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The role and impact of school boards vary considerably across contexts. Whereas school boards in some communities provide schools with extra resources, others mandate instructional approaches. Despite the potential importance of school boards for school resources and student achievement, related single-country research is limited, and cross-national evidence is even more scarce. Using data from the 2012 PISA and 2013 TALIS, we examine cross-national differences in school board presence, composition, and responsibilities, and their relationship with school resources and student achievement. We find that schools in countries with a higher proportion of school boards have less shortage of school-based human resources and higher levels of academic achievement. We also find that students in countries where a higher proportion of local community members participate in school boards have lower levels of achievement; in contrast, school board participation by parents is positively related to student achievement.

Background: We examine the sensitivity of the Heyneman-Loxley Effect to the influence of an error-prone family background measure in 15 education systems from Southern and Eastern Africa. Our aim is to revisit a claim by Abby Riddell from the November 1989 issue of the "Comparative Education Review" concerning the reliability of family background measures and the estimation of the Heyneman-Loxley Effect. Three questions guide our study: does national income have an association with the reliability of a family background measure, is the association between a family background measure and student achievement sensitive to measurement error, and is the association between national income and the school effect sensitive to measurement error? Methods: Our analysis relies on the SACMEQ III data archive and, most importantly, a known error-prone family background measure (i.e., socioeconomic status index) and its corresponding measurement error (i.e., conditional standard error of measurement). For each SACMEQ III education system, we calculate the reliability of the socioeconomic status index and examine its association with national income. We use a Bayesian multilevel regression model to estimate naive and correction parameters representing the association between the socioeconomic status index and student achievement. Finally, we explore the associations between national income and the naive and correction estimates for the school effect across SACMEQ III education systems. Results: We observe three results. First, the association between national income and the reliability of the socioeconomic status index appears negative among SACMEQ III education systems (albeit questionable due to the small n-size and influential outliers). Second, the association between the socioeconomic status index and student achievement is sensitive to measurement error across content areas and SACMEQ III education systems. Third and finally, the association between national income and the school effect is insensitive to measurement error across content areas and SACMEQ III education systems. Conclusions: Throughout our study, we discuss measurement error, its consequences, and why the correction of error-prone family background measures is important. We highlight the need for auxiliary information for measurement error correction (e.g., reliability ratio, conditional standard error of measurement). Lastly, in addition to encouraging the correction of error-prone family background measures when attempting to replicate the Heyneman-Loxley Effect, we invite further research on improving the reliability and comparability of family background measures.

Although cross-national evidence suggests that decentralization of educational governance is positively related to student achievement, related research often fails to recognize the separate roles and influences of governments, school boards, principals, and teachers. We use data from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment to examine school leaders' perceptions of governance arrangements across 68 countries and to assess whether differences in perceived governance patterns are significantly related to differences in student achievement. We find that although school governance arrangements vary substantially across countries, increases in teacher decision-making responsibilities are consistently and positively related to student achievement in math, reading, and science, all else equal. Furthermore, controlling for school principals' leadership style does not fundamentally change the positive and significant relationships between teacher decision making and student achievement, suggesting that the impact of teachers may be independent of school principals' attitudes and actions.

In recent years, the United States has made substantial progress in the quality and availability of early childhood education (ECE), especially in the areas of special education and ECE programs for low-income families. Nonetheless, there is room for improvement in terms of access and quality. To improve access and quality in ECE, the United States can look to best practices in ECE in other countries. A total of 49 sources were reviewed to develop an in-depth understanding of both ECE in the United States and international ECE best practices. Sources were chosen based on relevance and quality and included books, articles, and policy reports. These sources covered the ECE best practices in increasing funding, access, and quality. From developed to developing countries, this review provides an understanding of best practices in ECE throughout the world that the United States can learn from to enhance ECE for the wellbeing of children as well as society.

