Showing papers in "Educational Policy in 2011"

Imaging the Frame: Media Representations of Teachers, Their Unions, NCLB, and Education Reform.

Abstract: This article examines the political discourse surrounding NCLB, educational reform, and how that discourse shaped perceptions of public education during the Bush Administration. Examining mass media campaigns in the New York Times and Time Magazine, the article demonstrates how the media has visually and textually framed and reinforced NCLB and market reforms as the only solution to address the failures of public education by attacking teachers’ unions and individual teachers. Visual and textual data were collected, cataloged, and analyzed employing frame analysis in concert with critical discourse and visual analysis.Analysis revealed that media framing presented an overwhelmingly negative image of teachers’ unions as opposed to NCLB and other school reform efforts. Even in the rare instances where unions were presented positively, the debate resonated with general public perception so that even when individuals or the general public are critical of NLCB and educational reform efforts, they support overa...

Participatory action research for high school students: Transforming policy, practice, and the personal with social justice education

Abstract: The authors discuss how participatory action research (PAR) informs the pedagogy and epistemology of the social justice education. PAR facilitates students’ engagement in their social context and acquisition of knowledge to initiate personal and social transformation. The scope of research contains knowledge about social justice issues negatively influencing the students’ experiences. This knowledge is essential for what has been described as social justice youth development in which young people participate in practices geared toward achieving an egalitarian world with safe, vibrant neighborhoods that support healthy,positive youth identities.The article is based on program evaluation data collected for progress reports mandated by the project’s financial backers. Funding supports technical assistance provided by the university in the way of teaching students qualitative research methods. The authors’ roles involve both assisting the course instructor with teaching methodologies and collecting data for e...

Contested Communities in a Debate Over Dual-Language Education: The Import of “Public” Values on Public Policies:

Abstract: This study examines how public debate can shape school district policy. Using qualitative methods and an interdisciplinary framework that weaves an interpretive approach to policy implementation wi...

High Stakes Accountability and Policy Implementation: Teacher Decision Making in Bilingual Classrooms in Texas

Abstract: This article contributes to an emerging body of literature on the impact of high stakes testing accountability policies on implementation and teaching practice. It uses a theory of implementation, sense-making, to highlight the process by which policy and context shape teacher decision making. We focus on teachers in bilingual classrooms in an urban district in Texas where we found that teachers make decisions in an environment that exerts both formal and informal pressures to limit the curriculum they offer their students and privilege test preparation. Teachers struggle to reconcile their context, constituted by their students’ specific pedagogical and linguistic needs, with the pressures of their high stakes testing environment.

Examining Retention and Contingent Faculty Use in a State System of Public Higher Education

Abstract: In many cases, state systems of higher education are not only challenged to address decreasing state budgets but are also asked to increase student retention and other measures of student success. The increased use of contingent faculty may help economically, but this trend may have unintended consequences. This research used logistic regression methods to examine six institutions within a public higher education system for the effects of contingent faculty use on first-year student retention. A thorough examination of other traditional variables used in retention studies is also provided. Results are reported by institutional type via Carnegie classification. Most notably, high levels of exposure to part-time faculty in the first year of college are consistently found to negatively affect student retention to the second year. These findings have implications for both policy and practice in the use of contingent faculty across institutional types.

Evaluating School Improvement Plans and their Affect on Academic Performance

Abstract: The development of a school improvement plan (SIP) has become an integral part of many school reform efforts. However, there are almost no studies that empirically examine the effectiveness of SIPs. The few studies examining the planning activities of organizations have generally focused on the private sector and have not provided clear or consistent evidence that such planning is effective. Some studies have even suggested formal planning can lead to inflexible and myopic practices or may simply waste time and resources. This study explores the relationship between the quality of SIPs and school performance by examining a unique dataset from the Clark County School District, the fifth largest school district in the nation. The study finds that, even when controlling for a variety of factors, there is a strong and consistent association between the quality of school planning and overall student performance in math and reading.

Policies and programming for safer schools: Are ‘anti-bullying’ approaches impeding education for peacebuilding?

Abstract: Prevailing anti-violence practices in public schools, especially in the context of recently increased emphasis on bullying, often allocate more resources to surveillance and control than to facilitation of healthy relationships or conflict/ peace learning. This policy emphasis increases the risks of marginalization and reduces opportunities for diverse students to develop autonomy and mutual responsibility. This qualitative study examines educators' contrasting interpretations of various school safety and conflict management initiatives in practice, in peaceful and less peaceful schools serving stressed urban populations, and points out spaces for potential policy shifts and clarifications that could enhance sustainable peacebuilding in schools.

