Education reform

Plato believed that children would never learn unless they wanted to learn. In The Republic, he said, " ... compulsory learning never sticks in the mind." An educational debate in the time of the Roman Empire arose after Christianity had achieved broad acceptance. The question concerned the educational value of pre-Christian classical thought: "Given that the body of knowledge of the pre-Christian Romans was heathen in origin, was it safe to teach it to Christian children?"

Though educational reform occurred on a local level at various points throughout history, the modern notion of education reform is tied with the spread of compulsory education. Education reforms did not become widespread until after organized schooling was sufficiently systematized to be 'reformed.'

In the modern world, economic growth and the spread of democracy have raised the value of education and increased the importance of ensuring that all children and adults have access to high-quality, effective education. Modern education reforms are increasingly driven by a growing understanding of what works in education and how to go about successfully improving teaching and learning in schools.[4] However, in some cases, the reformers' goals of "high-quality education" has meant "high-intensity education", with a narrow emphasis on teaching individual, test-friendly subskills quickly, regardless of long-term outcomes, developmental appropriateness, or broader educational goals.[5]

Western classical education as taught from the 18th to the 19th century has missing features that inspired reformers. Classical education is most concerned with answering the who, what, where, and when? questions that concern a majority of students. Unless carefully taught, group instruction naturally neglects the theoretical "why" and "which" questions that strongly concern fewer students.

Classical education in this period also did not teach local (vernacular) languages and cultures. Instead it taught high-status ancient languages (Greek and Latin) and their cultures. This produced odd social effects in which an intellectual class might be more loyal to ancient cultures and institutions than to their native vernacular languages and their actual governing authorities.

Before there were government-funded public schools, education of the lower classes was by the charity school, pioneered in the 19th century by Protestant organizations and adapted by the Roman Catholic Church and governments. Because these schools operated on very small budgets and attempted to serve as many needy children as possible, they were designed to be inexpensive.

The basic program was to develop "grammar" schools. These taught only grammar and bookkeeping. This program permitted people to start businesses to make money, and gave them the skills to continue their education inexpensively from books. "Grammar" was the first third of the then-prevalent system of classical education.

Joseph Lancaster

The ultimate development of the grammar school was by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell who developed the monitorial system. Lancaster started as a poor Quaker in early 19th century London. Bell started the Madras School of India. The monitorial system uses slightly more-advanced students to teach less-advanced students, achieving student-teacher ratios as small as 2, while educating more than a thousand students per adult. Lancaster promoted his system in a piece called Improvements in Education that spread widely throughout the English-speaking world.

Discipline and labor in a Lancaster school were provided by an economic system. Scrip, a form of money meaningless outside the school, was created at a fixed exchange rate from a student's tuition. Every job of the school was bid-for by students in scrip, with the largest bid winning. However, any student tutor could auction positions in his or her classes. Besides tutoring, students could use scrip to buy food, school supplies, books, and childish luxuries in a school store. The adult supervisors were paid from the bids on jobs.

With fully developed internal economies, Lancaster schools provided a grammar-school education for a cost per student near $40 per year in 1999 U.S. dollars. The students were very clever at reducing their costs, and once invented, improvements were widely adopted in a school. For example, Lancaster students, motivated to save scrip, ultimately rented individual pages of textbooks from the school library, and read them in groups around music stands to reduce textbook costs. Students commonly exchanged tutoring, and paid for items and services with receipts from "down tutoring."

Lancaster schools usually lacked sufficient adult supervision. As a result, the older children acting as disciplinary monitors tended to become brutal task masters. Also, the schools did not teach submission to orthodox Christian beliefs or government authorities. As a result, most English-speaking countries developed mandatory publicly paid education explicitly to keep public education in "responsible" hands. These elites said that Lancaster schools might become dishonest, provide poor education and were not accountable to established authorities.

Lancaster's supporters responded that any schoolchild could avoid cheats, given the opportunity, and that the government was not paying for the education, and thus deserved no say in their composition.

Lancaster, though motivated by charity, claimed in his pamphlets to be surprised to find that he lived well on the income of his school, even while the low costs made it available to the poorest street-children. Ironically, Lancaster lived on the charity of friends in his later life.[6]

The term progressive in education has been used somewhat indiscriminately; there are a number of kinds of educational progressivism, most of the historically significant kinds peaking in the period between the late 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been called the father of the child-study movement. It has been said that Rousseau "discovered" the child (as an object of study).

