This book has a pedagogical goal in mind; it is not a scholarly work so much as anapplied text informed by scholarship and research. The book's goal is to provideindividuals who are teaching courses in comparative and international education,educational administration, educational policy, and politics of education with asupplementary text that can be used to help their students develop skills in policyanalysis, evaluation and development. As is explained in the book, the problemthat we face with respect to having students engage in "hands-on" study ofparticular cases is that by focusing on real cases, students are faced with eithervirtually unlimited data, or insufficient data (or, indeed, paradoxically with bothproblems). In addition, students come to such cases with all sorts of preconceptions that can cloud judgment in ahost of ways. By making use of fictitious case studies, though, we can carefully limit the amount of data withwhich students need to deal, and we can also minimize the challenges presented by the "baggage" that studentsmight bring with them about particular real nations.