QATAR: Winning its bid to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Doha, the Gulf emirate of Qatar showed the rising power of the Middle East. Its landmark football stadium will cool summer temperatures of around 40 degrees with solar panel-powered air-conditioning as the international teams play to crowded stands.
However, an even more amazing transformation has already taken place on the arid outskirts of Doha, where branch campuses of international universities have clustered to create Education City, a new learning hub for the region.
Commissioning top world architects and offering building grants, tax incentives and guaranteed student numbers, the state-owned Qatar Foundation began building Grand Designs university campuses with a vision to transform Qatar’s education system and build a knowledge economy. Rest
US: The Federal Role in Education Research: Providing Relevant Information to Students, Parents, and Educators
November 16, 2011 – testimony before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am Russ Whitehurst. I direct the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Prior to holding my present position, I was the founding director of the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education. Before entering government service I had a long career as a researcher and academic administrator.
Thank you for the invitation to testify. I am pleased that there is such interest and leadership in addressing the quality of education research in America.
Everyone in this room knows that education is important. I expect that all of us have had an experience with a teacher, a class, an educational institution, or through independent learning that has changed our lives. I certainly have. The American dream of opportunity and advancement and the educational system of the United State are inextricably connected. This has been true throughout our history. Indeed, well before the country was founded it was typical for colonial villages that had grown to more than a few hundred people to establish and fund a public school, with the first dating to 1639. Since that time, we have continued to value education and invest in it. But in an age of globalization and the advent of a knowledge based economy, the imperative to educate and educate well is stronger than it has ever been. The evidence that nations with a better educated populace experience higher growth rates is compelling, and during the current economic downturn the unemployment rate in the U.S. for young adults with just a high school diploma has been three times the rate for those with a college degree. Rest