Despite public commitments internationally and nationally to include the voices of all stakeholders, the voices of teachers have continued to be marginalized in the literature and in policy-making related to global educational development. The purpose of the current study is to examine the process of invoking teacher voice using a sample of international teachers participating in a US-based teacher exchange program. Toward this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 teachers from 14 countries and four continents (all participants in the Teaching Excellence and Achievement [TEA] program). Results demonstrate that teacher voice was more personal rather than systemic, narrative rather than propositional, and utilized colloquial vocabulary rather than technical jargon. Teacher voice is also not always positive, but can be biased, critical, or judgmental. Nonetheless, the interviews also illustrate the critical necessity of including teacher voice in educational planning and decision-making.

The objective of this commentary is to call attention to the feasibility and importance of large-scale, systematic, quantitative analysis in international and comparative education research. We contend that although many existing databases are under- or unutilized in quantitative international-comparative research, these resources present the opportunity for important, policy-relevant descriptive studies. We conclude the commentary with overarching observations about the strengths and limitations of such secondary data-based analysis.

"Indonesia Mengajar (IM)", or "Indonesia Teaches", is a movement that began in 2009 with the aim of addressing teacher shortage in schools across Indonesia and developing future leaders by sending them to live in remote parts of the country (Indonesia Mengajar in Indonesia Mengajar: Sejarah, 2015a. https://indonesiamengajar.org/tentang-indonesia-mengajar/sejarah/; Indonesia Mengajar: Tentang pengajar muda, 2015b. https://indonesiamengajar.org/tentang-pengajar-muda/jejak-pengajar-muda/; Indonesia Mengajar: Visi dan misi, 2015c. https://indonesiamengajar.org/tentang-indonesia-mengajar/visi-dan-misi/). To date, IM has sent more than 671 high-achieving young candidates to serve as schoolteachers and mobilize local education stakeholders in remote communities around Indonesia (Gabrillin in Hasilkan 671 pengajar muda dalam 5 tahun, Indonesia Mengajar gelar syukuran, 2016a. http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2016/01/31/13090031/Hasilkan.671.Pengajar.Muda.dalam.5.Tahun.Indonesia.Mengajar.Gelar.Syukuran?utm_source=WP&utm_medium=box&utm_campaign=Ktkwp). The first aim of the study is to provide readers with background knowledge of IM, including its history, theory of action and key operational features. The second aim of the study is to understand the process of transformation in the attitudes and perspectives of local stakeholders using hope theory (Snyder et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 60(4):570-585, 1991) as the theoretical framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with local education stakeholders at the IM-organized local sustainability forum held in November, 2015. Structural and descriptive coding was used to organize the qualitative data thematically. Participants reported that IM played a significant and positive role in igniting their will and showing them possible ways to create educational change in their respective communities. They reported a transformation in their attitudes and perspectives about their children's education--from feelings of hopelessness to hopefulness. Consistent with hope theory, findings demonstrate the importance of investing in the will and the ways at both the individual and communal level. Hope is found to be a necessary investment that must be made alongside investments in infrastructure, instructors and materials to create sustainable educational improvement.

Background: Although most research on teacher sorting has taken place in the United States, where teacher distribution favors more advantaged children, there is some evidence that the distribution of teachers across schools is much more equitable in South Korea. This is the first study to directly compare teacher distribution across schools and classrooms in the two countries. Research Questions: Our research questions are: (1) Are teachers in lower secondary schools distributed evenly across schools in South Korea and the United States? (2) Are teachers in lower secondary schools distributed evenly across classrooms in South Korea and the United States? (3) How does assignment of teachers to classrooms within schools differ in South Korea and the United States? Research Design: We use data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey to examine the distribution of teachers across regions, schools, and classrooms in the United States and South Korea. To answer our research questions we employ a range of quantitative techniques, ranging from simple descriptive statistics and Gini indices of teacher variables, to multinomial and ordered logistic regressions of school and classroom conditions on key teacher quality variables. Results: We find that across schools, inequitable teacher sorting patterns are more pronounced in the United States. In both countries teacher sorting is more pronounced across classrooms than across schools; specifically, teachers with more total experience are less likely to teach in classrooms with higher concentrations of economically disadvantaged students and students with behavioral problems. Further, U.S. teachers with more years of experience in their current schools are less likely to receive assignments in classrooms with more language minority students, economically disadvantaged students, and students with special needs. Conclusions: We conclude that South Korea can provide lessons to the United States to help reduce inequities in disadvantaged children's access to qualified teachers across schools through policies like centralized assignment of teachers, incentives to teach in difficult-to-staff schools, and mandatory rotation of teachers across schools. In terms of cross-classroom teacher sorting, our results signal a warning for policy makers in both countries. We argue that the most effective way to reduce within-school teacher sorting is to better integrate language-minority, low-income, and special-needs students into classrooms so that teaching conditions do not differ significantly across classrooms, and teachers have fewer options to sort across.

