Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA)
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School Choice Policies in the Political Spectacle
Linda Miller-Kahn and Mary Lee Smith
This article presents research on school choice. It takes the case of a school district in Boulder, Colorado, through the decade of the 1990s and shows how interest groups took advantage of federal, state, and district policies meant to promote school choice and molded them into a system of schools that met individualistic interests rather than the common good. Extensive interviewing and analysis of documents and media reports served as sources of evidence. The authors argue that district officials accommodated the demands of elite groups of parents to transform the district. ...
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Computing Experience and Good Practices in Undergraduate Education: Does the Degree of Campus "Wiredness" Matter?
Shouping Hu and George D. Kuh
Responses to the College Student Experience Questionnaire 4th Edition from 18,844 students at 71 colleges and universities were analyzed to determine if the presence of computing and information technology influenced the frequency of use of various forms of technology and other educational resources and the exposure to good educational practices. ...
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Information Technology and the Goals of Standards-Based Instruction: Advances and Continuing Challenges
Douglas A. Archbald
This article examines goals of standards-based reform in education and ways in which developments in information technology have facilitated those goals. Since standards-based reform is a rather general concept, I begin by developing a more specific formulation which I refer to as the “standards-based instruction and assessment” model. ...
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Knowledge Management for Educational Information Systems: What Is the State of the Field?
Christopher A. Thorn
This article explores the application of Knowledge Management (KM) techniques to educational information systems—particularly in support of systemic reform efforts. The first section defines knowledge and its relationship to information and data. There is also a discussion of various goals that might be pursued by organizations using KM techniques. The second section explores some of the fundamental design elements of an educational KM system. ...
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Second Year Analysis of a Hybrid Schedule High School
James B. Schreiber, William R. Veal, David J. Flinders, and Sherry Churchill
The current study examined two independent sophomore cohorts from a mid-western high school that had implemented a multi-schedule system (i.e., traditional, block, hybrid). The purpose of the study was to examine differences among the schedule types, gender, and GPA group on a state mandated standardized test. ...
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The Elementary Principal/Superintendent Relationship as Perceived by Teachers and Its Effects on the School: A Case Study Comparison
Catherine H. Glascock and Diane Taylor
… Given the lack of research on these phenomena, it is not surprising that we could find no studies that explore the effects of hierarchical independence and influence on school climate. The present study investigates both. Two schools form the basis of this comparative case study. ...
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Local Flexibility within an Accountability System
Benjamin Scafidi, Catherine Freeman, and Stan DeJarnett
… Using the recent accountability reforms in Georgia as a backdrop, this article considers the role of local flexibility within such an accountability system--flexibility over paperwork, resources, personnel, and curriculum for local educators ...
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Public versus Private Education in Hawaii and Its Role in the State's Economy
Antonina Espiritu
This study presents a time-series evidence on the timing and degree of feedback relationship between participation in education and income growth in Hawaii. Using the unrestricted vector autoregression approach and two related measures of linear dependence and feedback, the results suggest that across all educational levels, i.e., K-12 and tertiary, participation in public education could be a good predictor of income growth in Hawaii. ...
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Significance of Test-based Ratings for Metropolitan Boston Schools
Craig Bolon
In 1998 Massachusetts began state-sponsored, annual achievement testing of all students in three public school grades. It has created a school and district rating system for which scores on these tests are the sole factor. It proposes to use tenth-grade test scores as a sole criterion for high school graduation, beginning with the class of 2003. The state is treating scores and ratings as though they were precise educational measures of high significance. A review of tenth-grade mathematics test scores from academic high schools in metropolitan Boston showed that statistically they are not. ...
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High School Size, Achievement Equity, and Cost: Robust Interaction Effects and Tentative Results
Robert Bickel, Craig Howley, Tony Williams, and Catherine Glascock
… This article has two objectives. First, to determine if the size-by-socioeconomic status interaction effect proves robust across alternative regression model specifications, as it did across differing states. Second, to make a tentative judgment as to whether the equity gains associated with smaller schools are incompatible with the need for fiscal efficiency. ...
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Is Washington State an Unlikely Leader? Progress on Addressing Contingent Work Issues in Academia
Daniel Jacoby
Higher education workers in Washington State are challenging the use of contingent academic labor. This article examines data and policies relevant to the state's reliance upon part-time faculty in community colleges. ...
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When an "A" Is Not Enough: Analyzing the New York State Global History and Geography Exam
S. G. Grant
… In this article, I analyze the new New York State Global History and Geography standards and tests using a set of social studies-specific criteria which inquire deeply into the implications for real instructional change. From that vantage, I argue that New York's policy efforts, while seemingly well-intentioned and reflective of surface-level change, fail to promote powerful teaching and learning in social studies. ...
