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The Possibility of Public Education

Mara Casey Tieken

in Why Rural Schools Matter

This chapter discusses the various policies and educational reforms that have unsettled rural communities in Arkansas. It focuses on Senator Jim Argue's view regarding district consolidation and his ... More

This chapter discusses the various policies and educational reforms that have unsettled rural communities in Arkansas. It focuses on Senator Jim Argue's view regarding district consolidation and his argument that investment in schools should be about students and not the community. Another policy arises out of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which requires schools to test students' proficiency and report back their scores. If schools fail to make adequate yearly progress, they are subjected to harsh sanctions, such as school closure.Less

Competence Motivation in Head Start: An Early Childhood Link to Learning

Heather L. Rouse and John W. Fantuzzo

in Academic Motivation and the Culture of School in Childhood and Adolescence

Gaps for minority and low-income students' achievements have shown minute changes over the past two decades which have resulted in mandated improvements for public education. A major federal ... More

Gaps for minority and low-income students' achievements have shown minute changes over the past two decades which have resulted in mandated improvements for public education. A major federal legislation is the No Child Left Behind policy. However, early childhood educators and researchers disapproved of NCLB legislation due to its restricted emphasis on reading achievement. Developmental science argues that school readiness is a multidimensional concept that includes diverse cognitive, social, and physical skills sets related to academic success. A developmental-ecological model provides a useful theoretical framework in which to examine early childhood research. This chapter illustrates research taken from a brief longitudinal study of the relationships between competence motivation, socioemotional adjustment, and early literacy and mathematics abilities at kindergarten and first grade levels.Less

How Common Standards and Standardized Testing Widen the Opportunity Gap

Christopher H. Tienken and Yong Zhao

in Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance

Christopher Tienken and Yong Zhao describe how current policies exacerbate the educational conditions that afflict vulnerable children and consequently widen the educational opportunity gap. The ... More

Christopher Tienken and Yong Zhao describe how current policies exacerbate the educational conditions that afflict vulnerable children and consequently widen the educational opportunity gap. The various federal and state laws require schools to make Adequately Yearly Progress or achieve some other type of result on standardized tests, and the laws prescribe severe penalties for students and educators who fail to raise test scores to the mandated level. Schools that serve disadvantaged students have faced tremendous pressure to raise test scores. The authors contend, however, that most of the actions the schools have taken to raise test scores are counterproductive. They may appear to improve student achievement, but in reality they exacerbate the educational conditions that afflict these children and consequently widen the educational opportunity gap.Less

Introduction

in Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity

It is essential to understand the connection between teacher professionalism and civil rights to grasp fully the what is central to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that not only has an ... More

It is essential to understand the connection between teacher professionalism and civil rights to grasp fully the what is central to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that not only has an impact on the shape of public education in the United States, but also has influenced federal government intervention in public education since 1960. This book looks at the historical relationship between two social movements and these are studied separately, that is, the struggle of teachers for professional agency and the curiosity for an equal education by black Americans. The Teachers Guild and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) developed a strategy towards that which was focused on insulating teachers from the demands of civil rights. This book thus, attempts to examine the union agendas formed by leaders and the ways in which teachers influence these agendas.Less

Conclusion: Moving beyond Rights?: Teacher Professionalism and Civil Rights in the Era of No Child Left Behind

in Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity

This chapter outlines the recent efforts that teacher unions have made to address the quality of education in minority schools, the limits they have faced in their efforts, and the ways in which the ... More

This chapter outlines the recent efforts that teacher unions have made to address the quality of education in minority schools, the limits they have faced in their efforts, and the ways in which the historical tension between teachers' rights and civil rights has shaped the political landscape. The agenda that the midcentury teachers developed to advance their own professionalism undermined their moral authority in local communities. The legacy of this agenda enabled the design of federal legislation that focuses on teacher quality as the primary obstacle to minority student success. This chapter highlights the importance of rethinking about the centrality of rights to school reform projects and to visualize the empowerment of teachers and students as mutually beneficial goals, along with the failure of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to improve education for minority students and the historical events.Less

Engaging Failure: Probing the Problematics and Politics of Policy

Jill P. Koyama

in Making Failure Pay: For-Profit Tutoring, High-Stakes Testing, and Public Schools