An Examination of the McKinney-Vento Act and Its Influence on the Homeless Education Situation.

Abstract: This article describes the central elements of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and, drawing from Spillane’s distributed leadership perspective, examines the policy’s impact on the homele...

Reviewing Policy: Starting the Wrong Conversations: The Public School Crisis and “Waiting for Superman”:

Abstract: The documentary “Waiting for Superman” has become one of those rare things, a (supposed) documentary that generates a wider audience. It also is one of the more recent embodiments of what Nancy Fraser (1989) labels as the “politics of needs and needs discourses.” Dominant groups listen carefully to the language and issues that come from below. They then creatively appropriate the language and issues in such a way that very real problems expressed by multiple movements are reinterpreted through the use of powerful groups’ understandings of the social world and of how we are to solve “our” problems. This is exactly what is happening in education; and it is exactly what this film tries to accomplish. We critically examine the arguments and assumptions that the film makes, as well as how it makes them. In the process, we demonstrate how it elides crucial questions, contradicts many of its own claims, and acts to close off the kinds of substantive discussions that are essential for serious educational reforms.

Colliding Worlds: Practical and Political Tensions of Prekindergarten Implementation in Public Schools

Abstract: This chapter examines how the previously distinct worlds of early childhood education (ECE) and K-12 public school education are being drawn together through the recent and rapid advances of prekindergarten programming in the United States. Tensions around teaching philosophies, teacher qualifications, and financing are presented to illustrate the complexities involved in bridging the ECE and K-12 worlds. Common theories from the Politics of Education, including Policy Innovation Diffusion Theory, Institutional Theory, and Micropolitics are used to further understand current trends and issues around prekindergarten implementation, as well as to identify areas for future investigation. Despite the inherent tensions, prekindergarten has the potential to serve as a bridge between these two historically distinct systems, resulting in a better overall education system for young children.

Countering the Politics of Class, Race, Gender, and Geography in Early Childhood Education

Abstract: Mirroring many of the same social and geographic inequities present in the K-12 educational system, the promise of early childhood education has been unfulfilled for many young children and their families. Social norms and funding structures, including the lack of universal, publicly funded high-quality preschool offerings, have served to perpetuate gender, class, economic, and racial inequity. The outcomes of these inequities are clearly manifested in the politics of universal preschool access and quality. In this policy analysis, the author discusses disparities in preschool access and quality, critiques social and political barriers to equitable distribution of preschool resources, and suggests several strategies for countering the current politics of class, race, gender, and geography in early childhood education. Findings from this analysis suggest that in order to provide high-quality early childhood education for all children, policy makers and advocates must address structural and attitudinal inequities.

An Examination of Compulsory School Attendance Ages and High School Dropout and Completion

Abstract: An increasingly popular, but underresearched, initiative aimed at reducing high school dropout is raising the compulsory school attendance age. This study used a national data set from academic years 2001-02 to 2005-06 to examine the grade level at which students drop out, rates of dropout over time, and high school completion by state, region of the country, and compulsory school attendance ages of 16, 17, and 18. Results indicated that the compulsory school attendance age had a small relationship with the timing of dropout but no meaningful relationship with high school graduation. Also, no discernible pattern of reductions in drop-out rates was evident for states that raised their attendance ages. Implications and the effective prevention strategies are discussed.

Early Care and Education as Educational Panacea: What Do We Really Know About Its Effectiveness?

Abstract: Most young children in the United States regularly spend time in early care and education (ECE) settings. Institutionalized messages surrounding ECE claim that it has the potential to promote children’s life-long success, especially among low-income children. I examine the legitimacy of these claims by reviewing empirical evidence that bears on them and find that most are based on results of a small set of impressive but outdated studies. More recent literature reveals positive, short-term effects of ECE programs on children’s development that weaken over time. Efforts to support children’s long-term success must extend beyond the ECE setting into elementary school.

