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Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.

In this brief, authors Michael Ettlinger, Jordan Hensley, and Julia Vieira analyze how much the governments of different countries spend, and on what, to illuminate the range of fiscal policy options available and provide a basis for determining which approaches work best. They report that the United States ranks twenty-fourth in government spending as a share of GDP out of twenty-nine countries for which recent comparable data are available. The key determinant of where countries rank in overall government spending is the amount spent on social protection. The United States ranks last in spending on social protection as a share of GDP and twenty-second in per capita spending. The United States ranks at or near the top in military, health care, education, and law enforcement spending. Measuring government spending by different methods and including tax expenditures does not appear to significantly alter the conclusion that the United States is a low-tax, low-spending country relative to the other countries examined, particularly when compared to its fellow higher-income countries. [This paper is an evolution of a previous work, "Comparing Public Spending and Priorities Across OECD Countries" (ED606844).]

This research paper is the fifth in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). Based on comparative analysis of labour force survey data from 2014, the report analyses the vocational effect on labour market and education outcomes, asking whether any advantages conferred by vocational qualifications in early career would be offset by disadvantages later in life. The report explores the functioning of the safety net and the diversion effects across countries, demonstrating how these vary considerably with the specific institutional structure of schooling and work-based training. The results indicate that VET graduates are potentially sacrificing the longer-term gains associated with further education in favour of short-term benefits. [This research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH and including the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

This Report Card offers an assessment of child well-being in the context of sustainable development across 41 countries of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Specifically, this report seeks to bring the SDG [Sustainable Development Goal] targets for children in high-income countries into meaningful operation (while staying true to the ambitions of the global agenda) and to establish a point of departure for reviewing the SDG framework in these contexts. It focuses on those goals and targets with most direct relevance to the well-being of children in high-income settings. Where appropriate, it adapts the agreed SDG indicator, the better to reflect the problems facing children in such countries. The results therefore highlight the new challenges set by the SDGs.

The present paper discusses the potential of the capability approach in conceptualizing and understanding lifelong learning as an agency process, and explores its capacity to guide empirical studies on lifelong learning. It uses data for 20 countries from the Adult Education Survey (2007; 2011) and focuses on aspirations for lifelong learning. The study results show that there are considerable country differences in the level of people's aspirations. They highlight the fact that, despite the growing emphasis on lifelong learning, the level of aspirations has decreased in half of the European countries. However, this decrease occurs to a greater extent among people who did not participate in lifelong learning, but wanted to participate, than among people who had already participated in some form of education or training in the previous 12 months. [For the complete Volume 14, Number 1 proceedings, see ED568088.]

As the data in this new edition of the Innocenti Report Card series show, in the past five years, rising numbers of children and their families have experienced difficulty in satisfying their most basic material and educational needs. Most importantly, the Great Recession is about to trap a generation of educated and capable youth in a limbo of unmet expectations and lasting vulnerability. League Tables, the flagship tool of the Innocenti Report Card series, rank the change, since the onset of the crisis, in the poverty levels of children and the impact of the recession on youth. The Report also explores the effects of the recession on youth seeking to enter or remain in the labour force in the middle of a recession. [Support for this report was provided by the Government of Italy.]