In American public elementary and secondary school finance a lawsuit is often filed a suit on account of financial and educational disparities among school districts. Plaintifs claim that those diparities deprive their school children of equal educational oportunities in violation of federal and/or states' constitutional equality clauses and/or education clauses. The school finance litigation (hereafter referred to “the litigation”) started in the early period of the 1970s and has continured since then. The first stage of the litigation from the beginning until the latter half of the 1980s is usually called “equity law” suits because the crucial issue of law was focused on the comparative equality of education expenses per student among school districts. On the other hand, the latter stage of the litigation since then is called “adequacy law “suits because the legal issue is focused on issues such as the adequacy of the curriculum, methods, facilities and equipments in schools.

The Kentucky Supreme Court's “Rose Decision” in 1989 was the beginning of the adequacy law suits thereafter. The Kentucky Supreme Court stated that the “thorough and efficient” Education clause of the State Constitution provided for adequate school education to be adequate throughout the state, and declared that the Kentucky public school finance was unconstitutional in violation of the Education clause. Since then, many state courts followed the Rose adequacy decision and declared their state public school finance unconstitutional under their state constitutions.

With these developments of the litigation, a new concept of equal educational opportunity has emerged. A new concept of equal educational opportunity based upon the adequacy legal theory requires the guarantee of substantive minimum quality of school education, the attainment of academic achievements, and the state financial responsibility.

Among other things, it is noteworthy that many state courts have referred to the attainment of academic achievements, especially the cultivation of civic capacity as an object of school education. In the American litigation studies there are two reasons pointed out for the courts's referrence to the cultivation of civic capacity . The first one is that these adequacy decisions have heard the litigation cases based on each state constitutional education clause and many education clauses have specified the development of the civic character to be an aim of school education. The second one is that the resurgence of republican thought over the last two decades in America has urged schools to bring up the civic character in students to serve the community.

There is strong opposition to the adequacy theory and its adoption in the court's judgement. Ambiguity of adequacy concept, or court's interference in pursuit of adequacy into legislative or administrative powers were examples of criticism.

Regardless of these oppositions, a suit will be filed against the American public school finance in pursuit of adequate education if the school finance is unconstitutionally invalid.

The purpose of this paper is to consider factors related to reducing the fixed amount of additional allocation in the budgeting process of the national treasury's sharing of compulsory education expenses.

The national treasury's sharing of compulsory education expenses is calculated by the unit value of wages, and the fixed number for calculating this is decided by the national treasury. It consists of a fixed amount for the basic allocation and the fixed number for an additional allocation. The former is the fixed number of school personnel calculated based on the number of classes, etc., while the latter is the fixed number of school personnel allocated according to the policy aim.

There is a debate between the Ministry of Finance (MOF) which has insisted on a reduction in the fixed number of school personnel and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) which has insisted on an increase in the fixed number of school personnel in the budgeting process in recent years. The reduction in the fixed amount for additional allocation is taken up as a policy termination in this paper. The budgeting process in fiscal year 2011, fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2015 is analyzed using a policy window model.

The MEXT lowered the legal standard for the size of a first-grade class in elementary school to 35 pupils in the budgeting process in fiscal year 2011. The MEXT also reduced the fixed amount for additional allocation as the funds which increase according to the fixed number for basic allocation. The key factor was the existence of the Democratic Party of Japan, which included smaller class sizes in its political manifesto. The MEXT emphasized the reputation of the Democratic Party of Japan. However, there was opposition from prefectures for reduction of the fixed amount of additional allocation.

The MOF insisted on a reduction in the fixed number of school personnel in the budgeting process in fiscal year 2014 and in fiscal year 2015. However, the final result was only a slight reduction. The main factor was the strategy of the MOF. The MOF insisted on a large reduction in the fixed number of school personnel whereas the MEXT insisted on an increase in the fixed number of school personnel. There was greater focus on the proposals of the MOF, and the proposals of the MEXT did not rise on the cutting board of argument. Finally, the MOF retracted this insistence and made reductions on an incremental basis.

