The 1990 election of Dona Violeta Barrios de Chamorro as President of Nicaragua marked the end of the Sandinista era and the return of U.S. foreign assistance the following year. Education was prominent in the U.S. assistance package. Since early 1994, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission to Nicaragua has funded a…

This literature review, while not comprehensive, is aimed at informing the Strengthening Local Education Capacity project under way in Indonesia. Strategies that strengthen educational capacities at the school and local levels were reviewed, followed by strategies for local governance. Two school governance models, public choice and public…

Cultural differences contributed to the withdrawal of U.S. funding for the Support to Primary Education Project (SPE) in Cameroon, West Africa. The SPE proposed to increase the quantity and quality of primary school teachers and improve the skills of personnel responsible for supporting the teachers through technical assistance, training, and…

This study of basic education in El Salvador was carried out between September and December of 2003 by a team of researchers. This publication has two parts: (1) The introduction which addresses the main findings of the study and proposes education policy priorities for the next reform effort; and (2) A summary of the original study of basic…

The Indonesian school principal is a highly respected individual who serves as the critical link between the school and the community as well as local and national authorities. While most principals are well educated and capable, their positions are too limited. Most principals simply implement educational policy whereas they could and should be…

The Educational Policy and Planning (EPP) Project assists the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC) in establishing an information system to improve policy analysis and formulation. There are five elements of the project strategy: increase the ability of MOEC staff to create and use information for use in policy research, strengthen…

A program funded by USAID to help the Adult Literacy Organization of Zimbabwe (ALOZ) increase its capacity to provide training and supervision for adult literacy teachers and to publish and distribute literacy texts is evaluated. Methodology used included questionnaires, interviews with ALOZ staff, observation of grant activities, and a review of…

Improvement of primary school education in Indonesia has been sought since a national standardized curriculum was established in 1976. Curriculum reform centered on requirements for teaching and learning materials, libraries and library books, and other learning equipment. School management and teacher performance have also been emphasized. The…

This article explores the important role that the religion of Islam plays in the education of Egyptian children. The scrutiny under which the Islamic world finds itself in the after-math of September 11, 2001 has resulted in calls for educational reform, not only from the outside world, but also from the Muslim world itself. The author has a…

A detailed account and critique of the 1967 Salvadoran Educational Reform places particular emphasis on the role of instructional television (ITV) and its relation as the pacesetter for the whole educational system. It discusses foreign assistance through UNESCO, The World Bank, US/AID and Japan, and comments on several feasibility studies. In…

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Africa funded a study to understand how government, donor, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and civil society representatives view the increasing role of NGOs in basic education in Africa. The study was carried out in Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali by the Support for Analysis…

Countless studies over the past decade and more all point to a single, undeniable conclusion: educating girls is imperative to the development of nations. Increasingly, data suggest that educating girls is not only beneficial to developing countries but that it has a greater impact than educating boys. Better educated women have smaller,…

Background: For a majority of the world's children, despite substantial increases in primary school enrollment, academic learning is neither occurring at expected rates nor supplying the basic foundational skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century. The significant lag in academic achievement tells us that simply making formal education…

This document was created to serve as a major networking tool of the National Clearinghouse on Development Education (NCoDE). The purpose of the document is to share state of the art practices and common concerns among the expanding development education community. Among the items in the publication is an interview with Elizabeth Hogan,…

This report focuses on the short term basic and occupational skills training needs of rural and urban poor women in developing countries who have had no schooling or those who have entered and/or have completed primary schooling. It is organized into three parts. Part 1 deals with the rationale for training women in occupational skills and…