kismetcapitan

It sounds like you are not looking into education policy. Make sure the programs you do look at are exactly what you're seeking; generally speaking, when you see "international education program" it's about education policy in other countries.

Vanderbilt is effectively "2.5 years" - you don't get the summer off between year 1 and year 2 as a practicum is required. Some people wonder about Vanderbilt's networking because Nashville isn't exactly an international education policy hotspot. Peabody's network is strong, because Peabody alumni are everywhere where the action is. Plus, Vanderbilt's IEPM program has a fair amount of crossover with the MPP program, and there are opportunities with the Tennessee Dept of Education. While this may not seem to make much sense for an international education policy student, knowing in depth how our system works is a valuable asset when working with education systems in other countries.

Two years versus one makes a big difference. I honestly don't know how one can really gain true expertise in such a complicated field with a 9 month program that's essentially a comparative overview. That being said, Vanderbilt does spend quite a bit of time in the first year requiring you to master the skills required for research (i.e. stats). You don't need to be an expert in how research data comes to conclusions to argue policy, but if research/PhD is in your future, or if you simply want the skills to know if your data is on point or misleading, then the painful process of passing 1st year statistics at Vanderbilt is worth its weight in gold.

GRE scores matter at Peabody. No particularly good reason why, but they do. GPA matters less than other salient factors (SOP, recommendations, etc); this is according to my advisor.

you would be well served at Vanderbilt. The IEPM program is rigorous and more than twice as long as other M.Ed programs, but it's worth it (so I keep telling myself!!). Your area of interest is definitely covered; I had to write a paper on low-cost private schools filling the gap that public schools are unable to fulfill; they're cropping up everywhere; Kenya, Uganda, Jamaica, you name it. There's a Ph.D candidate writing his dissertation on these schools. two people in my cohort spent the summer practicum working in Kenya on literacy and other issues. Spin a globe and pick anywhere - someone's covering it here. But in regards to East Africa, my advisor spent a LOT of time there in his early research years.

if you have a burning single question, can research better than Google, and want to live like a monk, PhD is for you. You can also research and publish for the rest of your life. if you want doctoral level training, Ed.D is the ticket. Some schools allow you to do a dissertation with an Ed.D - this can give you some of the career benefits of a PhD. One analogy would be to consider law - a J.D. (doctor of law), versus a PhD in jurisprudence. Depends on what you want to do. A Ph.D makes little sense in K-12 education, either teaching or admin, but an Ed.D does. In policy though, like if you wanted to work on policy at the World Bank or a major foundation, that's when you really need a Ph.D.

well, according to the Gates Foundation massive Measures of Effective Teaching study, an M.Ed has no statistical significance in predicting teacher quality. You can however recover much of the cost through pay raises by holding the degree. But for policy, research, and a doctorate, M.Ed is the first step, and an important one.

I haven't decided yet - Building Excellent Schools contacted me out of the blue, I have an option with the Tennessee Dept of Education (they pay!), but I was locked out of my first choice - the Vanderbilt/Abu Dhabi project; I can't get in until September. Our professors do a lot of legwork and phone calls to match us all up with internships that we either ask for, or if we have no idea, what they believe will fit well. There's only 20 of us in the cohort, so it's pretty easy for them to know what would fit well, as they know us very, very personally. Some people in my cohort were panicking about the internship, but at this point, even those who didn't do much work on applying have been hooked up with good internships. I'd count out UNESCO though - in the international policy field, while they write interesting papers, their proposals are impractical and anyways they don't have the funding to make anything happen. It's even worse with the whole Palestine/US defunding debacle and the $65 million budget deficit they're running. For serious research, McKinsey and the Gates Foundation are really on the cutting edge, and Peabody is strongly linked with the World Bank; if you want to be somewhere where you are really part of the action, they've got the money to put their policies into action very quickly.

Peabody's domestic ed policy program hits everything you mentioned. Even as an international ed policy major, I still had to cover all of those domestic issues, either in research statistics, or in my K-12 policy class. One year ago, I wouldn't have known any of those issues you listed, but now, I could debate on all of those issues in depth. In fact, I'm currently procrastinating on a term paper on teacher recruiting systems in OECD nations, and linking that to PISA scores and ultimately economic development. Today in stats class, there was a long debate over TVAAS value-added metrics, not just the statistical formulas and standard deviations (and how to interpret the implications), but whether value-added is a good policy move or not in the first place, especially considering how much that factored into Tennessee winning Race To The Top funding. Needless to say, it got pretty fiery! I wrote a midterm on private schools and school choice (both domestic and internationally), and we've done a lot of discussions this term about high-stakes testing. My advisor has written a few papers on the implications of high-stakes testing; he doesn't think very highly of it. I'm possible interning at Vanderbilt's Institute of Global Health, and getting a Certificate in Global Health Education is an option for both domestic and international ed policy students here. And the professor who has done the first randomized controlled study on merit pay teaches one of the statistics sections - I avoided that because A: I'm not a fan of his paper (Springer 2010) and B: his class is a lot harder than the other section Education finance is an elective for the second year; haven't decided if I'll take it or not yet. The PhD folks here get a couple years to shop around before really zeroing in on their burning question; Vanderbilt might be a good fit for you, but it's gotten very selective ever since US News started ranking us #1 (league tables are crap; I did a stats project with the 2010 US News dataset to show how little you can change a Z score weighting and get big shifts in rankings). You have the numbers, but what really matters is if you know what you're talking about, which you do. Make sure your application reflects that. And if you're looking at a second master's, you might consider doing it here; it's two years, but very in depth - I've only got one year in the M.Ed program but I've had to write research papers or exams on pretty much everything you listed!

Vanderbilt requires a study abroad practicum between the first and second year. Actually, it's more of a "work abroad", as we're placed in internships around the world. These internships generally set the groundwork for where someone will work after graduation.

very few members of my cohort plan on teaching after graduation; where we're headed are big NGOs or the World Bank - there's a developmental economics program here at Vanderbilt as well, and the difference boils down to this: they have intensive econ core classes, and we're education policy specialists, but that's about it. They're more broadly trained for general economic development policy, where we're specialists in using education for development. I was a teacher for a long time and didn't see myself as a macro policy person; nearing the end of my first year, that has completely changed. With our employment prospects, those of us with loans aren't too worried.

I'm halfway through Vanderbilt's two-year program, and I can definitely say that it's a LOT more like an international M.P.P. program than an 8-month M.Ed.

for what it's worth, there are a LOT of research jobs at Peabody that can cover up to 100% of your tuition. About 2/3rds of my cohort are covering their tuition that way. if you're certain you just need your certification and that's it, go cheap and go local. If you think you'll do anything outside of the classroom, you'll want to be at Peabody. I'm in the policy department, but I do know that there's crazy research money and projects going on in pedagogy and curriculum development (teaching and learning), and a lot of interesting things they're cooking up over there.

it depends on the school: some schools are more flexible than others in what regions students can do research in, some schools require more original research than others. Do a quick search for a literature review on Cambodia; a lack of it may not bode well for M.Ed studies - that'd be Ph.D territory.

Vanderbilt requires a thesis, and it is a yearlong project to write that paper during the second year. International education at Vanderbilt is more like a two-year M.P.P. - it's all policy. re: applying, it's less of a numbers game than you think. Experience matters, a lot. With a lot of international experience, you'll probably not have any problems getting in pretty much everywhere.