Rousseau's principal work on education is Emile: Or, On Education, in which he lays out an educational program for a hypothetical newborn's education to adulthood. Rousseau provided a dual critique of both the vision of education set forth in Plato's Republic and also of the society of his contemporary Europe and the educational methods he regarded as contributing to it; he held that a person can either be a man or a citizen, and that while Plato's plan could have brought the latter at the expense of the former, contemporary education failed at both tasks. He advocated a radical withdrawal of the child from society and an educational process that utilized the natural potential of the child and its curiosity, teaching it by confronting it with simulated real-life obstacles and conditioning it by experience rather than teaching it intellectually. His ideas were rarely implemented directly, but were influential on later thinkers, particularly Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, the inventor of the kindergarten.

In the United States, Horace Mann (1796 – 1859) of Massachusetts used his political base and role as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education to promote public education in his home state and nationwide.[7] His crusading style attracted wide middle class support. Historian Ellwood P. Cubberley asserts:

No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.[8]

Education is often seen in Europe and Asia as an important system to maintain national, cultural and linguistic unity. Prussia instituted primary school reforms expressly to teach a unified version of the national language, "Hochdeutsch". One significant reform was kindergarten, whose purpose was to have the children spend time in supervised activities in the national language, when the children were young enough that they could easily learn new language skills.

Since most modern schools copy the Prussian models, children start school at an age when their language skills remain plastic, and they find it easy to learn the national language. This was an intentional design on the part of the Prussians.

In the U.S. over the last twenty years, more than 70% of non-English-speaking school-age immigrants have arrived in the U.S. before they were 6 years old. At this age, they could have been taught English in school, and achieved a proficiency indistinguishable from a native speaker. In other countries, such as the Soviet Union, France, Spain, and Germany this approach has dramatically improved reading and math test scores for linguistic minorities.

John Dewey

John Dewey, a philosopher and educator based in Chicago and New York, helped conceptualize the role of American and international education during the first four decades of the 20th century. An important member of the American Pragmatist movement, he carried the subordination of knowledge to action into the educational world by arguing for experiential education that would enable children to learn theory and practice simultaneously; a well-known example is the practice of teaching elementary physics and biology to students while preparing a meal. He was a harsh critic of "dead" knowledge disconnected from practical human life.[9]

Dewey criticized the rigidity and volume of humanistic education, and the emotional idealizations of education based on the child-study movement that had been inspired by Rousseau and those who followed him. He presented his educational theories as a synthesis of the two views. His slogan was that schools should encourage children to "Learn by doing." He wanted people to realize that children are naturally active and curious. Dewey's understanding of logic is best presented in his "Logic, the Theory of Inquiry" (1938). His educational theories were presented in "My Pedagogic Creed", The School and Society, The Child and Curriculum, and Democracy and Education (1916). Bertrand Russell criticized Dewey's conception of logic, saying "What he calls "logic" does not seem to me to be part of logic at all; I should call it part of psychology."[10]

The question of the history of Deweyan educational practice is a difficult one. He was a widely known and influential thinker, but his views and suggestions were often misunderstood by those who sought to apply them, leading some historians to suggest that there was never an actual implementation on any considerable scale of Deweyan progressive education. The schools with which Dewey himself was most closely associated (though the most famous, the "Laboratory School", was really run by his wife) had considerable ups and downs, and Dewey left the University of Chicago in 1904 over issues relating to the Dewey School.[11]

Dewey's influence began to decline in the time after the Second World War and particularly in the Cold War era, as more conservative educational policies came to the fore.

Horace Mann, regarded as the father of American public education

The form of educational progressivism which was most successful in having its policies implemented has been dubbed "administrative progressivism" by historians. This began to be implemented in the early 20th century. While influenced particularly in its rhetoric by Dewey and even more by his popularizers, administrative progressivism was in its practice much more influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the concept economies of scale.

The administrative progressives are responsible for many features of modern American education, especially American high schools: counseling programs, the move from many small local high schools to large centralized high schools, curricular differentiation in the form of electives and tracking, curricular, professional, and other forms of standardization, and an increase in state and federal regulation and bureaucracy, with a corresponding reduction of local control at the school board level. (Cf. "State, federal, and local control of education in the United States", below) (Tyack and Cuban, pp. 17–26)

These reforms have since become heavily entrenched, and many today who identify themselves as progressives are opposed to many of them, while conservative education reform during the Cold War embraced them as a framework for strengthening traditional curriculum and standards.

