Gabriella Gonzalez

Central to Qatar's education reform was the development of internationally benchmarked curriculum standards and standards-based assessments in four subjects: Arabic, English as a foreign language, mathematics, and science. This report recounts the development of Qatar's standards-based student assessment system, providing important lessons learned for Qatar and other countries that are seeking to implement similar measures on a large scale.

An assessment of progress of The Pittsburgh Promise--a postsecondary education scholarship intended to remedy the area's population and district enrollment decline, foster high school completion and college readiness, and prepare a capable workforce for the city--toward its goals to date. Recommendations for improving the program's effectiveness are offered, along with a conceptual model for evaluating progress and ensuring continual improvement.

This title describes the education and labor market initiatives implemented or under way in four countries in the Arab region - Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates - to address the human resource issues they each face as they prepare their countries for a place in the 21st century global economy. Together, these countries highlight the variety of challenges faced by countries in the region and responses to those challenges.

How can states, districts, and schools meet the requirements of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act? Accountability based on student test results is the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act, which assumes that schools can solve their problems if given proper incentives and technical assistance, and that parents should have educational alternatives if the schools fail to do so. This paper discusses evidence on accountability systems, describes the act's accountability model and its underlying assumptions, and offers educators specific recommendations for effective operation in an era of accountability.