Brown Bag — Global Education Reform

Public investment or market-based systems? What is the best available evidence on the implementation and results of these different approaches to education.

Many jurisdictions are now deciding on the future of their education systems. In particular, they are trying to determine whether market-based systems can deliver education better than governments. In this Brown Bag session, Frank Adamson, PhD and SCOPE Senior Policy and Research Analyst, will discuss the findings in his new volume, Global Education Reform: How Privatization and Public Investment Influence Education Outcomes. In the book, Frank and his co-authors compare the differences between the privatization and public investment approaches to education in three pairs of countries: Chile and Cuba, Sweden and Finland, and the U.S. and Canada. Come to the session to learn about the results of these national policies and the best available evidence on the implementation issues and specific results of these different approaches.

 Frank Adamson studies the effects of political and economic approaches to education on student experiences and their performance in schools. In the U.S., he researches the impacts of charter schools and portfolio districts on students, teachers, and communities. At SCOPE, he has published on teacher salary differences in U.S. labor markets and on the benefits of developing assessments of deeper learning.

 Frank began his career in education as an AP high school English teacher. He then worked at both the American Institutes for Research and SRI International, conducting state and national evaluations in the U.S., developing English and Math assessments in the U.S. and abroad, and creating indictors for the OECD and UNESCO. He earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Haverford College and an M.A. in Sociology and  Ph.D. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University.

Thanks to our sponsors for the 2016 SCOPE Brown Bag Seminar series:

• The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
• The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities
• The Stanford Graduate School of Education