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JIGSAW:Power and Control Over Education (Gunnarsson (Background (“As early…

- - - - • “In Latin America, as in many of the developing regions of the world, efforts to encourage school autonomy and/or community participation are aimed at making schools more productive. These efforts have taken numerous forms, including downsizing the central educational bureaucracy and modifying its functions, moving authority and responsibility to local levels of government, introducing school-based management and community-based school financing, initiating performance-based financing schemes, deregulating the choice of school books and materials, and expanding school choice through vouchers, charter schools, or open enrollment programs.
      - • “To investigate the impact of local school management on school outcomes, we use a multicountry survey carried out in 1997 over eight Latin American countries by the Latin American Laboratory of Quality of Education (LLECE).”
        
        “Our sample includes third and fourth graders in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Peru.7 The samples were constructed to include public and private schools, and schools in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas. The samples are not strictly proportional, noticeably undersampling rural children in Brazil and Chile and undersampling urban/metro children in the Dominican Republic.8 We include only the public schools in this analysis, as the private schools would not face the same constraints on local school control.”
- - - - Understanding teacher leadership through Teacher-Powered Schools
        
        “American teachers are ready and eager to play a larger and more important role in improving student learning — and the American public very much wants them to do so” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 3).
        
        “Teacher-powered schools can alleviate the tense political landscape because, when teachers share full responsibility and accountability for school success, they address the many hot-button teacher policy issues themselves.” (Education Evolving 2014, p. 3)
        
        Strong support among teachers and the public for Teacher-Powered Schools
        
        “Surprisingly, the public is even more enthusiastic about such arrangements than teachers are, likely because teachers report a healthy amount of skepticism regarding transformation of their field. Still, an overwhelming 78 percent of teachers say teacher-powered schools are a good idea, and 1 in 5 teachers say they are ready to implement teacher-powered schools today” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 6).
        
        Communities create conditions for Teacher-Powered Schools
        
        “Teacher-powered schools harness the collective wisdom, expertise, and experience of the many different stakeholders in K-12 public education — including principals and local school leaders who act in service to the teachers” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 7).
        
        “The American public is ready to know how teachers can transform public education. A new national opinion survey, commissioned by Education Evolving, a Minnesota-based education policy design and advocacy group, and conducted by Widmeyer Communications, a Finn Partners Company, found that 91 percent of Americans believe teachers should have a “great deal” or at least “some” authority in their schools” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 5).
        
        The experts support giving teachers collective authority to design and run schools
        
        “The research also included a series of focus groups among teachers. Focus group participants imagined the impact they could have if given the opportunity to make meaningful decisions in how their schools are designed and operated. They cited more consistency among classes, the ability to find the best programs, setting policies and schedules that work, better representing the interests of students, and saving money for the district in the long run” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 6).
      - Teacher-powered schools offer teachers a new deal:
        
        Teacher-Powered Schools align accountability with authority in K-12
        
        "Teacher-powered schools offer teachers a new deal: we will offer you collective authority if, in turn, you accept collective accountability."
        
        “Ever since the 1983 report “Nation at Risk” sparked broad concerns over the quality of education in the United States, local, state and federal policymakers have mandated various versions of new standards, more testing, and more accountability intended to raise student achievement and close achievement gaps” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 4).
        
        "These policies, combined with state accountability measures required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, have limited teachers’ professional autonomy to make the best decisions on behalf of their students.3 The study noted that seasoned teachers often report that they can no longer teach a rich and varied curriculum because of fears their students’ test scores will suffer – their own fears, that their principals’ fears, and their district and state leaders’ fears. Teachers are at the bottom of a hierarchical leadership pyramid, and each level of leadership imposes a new layer of accountability upon them, without providing teachers with commensurate autonomy. In short, teachers are being held accountable for the outcomes of decisions they do not make." Education Evolving, 2014, Pg. 4
        
        “In teacher-powered schools, teams of teachers collaboratively decide on the curricula, the allocation of resources, and the form of leadership. They choose their colleagues, handle evaluation, determine the schedule, and set school-level policy.” (Education Evolving, 2014, p. 5)
        
        “Across the country, a growing number of educators are exploring meaningful opportunities to transform student learning in provocative new ways, through teacher-powered schools. These teacher teams have secured authority to design and run their schools — making the decisions influencing school and student success — using a professional partnership model” (Education Evolving, 2014, pg. 3).
        