The implication of this paper is as follows. First, this paper suggests that it is important to take an initiative in argument through the budgeting process to plan for the realization of a policy. Second, this paper suggests that the target of the emphasis of the MEXT has changed. The MEXT emphasized reputation from The Democratic Party of Japan and reduced the fixed number for additional allocation by the budgeting process in fiscal year 2011. However, due to the opposition in various prefectures, the MEXT changed to reputation emphasis.

The improvement of educational finance for public compulsory education in recent years has been facing difficult conditions because the reform of class sizes is not making any progress and a policy of decreasing the number of educational personnel is also needed in response to the declining number of children. It seems there is no sustainable method to improve the quality and quantity of educational finance for compulsory public education.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of Education and the Central Council for Education have been trying to make efforts to introduce a new strategy for improving the number of teachers in schools for the past two years. However, it is impossible to improve the number of educational personnel without evidence, which is required by the Ministry of Finance and the Fiscal System Council.

Knowledge of the difficulties of education reform in advanced countries including Japan is derived from evidence-based policy. The test scores of students tend to be valued in both evidence-based policies and merit- based policies. In this situation, improving the fixed number of educational personnel by the traditional method of cutting down of class sizes may trivialize the discussion on the correlation between test scores and class sizes.

In this difficult situation, new methods to improve the strategies for improving the number of teachers in schools are envisaged flexibly.

In this article the new phase of Japanese education policy is defined as follows: “Improving teacher and staff numbers for children's issues” in section 2. In section 3, the structures of the Act on the Standard and Fixed Number of Educational Personnel of Public Compulsory Education are digested and some new formulae options noted to reflect “improving teachers and staff numbers for children's issues” on teachers and staff numbers.

In section 4, a vision to actualize the new reform of teacher and staff numbers in school is discussed and the new “standard” of public compulsory education in this new reform is considered

This paper discusses the anticipated impacts of a change in the public funding scheme for Japanese national universities on higher educational opportunity for the college-age population, by forecasting an increase in tuition fees for each national university that offers undergraduate programs, and by examining the magnitude of influence of parental income on college attendance patterns.

The major findings are as follows: first, former Imperial universities and medical universities are likely to increase their tuition fees most rapidly if a proposal by the Ministry of Finance at the Fiscal System Council held on October 26, 2015 is implemented, which recommended that national universities should increase “self-generated income” excluding the income from University Hospitals by 1.6 percent year-onyear in order to lower the dependence on the Management Expenses Grants from the central government.

Second, a projection of tuition fees for 82 national universities, which fixed, the amount until now based on the total enrollment of undergraduate and graduate students, and the revenue generated from university-industry cooperation research, donations, entrance examination, and matriculation, suggested that on average (weighted average), the cost of tuition would increase by 1,260 dollars (126,000 yen) in six years, and that the amount could be even greater for the universities which enroll more students.

Third, a multiple regression analysis of aggregate data by prefecture revealed that the attendance rates for former Imperial Universities by prefecture of high school students' origin have a slightly positive correlation with parental income, while those for national universities (excluding Imperial Universities) are negatively correlated. In addition, this analysis found that the level of academic achievement in mathematics has a positive impact on the matriculation to both former Imperial Universities and non-Imperial national universities.

Based on these findings, it is suggested that if former Imperial Universities raise the cost of attendance without expanding student financial aid that includes grant and tuition waiver, low-income students with high achievement would be less likely to matriculate at these institutions. Moreover, competitor institutions such as large national and private universities could also raise their tuition fees as a reaction. In that case, more students would face a higher cost of admission. It should be an important issue in the near future whether some of the national universities adopt a set of policies coupling higher tuition fees with higher financial aid.

