demonstrates how teachers in rural and remote communities constitute a special group of educational consumers with insider knowledge and unique dilemmas around school choice. Their heightened anxieties around school choice under neoliberal policy are shown to contribute to the public issue of staffing rural and remote schools.     

The Impact of Taiwan's University Multiple-Channel Entrance Policy on Student Learning Outcomes

This research explores the impact of Taiwan's university multiple-channel entrance policy on student learning outcomes, using quantitative research to look for differences in the learning experiences of third-year students who were admitted via different methods (examination and placement, application for admission, recommendation and selection, and gifted aptitude selection) and who were at different types of institutions (public universities, public vocational/technical schools, private universities, and private vocational/technical schools). The source data for this research was a 2005 national survey of third-year university students by the National Taiwan Normal University Center for Educational Research and Evaluation. The data were analyzed using two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and found that among students at public universities and vocational/technical schools, those who applied for admission had a better learning experience, while those selected for gifted aptitude had a poorer learning experience. Among students at private schools, those admitted through examination and placement or application for admission had a significantly better learning experience than students admitted through selection. Overall, the learning experience of screened students was generally poor, so it is worth considering a review of this admission method.