        "teacher-powered schools gives teachers the opportunity to address in innovative ways the quality of entrants to the profession, tenure policies, evaluation, achievement, and assessment".
        
        "They are proof that characteristics of high-performing cultures need not be mandated from the top but can be created by the teachers who take the initiative and make teacher-powered schools happen."
    - - Results
        
        Students’ Views of Change in Physical Education
        
        Field notes written during class observations indicate extremely high rates of participation with no notes on students sitting out, and many entries refer to high percentages of students showing on-task behaviors.
        
        Teachers’ Perception of Change
        
        “This idea that physical educators perceive their role in school to be teachers responsible for important content that students will learn and enjoy is at least equally important to change as receiving external accolades for being innovative.” (Cameron, et al., 2016, p. 47)
        
        Students’ Perspectives on Physical Education Experiences
        
        One important student perspective relates to understanding what is expected to earn a good grade.
        
        Program & Policy Change
        
        Teachers took the initiative and responsibility to adjust not only grading but also physical education content programming based on data collected from their students.
      - “Kirk and Macdonald (2001) found three dimensions of the local contexts that mediate secondary teachers’ authentic implementation of the innovation: teachers’ knowledge of their students and community, the human (skills and abilities) and material resources available to teachers, and the practical structures (including class sizes︎︎︎ and time) of teachers’ work.” (Cameron, et al., 2016, p. 35)
      - Shared Instructional Change Experience
        
        “A major catalyst for changing instruction was the PE Profile assessment package. In particular, the teachers frequently referred to their decision to try the assessments as having a noticeable effect on their teaching.” (Cameron, et al., 2016, p. 42)
      - Discussion
        
        “Results indicate that several factors identified by Fullan (2007) were instrumental in these institutionalized program changes. The quality of the innovation, the PE Profile assessment package provided by the state, and the access teachers had to learning about it through the state-provided materials and teacher workshops were important factors in the initiation phase.” (Cameron, et al., 2016, p. 52)
        
        “In this case, the student survey and interviews of random students confirmed that either students were oblivious to teachers’ changes in program or changes had improved students’ HSPE experience. Students had varied perceptions of whether there were changes and what the specific changes were.” (Cameron, et al., 2016, p. 52)
      - Methods
        
        Data Sources
        
        Throughout the study, researchers maintained engagement and continued to gather data including class observations, student assessment results, program documents, plan books, and informal interviews.
        
        Setting & Participants
        
        Permission was granted for researchers to observe, videotape, and interview during regular physical education classes.
        
        Although assessment scores, video tapes, document collection, and interviews with students and teachers were focused on the effect of assessment at first, we expanded the study to examine broader changes in the physical education program.
        
        Data Analysis
        
        These data included transcripts from two rounds of teacher and student interviews (2008 and 2012), grading policies, field notes, teacher journals, professional presentation materials, and teacher documents (e.g., block plans, handouts).
- - - - “If a school does not improve in the third year, students will also be given the option of using their share of Title I funds to pay for tutoring or other supplemental educational services.” (McGuinn, 2005, 43)
        
        “Schools that fail for four consecutive years must implement corrective actions such a replacing staff or adopting a new curriculum, and in the fifth year the failing school must be reconstituted with a new governance structure.” (McGuinn, 2005, 43)
        
        “School districts can shift up to 50 percent of the federal funds they receive for teaching improvement, innovation, technology, and safe and drug-free schools among the different programs or into Title I.” (McGuinn, 2005, 43)
    - - “Journalistic coverage of NCLB, for example, has generally implied that support for the law at the national level is tentative and emphasized the growing opposition to its mandates at the state level.” (McGuinn, 2005, 44)
        