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Educational Performance and Charter School Authorizers: The Accountability Bind
Katrina Bulkley
... Here, I focus on one central component of accountability to government: performance accountability or accountability for educational outcomes to charter school authorizers through the revocation or non-renewal of charter contracts. In this paper, I suggest that contract-based accountability for educational performance in charter schools may not be working as proponents argued it would. ...
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Teachers Who Grow as Collaborative Leaders: The Rocky Road of Support
Richard D. Sawyer
The following narratives examine three teachers over a course of ten years as they first entered teaching and began to collaborate with other teachers on curriculum. Specifically, the study examines how the teachers 1) developed as collaborators and 2) perceived elements of support from both within and outside the classroom for their collaborative efforts. ...
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A Profile of Chief Academic Officers at Four Year Colleges and Universities
Brent D. Cejda and Kirsten L. Rewey
Chief Academic Officer (CAO) is the most common position title before assuming the presidency of a college or university. Results from a national survey are used to develop a profile of the CAO in each respective Carnegie institutional classification.
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La Formación Profesional en España y Alemania: El patrón de cooperación como garantía en la política de administración y gestión educativa
María Jesús Martínez Usarralde
This article analyzes how the patterns of cooperation among different institutions ensure quality professional preparation in terms of the production of an effective and regulated distribution of competencies. For this analysis we apply the comparative methodology of García Garrido to the Spanish and German models of professional development; and we review educational issues related to the administration, management, and supervision of the professional preparation system in the two countries both at the central and regional levels.
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Predicting Variations in Mathematics Performance in Four Countries Using TIMSS
Daniel Koretz, Daniel McCaffrey, and Thomas Sullivan
... This study used data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) to compare the variability of performance in the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan; investigate how this performance variation is distributed within and between classrooms; and explore how well background variables predict performance at both levels. ...
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Similarity of Mathematics and Science Achievement of Various Nations
Algirdas Zabulionis
In 1991-97, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) undertook a Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in which data about the mathematics and science achievement of the thirteen year-old students in more than 40 countries were collected. These data provided the opportunity to search for patterns of students' answers to the test items: which group of items was relatively more difficult (or more easy) for the students from a particular country (or group of countries). Using this massive data set an attempt was made to measure the similarities among country profiles of how students responded to the test items.
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Autonomy and Accountability in the Context of Standards-Based Reform
Susan Watzon and Jonathan Supovitz
In this article we discuss the effects of one urban school district's efforts to increase the autonomy and accountability of schools and teams of teachers through a standards-based reform known as team-based schooling. ...
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Globalization, Consumers, Citizens, and the "Private School Advantage" in Argentina (1985-1999)
Gustavo E. Fischman
Local actors' perceptions of curricular and management changes in two private schools and one neighboring public secondary school in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, are analyzed. An exploration was conducted of how, within an ideologically and politically pro-reform context and a widespread acceptance of the "private school advantage," principals, teachers, and students in these schools evaluated the changes (or lack of them) in management, teaching, and curriculum orientations of the secondary education sector.
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La formación de posgrado en las ciencias sociales argentinas: oportunidades y restricciones para la innovación
Ana M. García de Fanelli
The article describes the main features of Argentine Social Science Masters programs and evaluates the extent to which they are developing innovative strategies in the present conservative institutional context. The research was based on nineteen case studies of Masters in public and private universities. Quantitative data were also gathered from those Masters that were accredited by the National Commission of Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU). All these data are analyzed in terms of the program's objectives, inputs, processing and output indicators. The paper concludes with an analysis of the restrictions that limit the suitable development of academic and professional postgraduate courses in Argentina.
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Committing to Class-Size Reduction and Finding the Resources to Implement It: A Case Study of Resource Reallocation
Allan Odden and Sarah Archibald
This article discusses how a medium-sized school district in Wisconsin was able to reallocate resources to reduce class sizes in grades K-5 without spending more money or increasing its tax rate. ...
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"I love teaching but…." International Patterns of Teacher Discount
Catherine Scott, Barbara Stone, and Steve Dinham
This article reports the results of research into the career motivation and satisfaction of a sample of over 3,000 teachers and school administrators in four countries: Australia, New Zealand, England, and the USA. Using the participants' own words, we explore the effects on educators of recent international educational change, understood here as a subcategory of more general social trends. ...
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The Establishment of Modern Universities in Korea and Their Implications for Korean Education Policies
Jeong-Kyu Lee
The purpose of this study is to examine the historical factors which affected the rise of modern higher education during the late Choson period (1880-1910), and to analyze the implications of these historical factors on educational policies in contemporary higher education in Korea. ...