Although substantial evidence from the United States suggests that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated in the schools and classrooms of academically and socioeconomically advantaged children, it is not clear whether the problem of teacher sorting is global in scope. This study uses data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey to examine whether and how school- and classroom-level teacher distribution patterns vary across 32 education systems with diverse national contexts and education policies. We find that cross- and within-school teacher sorting is common in most countries but within-school sorting is more pronounced in higher income countries. We also identify several national policy variables that are significantly related to both cross-school and cross-classroom sorting of teachers.

In 1997, a cross-national assessment of educational achievement in Latin America and the Caribbean found that rural schools in Colombia outperformed urban schools in tests of reading and mathematics, except in very large cities. Given a long history of urban/rural inequality in the region, Colombia's rural school advantage attracted substantial attention. Yet by 2006, a follow-up to the 1997 assessment found that Colombia's rural school advantage had vanished. This study's objective is to determine whether, after adjusting for relevant background factors, Colombia's rural school advantage persisted in 2006. We find that rural schools in Colombia retained their advantage in a limited way: all else equal, rural schools in Colombia outperformed marginally urban schools in mathematics, when comparing each type of school to urban schools. Analysis of the 2006 data finds that rural schools in several countries outperformed urban schools in tests of math and reading, after adjusting for student background.

In this essay, the author introduces the concept of "convivencia" (peaceful coexistence) as a framework for re-centring education as a moral enterprise. He discusses "convivencia" within the context of education and society in Colombia, paying special attention to the Colombian rural school model "Escuela Nueva" (New School). This discussion draws on both previous evidence and the author's own research on the implementation of the "Escuela Nueva" model in urban areas of Colombia. He discusses several facets of "convivencia" and parallels with the ideas and ideals of "ubuntu." Using "convivencia" as an organising principle, he presents insights for educational practitioners and researchers related to re-centring education as a moral enterprise.

The United States has long struggled with the challenge of educating children experiencing extreme disadvantage, including the poor, ethnic and racial minorities, English language learners, and foster children. In this article, we argue that solutions to this problem lie not to the east or west, but to the south. Specifically, we offer the Colombian Escuela Nueva model as a successful example of addressing the educational needs of marginalized children. We focus on an Escuela Nueva program known as Learning Circles, which was designed to educate and support children displaced by civil conflict as they transition to the formal education system. After describing Escuela Nueva and Learning Circles, we offer suggestions for incorporating and adapting these successes to schools in the United States.

In this multicountry analysis, we generate a student-level measure of socioeconomic status (SES) "mixing" to understand the benefits or pitfalls of placing low-SES children with diverse peers. We conduct this analysis separately for equal and unequal countries that provide the same curriculum to all children regardless of ability level, and we find some surprising similarities. For example, lower mathematics and science test scores are associated with low-SES children in mixed classrooms. We then apply this analysis to the United States, a rich but unequal country where ability-based tracking is common. For the United States, we find that the cross-national patterns are reversed for mathematics, and socioeconomic mixing is beneficial for low-SES children; however, the results for science are not significant. (Contains 4 tables and 8 notes.)

