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Divvy Group: Week 11 (Education Evolving (• “social capital, particularly…

- - - - There are substantial differences across countries in how decisions are made regarding teacher hiring, evaluation, and compensation. In Argentina and Peru, hiring promotion and salary decisions are made at the state or provincial level, while in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, it is the national authorities that manage personnel matters.
        
        o The contribution of this study is to formally confront the decision by the local authority of whether or not to exercise control over the school. Rather than presuming the local school managerial effort is determined exclusively by legislative fiat, we assume that the local authority can choose how much effort to exert in running the school. As a consequence, the exertion of local authority must be treated as an endogenous variable and estimates that treat the exercise of local authority as exogenous will be biased.
- - - - Central dictates that are aimed at maximizing welfare on average may oversupply the service in some areas and undersupply it in others. Local officials should respond better to local needs because they are more exposed to pressure from constituents and because they may use quality public services to attract or retain residents.(Gunnarsson,Orazem,Sanchez, & Verdisco, 2009 pg. 26)
- - - - Dissatisfaction item: This has made me feel dissatisfied in my thinking. I have always known that schools should be equal in their test taking and strategies or standards. We must have our own standards, but still include others. This has just expanded my thinking.
        
        Fruitfulness term: This has also made me think differently, I have always known that things should be equal, but the fact that we must address this, seems as an issue that is somewhat unsettling with myself.
    - - “’Highly qualified’ is specified as meaning that a teacher must be fully certified or licensed, have a bachelor’s degree, and show competence in subject knowledge and teaching skills. NCLB mandates that every state and school district issue report cards that detail student test scores and identify those schools that have failed to meet proficiency targets and are in need of ‘program improvement’” (McGuinn, pg. 42)
    - - “The law's accountability provisions escalating actions with Title I schools that do not reach state performance objectives. A school that fails to meet state performance targets for two consecutive years must be given technical assistance from the district to help it improve, and students in that school must be given the option to transfer to another public school in the district” (McGuinn, pg. 42)
      - “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. Schools that fail for four consecutive years must implement corrective actions such as replacing staff or adopting a new curriculum, and in the fifth year the failing school must be reconstituted with a new governance structure (e.g., reopening as a charter school)” (McGuinn, pg. 43)
- - - - This study also contributes to the literature on district effectiveness. This rapidly growing field considers, among other things, the relationship between different district governance structures and student performance, usually measured by standardized test scores (Trujillo, in press). (pg.338)
      - These studies show that more centralized districts, that is, districts that create policies for standardsaligned curricula, assessments, and training; standardized instructional routines; and test-centered monitoring and evaluation, typically experience test growth (Elmore & Burney, 1997; Firestone, Mangin, Martinez, & Polovsky, 2004; Massell & Goertz, 2002; Murphy & Hallinger, 1988). (pg.338)
      - “While these studies shed light on the technical structures that are linked with higher test performance, they tend to lack analyses that look beyond effects on test scores to consider the potential of different forms of district governance for furthering local democratic conditions.” (Trujillo, 2012, p. 339)
      - This framework enables me to investigate the observations of scholars in the politics of education who reason that reforms intended to maximize effectiveness and efficiency may be eroding public, democratic school governance (Kirst, 2004; Mintrom, 2001; Plank & Boyd, 1994). (pg.339)
    - - Study Design
        
        This study employed a qualitative, case study design of one urban school board in which I triangulated multiple data sources to better understand board members’ and their superintendent’s experiences making decisions within a high stakes accountability policy system (Stake, 2010)l (Trujillo Pp.8).
      - Data Collection and Analysis
        
        Data sources included 72 interviews with 46 participants, 59.5 hours of meeting observations, and 49 documents and secondary data (Trujillo Pp.9).
        
        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).
      - The State and Federal
        Policy Context
        
        The state sets API targets for each school and district; the overall goal is at least 800. At the time of the study, low scores were met with federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) corrective actions. NCLB mandated that states institute sanctions for those districts unable to consistently meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets—changing curriculum, replacing staff, and closure. The sanctions were intended to motivate district leaders to craft policies that improved teaching and learning to ward off intervention (Trujillo Pp.10).
      - The District Context: Ignacio School District
        
        "Ignacio School District is located in a major urban area. Roughly 80,000 residents comprise the economically depressed city of Ignacio. Its families’ median household income was just under US$42,000; the per capita income was slightly above US$11,000, figures significantly below the state’s figures of US$53,000 and US$23,000, respectively (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000)” (Trujillo, 2012, 343).
      - Accountability pressures, particularly in districts serving low-income children of color, have compelled central office administrators to standardize curricular and instructional approaches to efficiently evade sanctions (Trujillo, in press). (pg.341
        
