Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA)

EPAA/AAPE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. It is published by the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University and was edited by University of South Florida College of Education Professor Dr. Sherman Dorn from 2003-2008. There are currently over 500 issues in this digital collection, Vol. 1/No.1 (1993) - Vol. 16/No. 7 (2008).

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School-Based Management: Views from Public and Private Elementary School Principals

Mary T. Apodaca-Tucker and John R. Slate

In this study, we analyzed the principal questionnaire contained in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K) database regarding the extent to which school-based management was reported as having been implemented differently by public and by private elementary school principals. ...
Affirmative Action in Higher Education: An Analysis of Practices and Policies

Alfred R. Cade Jr.

This study analyzed the variations of policies and practices of university personnel in their use of affirmative action programs for African American students. In this study, the policy topic is affirmative action and the practices used in admissions, financial aid, and special support services for African-American students. Surveys were mailed to 231 subjects representing thirty-two Missouri colleges and universities. Most of the survey respondents were male, white, and nearly two-thirds were above the age of forty. ...
The Possibility of Reform: Micropolitics in Higher Education

Susan Haag and Mary Lee Smith

The purpose of this case study was to examine the restructuring of an institution of higher education's teacher preparation program and to assess the possibility for systemic reform. Although teacher education represents a vital link in not only the educational system but in curricular reform, the increased expectations for educational reform made this institution unavoidably more political. ...
The Amalgamation of Chinese Higher Education Institutions

David Y. Chen

The 1990s witnessed revolutionary change in China's higher education system, particularly through radical mergers. The reform process and its background are detailed here, with a case study focusing on Zhejiang University. After nearly 15 years of painstaking effort, the reform goals for the higher education system have been met, and a decentralized, two-tiered administrative system has been installed. ...
Entrepreneurial Ambitions in the Public Sector: A Random Effects Model of the Emergency of Charter Schools in North Carolina

Linda A. Renzulli

In this article, I study charter schools as social innovations within the population of established public educational institutions. I begin by briefly outlining the history of public schools in the United States. I apply organizational theories to explain the perpetuation of the structure of public schools since World War II. ...
High-Stakes Testing, Uncertainty, and Student Learning

Audrey L. Amrein and David C. Berliner

A brief history of high-stakes testing is followed by an analysis of eighteen states with severe consequences attached to their testing programs. These 18 states were examined to see if their high-stakes testing programs were affecting student learning, the intended outcome of high-stakes testing policies promoted throughout the nation. ...
Are Increasing Test Scores in Texas Really a Myth, or is Haney's Myth a Myth?

Laurence A. Toenjes and A. Gary Dworkin

Pass rates by Texas tenth-graders on the high school exit exam improved from 52 percent in 1994 to 72 percent in 1998. In his article "The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education" (EPAA, August 2000) Professor Walt Haney argued that some part of this increased pass rate was, as he put it, an illusion. Haney contended that the combined effects of students dropping out of school prior to taking the 10th grade TAAS and special education exemptions accounted for much of the increase in TAAS pass rates. Relying on the same methodology and data that Haney used, we demonstrate that his conclusion is incorrect. ...
Quantifying Quality: What Can the U.S. News and World Report Rankings Tell Us about the Quality of Higher Education?

Marguerite Clarke

… he research presented here addresses two of the most common criticisms of the methodology used to produce these rankings. In particular, this study answers the following questions: What is the extent of change in U.S. News' ranking formulas across years and what are the implications for interpreting shifts in a school's rank over time? How precise is the overall score that U.S. News uses to rank schools and what are the implications for assigning schools to discrete ranks? ...
Basic Education Reform in China: Untangling the Story of Success

Chengzhi Wang and Quanhua Zhou

... This article briefly examines the general process and outcomes of basic education reform. It discusses the following questions: Is basic education reform also a story of success? What significant lessons can the Chinese reform experience offer to other comparable developing countries?
Japanese Higher Education Policy in Korea During the Colonial Period (1910-1945)

Jeong-Kyu Lee

The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of Japanese nationalistic thought on the administrative systems and structures of colonial and modern higher education in Korea, as well as to analyze Japanese higher educational policy in Korea during the colonial period (1910-1945). ...
Los Rituales Escolares y las Prácticas Educativas

Pablo Daniel Vain

This study on school rituals, based on an socio-anthropology view, has arisen from the hypothesis of the anthropologist Roberto Da Matta. This hypothesis supports the theory that rituals are useful, particularly in a complex society, to promote its social identity and develop its character. ...
How Schools Matter: The Link Between Teacher Classroom Practices and Student Academic Performance

Harold Wenglinsky

… The current study explores the link between classroom practices and student academic performance by applying multilevel modeling to the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics. The study finds that the effects of classroom practices, when added to those of other teacher characteristics, are comparable in size to those of student background, suggesting that teachers can contribute as much to student learning as the students themselves.
Women in Managerial Positions in Greek Education: Evidence of Inequality

Anastasia Athanassoula-Reppa and Manolis Koutouzis

This article deals with the under-representation of women in managerial positions in Greece. While substantial progress has been made in terms of the legal framework that ensures equal rights to both men and women in the country, evidence shows that there are barriers that inhibit women from pursuing and taking such positions, resulting to covert discrimination.
Response to Michelson and to Wilson and Kellow