        “Some scholars have argued that NCLB does not represent a major shift in federal education policy but rather is simply an extension of the 1994 reforms contained in Goals of 2000 and Improving America’s Schools Act.” (McGuinn, 2005, 44)
        
        “Comparing NCLB with the most recent prior reauthorization of ESEA in 1994 shows the NCLB does not take federal education policy in a new direction.” (McGuinn, 2005, 45)
        
        “Paul Manna has emphasized its derivation from earlier state education reform efforts.” (McGuinn, 2005, 45)
        
        “He has advanced what he calls a “ agenda setting” model to explain the passage of NCLB and argues that state activity on education reform put pressure on the federal government to embrace standards, accountability, and choice.” (McGuinn, 2005, 45)
        
        “As a result, by the spring of 2002, shortly after the passage of NCLB, only sixteen states had fully met the requirements of the 1994 law.” (McGuinn, 2005, 45)
    - - “For most of the nation's history the federal government had little role in elementary and secondary education and confined itself to supporting state efforts to create public schools and to collecting statistical information about them.”(McGuinn 48)
        
        Democrats embraced the nation's public school teachers and the public education establishment as core constituent groups of their evolving coalition and pushed for increased federal spending and mandates in education. The opposition of the Democratic party to education reform (as opposed to education spending) would become increasingly problematic politically, however, when federal activism across the board came under fire and when evidence of the continuing decline in public education mounted during the 1980s.
        
        The 1980s largely resulted in a stalemate as conservative proposals to abolish the Department of Education and to create private school choice programs were defeated and Democratic proposals for a significantly enlarged federal role were also blocked.
    - - In contrast to Reagan, Bush embraced a federal role in education reform and helped to legitimize the idea that the country's historically decentralized public schools needed national leader- ship to help them improve. Whereas Reagan had pushed for states to be allowed to govern their schools without federal interference, Bush gathered the nation's governors together to discuss education reform under national leadership for the first time in
        
        Congressional Republicans, however, continued to believe such measures would inevitably lead to federal control of education. Democrats feared that they would lead to the imposition of tough school accountability measures and a deemphasis on the importance of increasing federal funding
        
        Though the new laws did not include many mandates for states, they nonetheless signified a sea change in federal education policy and codified the shift from the historical focus on ensuring equity for disadvantaged students and impoverished schools to a new commitment to improve the academic performance of all students and schools.
    - - “In addition to the intense policy fights in Congress, this period also saw a very public battle over ideas as Republicans devoted considerable time and energy to convincing the public that federal involvement in education was harmful, that funding was not the key element in improving schools, and that vouchers were not a radical idea. They largely failed on all three counts. The conservative positions on education, although popular with the party's base, remained extremely unpopular with the general public and particularly with moderate swing voters.”(McGuinn 53)
    - - The political future of NCLB and the new, more assertive federal role in education will likely be determined by the extent and pace of school improvement, whether the public continues to support federal activism in schools, and the degree to which the bipartisan consensus behind the law can continue to be sustained
      - Despite claims that public opposition to NCLB has been growing, a closer analysis of public opinion data leads to a more complex-and ultimately more supportive-public view of NCLB and federal activism.
        
        It is important to acknowledge that the kinds of political pressures that helped to bring about NCLB could also ultimately undo it: public opinion can be fickle and the broader political context can change
        
        The 2004 Phi Delta Kappan poll revealed that, overall, NCLB continues to be viewed more favorably than unfavorably (24 to 20 percent), and that the favorability ratio has remained roughly constant from 2003, when 18 percent viewed it favorably and 13 percent unfavorably
- - - - From these data, I used snowball sampling to identify other central office and school site staff (and a small number of consultants) who were recommended as individuals possessing relevant knowledge about district leadership and decision making (Trujillo Pp.9).
- - - - For this board member, effectiveness and efficiency were synonymous with standardized test scores. His position represented a highly competitive, individualized notion about the factors that shaped test results. In his view, basing hiring and firing decisions on principals’ experiences leading higher or lower scoring schools, divorced from any consideration of each school’s context, seemed to be a reasonable consequence for test performance. (pg.345)