In more recent times, groups such as the think tank Reform's education division, and S.E.R. have attempted to pressure the government of the U.K. into more modernist educational reform, though this has met with limited success.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, many of the proposed and implemented reforms in U.S. education stemmed from the civil rights movement and related trends; examples include ending racial segregation, and busing for the purpose of desegregation, affirmative action, and banning of school prayer.[12]

In the 1980s, some of the momentum of education reform moved from the left to the right, with the release of A Nation at Risk, Ronald Reagan's efforts to reduce or eliminate the United States Department of Education.

"[T]he federal government and virtually all state governments, teacher training institutions, teachers' unions, major foundations, and the mass media have all pushed strenuously for higher standards, greater accountability, more "time on task," and more impressive academic results".[13]

This shift to the right caused many families to seek alternatives, including "charter schools, progressive schools, Montessori schools, Waldorf schools, Afrocentric schools, religious schools - or teaching them at home and in their communities."[13]

In the latter half of the decade, E. D. Hirsch put forth an influential attack on one or more versions of progressive education, advocating an emphasis on "cultural literacy"—the facts, phrases, and texts that Hirsch asserted every American had once known and that now only some knew, but was still essential for decoding basic texts and maintaining communication. Hirsch's ideas remain significant through the 1990s and into the 21st century, and are incorporated into classroom practice through textbooks and curricula published under his own imprint.

Most states and districts in the 1990s adopted Outcome-Based Education (OBE) in some form or another. A state would create a committee to adopt standards, and choose a quantitative instrument to assess whether the students knew the required content or could perform the required tasks. The standards-based National Education Goals (Goals 2000) were set by the U.S. Congress in the 1990s. Many of these goals were based on the principles of outcomes-based education, and not all of the goals were attained by the year 2000 as was intended. The standards-based reform movement culminated in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which as of 2016 is still an active nationwide mandate in the United States.

OBE reforms usually had other disputed methods, such as constructivist mathematics and whole language, added onto them. Some proponents advocated replacing the traditional high school diploma with a Certificate of Initial Mastery. Other reform movements were school-to-work, which would require all students except those in a university track to spend substantial class time on a job site. See also Uncommon Schools.

Under the Obama Administration, many of the more restrictive elements that were enacted under No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), were removed in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015)[14] which limits the role of the federal government in school liability. Some argue that giving states more authority can help prevent considerable discrepancies in educational performance across different states.[15] ESSA was approved by former President Obama in 2015 which amended and empowered the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.[16] The Department of Education has the choice to carry out measures in drawing attention to said differences by pinpointing lowest-performing state governments and supplying information on the condition and progress of each state on different educational parameters. It can also provide reasonable funding along with technical aid to help states with similar demographics collaborate in improving their public education programs.[17]

During his campaign, Trump criticized the 2010 Common Core States Standard[18] and other cases of “federal government overreach.[19]” His advocacy was to give state and local governments more responsibilities over education policies. In 2017, Under the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos was instated as the 11th Secretary of Education. A strong proponent of school choice, school voucher programs, and charter schools, DeVos was a much-contested choice as her own education and career had little to do with formal experience in the US education system. "Many education groups opposed her nomination, citing her lack of experience in public education." [20]She received a BA degree in business economics from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In a Republican-dominated senate, she received a 50–50 vote - a tie that was broken by Vice President Mike Pence. Prior to her appointment, she served as chairman of an investment management firm, The Windquest Group. She supported the idea of leaving education to state governments under the new K-12 legislation.[21] DeVos cited the interventionist approach of the federal government to education policy following the signing of the ESSA. The primary approach to that rule has not changed significantly. Her opinion was that the education movement's populist politics or populism[22]encouraged reformers to commit promises which were not very realistic and therefore difficult to deliver.[23]

Many opinion makers say the situation in all American social institutions[24] is the same. These institutions which include government, higher education, healthcare, and mass media are still attuned with the traditional or original economic system.[25] There is a need to upgrade to a digital information economy.[26] More providers of higher education which include colleges and universities, non-traditional entities like school districts, libraries, and museums, and for-profit organizations will surface. All of these stakeholders will reach out to bigger audiences and use similar tools and technologies to achieve their goals.[27] An article released by CBNC.com said a principal Senate Committee will take into account legislation that reauthorizes and modernizes the Carl D. Perkins Act. President George Bush approved this statute in 2006 on August 12, 2006.[28] This new bill will emphasize the importance of federal funding for various Career and Technical (CTE) programs that will better provide learners with in-demand skills. Congress can provide more students with access to pertinent skills in education according to 21st century career opportunities.[29]