Craig Bolon

The criticisms and points made by both Michelson and Willson and Kellow in response to my article "Significance of Test-based Ratings" are here addressed.
Reactions to Bolon's "Significance of Test-based Ratings for Metropolitan Boston Schools"

Stephen Michelson

Several concerns are raised abut the procedures used and conclusions drawn in Craig Bolon's article "Significance of Test-based Ratings for Metropolitan Boston Schools" published in this journal as Number 42 of Volume 9.
Confusing the Messenger with the Message: A Response to Bolon

Victor L. Wilson and Thomas Kellow

The conclusions by Bolon (2001) based on the relationship between per capita income and school mean grade 10 mathematics scores in Massachusetts and on instability in year-to-year mean school scores are criticized by us. Our concerns focus on the uninterpretable covariation of economic condition with test performance and the limitations in interpreting cross-time variability. We agree with Bolon's conclusions but consider the methodology employed inadequate to support them. We suggest alternative requirements and discuss our own previous efforts in this area.
¿Exito en California? A Validity Critique of Language Program Evaluations and Analysis of English Learner Test Scores

Marilyn S. Thompson, Kristen E. DiCerbo, Kate Mahoney, and Jeff MacSwan

… We first discuss the background, media coverage, and previous research associated with California's Proposition 227. We then present a series of validity concerns regarding use of Stanford-9 achievement data to address policy for educating LEP students; these concerns include the language of the test, alternative explanations, sample selection, and data analysis decisions. Finally, we present a comprehensive summary of scaled-score achievement means and trajectories for California's LEP and non-LEP students for 1998-2000. Our analyses indicate that although scores have risen overall, the achievement gap between LEP and EP students does not appear to be narrowing.
Technical and Ethical Issues in Indicator Systems: Doing Things Right and Doing Wrong Things

Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon and Peter Tymms

Most indicator systems are top-down, published, management systems, addressing primarily the issue of public accountability. In contrast we describe here a university-based suite of "grass-roots," research-oriented indicator systems that are now subscribed to, voluntarily, by about 1 in 3 secondary schools and over 4,000 primary schools in England. ...
The Power-discourse Relationship in a Croatian Higher Education Setting

Renata Fox and John Fox

Croatian higher education system's public space is researched through a critical analysis of a Croatian faculty's discourse. Representing a typical faculty social situation, two council meetings— recorded in minutes—are critiqued. Both meetings' minutes provide evidence of discourse strategies of deception used by faculty power holders to create an illusion of consent. We attribute the success of the deception to council members' ideas about the Faculty's groups/individuals, relations and issues related to the Faculty's hierarchy, their rank within that hierarchy, and their position within the Faculty's social network. To support our argument, we explore how the Faculty power holders' discourse is built on a power/ideology/language formation. We conclude that, failing to critique the faculty's discourse, council members neglected their historical task of paving the way to democracy.
Technology is Changing What's "Fair Use" in Teaching - Again

Linda Howe-Steiger and Brian C. Donohue

… Desktop publishing and Internet and web-based teaching, the authors believe, will further erode traditional applications of Fair Use for educational purposes. They argue that instructors and researchers should assume that there is no Fair Use on the Internet. Guidelines are provided for faculty and others considering dissemination of potentially copyrighted materials to students via digital technologies.
Socratic Pedagogy, Race, and Power: From People to Propositions

Peter Boghossian

Rud (1997) wrote in this journal: " Leaving aside the blatant (to my eyes at least) problems of power and dominance of an elderly Greek citizen teaching a slave boy, this example [the Meno] of teaching has always left me cold." Garlikov (1998) addressed Rud's criticism of the Socratic dialogue. The present article addresses and extends Garlikov's response to cover general notions of power, and shows how these may affect Socratic discourse. ...
State-Mandated Testing and Teachers' Beliefs and Practice

Sandra Cimbricz

In this article, I examine the relationship between state-mandated testing and teachers' beliefs and practice. The studies reviewed suggest that while state testing does matter by influencing what teachers say and do, so, too, do other things, such as teachers' knowledge of subject matter, their approaches to teaching, their views of learning, and the amalgam of experience and status they possess in the school organization. As a result, the influence state-mandated testing has (or not) on teachers and teaching would seem to depend on how teachers interpret state testing and use it to guide their actions. ...
Testing and Diversity in Postsecondary Education: The Case of California

Daniel Koretz, Michael Russell, Chingwei David Shin, Cathy Horn, and Kelly Shasby

The past several years have seen numerous efforts to scale back or eliminate affirmative action in postsecondary admissions. In response, policymakers and postsecondary institutions in many states are searching for ways to maintain the diversity of student populations without resorting to a prohibited focus on race. In response to these changes, this study used data from California and a simplified model of the University of California admissions process to explore how various approaches to admissions affect the diversity of the admitted student population. "Race-neutral" admissions based solely on test scores and grades were compared with the results of actual admissions before and after the elimination of affirmative action. ...
Gender Barriers in Higher Education: The Case of Taiwan

Ru-jer Wang

As a consequence of the rapid expansion of higher education in Taiwan over the past decades, the enrolment of females in higher education has grown considerably. However, this article reports that in terms of institutional difference, access to advanced study, and differing subject preferences, the barriers to women's participation in higher education remain. Thus, the findings drawn from this article lead to the conclusion that females still suffer disadvantages in access to higher education, although the expansion of higher education in Taiwan has substantially benefited females over the past few decades.