This paper examines the relationship between the empirical policy research and the education finance and education policy process, and clarifies the agenda of future research.

“Evidence based policy” has been advocated in the context of today's political decision making everywhere. The area of education policy is no exemption. At the end of 2015, The Council on Economic and Finance Policy announced the “Action Program for Economic and Fiscal Revitalization” that emphasized the necessities of visualization of the financial input and policy output, concretization of “key performance indicators”, and research between inputs and outputs.

High quality data and empirical research are the necessary conditions of evidence based policy but not sufficient conditions. We can learn lessons from the past experience of the US education policy process. The politicization of policy research and evidence has been frequently observed in the context of the plural democracy of the US. We can find some reasons for the politicization of the empirical policy research. First, the evidence on education policy and finance is fragile, the policy effects are subtle, and this indecisiveness urges the political actors to take advantage of the evidence. Second, the methodology of quantitative analysis is much easier than in the past because of the lower cost of computers and easy-touse statistical packages. In spite of the greater technical sophistication, the risk and danger of misuse of the statistical techniques has become more pervasive. Third, as the outstanding nature of the field of education, the discrepancy of the knowledge between the policy researchers and the practitioners has been a serious problem.

The methodology of the policy evaluation, especially the analysis of treatment effects on the program evaluation, is too sophisticated for outsiders today to understand. However, this does not mean that the arguments about it are merely technical, or not the concern of persons on the street and practitioners because they has important policy implications. At least, the significant issues we seriously have to consider are the objects for evaluation―program or organization, which do we intend to evaluate?―, the difference between the (quasi-) experimental methods and the theory based “structural” methods, the relationship between internal validity and external validity, the consideration of noncognitive skills as the policy outputs.

Based on the above, for sound“ informed democracy” and controlling the politicization of the empirical policy research, we need to consider both the object-level issues regarding the implications of methodology and meta-level issues regarding evidence based education policy process.

This article investigates the organization of the leading division of the board of education and the personnel and the duties of educational administrative staff members of the bureau of the board of education. This paper focuses on the case of Kyoto city which arranges experts on educational administration. My intention was to acquire new knowledge about the administrative staff members who have expertise in educational administration. The findings of this paper are follows. First, I confirmed the number of the general administrative staff members and educational administrative staff members, post arrangement, field of the duties from a point of view of making the arrangement of administrative staff members in the leading division of educational administration clear. I compared Kyoto city with an ordinance-designated city of the same scale as Kyoto city and three prefectures. Educational administrative staff members are appointed to the leading division in the cities other than Kyoto city and general administrative staff members are appointed to a limited division as general affairs manager. However, in Kyoto city personnel arrangement keeps trade with educational administrative members and general administrative staff members. This investigation revealed that general administrative staff members are in charge of various kinds of duties such as projects and administration of educational reform.

Second, I carried out an investigation by interviewing general administrative staff members of the board of education in Kyoto city who are appointed to the leading division. I found that establishing a relationship between general administrative staff members and educational administrative staff members is the key to confirming how the duties are actually accomplished. I proposed “expert on educational administration” as a new concept of the field of the duties. The advantage of having experts on educational administration is that they are enrolled in the bureau of the board of education for a long time and acquire expertise in educational administration whereas educational supervisors return to school. The difference between these positions has an enormous influence on the way of accomplishing the duties. I pointed out that experts on educational administration in Kyoto city coordinate the conflict between the sort of jobs of experts on educational administration and educational administrative staff members and come up with an idea of politics and a role of expert on educational administration to show that the innovative leadership is the driving force of educational reform in Kyoto city.

Last, I focus on general administrative staff members who are assigned to the board of education from the department of the head of the local government and the post and the field of the duties of experts on educational administration. An aim for further research is to acquire knowledge of the future personnel policy of educational administrative staff members.

The purpose of this article is to reconsider the role of free schools for the children who refuse to attend school by revealing the impact of collaboration with the local government.