At present, there are many initiatives aimed at dealing with these concerns like innovative cooperation between federal and state governments, educators, and the business sector. One of these efforts is the Pathways to Technology Early College High School (P-TECH).[30] This six-year program was launched in cooperation with IBM, educators from three cities in New York, Chicago, and Connecticut, and over 400 businesses.[31] The program offers students in high school and associate programs focusing on the STEM curriculum.[32] The High School Involvement Partnership, private and public venture, was established through the help of Northrop Grumman, a global security firm. It has given assistance to some 7,000 high school students (juniors and seniors) since 1971 by means of one-on-one coaching as well as exposure to STEM areas and careers.[33] In 2016, Time.com published an article mentioning that one way of reenergizing the United States economy is to provide quality education and training opportunities for American youngsters.[34] There is a need to update funding streams for schools at the federal, state, and local levels such as Pell Grants addressing the requirements of college students. The Grant or specific amount of money is given by the government every school year for disadvantaged students who need to pay tuition fees in college.[35]

Higher education in the United States of America has always been regarded as exceptional worldwide although there are apprehensions regarding expensive and quality education, unimpressive completion rates, and increasing student debt. These issues raised doubts as to the effectiveness of the conventional approach to higher education.[36] There have been numerous proposals for federal reforms to enhance the status of higher education in the US. Some of the recommendations included making institutions liable for students/ non-attendance or dropping out of school, changing the obsolete accreditation process in overseeing access to federal subsidies, and allowing access to free education.[37]

This uses a methodology that values purposeful engagement in activities that turn students into self-reliant and efficient learners. Holding on to the view that everyone possesses natural gifts that are unique to one's personality (e.g. computational aptitude, musical talent, visual arts abilities), it likewise upholds the idea that children, despite their inexperience and tender age, are capable of coping with anguish, able to survive hardships, and can rise above difficult times.[38][39][40][41]

President Donald Trump signed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (HR 2353) on July 31, 2018. This is the first law the American president signed that made meaningful amendments to the federal education system.[42] It reauthorizes the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, a $1.2 billion program modified by the United States Congress in 2006.[43]

Legislators have repeatedly rebuffed the efforts of Trump and education secretary Betsy DeVos to implement school choice programs funded by the federal government. The move to change the Higher Education Act was also deferred.[44] Business and education groups such as the Council of Chief State School Officers[45] as well as the National Governors Association[46] commended the US Congress for its prompt work during the past month. However, some advocacy organizations like Advanced CTE[47] and Association for Career and Technical Education[48] are apprehensive that said law can urge states to set passive laws for Career and Technical Education.

The new legislation takes effect on July 1, 2019 and takes the place of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (Perkins IV) Act of 2006. Stipulations in Perkins V enables school districts to make use of federal subsidies for all students' career search and development activities in the middle grades as well as comprehensive guidance and academic mentoring in the upper grades.[49] At the same time, this law updates and magnifies the meaning of "special populations" to include homeless persons, foster youth, those who left the foster care system, and children with parents on active duty in the United States armed forces.[50]

In the first decade of the 21st century, several issues are salient in debates over further education reform:[51]

• Longer school day or school year
• After-school tutoring
• Charter schools, school choice, or school vouchers
• Smaller class sizes[52]
• Improved teacher quality
  • Improved training
  • Higher credential standards
  • Generally higher pay to attract more qualified applicants
  • Performance bonuses ("merit pay")
  • Firing low-performing teachers
• Internet and computer access in schools
• Track and reduce drop-out rate
• Track and reduce absenteeism
• English-only vs. bilingual education
• Mainstreaming or fully including students with special educational needs, rather than placing them in separate special schools
• Content of curriculum standards and textbooks
  • What to teach, at what age, and to which students. Discussion points include the age at which children should learn to read, and the primary mathematical subject that is taught to adolescents – algebra, or statistics or personal finances.
• Funding, neglected infrastructure, and adequacy of educational supplies
• Student rights

