The goal of education reform is to improve the quality of education and its relevance for citizens in a changing society. It encompasses a wide range of issues, including curriculum standards and teaching methods, school choice, student assessment and accountability, and public education funding. It also includes educational access for marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities.
Historically, many educational reforms were politically motivated. They sought to redress social ills or institute societal changes through education: to prepare a ruling class to rule, a working class to work, an immigrant group to settle in a country, a democracy to thrive, and so on.
More recently, political pressures have led to education reforms focusing on improving the academic achievement of students. This has prompted systems to increase teacher salaries, establish entry-level teacher testing and qualifications, strengthen student academic requirements and graduation standards, and impose accountability through standardized tests. These systems often have large “implementation gaps” between policy decisions made at the national, state or district level and what happens in classrooms.
Other systems, such as Singapore and Finland, have devolved some authority from central administration to schools, but they still use strong mechanisms at the national and/or state level to promote consistency and accountability. For example, Singapore and Finland have curriculum or syllabus-based instructional and examination systems around which teachers are aligned, and both have long traditions of regular collaboration among teachers to raise teacher standards and improve classroom practice.