Since the 1980s, free schools designed to meet the special needs of the children who refuse to attend school have become increasingly prominent in Japan. Although many people regarded students who refused to attend school as just lazy, free schools were founded to take them in. They adopted a confrontational approach to public education and criticized the uniformity of public schools.

However, the circumstances surrounding school refusal have changed in recent years. After MEXT acknowledged the fact that school refusal was a phenomenon that could occur in any child, some of the local governments attempted to build new relations with free schools. Free schools which decide to collaborate with the local governments get subsidies and receive official recognition. Although some researchers express concern about the danger of free schools losing their uniqueness as a result of regulations that the local governments may impose in exchange for subsidies, no survey of the collaboration between them has been conducted.

Therefore, this article analyzes how free schools are affected by getting subsidies and receiving official recognition. Data for this study were collected from fieldwork at a free school named PACE (pseudonym), which was established in 1991. Like other free schools, PACE displays distinctive characteristics, which differ from those of public schools, and it emphasizes the individuality of students rather than their uniformity. However, the local government commissioned PACE to operate a public free school, and PACE has been receiving subsidies since 2003. PACE now accepts about 100 children who refuse to attend school.

The following points became clear through fieldwork. 1. By receiving subsidies continuously, PACE built a management system that did not depend only on membership fees. So, Children who cannot pay membership fees for economic reasons have an access to PACE. 2. Because PACE increases visibility and reliance by receiving official recognition, not only schools / teachers but also children's consultation offices / municipal welfare offices introduce PACE to children from unstable home environments. 3. Therefore, PACE functions as a place for the children who are excluded from the general support system of school refusal because of their unstable home environments.

The implications of this study are as follows. 1. When collaborating with the local government, free schools may be forced to make a choice about whether to accept the children who are excluded from the general support system of school refusal. 2. When choosing to accept them, free schools have to care about not only school refusal but also unstable home environments. 3. The local governments which take measures against school refusal need to make consideration for the situation that free schools function as a place for the children who are excluded from the general support system.

Value-Added Assessment determines the effectiveness of school systems, schools, and teachers based on student academic growth over time. This study clarifies a strategy for school improvement by utilizing the results of measuring academic achievement, especially focusing on the use of Value-Added Assessment for the school improvement initiative in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The initiative was prompted by the announcement that nine of Tennessee's 20 lowest-performing elementary schools were located in Chattanooga. All nine of these schools were urban, poor, and largely minority. Teacher turnover rates were high: the faculty of each school was made up of young, inexperienced, and, in some cases, unqualified teachers. The partners of the initiative decided to focus their efforts on student literacy, with a primary strategy of building knowledge and skills among educators. They tackled district-level structures and policies that impeded reform and crafted a reform framework that continues to provide effective professional development for teachers and principals. Their efforts have paid off: 1) students in the schools were making significant gains in achievement, 2) the performance of teachers in the schools has improved, and 3) teacher turnover rates have dropped.

One core component of the success has been data on Value-Added Assessment. In analyzing the process of utilizing this for school improvement in Chattanooga, the results show that Value-Added Assessment can become a driving force for collaborative professional development when it serves as a data source for formative evaluation, not summative evaluation.

This article concludes that, in analysis of the initiative in Chattanooga, Value-Added Assessment has three functions: 1) recognizing teachers' contributions to student academic growth, 2) facilitating collaboration among teachers, and 3) focusing on discussion for better instruction. It has a greater potential to make the three functions work together rather than individually. This is because it could work as a driving force for school improvement. Implications of the findings for prerequisites and factors as potential of Value-Added Assessment are discussed.

However, this paper also points out the challenges of the initiative, or Value-Added Assessment. First, the potential of Value-Added Assessment can be made possible after ridding the schools of teachers who lack sufficient morale and teaching skills. Second, it may cause the problem that some teachers could be labeled as “ineffective” teachers as a result of Value-Added Assessment, and cooperation could also be undermined by doing so. It is also necessary to examine the limitations and challenges of achievement-based educational reforms.

