LEE HYSAN LECTURE SERIES IN EDUCATION
 
The Promise and Limits of Education Reform and Accountability:
An International Perspective
 

Prof. William Lowe Boyd
Batschelet Chair Professor of Educational Leadership at the Pennsylvania State University

About the Speaker:
Prof. William Lowe Boyd is Batschelet Chair Professor of Educational Leadership at the Pennsylvania State University and editor of the American Journal of Education. A specialist in educational administration and education policy and politics, he has published over 135 articles and has co-edited fifteen books, including, most recently, Education Between the State, Markets, and Civil Society: Comparative Perspectives; American Educational Governance on Trial: Change and Challenges; and Curriculum Politics in Multicultural America. He has served as president of the Politics of Education Association, as an officer of the American Educational Research Association, and has been a Fulbright Scholar in Australia and England, and a visiting scholar at eight universities abroad. He has studied education reform efforts in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, and Sweden, with special attention to urban education; school effectiveness; coordinated, school-linked services for at-risk children; and parental choice of schools.

ABSTRACT
From a once obscure policy domain, education has moved increasingly onto the center stage of national and international policy debates. Globalization and the restructuring of the world's economy have greatly increased recognition of education as a strategic factor in national economic welfare. Consequently, education reform and improvement efforts have become an international phenomenon. Policy ideas move quickly across international boundaries and policy borrowing is rampant. The promise of education reform and accountability schemes is touted, but too little is understood about how national and local contexts and cultures affect the successful implementation of reform ideas. This lecture will discuss and assess the promise and limits of leading education reform and accountability ideas – such as school-based management, decentralization, high stakes testing, professional development of teachers, and market forces and privatization – as they have been tried in different parts of the world.
Date: 25 May 2006 (Thursday)
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Venue:

Auditorium B6, Ho Tim Building [View Map]
Registration:
Enquiries: (852) 2609 6905