Background/Context: Although substantial evidence from the United States indicates that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated among academically and economically advantaged children, little cross-national research has examined the distribution of teacher qualifications across schools and students. As a result, we know little about how different institutional contexts, policies, and priorities influence children's access to qualified teachers. Research Question: Our research questions are: (1) Are the qualifications of lower-secondary teachers within and across Mexico and South Korea distributed uniformly across schools? (2) If not, does the distribution of teacher qualifications in each country favor less or more advantaged children? (3) How can dissimilarities in teacher-related policies and educational priorities help to explain differences in the distribution of teacher qualifications across Mexico and South Korea? Research Design: We employ secondary analysis of data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey, which was conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2007/2008. We use these data to describe the distribution of various teacher qualifications across communities of different sizes and across schools with varying levels of parental education. We also explore cross-national differences in institutional priorities and teacher-related policies. We compare Mexico and South Korea because while these two countries are similar in the level of teacher hiring and assignment, they are quite different in terms of their general commitment to educational equity. Findings/Results: We find that the distribution of qualified teachers in South Korea is skewed toward disadvantaged children, while Mexican teachers tend to be distributed in a way that favors more advantaged students. Specifically, in South Korea students living in rural areas and those in schools with lower average parental education have greater access to better educated and more experienced teachers. The opposite occurs in Mexico. Conclusions/Recommendations: We argue that these differences are due to both explicit policies and a greater commitment to educational equity in South Korea, relative to Mexico. Moreover, these differences are likely to be related to large cross-national differences in educational performance and equity.

This study uses longitudinal data from Mexico's Carrera Magisterial teacher incentive program to identify teacher attributes that are positively associated with student test scores and to describe how teachers with these attributes are distributed across schools in two diverse Mexican states, Aguascalientes and Sonora. I find that teachers' scores on tests or training evaluations are significantly and positively related to student achievement in both states, while education levels and experience are not. In both states, teachers with higher scores on tests and training evaluations are more concentrated in urban schools and lower-poverty municipalities. These results have important implications for education systems attempting to professionalize their teacher workforces, as well as those seeking to ameliorate urban/rural disparities in educational quality. (Contains 1 figure, 6 tables, and 8 footnotes.)

As one of the world's largest and most diverse countries, Indonesia faces an enormous challenge as it seeks to upgrade the skills and knowledge of its widespread primary teacher workforce. This challenge is even more acute in remote rural areas, where practising teachers require specialized training to work in classrooms with children of different ages and grades. Yet, due to their remote locations, these teachers have little access to training opportunities, and teacher educators have few opportunities to assess their needs. To explore training needs and instructional strategies employed by rural teachers, we conducted a case study of nine rural schools in the district of Bogor, West Java. We interviewed headmasters and teachers in these schools, instructors at a major Indonesian university, and a district official. We found that while rural teachers generally consider their training to be helpful, they receive little guidance to help them manage and teach large multigrade classes. As a result, pedagogical practices and perspectives vary across nine schools in the same rural district. At the same time, a growing number of "contract teachers" in these schools has reduced the number of multigrade classrooms while increasing the need for training of novice teachers in rural schools. (Contains 3 notes and 1 table.)

Although the results of quantitative studies often indicate that students of male teachers perform worse on achievement tests than those of female teachers, it is not clear that men are less effective teachers. Instead, male teachers may work in more difficult environments. This study uses longitudinal data from Mexico's national teacher incentive program to examine the effectiveness and distribution of male teachers in two Mexican states. While we find some evidence that the students of male teachers score lower than those of female teachers, we also find that male teachers are disproportionately concentrated in lower-achieving and rural schools, and in higher-poverty municipalities. (Contains 3 tables.)

