Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA)
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Indicadores de la implementación en procesos de reforma educativa en Uruguay: Una aproximación cualitativa
Marcos R. Sarasola
In this paper the author investigates, from a qualitative perspective, the problems associated with implementing educational innovations. He studies the recent case of the Basic Cycle reform in Uruguay. Based on the concepts of van der Vegt and Vandenberghe (1992), he analyzes the "functions guides" exercised by the director in order to be able to regulate the internal flow of the implementation. ...
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Higher Education Finance Reform in the Czech Republic: Transitions in Thought and Practice
Matthew S. McMullen
Throughout Europe and especially the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, universities and governments are evaluating ways to finance higher education other than the current dominant model of almost total government support. With government pressure to use limited funds in other areas (e.g., health care, environment, and the like) higher education institutions are being encouraged to become more economically self-sufficient. ...
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Education Policy in Portugal: Changes and Perspectives
Jesus Maria Sousa
The Revolution of 25 April 1974 in Portugal put an end to a forty-eight year old dictatorship, opening the country to democracy. The purpose of this article is to describe education reform from the standpoint of a country that experienced a major political transition and had to start from the very beginning to devise an education policy. ...
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Technology and School Reform: A View from Both Sides of the Tracks
Mark Warschauer
A discourse of reform claims that schools must be transformed to take full advantage of computers, while a competing discourse of inequality warns that technology-enhanced reform is taking place only in wealthy schools, dooming poor and minority students to the wrong side of a digital divide. A qualitative study at an elite private school and an impoverished public school explored the relationship between technology, reform, and equality. ...
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Social Science Research Findings and Educational Policy Dilemmas: Some Additional Distinctions
Steven I. Miller and Marcel Fredericks
The article attempts to raise several distinctions regarding the presumed relationship of social science research findings to social policy making. The distinctions are made using Glymour's critique of the Bell Curve. An argument is made that (1) social science models and research findings are largely irrelevant to the actual concerns of policy makers and (2) what is relevant, but overlooked by Glymour, is how ideological factors mediate the process. The forms that ideological mediation may take are indicated.
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America Y2K: The Obsolescence of Educational Reforms
Shermon Dorn
The passing of the deadline for fulfillment of the national education goals in the United States (the beginning of 2000) reflects the frequently hyperbolic statements of objectives and the manic pace of school reform efforts over the past two decades. The domination by schools of child and family life has combined with a longstanding reliance on schools to solve social problems to make school reform a politically opportune as well as visible issue. Thus, even if the phrasing of national education goals in the U.S. changes to reflect the passing of the nominal deadline, those pressures will remain.
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Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: A Review of State Policy Evidence
Linda Darling-Hammond
Using data from a 50-state survey of policies, state case study analyses, the 1993-94 Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), this study examines the ways in which teacher qualifications and other school inputs are related to student achievement across states. The findings of both the qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest that policy investments in the quality of teachers may be related to improvements in student performance. ...
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O Perfil da Universidade para o próximo milênio
Vidal Sunción Infante
In this article, I analyze the role of the university in meeting the demands for new knowledge (scientific, artistic and technological) presented by an era of globaliztion of knowledge that is destroying old paradigms and creating new models of management and behavior. ...
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Children's Rights and Education in Argentina, Chile and Spain
David Poveda, Viviana Gómez, and Claudia Messina
This article is a first attempt to relate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to education policy. It compares three countries, Argentina, Chile and Spain in an attempt to both present particular problems that are of pressing concern in each and to propose a framework that might reveal some possible obstacles to the implementation of children's rights. ...
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Grade Inflation Rates among Different Ability Students, Controlling for Other Factors
Stephanie McSpirit and Kirk E. Jones
This study compares grade inflation rates among different ability students at a large, open admissions public University. Specifically, this study compares trends in graduating grade point average (GPA) from 1983 to 1996 across low, typical and higher ability students. This study also tests other explanations for increases in graduating GPA. These other explanations are changes in 1) ACT score 2) gender 3) college major and 4) vocational programs. ...
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Block Scheduling Effects on a State Mandated Test of Basic Skills
William R. Veal and James Schreiber
This study examined the effects of a tri-schedule on the academic achievement of students in a high school. The tri-schedule consists of traditional, 4x4 block, and hybrid schedules running at the same time in the same high school. ...
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Project Hope and the Hope School System in China: A Re-evaluation
Samuel C. Wang
I investigate the creation, development, contributions and limits of Project Hope, a huge government-endorsed education project seeking non-governmental contributions to overcome educational inadequacy in poverty-stricken rural communities in transitional China. ...
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Homeschooling and the Redefinition of Citizenship
A. Bruce Arai
… This paper reviews the research on homeschooling, as well as the major objections to it, and frames these debates within the broader issues of citizenship and citizenship education. The paper shows that homeschoolers are carving out a different but equally valid understanding of citizenship and that policies which encourage a diversity of understandings of good citizenship should form the basis citizenship education both for schools and homeschoolers.