According to a 2005 report from the OECD, the United States is tied for first place with Switzerland when it comes to annual spending per student on its public schools, with each of those two countries spending more than $11,000 (in U.S. currency).[53] Despite this high level of funding, U.S. public schools lag behind the schools of other rich countries in the areas of reading, math, and science.[54] A further analysis of developed countries shows no correlation between per student spending and student performance, suggesting that there are other factors influencing education. Top performers include Singapore, Finland and Korea, all with relatively low spending on education, while high spenders including Norway and Luxembourg have relatively low performance.[55] One possible factor is the distribution of the funding. In the US, schools in wealthy areas tend to be over-funded while schools in poorer areas tend to be underfunded.[56] These differences in spending between schools or districts may accentuate inequalities, if they result in the best teachers moving to teach in the most wealthy areas.[57] The inequality between districts and schools led to 23 states instituting school finance reform based on adequacy standards that aim to increase funding to low-income districts. A 2018 study found that between 1990 and 2012, these finance reforms led to an increase in funding and test scores in the low income districts; which suggests finance reform is effective at bridging inter-district performance inequalities.[58] It has also been shown that the socioeconomic situation of the students family has the most influence in determining success; suggesting that even if increased funds in a low income area increase performance, they may still perform worse than their peers from wealthier districts.

Starting in the early 1980s, a series of analyses by Eric Hanushek indicated that the amount spent on schools bore little relationship to student learning.[59] This controversial argument, which focused attention on how money was spent instead of how much was spent, led to lengthy scholarly exchanges.[60] In part the arguments fed into the class size debates and other discussions of "input policies."[61] It also moved reform efforts towards issues of school accountability (including No Child Left Behind) and the use of merit pay and other incentives.

There have been studies that show smaller class sizes[62] and newer buildings[63] (both of which require higher funding to implement) lead to academic improvements. It should also be noted that many of the reform ideas that stray from the traditional format require greater funding.

It has been shown that some school districts do not use their funds in the most productive way. For example, according to a 2007 article in the Washington Post, the Washington, D.C. public school district spends $12,979 per student per year. This is the third highest level of funding per student out of the 100 biggest school districts in the United States. Despite this high level of funding, the school district provides outcomes that are lower than the national average. In reading and math, the district's students score the lowest among 11 major school districts—even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. 33% of poor fourth graders in the United States lack basic skills in math, but in Washington, D.C., it's 62%.[64] According to a 2006 study by the Goldwater Institute, Arizona's public schools spend 50% more per student than Arizona's private schools. The study also says that while teachers constitute 72% of the employees at private schools, they make up less than half of the staff at public schools. According to the study, if Arizona's public schools wanted to be like private schools, they would have to hire approximately 25,000 more teachers, and eliminate 21,210 administration employees. The study also said that public school teachers are paid about 50% more than private school teachers.[65]

In 1985 in Kansas City, Missouri, a judge ordered the school district to raise taxes and spend more money on public education. Spending was increased so much, that the school district was spending more money per student than any of the country's other 280 largest school districts.

According to a 1999 article, William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, argued that increased levels of spending on public education have not made the schools better, citing the following statistics:[66]

In the United States, private schools (independent schools) have long been an alternative to public education for those with the ability to pay tuition. These include religious schools, preparatory and boarding schools, and schools based on alternative paradigms such as Montessori education. Over 4 million students, about one in twelve children attend religious schools in the United States, most of them Christian.[67] Montessori pre- and primary school programs employ rigorously tested scientific theories[68] of guided exploration which seek to embrace children's natural curiosity rather than, for instance, scolding them for falling out of rank.

Home education is favored by a growing number of parents who take direct responsibility for their children's education rather than enrolling them in local public schools seen as not meeting expectations.

Economists such as Nobel laureate Milton Friedman advocate school choice to promote excellence in education through competition and choice.[69] A competitive "market" for schools eliminates the need to otherwise attempt a workable method of accountability for results. Public education vouchers permit guardians to select and pay any school, public or private, with public funds currently allocated to local public schools. The theory is that children's guardians will naturally shop for the best schools, much as is already done at college level.

Though appealing in theory, many reforms based on school choice have led to slight to moderate improvements—which some teachers' union members see as insufficient to offset the decreased teacher pay and job security.[70] For instance, New Zealand's landmark reform in 1989, during which schools were granted substantial autonomy, funding was devolved to schools, and parents were given a free choice of which school their children would attend, led to moderate improvements in most schools. It was argued that the associated increases in inequity and greater racial stratification in schools nullified the educational gains. Others, however, argued that the original system created more inequity (due to lower income students being required to attend poorer performing inner city schools and not being allowed school choice or better educations that are available to higher income inhabitants of suburbs). Instead, it was argued that the school choice promoted social mobility and increased test scores especially in the cases of low income students. Similar results have been found in other jurisdictions. Though discouraging, the merely slight improvements of some school choice policies often seems to reflect weaknesses in the way that choice is implemented rather than a failure of the basic principle itself.[71]