The Federal Role in Early Childhood Education: Evolution in the Goals, Governance, and Policy Instruments of Project Head Start

Abstract: The authors analyze bills, congressional records, agency reports, and newspaper articles to trace the evolution of Project Head Start, by far the nation’s largest federal early childhood program, beginning with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Their analysis is organized around the policy goals embedded in the program and the governance structures and policy instruments designed to achieve those goals. Findings reveal that the life of Head Start has been marked by periods of policy expansion and relative stasis. Expansion has occurred most notably in the policy instruments through which services have been delivered while stasis has characterized program governance.

Unequal Power Relations and Inclusive Education Policy Making: A Discursive Analytic Approach.

Abstract: In order to challenge individual deficit imperatives and discursive binaries of “normality and abnormality,” which have traditionally held sway over the education of children with presumed special educational needs (SEN), it is crucial to provide alternative and, hence, liberating, theorizations of special education. These new theorizations should be conceptualized and articulated in terms of the incessant interplay of unequal power relationships. This article aims to use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to expose the ways in which children with presumed SEN are disempowered by the policy framework of a particular sociopolitical context. In so doing it will be possible to expose and critically examine the ways that power manifests itself through language, thus identifying and demystifying the interplay of unequal power relationships that give rise to and perpetuate discursive fabrications of “normality” and “special educational needs.”

Curriculum Differentiation and Comprehensive School Reform: Challenges in Providing Educational Opportunity.

Abstract: Given the efforts of comprehensive school reform to improve the quality of educational opportunities for students by providing a standards based curriculum, this analysis examines the issue of tracking and its implications regarding curriculum differentiation. Using data from middle schools involved with the comprehensive school reform model, America’s Choice, this mixed method analysis shows a complex manifestation of curriculum differentiation where schools had multiple types of academic tracks that responded to students differences including comprehensive learning groups, subject-specific groups, and temporary learning groups used for test preparation. Although school-level reports indicated that most regular education and gifted students were exposed to the America’s Choice English Language Arts and mathematics units, special education students and English Language learners were least likely to gain access to this content. Individual teacher responses to tracking were idiosyncratic where some modified...

International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education

Abstract: In this chapter Dr. Cochran uses an empirically based overarching conceptual framework linking historical patterns, current policy goals and intervening influences as a tool for understanding the p...

Declaring Bankruptcy on Educational Inequity

Abstract: The authors consider Ladson-Billings’ (2006) charge to reframe the way the ‘achievement gap’ is viewed, and put forth the metaphor of “bankruptcy” as a way to acknowledge the educational debt and e...

Is the Outcry for More Pilot Schools Warranted? Democracy, Collective Bargaining, Deregulation, and the Politics of School Reform in Boston:

Abstract: Using a theoretical lens of democratic education, this study critically analyzes pilot schools in the Boston Public School system, a school model gaining influence and imitation around the United States Building on theories regarding the role of democracy in schools, and especially workplace democracy, this article juxtaposes these conceptions of democracy with competing economic theories of marketization, privatization, antiunionism, and individualism, here referred to as neoliberalism, and analyzes the political terrain onto which pilot schools emerged, are debated, and understoodThe Boston Teachers Union first conceptualized, and bargained for, pilot schools in the early 1990s However, the union has since come under criticism from influential individuals and groups for resisting or slowing the expansion of this reform This study examines the proposition that more pilot schools should be created and argues that insufficient evidence exists to warrant the current outcry for pilot school expansion

Financing Early Childhood Education Programs: State, Federal, and Local Issues:

Abstract: The landscape of financing early childhood education in the U.S. is complex. Programs run the gamut from tuition-supported private centers to public programs supported by federal, state, or local funds. Different funding streams are poorly coordinated. The federal government funds several major targeted programs that are available only to specific subgroups of children. States have also tended to offer targeted programs, though in recent years several states have committed to serving all children at age 4. Types of finance models used in state preschool initiatives are examined in detail, and future opportunities to build a more cohesive system are explored.

Accountability Policies and Readiness for College for Diverse Students

Abstract: Following a national trend, state policy has focused on accountability measures such as high-stakes high school exit exams, standards-based reforms, and graduation curriculum requirements. Yet the effect of these accountability policies on students’ readiness for college is relatively untested. In a multilevel model (students within states), the study asked, “Are accountability school reform policies positively or negatively associated with readiness for college for students from different ethnic and income groups?” Exit exam policies and degree of implementation of state standards were not significantly related to academic readiness as measured by composite SAT scores. Math graduation numeric curriculum requirements were negatively related to SAT score for Whites.

