The institutional environment of America’s schools has changed substantially as government regulation has focused increasingly on the core technical work of schools—instruction. The authors explore the school administrative response to this changing environment, describing how government regulation becomes embodied in the formal structure of four schools. Working at coupling government regulation with classroom teaching, school leaders transformed the formal structure, paying particular attention to designing new organizational routines. Analyzing the performance of these routines, the authors show how both government regulation and the technical core featured prominently, if selectively, and explore how routines enabled coupling by promoting standardization through alignment with common standards, by monitoring teacher and student performance, and by making aspects of instruction transparent.

/pdf/organizational-routines-as-coupling-mechanisms-policy-school-jloff3cbk3.pdf

Organizational Routines as Coupling Mechanisms: Policy, School Administration, and the Technical Core

notice appearing later in this work. This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for non-commercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see RAND Permissions. Limited Electronic Distribution Rights Visit RAND at www.rand.org Explore RAND Education View document details For More Information Purchase this document Browse Books & Publications Make a charitable contribution Support RAND This PDF document was made available from www.rand.org as a public service of the RAND Corporation.

/pdf/improving-school-leadership-40unhgzny0.pdf

Improving School Leadership

With teacher quality repeatedly cited as the most important schooling factor influencing student achievement, there has been increased interest in examining the efficacy of teacher training programs. This paper presents the results of research investigating the relationship between teachers who graduate from different training programs and student achievement on state reading and math tests. Using a novel methodology that allows teacher training effects to decay, we find that training institution indicators explain a statistically significant portion of the variation in student achievement in reading, but not in math. Moreover, there is evidence that graduates from some specific training programs are differentially effective at teaching reading than the average teacher trained out-of-state and that these differences are large enough to be educationally meaningful.

The Gateway to the Profession: Assessing Teacher Preparation Programs Based on Student Achievement. CEDR Working Paper No. 2011-2.0.

The dialogue re-presented in this article is intended to foster mutual engagement—and opportunity for learning—across different perspectives on research within the education research community. Participants in the dialogue each addressed the following questions: (1) What are the touchstones by which you judge quality or rigor in education research (for a single study, a set of studies, or a “field” or community of researchers in dialogue)? What is your chief concern or fear that the touchstones guard against? (2) Where do you see challenges to your perspective in the perspectives of other members of the panel? How might your perspective evolve to respond to those challenges? Given all of this, what are the implications for the preparation of education researchers? Opening and closing comments set the dialogue in historical context, highlight issues raised, and suggest next steps for collaborative learning from the diversity of perspectives in our field.

Learning From Our Differences: A Dialogue Across Perspectives on Quality in Education Research:

https://www.caldercenter.org/sites/default/files/conferences/5th/Goldhaber-et-al.pdf

The Gateway to the Profession: Assessing Teacher Preparation Programs Based on Student Achievement

Contents: Part I: Introduction to Education Policy Research. S.H. Fuhrman, D.K. Cohen, F. Mosher, Preface and Acknowledgments. R. Floden, Philosophical Issues in Education Policy Research. Part II: The Making and Effects of Education Policy. L.M. McDonnell, The Politics of Education: Influencing Policy and Beyond. S.H. Fuhrman, M.E. Goertz, E.H. Weinbaum, Educational Governance in the U.S.: Where Are We? How Did We Get Here? Why Should We Care? D.K. Cohen, S.L. Moffitt, S. Goldin, Policy and Practice. P.T. Hill, New Political Economy of Public Education: Policy and Research. J.R. Henig, As Moths to a Flame: Education Policy Research and the Controversial Issues of Race. J.P. Spillane, The Making and Effects of Education Policy: Commentary. Policy, Politics, Institutions, and Markets. Part III: Policy as Resource Allocation. L. Barrow, C.E. Rouse, Causality, Causality, Causality: The View of Education Inputs and Outputs From Economics. W.N. Grubb, The Elusiveness of Educational Equity: From Revenues to Resources to Results. H.F. Ladd, Policy as Resource Allocation: Commentary. Part IV: Across the Sectors. W.S. Barnett, D.J. Ackerman, Boundaries With Early Childhood Education: The Significance of the Early Childhood Frontier for Elementary and Secondary Education. M.W. Kirst, Separation of K-12 and Postsecondary Education Policymaking: Evolution, Impact, and Research Needs. J.L. Aber, Across the Sectors: Commentary. Border Crossings: On the Relations Between the Major Age-Graded Education Systems in the United States. Part V: The Role of Education Research. F. Mosher, Knowledge and Policy. B. Neufeld, Learning, Teaching, and Keeping the Conversation Going: The Links Between Research, Policy, and Practice. R.E. Slavin, N.A. Madden, A. Datnow, Research In, Research Out: The Role of Research in the Development and Scale-Up of Success for All. C.H. Weiss, The Role of Education Research: Commentary. Can We Influence Education Reform Through Research? Part VI: Policy and Professionals. R.M. Ingersoll, Misdiagnosing the Teacher Quality Problem. T.B. Corcoran, The Changing and Chaotic World of Teacher Policy. A.R. Odden, A. Milanowski, H.G. Heneman III, Policy and Professionals: Commentary. Part VII: In Conclusion. S.H. Fuhrman, D.K. Cohen, F. Mosher, Conclusion: A Review of Policy and Research in Education.

The state of education policy research

/pdf/the-research-that-policy-needs-4bmvohulg0.pdf

Fritz Mosher

Papers

The state of education policy research

The Research that Policy Needs.

Conclusion: A Review of Policy and Research in Education