Martin Carnoy

Does External Accountability Affect Student Outcomes? A Cross-State Analysis

We developed a zero-to-five index of the strength of accountability in 50 states based on the use of high-stakes testing to sanction and reward schools, and analyzed whether that index is related to student gains on the NAEP mathematics test in 1996–2000. The study also relates the index to changes in student retention in the 9th grade and to changes in high school completion rates over the same period. The results show that students in high-accountability states averaged significantly greater gains on the NAEP 8th-grade math test than students in states with little or no state measures to improve student performance. Furthermore, students in high-accountability states do not have significantly higher retention or lower high school completion rates.

The Effectiveness and Efficiency of Private Schools in Chile's Voucher System.

This paper assesses the relative effectiveness and efficiency of private and public schools in Chile, where the military government implemented a national voucher plan in 1980. Non-religious voucher schools (accounting for two-thirds of primary enrollments in all private voucher schools) are marginally less effective than public schools in producing academic achievement in the fourth grade; at best, they are similarly effective. Catholic voucher schools are somewhat more effective than public schools. Nevertheless, non-religious schools are more efficient, by virtue of producing academic achievement at a lower cost. The difference is probably attributable to lower teacher wages and constraints on public school resource allocation. The relative efficiency of public and Catholic schools is similar. We tentatively conclude that the case for shifting public resources to privately run schools is mixed (although a comprehensive evaluation would require evidence not provided by this research).

What Does Globalization Mean for Educational Change? A Comparative Approach

This issue of the Comparative Education Review (CER) takes as its theme the relationship between globalization and educational change. Linking economic and social change to changes in how societies transmit knowledge is a relatively new approach to studying education. Before the 1950s, comparative education focused mainly on the philosophical and cultural origins of national educational systems. This approach saw educational change as rooted in new educational philosophies or theories—new conceptions of what knowledge should be transmitted and of organizing knowledge transmission—usually promulgated by individual visionaries. In the 1960s and 1970s, a rash of historical studies challenged this view. They situated educational reform in economic and social change. Some of them went further, using approaches based in political economy, world systems theory, and theories of neocolonialism and underdevelopment to show that economic imperatives on a global scale were a major force in shaping education worldwide. Others interpreted such change through an institutional lens, arguing that the convergence toward accepted models of modernity has resulted in a process of educational isomorphism within and across countries. Today, the notion that economic and social change affect educational structures and content is old hat. Comparative education has incorporated these models, and many studies have tied educational reform to economic and social change at an international level. Nevertheless, the current phenomenon of globalization provides a new empirical challenge as much as it does a new theoretical frame for comparative education. Globalization is a force reorganizing the world’s economy, and the main resources for that

Education and Social Transition in the Third World

Through a comparative analysis of educational theory and practice, this analytic overview illuminates the larger economic and political changes occurring in five peripheral countries--China, Cuba, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Nicaragua--commonly viewed as in transition to socialism. Current political patterns and leadership in these countries have emerged in the context of predominantly agricultural, industrially underdeveloped economies. Each state has played a major role in social transformation, relying on the educational system to train, educate, and socialize its future citizens. Discussing the similarities and differences among these states, the authors show the primacy of politics and the interaction of material and ideological goals in the process of social transition, and how shifting policies reflect and are reflected in educational change. This collection first examines critical analyses of education in capitalist societies, both industrialized and peripheral, and explores the utility of those perspectives in the political and educational conditions of the countries under study. Together these essays offer the first systematic explanation of how and why education in socialist countries undergoing rapid change differs from education in developing capitalist countries. Contributions to the study were made by Mary Ann Burris, Anton Johnston, and Carlos Alberto Torres.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Sustaining the new economy : work, family, and community in the information age

This book explores the growing tension between the requirements of employers for a flexible work force and the ability of parents and communities to nurture their chidren and provide for their health, welfare and education. Global competition and the spread of information technology are forcing business to engage in rapid, worldwide production changes, customized marketing and just-in-time delivery. They are reorganizing work around decentralized management, work differentiation, and short-term and part-time employment. Increasingly, workers must be able to move across firms and even across types of work, as jobs get redefined. But there is a stiff price being paid for this labour market flexibility. It separates workers from the social institutions -family, long-term jobs, and stable communities - that sustained economic expansions in the past and supported the growth and development of the next generation. This is exacerbated by the continuing movement of women into paid work, which puts a greater strain on the familys ability to care for and rear children. Unless government fosters the development of new, integrative institutions to support the new world of work, the author argues, the conditions required for long-term economic growth and social stability will be threatened. He concludes by laying out a framework for creating such institutions.

Globalization, the knowledge society, and the Network State: Poulantzas at the millennium

In State, Power, Socialism, Nicos Poulantzas conceptualized a state that materializes and concentrates power and displaces the class struggle from the economic to the political arena. In the past twenty years, much has changed. We argue that economic relations have been transformed by economic globalization, work reorganization, and the compression of space, time, and knowledge transmission through an information and communications revolution. Knowledge is far more central to production, and the locus of the relation between power and knowledge has moved out of the nation state that was so fundamental to Poulantzas’ analysis.

Decentralization and School Improvement: Can We Fulfill the Promise?

School governance in the United States - historical puzzles and anomalies, David Tyack school decentralization - who gains? who loses?, Richard F. Elmore control versus legitimation - the politics of ambivalence, Hans N. Weiler de-institutionalization and school decentralization - making the same mistake twice, Dan A. Lewis fiscal decentralization and accountability in education - experiences in four countries, Donald R. Winkler decentralization in two school districts - challenging the standard paradigm, Jane Hannaway school improvement - is privatization the answer?, Martin Carnoy employee involvement in industrial decision making - lessons for public schools, Clair Brown epilogue - reframing the debate, Martin Carnoy and Jane Hannaway.

Changing Rates of Return to Education over Time: A Korean Case Study.

Abstract The accepted wisdom is that rates of return to lower levels of schooling are higher than to university and tend to stay higher even as a country develops. But increasing evidence suggests that there are many exceptions to this rule, especially during sustained periods of rapid industrialization. This paper examines changes in the rates of return in South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. It shows that during this period the pay-off to lower levels of schooling fell substantially in absolute terms and relative to investing in completed 4-year college education, leaving college rates considerably above primary and secondary. The main restriction on students taking further education in such situations may therefore not be self-selection based on declining pay-off to further investment, but rather imposed selection, either through highly imperfect capital markets, or restriction on the number of places available in 4-year colleges.

Rethinking the Comparative—and the International

It is both a great honor and a great responsibility to address the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. A great honor, of course, because of the symbolism associated with such an event. The great responsibility comes from the richness and depth of past presidential addresses and the weight of living up to their standards. The theme of our meeting this year in Hawaii is “Rethinking the Comparative.” It might well have been “Rethinking the Comparative and the International,” for both elements of our name bear reexamination in a world and in national societies that are changing rapidly and profoundly. We need to ask ourselves, after 50 years, what it is that makes comparative and international education unique and what the CIES, as an intellectual community, contributes to understanding how the world works and to human progress.

School Is Bad; Work Is Worse

experience indicates that young persons need both activity directed toward self-development and useful activity directed toward the outside on which others depend. Neglect of the first results in an unskilled adult, impotent to deal with a complex world. Neglect of the second leads to frustration of the idealistic, creative, and constructive impulses of youth. For most persons these two activities, directed inward and outward, take prosaic forms of school and work (though school does not always bring self-development and work does not always constitute productive and useful activity). [P. 137]