Investment in secondary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa has been neglected since the World Conference on Education for All at Jomtien. The World Education Forum at Dakar began to recognize the growing importance of post-primary schooling for development. Only 25 percent of school-age children attend secondary school in the region--and fewer complete successfully, having consequences for gender equity, poverty reduction, and economic growth. As universal primary schooling becomes a reality, demand for secondary schools is increasing rapidly. Gaps between the educational levels of the labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions remain large. Girls are more often excluded from secondary schools than boys. Secondary schooling costs are high to both governments and households. This study explores how access to secondary education can be increased. Radical reforms are needed in low-enrollment countries to make secondary schooling more affordable and to provide more access to the majority currently excluded. The report identifies the rationale for increasing access, reviews the status of secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa, charts the growth needed in different countries to reach different levels of participation, identifies the financial constraints on growth, and discusses the reforms needed to make access affordable. It concludes with a road map of ways to increase the probability that more of Africa's children will experience secondary schooling.

Because what we do in staff development can best be understood in terms of Contexts, Strategies, and Structures, the remainder of the book features distinguished educators who write from their own unique experiential and theoretical stances. Jacqueline Ancess describes how teachers in New York City secondary schools increase their own learning while improving student outcomes • Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Joel Zarrow demonstrate how teachers learn to use data to improve their practice and meet educational standards • Lynne Miller presents a case study of a long-lived school, university partnership • Beverly Falk recounts stories of teachers working together to develop performance assessments, to understand their student’s learning, to re-think their curriculum, and much more • Laura Stokes analyzes a school that successfully uses inquiry groups. There are further contributions (including some from novice teachers) by Anna Richert Ershler, Ann Lieberman, Diane Wood, Sarah Warshauer Freedman, and Joseph P. McDonald. These powerful exemplars from practice provide a much-needed overview of what matters and what really works in professional development today.