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Since post-World War II and especially throughout the 1990s, the globalization of a liberal international order propelled a wave of education reforms around the world. However, recent challenges to the legitimacy of the liberal order may undercut the prevalence of education reform across countries. To reveal how global changes are influencing education, we draw on a newly constructed data set of 6,696 education reforms in 147 countries from 1960 to 2017. Using dynamic negative binomial panel regression models, we find declining levels of reform in recent decades. We also find evidence of changing dynamics of influence among prominent organizational actors: World Bank lending is less associated with education reform over time, whereas the influence of international nongovernmental organizations has grown. This suggests a shifting system of governance, where formal coercive pressures become less palatable and the normative influences of civil society grow stronger. Overall, our findings indicate that education reform arises as a macro-global process as much as a response to local needs and conditions.

In a world characterized by a formal global consensus on norms of "Education for All," countries face growing social pressures to rationalize their educational institutions around a global and standardized set of best practices. In this context, I argue that national assessments are part of a more general set of organizational structures that measure and evaluate a country's progress toward achieving the goals of Education for All; however, they also specifically reflect commitments to expanded conceptions of student personhood that develop from longer-term processes of rationalization around an ontology of liberal individualism. Using an original data set of 132 countries, from 1960 to 2011, I show that national assessments have expanded rapidly after 1990, especially at the primary-school level. Results from event history analyses indicate that the adoption of a country's first national assessment test is shaped by its linkages to international nongovernmental organizations, the World Bank, and its education research output. Countries that maintain institutional structures that reflect older logics of educational selection and stratification are less likely to adopt a national assessment.

The liberal and neoliberal world order is increasingly under attack. Global levels of democracy have been declining for over a decade, accompanied by rollbacks in some kinds of rights. We examine the implications of increasing criticisms of the (neo)-liberal era over time for educational reform discourse around the world by drawing on a unique primary dataset of 473 reports produced by international organisations between 1998 and 2018. Extending insights from neo-institutional theories of organisations, we argue that globalised models of education reform is on a decline as a result of growing attacks on the (neo)-liberal cultural system that has affected education policies around the world. Empirically, we find no evidence that reform emphases continue to grow since the 1990s, and support for arguments that predict stagnant or falling levels of reform discourse.

National high-stakes exams are a fundamental structural feature of education systems around the world. Despite their importance in shaping educational stratification, little is known about the social processes that influence how and why national high-stakes exams are used at early ages on a global basis. I argue that global trends in the use of primary-level high-stakes exams during the postwar period are shaped by competing international and historical pressures. On one hand, Western colonialism instigated path-dependent processes that led former French and British colonies to continue to use high-stakes exams at the primary level, even after gaining independence. On the other hand, a worldwide cultural shift toward universalistic conceptions of education as a human right has led other countries to abandon high-stakes exams at early ages. Drawing on a newly constructed panel data set of 138 countries from 1960 to 2010, I show that national high-stakes exams have declined over time at early ages of schooling. Evidence from a series of panel regression models supports arguments about the importance of Western colonialism and universalistic conceptions of education in world society in shaping the use of high-stakes exams at the primary level.

This article examines global changes in tracking policies over the post-World War II period. Using a newly constructed quantitative panel data set of 139 countries from 1960 to 2010, I show that a majority of countries around the world have shifted away from sharply tracked institutions at the junior secondary level toward more formally "open" and "comprehensive" ones. To explain this trend, I argue that worldwide shifts away from more stratified and corporatist conceptions of the polity toward more liberal models led to the construction of norms of individual egalitarianism in the educational process, and this process delegitimated tracking at early ages. Findings from a series of panel regression models indicate that countries that are more formally committed to individual rights and universalistic conceptions of the educational process are less likely to track students at the junior secondary level; some nation-specific characteristics, such as levels of economic development, also shape tracking at lower levels of schooling. Most countries, however, continue to track students at the senior secondary level. The persistence of tracking at this level suggests a tension between existing conceptions of education as a mechanism for both propagating equality and allocating individuals to unequal opportunities.

This article examines the rise of "test-optional" college admissions policies since the 1990s. I argue that the rationalization of college admissions policies after World War II contributed to the rise of "meritocratic" stratification (in policy) and standardized tests, like the SAT, but it also led to the expansion and legitimation of the roles of student and school personhood in the admissions process. Schools more committed to enlarged conceptions of student personhood are more likely to adopt a test-optional policy, in order to recruit students who fit the distinctive characteristics of their school identity. To test the argument, I use a comprehensive data set of 1,640 colleges and universities in the United States and discrete-time event history models from 1987 to 2015. I also assess alternative arguments that emphasize economic or prestige-driven motives. Liberal arts colleges and schools committed to several dimensions of student personhood are more likely to adopt test-optional policies, net of other factors.