Despite costly global efforts to improve and reward teacher qualifications like education and experience, little international evidence exists on the relationship between these attributes and student achievement. It is also unclear whether these attributes are more important for disadvantaged children, or in lower-income countries. This article examines the relationships among teacher characteristics (experience, education, readiness to teach, and gender), student background, and fourth grade students' mathematics and science achievement across 25 diverse countries participating in the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The analysis revealed limited evidence that the teacher characteristics deemed important in teacher upgrading and compensation are systematically related to student test scores, or that these characteristics are more important for lower-income students. It also found no relationship between national income and the importance of these characteristics. These results add to increasing evidence that efforts to improve teacher quality must look beyond simply increasing and rewarding measurable teacher qualifications like education and experience. Further, those who design cross-national studies should consider developing richer measures of teacher skill and knowledge.

In this paper we discuss results from an analysis of a large dataset that includes virtually all sixth-grade students in Uruguay in 1996. We analyze the relationship between teacher attributes and student achievement scores and we explore the distribution of teachers according to characteristics identified as important by this analysis. We find that teachers with "important" attributes are distributed in a way that systematically favors schools with higher average achievement and socioeconomic context. Policy-related factors that may explain these patterns include Uruguay's system of teacher compensation, teachers' working conditions, the level and locus of educational decision making in Uruguay, and teacher recruitment and assignment policies. The results are particularly interesting because Uruguay is a relatively equal society in Latin American terms, so the unequal distribution of teacher attributes is probably more accentuated in other Latin American societies. (Contains 7 tables.)

The international and comparative education literature is not in agreement over the role of schools in student learning. The authors reexamine this debate across 25 diverse countries participating in the fourth-grade application of the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The authors find the following: (a) In most cases, family background is more important than schools in understanding variations in student performance; (b) schools are nonetheless a significant source of variation in student performance, especially in poor and unequal countries; (c) in some cases, schools may bridge the achievement gap between high and low socioeconomic status children. However, schools' ability to do so is not systematically related to a country's economic or inequality status. (Contains 8 tables and 15 notes.)

The Open University of Indonesia (Universitas Terbuka, UT) has over 450,000 students distributed across a vast, diverse archipelago. UT will play a central role in meeting the requirement that over 1 million primary teachers earn four-year postsecondary degrees by 2015. While the Open University has considerable capacity in print-based and CD-ROM-based instruction, the university must begin to provide its students with greater online learning opportunities. In this article we describe the challenges faced by the Open University in augmenting online instruction. Lessons learned from the university's history of print-based distance education, combined with growing experience with online instruction at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, provide a way forward as the Open University increases online instruction of in-service teachers while maintaining and enhancing efficient, effective, and engaging learning.

As one of the world's largest exporters of asparagus, Peru has developed a high-tech system of asparagus production, processing and delivery that requires well-trained and responsive workers. In this study we examine the role of both private and public sectors in preparing workers for the asparagus industry and the implications of this skill acquisition for lifelong learning policies. Drawing on surveys of managers and workers located at every link of the chain of asparagus production, we conclude that the private sector has taken the lead in providing lifelong learning opportunities for asparagus workers. The public sector's most important contribution has been the establishment and support of an agricultural university in Lima that prepares many of the professionals working in asparagus production. We also find that asparagus workers have relatively high (by Latin American standards) levels of formal public education. We conclude by identifying several government-sponsored initiatives that may be expanded or improved to support the continued development of asparagus and other high-yield export crops. (Contains 1 figure, 3 tables, and 7 notes.)

Since the summer of 2006, faculty from the Florida State University (FSU) College of Education and Learning Systems Institute and the Open University of Indonesia (Universitas Terbuka, or UT) have worked together to strengthen UT's distance teacher education program, which prepares a large percentage of Indonesia's basic education teachers. While this relationship has been positive and collaborative from the beginning, the authors have naturally experienced some misunderstandings. These are inevitable consequences of the nexus of different cultures, instructional approaches, and learning contexts. At the same time, faculty involved in this project have found many areas of common ground, leading to what has become a strong relationship that will expand considerably as UT begins sending faculty for graduate study at FSU. In this article, the authors briefly describe the context and background of the project, evolving collaborative work between the two universities, obstacles they have faced and progress that they have achieved, and lessons learned to date.