Critics of teacher tenure claim that the laws protect ineffective teachers from being fired, which can be detrimental to student success. Tenure laws vary from state to state, but generally they set a probationary period during which the teacher proves themselves worthy of the lifelong position. Probationary periods range from one to three years.[72] Advocates for tenure reform often consider these periods too short to make such an important decision; especially when that decision is exceptionally hard to revoke.[73] Due process restriction protect tenured teachers from being wrongfully fired; however these restrictions can also prevent administrators from removing ineffective or inappropriate teachers.[74] A 2008 survey conducted by the US Department of Education found that, on average, only 2.1% of teachers are dismissed each year for poor performance.[74]

In October 2010 Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs had a consequential meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss U.S. competitiveness and the nation's education system. During the meeting Jobs recommended pursuing policies that would make it easier for school principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit.[75]

In 2012 tenure for school teachers was challenged in a California lawsuit called Vergara v. California. The primary issue in the case was the impact of tenure on student outcomes and on equity in education. On June 10, 2014, the trial judge ruled that California's teacher tenure statute produced disparities that " shock the conscience"[76] and violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.[77] On July 7, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan commented on the Vergara decision during a meeting with President Barack Obama and representatives of teacher's unions. Duncan said that tenure for school teachers "should be earned through demonstrated effectiveness" and should not be granted too quickly. Specifically, he criticized the 18-month tenure period at the heart of the Vergara case as being too short to be a "meaningful bar."[78]

A study by the Fordham Institute found that some labor agreements with teachers' unions may restrict the ability of school systems to implement merit pay and other reforms. Contracts were more restrictive in districts with high concentrations of poor and minority students.[79] The methodology and conclusions of the study have been criticized by teachers' unions.[80]

Another barrier to reform is assuming that schools are like businesses—when in fact they are very different.[81]

Legal barriers to reform are low in the United States compared to other countries: State and local governance of education creates "wiggle room for educational innovators" who can change local laws or move somewhere more favourable. Cultural barriers to reform are also relatively low, because the question of who should control education is still open.[82]

There are factors that can impede innovations in K-12 education.[83] One could be “Site-Based Decision Making Councils”[84] composed of teachers and some parents who vote on school rules and regulations, adoption of curriculum, hiring of new mentors, and other related matters. There are times attendance in meetings is not adequate or stakeholders are not represented properly. The belief is small meetings attended by a few individuals may not be ideal for innovation. Turnover of teachers is another possible hindrance to such innovations. The learning process is adversely affected because of frequent teacher resignations and replacements. Constant changing of mentors leads to waste of resources and dormant thinking influenced by policies, systems, and traditions.[85]

Education 2030 Agenda refers to the global commitment of the Education for All movement to ensure access to basic education for all. It is an essential part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The roadmap to achieve the Agenda is the Education 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action, which outlines how countries, working with UNESCO and global partners, can translate commitments into action.[86]

The United Nations, over 70 ministers, representatives of member-countries, bilateral and multilateral agencies, regional organizations, academic institutions, teachers, civil society, and the youth supported the Framework for Action of the Education 2030 platform. The Framework was described as the outcome of continuing consultation to provide guidance for countries in implementing this Agenda. At the same time, it mobilizes various stakeholders in the new education objectives, coordination, implementation process, funding, and review of Education 2030.[87]

In 1995, the minister of education, Sukavich Rangsitpol, launched a series of education reforms in 1995 with the intention of the education reform is to realize the potential of Thai people to develop themselves for a better quality of life and to develop the nation for a peaceful co-existence in the global community.[88]

According to UNESCO, Thailand education reform has led to the following results:

• The educational budget increased from 133 billion baht in 1996 to 163 billion baht in 1997 (22.5% increase)
• Since 1996, first grade students have been taught English as a second or foreign language and computer literacy.
• Professional advancement from teacher level 6 to teacher level 7 without having to submit academic work for consideration was approved by the Thai government.
• Free 12 years education for all children provided by the government. This program was added to the 1997 Constitution of Thailand and gave access to all citizens.[89]

World Bank report that after the 1997 Asian financial crisis Income in the northeast, the poorest part of Thailand, has risen by 46 percent from 1998 to 2006.[90] Nationwide poverty fell from 21.3 to 11.3 percent.