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Solving the Policy Implementation Problem: The Case of Arizona Charter Schools
Gregg A. Garn
This policy study analyzes how they [Arizona] were able to achieve this elusive result. Key policy makers attended to four significant features of policy implementation in creating the charter school policy: communication, financial resources, implementor attitudes, and bureaucratic structure. Manipulating these key variables allowed policy
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The Quality of Researchers' Searches of the ERIC Database
Scott Hertzberg and Lawrence Rudner
During the last ten years, end-users of electronic databases have become progressively less dependent on librarians and other intermediaries. This is certainly the case with the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Database, a resource once accessed by passing a paper query form to a librarian and now increasingly searched directly by end-users. This article empirically examines the search strategies currently being used by researchers and other groups. College professors and educational researchers appear to be doing a better job searching the database than other ERIC patrons. However, the study suggests that most end-users should be using much better search strategies.
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Autonomia Universitária no Brasil: Uma Utopia?
Maria de Lourdes de Albuquerque Fávero
The purpose of this work is to trace the historical stages through which university autonomy in Brazil has evolved. It begins with 1931 when Minister Francisco Campos conceded "relative autonomy" to the universities and describes developments to the present day. The history of autonomy in Brazilian universities is related to various political regimes and national movements through which Brazil has passed in the last 70 years. Final thoughts on the the challenges facing academic autonomy in present-day Brazil are presented.
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Academic Program Approval and Review Practices in the United States and Selected Foreign Countries
Don G. Creamer and Steven M. Janosik
This report outlines general and specific processes for both program approval and program review practices found in 50 states and eight foreign countries and regions. Models that depict these procedures are defined and the strengths and weakness of each are discussed. Alternatives to current practice by state agencies in the U.S. are described that might provide for greater decentralization of these practices while maintaining institutional accountability.
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Teachers in Charter Schools and Traditional Schools: A Comparative Study
Sally Bomotti, Rick Ginsberg, and Brian Cobb
Teachers from charter and traditional schools in Colorado were queried about their perceptions of their level of empowerment, school climate, and working conditions. Using a cluster sampling design, approximately 100 teachers from 16 charter schools and 100 teachers from seven traditional schools were surveyed by combining several well-established instruments to measure empowerment, school climate, and working conditions. ...
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Facing the Consequences: Identifying the Limitations of How We Categorize People in Research and Policy
Cynthia Wallat and Carolyn Steele
Social policy researchers and policy rules and regulation writers have not taken advantage of advances in assessing ways in which social representations of ideas about people can convey alternative explanations of social life. During the past decade a growing number of scholars have considered how representational practices and the representations that are outcomes of such practices have value. Neglecting to consider representational practices has consequences including failure to mobilize and sustain alternative ideologies that reject narrow perspectives on families and communities. ...
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Testing on Computers: A Follow-Up Study Comparing Performance on Computer and On Paper
Michael Russell
Russell and Haney (1997) reported that open-ended test items administered on paper may underestimate the achievement of students accustomed to writing on computers. This study builds on Russell and Haney's work by examining the effect of taking open-ended tests on computers and on paper for students with different levels of computer skill. Using items from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), this study focuses on language arts, science and math tests administered to eighth grade students. ...
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A Statist Political Economy and High Demand for Education in South Korea
Ki Siu Kim
In the 1998 academic year, 84 percent of South Korea's high school "leavers" entered a university or college while almost all children went up to high schools. This is to say, South Korea is now moving into a new age of universal higher education. Even so, competition for university entrance remains intense. What is here interesting is South Koreans' unusually high demand for education. In this article, I criticize the existing cultural and socio-economic interpretations of the phenomenon. Instead, I explore a new interpretation by critically referring to the recent political economy debate on South Korea's state-society/market relationship. ...
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Demonstrated Actions of Instructional Leaders: An Examination of Five California Superintendents
George J. Petersen
This exploratory study focuses on the perceived and actual leadership characteristics and actions of five district superintendents in California who focused on the core technology of education - curriculum and instruction. In-depth interviews were conducted with these superintendents, their principals and members of their boards of education. The selection of superintendents for this study were guided by three criteria: peer recognition as instructional leaders, district demographics and aggregated increases in CAP (California Assessment Program) scores in grades 3, 3&6, and 3 6&8 for the academic years of 1986-87 to 1989-90. ...
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¿Autonomía por decreto? Paradojas en la redefinición del trabajo del profesorado
José Contreras Domingo
In the present atmosphere of education reform in Spain, autonomy of the faculty and the educational institutions is continually referred to. "Autonomy" as it is currently used in this context poses a paradox: autonomy as obligation. Not just this paradox but others as well are discussed. The present article is organized in four sections. In the first section, the article analyzes a set of factors (from the new organizational arrangements of social services and their relationship with the State to the current patterns of production and consumption) present in the autonomy rhetoric. In the second section the author describes the main changes in the school as institution, changes that are affecting academic and professional autonomy. In the third section, the paradoxes surrounding present policies of scholastic autonomy are analyzed. In the fourth, suggestions are made for recovering the political and pedagogical meaning of autonomy.
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Race and Policy
Ernest R. House
Beliefs about race have played a central role in American history, literature, and education. Racial beliefs are embedded in the national identity in complex and disguised ways. These beliefs attribute presumed character traits to African Americans and other minorities, who are thought of as different in character and ability, especially the ability to govern themselves. These beliefs lead to education policies which separate, differentiate, and mandate different curricula and treatment for minorities, policies justified as being fair and democratic. These beliefs influence not only curriculum content, but how the schools are organized, financed, and administered at a deeper level than is commonly understood.