Who and What Influences School Leaders’ Decisions: An Institutional Analysis of the Implementation of Universal Prekindergarten

Abstract: School-community interactions facilitate connections between schools and their local surroundings; however, these relationships are subject not only to local political, economic, and social influences but also to broader political and institutional forces. Educational administrators’ decisions about programming and partnering can be considered in light of who influences these decisions and why, as well as why administrators make these decisions. Leaders make partnering decisions using either or both local input and institutional level beliefs (Arum, 2000). Why educational leaders make decisions, like with whom and why to partner, is often related to regulations, norms, or deep-seated beliefs in the school or local culture (Scott, 2001). Data from case studies of five rural school districts in New York State provides a window onto the decision-making process surrounding the implementation, maintenance, and partnering involved in the implementation of a new statewide Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) program...

Job queues, certification status, and the education labor market

Abstract: This research explores the interaction between training programs and certification status in one education labor market to examine the micro-level interactions that shape the recruitment process. Using job queue theory, it is found that the information available to novice teachers operates to stratify and shape their worksite choices in addition to stratifying workers by their certification status. Traditionally trained teachers use the formal and informal knowledge garnered during training to identify preferred worksites, citing poverty levels, student achievement, and the administration as important factors in the decision-making process. Conversely, alternatively trained teachers are channeled into disadvantaged schools and, constrained by limited occupational knowledge, select a worksite based on personal interactions. Accountability policies and teacher training programs interact to stratify schools and teachers in the education labor market.

The Rush Toward Universal Public Pre-K: A Media Analysis

Abstract: Research has shown for decades that early childhood education contributes to long term increases in student achievement for all children, but what is motivating the current movement toward universa...

Did the No Child Left Behind Act Miss the Mark? Assessing the Potential Benefits From an Accountability System for Early Childhood Education:

Abstract: With growing evidence that human capital investment is more efficiently spent on younger children coupled with wide variation in preschool access across states, this article uses a neoliberal approach to examine the potential social costs and benefits that could accrue should the United States decide to implement a centralized preschool accountability system. Conceptual agency-based arguments that support implementing a preschool accountability system are compared and contrasted with conceptual arguments that oppose centralized accountability. In spite of credible conceptual arguments that local control over preschool access maximizes efficiency, we find the most support for an accountability system that enhances equity through universal access to preschool.

Educational Equity in Spain and Norway: A Comparative Analysis of Two OECD Country Notes.

Abstract: This article undertakes a comparative study of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) thematic reviews on “equity in education” for Spain and Norway. The author investigates whether there may be a similar orientation to equity expressed in the two reviews and discusses how social stratification may occur within the recommendations to improve equity. The author claims that special attention should be paid to how “multiculturalism” is combined with “national measurements of key performance indicators” and how the “objective” definition of schools as good or bad through national testing may affect the demography of the schools. Targeting the inequity that may arise through a conservative modernization, the author finds that it is important to employ an expanded concept of “educational policy.”

Have We Been Here before? Lessons Learned from a Microhistory of the Policy Development of Universal Kindergarten.

Abstract: This article historicizes the collision of K-12 public schooling and early childhood education by interrogating the ways in which people called for and implemented the public kindergarten into primary school over the past century. Using a theoretical framework that pays attention to the ways in which policy develops over time we provide a microhistory of one city, Austin, Texas. The historical narrative relates the details of the individuals who were engaged in the debate over kindergarten in the early 20th century while at the same time explicating the context that shaped those individuals. We conclude by using this portrait of the past to make sense of the current policy issues and to raise questions about the assumptions that circulate within today’s policy environment.

Teacher Unionization in School Governance.

Abstract: The role of unions in school governance is reviewed to note that labor operates in a larger context of principal—agent relationships As agents for teachers, unions articulate the concerns that mus

Civic Capacity in Educational Reform Efforts: Emerging and Established Regimes in Rust Belt Cities:

Abstract: Using urban regime theory, the article examines two Rust Belt cities that tried to break the cycle of social reproduction in their communities by reforming their schools. The article contributes to the development of urban regime theory by comparing an emerging regime to an established regime. The comparison highlights the interdependent nature of regimes’ engagement, purpose, and civic capacity.

Sound Bites Won't Prepare the Next Generation: Early Childhood Teacher Education Policy Public-Private Divide in Massachusetts.

Abstract: The political emphasis on early education speaks of growing expectations for equal access and the need to ensure quality—by way of standard accountability measures—on behalf of all young children. ...