Implementing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) continues to be challenging at the district level because people do not automatically do what they are told. This chapter documents the appropriation of NCLB ... More

Implementing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) continues to be challenging at the district level because people do not automatically do what they are told. This chapter documents the appropriation of NCLB by tracing the linkages between the New York City school district, public schools across five boroughs, city government, and United Education. Integrating the federal and state actions with the more localized interactions, it traces “policy connections between different organizational and everyday worlds, even where actors in different sites do not know each other or share a moral universe.” The chapter provides an investigation into how NCLB creates circumstances that limit the range of possible reactions and outcomes to school failure—and also how NCLB enables the creative and practical management of problems constituted by the uncertainties of the policy. It challenges conventional educational ethnography and educational policy analysis in three important ways, firstly by reducing the gap between everyday actions and activities and government action. Secondly, the chapter concurrently regards the actions of disparate policy stakeholders, including supplemental educational services managers and politicians who foray temporarily into policy processes, and principals whose policy roles persist, often over years. Finally, it expands the field of study to transactional spaces that transcend physical locations.Less

Neglecting Failure: Ignoring the Need for “Help”

Jill P. Koyama

in Making Failure Pay: For-Profit Tutoring, High-Stakes Testing, and Public Schools

The juxtaposition of the stated goal to fix failure and the daily actions in which failure was admittedly ignored illuminates the ways in which failure was made to matter through inactions. This ... More

The juxtaposition of the stated goal to fix failure and the daily actions in which failure was admittedly ignored illuminates the ways in which failure was made to matter through inactions. This chapter demonstrates that failure can be constructed through everyday actions. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), like all policy, has gaps of ambiguity—spaces in which actors can take “charge” and establish, for themselves and often others, elements of the policy that may or may not be in line with the initial stated aims of NCLB. Policy is made in many contexts by diverse actors, and supplemental educational services (SES) mandates link an increasing variety of public and private policy mediators, each of whom makes claim to policy authority. NCLB steers action toward school failure in a generic manner—i.e., local educational agencies, schools, and SES providers must do something about it—but what exactly they do is somewhat flexible.Less

The Titans Meet the State: Federal Accountability and School Transformation

Douglas S. Reed

in Building the Federal Schoolhouse: Localism and the American Education State

This chapter continues the examination of accountability policies in Alexandria, focusing on federal efforts to improve the city’s educational achievement through No Child Left Behind and the School ... More

This chapter continues the examination of accountability policies in Alexandria, focusing on federal efforts to improve the city’s educational achievement through No Child Left Behind and the School Improvement Grant program. These federal efforts resulted in a local push for proficiency and prompted significant reforms at a number of underperforming schools while placing enormous pressure on school officials. Their efforts, especially those of Superintendent Rebecca Perry, to respond to the demands of federal accountability policies were constrained, however, by, among other factors, poor federal guidance, poverty, and language barriers confronting their students. The federal criteria also conflicted with the community expectations of what T.C. Williams High School represented: a common public high school for all Alexandria’s youth. The chapter argues that inflexible accountability mechanisms built into NCLB and the school transformation process made it more difficult for Alexandria to address the real causes of student achievement gaps.Less

High-Stakes Testing: Performance-Driven Accountability Policies and Achievement Outcomes

Jaekyung Lee

in The Anatomy of Achievement Gaps: Why and How American Education is Losing (but can still Win) the War on Underachievement

This chapter addresses the question of high-stakes testing policy and accountability. How effective are performance-driven educational policies under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act? What ... More

This chapter addresses the question of high-stakes testing policy and accountability. How effective are performance-driven educational policies under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act? What interventions are most cost-effective for disadvantaged minority students? The average effect size of high-stakes testing interventions is modest, and there is no consistent evidence on narrowing achievement gaps among racial and social groups. The discrepancy of student progress between National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and state assessment measures is noted. School choice policies, including vouchers and charter schools, have had limited effects on system-wide education improvement, and performance-driven policy could become more effective when properly combined with input-driven policy. The Common Core Standards can induce desirable changes in American schools through narrower, higher, and deeper curricular coverage in core subjects, but with negative results if states continue to operate under NCLB and without adequate funding and technical support for chronically low-performing schools.Less