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If Education for All is to be achieved, children and students with disabilities and learning and behaviour difficulties must be given the necessary support. This chapter discusses equity in secondary and tertiary education with a focus on children with disabilities and learning and behavioural difficulties, using an international database developed by the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It addresses, from an international policy perspective, five important areas involved in achieving equity in education for all students: resource distribution, gender, access, outcomes and process. A fundamental premise of this chapter is that equity should be understood in terms of maximising outcomes for all students, including those with disabilities and learning difficulties, by finding the most effective balance in resource distribution and access.

The strong relationship between education and life chances suggests that addressing educational disparities is one of the most important steps that can be taken to reduce wider social and economic inequalities. The volume’s introductory chapter examines recent trends in educational access, quality, persistence and achievement for marginalized populations around the world, measures them against countries’ commitments to providing universal education, and reviews the evidence of a causal link between educational attainment and a wide array of social and economic outcomes. Usefully summarizing the examples of success which later chapters explore in greater depth, it clearly demonstrates that increased equity in education can be achieved with the right combination of political commitment and practical solutions.

Efforts to advance educational inclusion for children with disabilities must be sustained and accelerated in the years to come if equity for this group, and universal education in general, is to be achieved. This includes addressing remaining gaps in provision, including the shortage of trained teachers, locally-adapted pedagogies, and essential data to monitor progress and gaps for children with disabilities. This chapter addresses the challenges associated with increasing access to primary education for children with disabilities and describes what is being done internationally to address these challenges. In particular, the chapter looks at programs to promote equity and the challenges that remain in implementing such programs. Examples are given from countries with disability programs that are receiving support through the Education for All – Fast Track Initiative (FTI).

The chapter opens with gains and concerns regarding education. The Millennium Development Goals regard education as essential, yet the availability of quality education remains limited in many areas. Barriers exist for children caught in conflict, working children, poor children and girls. Girls face numerous barriers including structural barriers, safety concerns and cultural expectations. Poverty is a barrier to quality education in all nations at all levels from primary to university. The issues of dropout/school leavers and poor quality education are examined around the world, including the United States. Education for All and Universal Primary Education are analyzed as paths to improve access and quality.

The “private-for-profit” sector is a significant provider of global early childhood care and education (ECCE). This chapter explores how this trend contributes to policy goals, focusing especially on the risks that a growing private-for-profit sector may amplify inequities in access and quality. We review the government financing and regulation required to harness private sector providers to achieve comprehensive ECCE goals, recognizing that the private sector varies in respect to finance, management, and client group. We offer a taxonomy of four major functions for the private-for-profit sector in its relationship to public policies and services, drawing on case studies in Peru, Ethiopia, and India. The potential of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has been widely discussed in relation to early childhood, but less commonly implemented fully. We also discuss the risks of current laissez-faire approaches, favoring positive, pro-equity policies, including adequate governance of the private sector, which is not an alternative to quality publicly funded services.

This chapter discusses the historical and legislative background to the adoption of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) in 1975. It begins with an overview of the evolution of laws requiring the education of children with disabilities, with particular emphasis on issues of exclusion and segregation. It then examines Congress's passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 and the Education of the Handicapped Act in 1971 in response to cases in which courts concluded that the constitutional rights of children with disabilities were being violated by their exclusion from school or by their receiving inferior education in segregated classrooms. It also explores the legislative history of the EAHCA and highlights the link between disability discrimination in education and racial segregation. Finally, it analyzes some of the important concepts of the EAHCA that are still basic to federal disability education law, including a free and appropriate public education and individualized education programs.

This chapter examines how and why the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EAHCA) and its successor, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), have fallen short of ambitious promises for social reform. It explains that the educational rights of disabled children, established in the Act (EAHCA), arose within a broad context of social reform and highlights the limitations of the provisions of EAHCA. This chapter argues that the EAHCA has only succeeded in enabling parents to raise individualized, technical disputes over their children's disability diagnoses and needs.

How can studies of language change in Iberian America help us better understand related phenomena in the Caribbean, and vice-versa? I raise some fundamental issues about language contact and its linguistic, cultural and socio-political consequences in Latin America, alongside challenging questions regarding the relationship between power and the production of knowledge in and about Latin America. These issues conjure up the foundations and politics of Creole studies and of education in Haiti. Here, Haiti serves as a spectacular case study to probe the effects of (neo-)colonialism on language diversification, vitality and endangerment throughout Latin America. Rejecting Creole Exceptionalism (i.e., the dogma that Creole languages are exceptional languages on either developmental or structural grounds), I compare Haitian Creole with its counterparts in continental Latin America, particularly Amerindian languages. This exercise sheds new light on the common socio-historical roots of various myths about Creole and Indigenous languages. I then consider how the past can help us analyze, then deconstruct, some of the racially- and ethnically-based hierarchies in Latin America. I conclude with a plea for a North-South collaboration among linguists and, also, between the latter and educators—collaboration toward social justice through quality education for all in Latin America and beyond.

