Since at least the 1980s, countries all over the world have prioritized the improvement of educational quality. The amount of education reform globally increased dramatically beginning in this decade and continued through 2010 (Bromley et al. 2023). Quality reform discourse around the world increased both in absolute number and as a proportion of all education reforms during the peak decades of this wave of reform. While countries continued to adopt reforms to expand equitable access to education, a defining characteristic of this recent education reform wave is the dramatic increase in reform discourse focused on improving a narrowly defined conception of quality related to learning outcomes and constrained by what can be quantified and measured (Overbey 2023). What explains the dramatic rise cross-nationally in national education reforms to improve educational quality? To answer this question, this study draws on education reforms from the World Education Reform Database (WERD) adopted in 143 countries between 1960 and 2018. Using negative binomial regression modeling, the study analyzes how factors related to a country’s need or capacity to improve quality, such as the level of economic development, level of democracy, or features of the national education system, may explain variation in the amount of quality reform a country adopts. Alongside country characteristics, the analysis also considers the role of global influences on national quality reform discourse such as a country’s linkages to international civil society and participation in international assessments. The results of the analysis show some positive association between country characteristics and the level of quality reform discourse. Countries with strong democracies with an active domestic civil society are more likely to adopt quality reforms. The results also show that global influences also play an important role. Countries with stronger linkages to world society, as measured by the amount of international non-governmental organization (INGO) memberships and the amount of education related research it produces. Countries that have historically participated in more assessments are also more likely to adopt quality reforms. The results lend support to arguments that the dramatic rise in quality reform discourse is part of the broader global cultural process of rationalization in the approaches to improve education and the scientization of educational problems that underlie the increase in measurement, data, and research observed during the decades of neoliberal education reform (Schofer et al. 2003).

Bromley, Patricia, Jared Furuta, Rie Kijima, Lisa Overbey, Minju Choi, and Heitor Santos. 2023. “Global Determinants of Education Reform, 1960 to 2017.” Sociology of Education 96(2):149–67. doi: 10.1177/00380407221146773. Overbey, Lisa. 2023. What's in a Wave? The Content of Neoliberal Education Reforms, 1970–2018, Wiseman, A.W. (Ed.) Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2022 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 46A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 91-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792023000046A007 Schofer, Evan, John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and Gili S. Drori. 2003. Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.