The current scenario in the educational field has seen major changes impacted by globalization in which educational policies are bought and sold across national borders with nation states joining this market as actors. The purpose of this study is to point out the structural problems inherent in the reality of the global education policy market.

Researchers who criticize neoliberal reform consider globalization as a back down of nation states. However, changes through globalization have brought forth a new position for nation states in which they have partly expanded their functions. Ball (2012) points out that ever since the private sector made its foray in the educational field, the mode of political processes and community has changed, and a new form of ‘network governance’ has emerged. He termed this the ‘global education policy’ (see also Rizvi & Lingard 2010). The focus of this research is on the government-affiliated educational research institutes of developed countries that are active participants in this ‘global education policy market’ as actors by contracting work in teacher training and consulting.

Four institutes were chosen to study the concrete activities of the nation state in the international market. The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), Central Institute for Test Development (Cito), and the German Institute for International Education Research (DIPF) emerged as the leading institutions that have expanded their business to the international market as per a large-scale assessment, and they play a central role in the operation of PISA. In Singapore, which exhibited a high score in PISA, the National Institute of Education (NIE) and its private arm, NIE International Pte Lte (NIEI), carry out educational consulting in close coordination with the central government.

Through these four cases, it is apparent that a ‘global education policy market’ is on the rise. The relationship between the countries offering expertise and the countries at a disadvantage is based on the exchange of educational performance and economic resources; countries that have the advantages of educational performance impart their expertise in educational policy while the economically disadvantaged nations pay for this know-how by using their economic resources. This exchange is understood superficially as following the market mechanism. The choice is made according to the rational supply-demand relationship and both sides are expected to agree on fair terms. However, most of the countries seeking this expertise in the field of education are non-members of the OECD, and they have no seats on the PISA Governing Board. Therefore, they have no influence on the selection, definition, value setting, and frameworks of the assessment. The educational performance is unilaterally priced by the countries offering their knowledge in the field and therefore the rules for balancing supply and demand are biased. Hence, this kind of trade can possibly result in the status quo being maintained, wherein the privileged countries continue to be at an advantage and dominate while the disadvantaged remain submissive.

This asymmetric relationship is a kind of ‘Hegemony’ (Gramsci 1975). Furthermore, ‘Educational Hegemony’ has come into being through the supply of consulting services from developed countries to developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the drafting process of school finance laws during the education reform in the post-war era, through analyzing on 1) the proceedings of the Japan Education Reform Council (JERC), especially that of the 18th Ad Hoc Committee, and on 2) the Reports of Conference written by Walter E. Morgan who was Education Finance Officer at the Civil Information and Education Section.

The 18th Ad Hoc Committee was established by the JERC to discuss educational finance when the Shoup Report was submitted to the Japanese government. However, most studies reviewed the 18th committee without analyzing its proceedings. In addition, Morgan has not been seen as a key person for educational finance in the post-war reform. The lack of these points of view was caused by the fact that researchers place weight on decentralization of school finance on the basis of the Shoup Report, while they criticized the Ministry of Education, which aimed to construct a centralized system.

The findings of this study are as follows; first, school finance laws were drafted to secure“ the right to receive an equal education” described in the Constitution of Japan. Though the General Equalization Grant Law demanded a decentralization of the finance system, the members of the JERC put much value on the national minimum standard on the basis of a centralized finance system for education.

Secondly, Morgan focused on article 26 of the Constitution of Japan. He explained the need for free and compulsory education for all children and this was an obligation imposed on the government under the Constitution.

Third, school finance laws, especially the Law Concerning the Security of the Standard Compulsory Education Expense, had never proceeded to the Diet not because GHQ and GS were opposed to the laws but the Local Autonomy Office was opposed to it and urged GHQ to oppose it.