        In 2002, 1 year after the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act, the Ignacio School District’s board of education voted unanimously to hire a new superintendent. Every board member recalled their aim at the time: to hire a strong leader who would help them avoid federal sanctions by rapidly, dramatically changing the district’s standardized test performance. (pg.344)
        
        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)
        
        This logic mirrors the individualized goals for teaching and means of achievement that distinguish competition-driven, market-based reform and accountability. It also reveals how at least one member lacked broader, more collective goals for student learning. (pg.345)
        
        For these board members, the weight of high-stakes testing appeared to create not just school- and district-level pressures to produce results, but also individual-level pressures when board members interpreted test scores as singular indications of employees’ worth. The result was a new set of stakes that encompassed principals’ and teachers’ personal livelihood, and about which decisions were made privately, rather than through more legitimate, public, and impartial means. (pg.348)
    - - From a democratic perspective, McNeil (2002) also reasoned that high-stakes pressures reduce “public education to a private good by measuring, and thereby validating, only highly individualized means of achievement” (p. 245). Yet her observation that “standardized accountability systems have been studied and debated more for their effects on achievement than for their potential to reshape the societal basis underlying a public education” (2002, p. 245) suggests that much remains to be understood about the dynamics between accountability and democratic social processes (Trujillo Pp. 2).
      - The major research questions
        that guided this study were:
        
        What were the board members’ goals for teaching and learning? (Trujillo Pp.3).
        
        How did board members approach decision making and opportunities for local participation? (Trujillo Pp.3).
        
        What types of instructional and administrative practices did board members promote? (Trujillo Pp.3).
      - This article addresses this gap by examining the relationship between one urban school board and the democratic governance processes that were advanced or hindered under high-stakes accountability conditions. It uses in-depth, qualitative case study data to show how high-stakes pressures coincided with board members’ individualized goals for teaching and learning; autocratic decision making and participation; and standardized curricular and instructional practices(Trujillo Pp.3).
      - If you go into Program Improvement, what you eventually lose is the chance for the people up here to do their job.” The leader of this mostly Latino, working class district was referring to NCLB sanctions for persistently low-performing districts. In his and his board members’ eyes, federal consequences for low performance represented grave threats to their autonomy. (pg.335)
        
        Of particular concern were the law’s latter-stage corrective actions for districts consistently deemed in need of “Program Improvement”—mandated restructuring, superintendent or board member removal, and even the abolishment of entire districts. These were stakes that neither the board nor the superintendent was willing to risk. (pg.335)
        
        They are also the stakes that have garnered the attention of multiple scholars. Policy analysts have found either weak or inconclusive evidence of highstakes policies’ effectiveness in boosting test scores (National Research Council, 2011; Mintrop & Sunderman, 2009; Trujillo & Renée, 2012). (pg.335)
        
        Studies have revealed the detrimental impacts of such pressures on instructional quality, particularly for poor children, children of color, and English Learners in urban settings (Booher-Jennings, 2005; Valenzuela, 2004; Mintrop & Trujillo, 2007; Trujillo, 2012).(pg.335)
        
        Other research has detailed the racial and socioeconomic segregation (Lipman, 2004b) and organizational instability that ensue from accountability policies (Mathis, 2009). McNeil (2002) concluded that accountability language and the dominance of standardized tests shifts the locus of control from local actors to far-removed “experts” (p. 244). (pg.335)
    - - “Finally, Mintrom reminds us that democratic governance recognizes different educational philosophies and allows communities to collaboratively pursue practices that are keyed to local needs.” (Trujillo, 2012, p. 341)
      - Accountability pressures, particularly in districts serving low-income children of color, have compelled central office administrators to standardize curricular and instructional approaches to efficiently evade sanctions (Trujillo, in press). (pg.341)
    - - Finding 1
        
        “In the eyes of most board members, the API represented the ultimate goals toward which all schools should strive.” (Trujillo, 2012, p. 344)
        
        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)
      - Finding 2
        
        “The result was a culture of fear, coercion, and autocratic decision making as seen by most central office and school employees I interviewed.” (Trujillo, 2012, p. 349)
      - Finding 3
        
        “In doing so, the board members promoted centrally determined, standardized curricular and instructional practices that were in line with more privatized educational philosophies and approaches to teaching.” (Trujillo, 2012, p. 349)
    - - Collectively, this research provides an important introduction to particular dimensions of urban school boards, namely, their complex relationships with superintendents, their potential influence on teaching and learning, and the political repercussions of their electoral conditions. Yet researchers have paid little attention to the role of testing, standards, and high-stakes accountability in the daily work of school boards (for an exception, see Feuerstein & Dietrich, 2003) (Trujillo Pp.5).
        District Effectiveness
      - “For more than 200 years, the public has relied on elected boards to govern public education and to, presumably, serve as sites of democratic deliberation. After the turn of the century, in response to concerns over corruption and a lack of confidence in lay people’s capacity to govern increasingly diverse urban communities, business and university elites abolished locally elected ward boards and dramatically centralized district control according to a “corporate model” of schooling.” (Trujillo, 2012, p. 337)
      - Nonetheless, little empirical research has rigorously examined the relationship between such policies and local boards’ specific democratic governance functions. (pg.337)
        