This chapter discusses Congress's attempts to amend the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), which was later replaced by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), after 1975. It begins with an overview of 1977 amendments, followed by amendments in 1983 and 1986 including those dealing with attorney fees and infants and toddlers with disabilities. It then examines amendments made during the 1990s as well as the concerns expressed by some special education advocates that the special education law (now renamed IDEA) was not serving the needs of poor and minority students. It also considers amendments relating to eligibility, individualized education programs, racial disproportionality in disability identification, private school education, and the ability of school districts to discipline children with disabilities. The chapter concludes with an assessment of 2004 amendments to the IDEA.

This chapter describes the story of Amy Rowley and her family to show how the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) has affected the lives of children with disabilities. It examines three themes that emerge from the Supreme Court case involving Amy, who is deaf. First, Amy's story reveals the enormous toll on the family as her parents persevered for years to help her obtain an interpreter in the classroom. Second, her story demonstrates that victories can often be shallow because of the ability of a school district to resist a court order. Third, her story exemplifies that justice delayed is justice denied, because a child can never truly recover lost education. The chapter also highlights the continued shortcomings of the EAHCA, which later became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), that are apparent throughout Amy's story.

This chapter describes the story of Michael Panico and his family to show how the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), which was later replaced by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has affected the lives of children with disabilities. It narrates how Michael's parents had to fight for years with the assistance of pro bono legal counsel in order for him to win the right to attend a private school that could give him an adequate education. It examines the Supreme Court case involving Michael—the dispute in this case arose over the content of the individualized education program proposed by the school district on June 28, 1979, for the 1979–1980 school year (fourth grade)—and shows that his story reflects the sloppy way in which many school districts implemented the EAHCA in the early days of enforcement.

The measure of knowledge capital is introduced in empirical growth modelling. The knowledge capital measure turns out to be very closely related to economic growth rates in cross-country growth regressions. Simple growth models considering knowledge capital (in addition to years of schooling and initial income levels) account for three quarters of the international variation in growth rates – in stark contrast to models excluding cognitive skills that can account for just one quarter of the variation. The empirical results are remarkably stable in the face of alternative specifications, varying samples, and alternative measures of cognitive skills, demonstrating a robustness uncommon to most cross-country growth modelling. Moreover, knowledge capital has a dramatic impact on growth rates: one standard deviation higher cognitive skills of a country’s workforce is associated with approximately two percentage points higher annual growth in per-capita GDP. It is also true that having both top performers (rocket scientists) and a broad base of proficiency (education for all) is important for growth.

Niraja Gopal Jayal examines the politics of India’s higher education. She revisits the Rudolphs’ (1972) seminal study which explores the politicization of higher education, including the state’s active role during the early decades of the post-colonial era. Jayal highlights the irony that at a time when neoliberal ideologies suggest the roll back of state intervention and the diminution of the political sphere, higher education has become more politicized than ever. Jayal’s discussion of increased regulation by the University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education, and the Ministry of Human Resources shows how these agencies have hamstrung higher education in recent years. In the name of accountability, the Indian state has increasingly micromanaged higher education in ways that have limited academic freedom and, all too often, substituted partisan for public interest.

Access and quality are key dimensions of any public service—health, infrastructure, and, of course, education. The terms are particularly ubiquitous in the field of international education, where over the past two decades they have been used to categorize both the challenges facing the Education for All movement and the work to address them. This chapter analyzes how these terms have been defined and used in the international education literature, and in particular focuses on understanding the connection between them. The discourse often presents access to education and education quality as either independent or competing concerns and uses them to explain the Global Learning Crisis. The chapter reviews evidence on the association between access and quality, laying the foundation for this theme to continue throughout the book.

The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the next millennium was characterized by an extraordinary burst of international cooperation on development. At the core of this cooperation was the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 and the related agreement to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The U4 played a role both in the run-up to the MDG agreement and in linking the achievement of the MDG objective of ending poverty to collaborative efforts between donor and recipient, with partners in the driver’s seat setting their own priorities. This chapter starts with a discussion of the agreement to establish the MDGs at the UN and its implications for development. Then it turns to the perennial question of how much aid developed countries should commit to provide to developing countries, and what donors and recipients must do to make aid more effective, two central issues of the Monterrey Conference on Finance for Development in 2002. The last part discusses the special U4 and international community efforts to achieve universal primary education and to battle HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Born in Massachusetts, Judith Sargent Murray wrote essays arguing for education that is accessible to all, regardless of sex. In one such essay, “Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of encouraging a degree of Self-Complacency, especially in Female Bosoms,” published in 1784, Murray challenged the prevalent imagery of helpless, seduced young women found in the popular novels at the time and insisted that properly educated young women would not easily fall to flattery and seduction. In another essay, “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), she blamed differential access to education as the reason for differences between the sexes and argued for gender equality. This chapter features both essays.

This chapter explores life in Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic) in the 20^th Century for people with intellectual disabilities. It opens at the time that the Czech lands were part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This was a period marked by efforts to increase the quality of institutional care for people with intellectual disabilities. The authors then describe the period of communism. They discuss the controversial nature of an Education Act (1948), which contained a well-established network of special schools for students with disabilities as a regular part of the school system, and yet it introduced the concept of “being uneducable” for students with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. The authors also debate the role of a parental movement in advocacy for the rights of people with intellectual disabilities. The chapter concludes with the period after the fall of communism, when compulsory education was introduced for all children with no exception.