        This study also contributes to the literature on district effectiveness. This rapidly growing field considers, among other things, the relationship between different district governance structures and student performance, usually measured by standardized test scores (Trujillo, in press). (pg.338)
        
        These studies show that more centralized districts, that is, districts that create policies for standardsaligned curricula, assessments, and training; standardized instructional routines; and test-centered monitoring and evaluation, typically experience test growth (Elmore & Burney, 1997; Firestone, Mangin, Martinez, & Polovsky, 2004; Massell & Goertz, 2002; Murphy & Hallinger, 1988). (pg.338)
        
        While these studies shed light on the technical structures that are linked with higher test performance, they tend to lack analyses that look beyond effects on test scores to consider the potential of different forms of district governance for furthering local democratic conditions. (pg.339)
        
        This framework enables me to investigate the observations of scholars in the politics of education who reason that reforms intended to maximize effectiveness and efficiency may be eroding public, democratic school governance (Kirst, 2004; Mintrom, 2001; Plank & Boyd, 1994). (pg.339)
    - - Implications for Research
        
        By systematically examining a school board’s decision-making processes and opportunities for collective participation in district governance, this in-depth case study reveals specific democratic processes that were missing or present when an urban district experienced heavy pressures to maintain a level test performance that would help board members evade sanctions and threats to their autonomy. (pg.352)
        
        "This case also complements the literature on high-stakes accountability by detailing the ways in which urban board members under heavy pressure to demonstrate test-based effectiveness possessed individualized goals for student achievement and teaching, rather than more communal ones” (Trujillo, 2012, 353).
        
        "For these board members and their superintendent, questions of content, assessment, and monitoring were best left to central authorities, not local communities, teachers, or principals. In this sense, the Ignacio School District provided rich evidence to support multiple scholars’ assertions that high-stakes accountability policies were not conducive to democratic governance practices, particularly in urban contexts” (Trujillo, 2012, 353).
        
        "The final implication of these findings closely relates to the previous one. These findings round out the literature on district effectiveness by illustrating how, when effectiveness is narrowly defined in terms of standardized test scores, district leaders’ notions about success and learning can be equally restrictive” (Trujillo, 2012, 353).
        
        This study also suggests significant implications for policy makers and practitioners. Today’s urban districts face unparalleled pressures to maintain certain test results or face severe restrictions to their autonomy. While most districts exist under the same federal accountability structure, the weight of these policies differentially impacts districts in urban settings. (pg.354)
        
        Accountability policies that are framed in terms of their potential to further democratic aims by granting greater liberty in exchange for results, and by holding all districts to the same high standards, risk exacerbating the same racial and socioeconomic segregation that they presumably exist to transform. Policy making that does not account for powerful contextual differences across more and less privileged districts leaves urban school boards disproportionately vulnerable to reduced democratic control and participation. (pg.354)
      - Implications for Policy and Practice
        
        "Suburban districts that serve more privileged communities simply do not encounter the same obstacles to maintaining adequate levels of test performance. As such, policies that purportedly apply high stakes consequences evenly to all districts actually carry with them substantially higher stakes for districts in urban contexts” (Trujillo, 2012, 354).
        
        "Accountability policies that are framed in terms of their potential to further democratic aims by granting greater liberty in exchange for results, and by holding all districts to the same high standards, risk exacerbating the same racial and socioeconomic segregation that they presumably exist to transform. Policy making that does not account for powerful contextual differences across more and less privileged districts leaves urban school boards disproportionately vulnerable to reduced democratic control and participation” (Trujillo, 2012, 354).
      - "As the preceding section demonstrates, this case study of an urban school board’s experiences under conditions of high-stakes accountability uncovered three main findings” (Trujillo, 2012, 351).
        
        "First, patterns in this case indicate how urban board members embraced competitive, individualized goals for teaching and learning—ones centered almost exclusively on standardized test scores” (Trujillo, 2012, 352).
        
        "Second, these data reveal the ways in which urban board members and a superintendent restricted deliberative decision making and failed to provide opportunities for local participation in matters of instruction and personnel” (Trujillo, 2012, 352).
        
        "Finally, these findings suggest that board members promoted centrally determined instructional and administrative practices—practices grounded in values of standardization and managerial efficiency over issues of local adaptation or diverse educational philosophies” (Trujillo, 2012, 352).