Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA)
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Race, Intelligence and Ideology: A Review Essay of The Bell Curve
John C. Culbertson
... When examining the findings of Herrnstein and Murray, an obvious question arises: What are the scientific merits of their discoveries? From this question, two elements will be analyzed in this essay: (1) the notion of race as a legitimate category; and (2) intelligence as an understandable phenomenon. If the scientific status of these elements is clearly discreditable, another question arises: What is the ideological purpose of such a study? As a conclusion, I will offer some final thoughts relevant to the book as a whole. ...
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Coordinating Family and School: Mothering for Schooling
Alison I. Griffith
In this paper I explore the relationship between mothering work in the family and the social organization of schooling. In particular, I address the ways in which mothers coordinate and contest the textually-organized discourse of schooling In contrast to other studies of the family/school relationship, this research began in the experience of mothers whose children attend primary school. The data were collected through interviews with mothers in two cities in Ontario. Mothering work constructs families that are differently connected to schools -- a connection strongly shaped by and constitutive of social class.
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Worldwide Educational Convergence Through International Organizations: Avenues for Research
Connie L. McNeely and Yung-Kyung Cha
We argue for an examination of the role of the transnational organizational apparatus vis-a-vis nation-states in organizing national educational systems in accordance with world level educational ideologies, structures, and practices. We propose that more analytic attention be given international organizations as an institutionalizing force in examining educational convergence and change, and suggest four primary international organization activities as potentially fruitful avenues for research in this area: 1) the exchange of information, 2) charters and constitutions, 3) standard-setting instruments, and 4) technical and financial resources. ...
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Carrot or Stick? How Do School Performance Reports Work?
Mark E. Fetler
State and federal government espouse school performance reports as a way to promote education reform. Some practicing educators question whether performance reports are effective. While the question of effectiveness deserves study, it accepts the espoused purposes of performance reports at face value, and fails to address the more basic, tacit political and symbolic roles of performance reports. Theories of organization, modern government, and regulation provide a context that helps to clarify these political and symbolic roles. Several performance report and assessment programs in California provide illustrations.
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A Response to John Covaleskie
Andrew J. Coulson
I have no doubt that Covaleskie's commentary was well- intentioned. Nonetheless, it is seriously flawed. In this response I shall identify the numerous instances of inaccurate and incomplete data, as well as invalid reasoning, upon which his conclusion is based.
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On Education and the Common Good: A Reply to Coulson
John Covaleskie
This response to Coulson's recent EPAA piece, "Human Life, Human Organizations, and Education," argues that Coulson is wrong about "human nature," social life, and the effects of unregulated capitalist markets. On these grounds, it is argued that his call to remove education from the public sphere should be rejected. The point is that education is certainly beneficial to individuals who receive it, but to think of education as purely a private and personal good properly distributed through the market is seriously to misconstrue the meaning of education. We should not care to be the sort of people who do so.
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On the Academic Performance of New Jersey's Public School Children: Fourth and Eighth Grade Mathematics in 1992
Howard Wainer
Data from the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress are used to compare the performance of New Jersey public school children with those from other participating states. The comparisons are made with the raw means scores and after standardizing all state scores to a common (National U.S.) demographic mixture. It is argued that for most plausible questions about the performance of public schools the standardized scores are more useful. Also, it is shown that if New Jersey is viewed as an independent nation, its students finished sixth among all the nations participating in the 1991 International Mathematics Assessment.
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Human Life, Human Organization and Education
Andrew J. Coulson
… Data are presented that illustrate the way in which the incentive structure of our public school system leads the goals of its employees to diverge from those of the families it is intended to serve. Arguments in support of government-run schooling are discussed and refuted. An alternative system of mutually beneficial cooperation within a competitive market is proposed, based on its proven success in the more liberal parts of our economy. It is demonstrated that such a market system would unite the goals of educators and families, encourage innovation, and discourage many of the inefficient and educationally irrelevant practices engendered by the public school system.
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Choosing Higher Education: Educationally Ambitious Chicanos and the Path to Social Mobility
Patricia Gandara
This is a study of high academic achievement found in the most unlikely places: among low-income Mexican Americans from homes with little formal education. It examines the backgrounds of 50 persons, male and female from one age cohort, who met most of the predictors for school failure or "dropping out." ...
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Policy Questions: A Conceptual Study
Thomas F. Green
A policy question is a request for a fairly stable, but modifiable authoritative line of action aimed at securing an optimal balance between different goods, all of which must be pursued, but cannot be jointly maximized. To such questions there are no purely technical solutions, a point that is revealed by the etiology of policy questions. They appear to arise from conflicts among humans over the distribution of goods, i.e., conflicts of interest. However, the deeper roots of such questions lie not in a conflict of human interests, but in the incompatibility of the actual goods that human beings seek. ...
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School Choice: A Discussion with Herbert Gintis
Gene V. Glass
Eighteen educators and scholars discuss vouchers as a means of promoting school choice and introducing competition into education. The discussion centers around the thinking of the economist Herbert Gintis, who participated in the discussion, and his notion of market socialism as it might apply to education. In 1976, Gintis published, with Samuel Bowles, Schooling in Capitalist America; in 1994, he is arguing for competitive markets for the delivery of schooling.
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The Educational System and Resistance to Reform: The Limits of Policy
John F. Covaleskie
I suggest some reasons why education has proved so resistant to reform. That the educational system is a system is, in some respects, more significant to this question than the fact that it deals with education; that it is a system militates against certain sorts of reforms being successfully adopted. I will also argue that policymakers' efforts to reform education are made more difficult because of lack of clarity of purpose. Though all agree that "excellence" is the goal to be pursued, there is little attention to the meaning of excellence, nor how we would recognize it if we saw it. Often, "excellence" is used synonymously with "competitiveness." I explore the limits of policy, and suggest that these limits are inescapable. Recognition of these limits may allow us to attend to those policy areas where success may be more likely. ...
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Public Speech: The DeGarmo Lecture for 1993
Thomas F. Green
The State is constituted by law; the public by public speech. But "What makes public speech public?" Two views are contrasted: the forum view by which speech is public only if it is truth functional, and the idea of umbilical narratives in which speech is public when placed in some community of memory. Offered instead is the auditory principle, namely that speech is public when what is said by A is heard by B as candidate for B's speech. This principle is explored and applied and currently popular fallacies of public speech are exposed.
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"Lower Literacies for Hire: How Politics of Discourse Shapes Schools of Thought" and Review of Ernest R. House Professional Evaluation: Social Impact and Political Consequences"
Craig B. Howley, Aimee Howley, and Kent P. Scribner
This issue of the Education Policy Analysis Archives comprises two book reviews: An essay review of R. G. Brown Schools of Thought by Craig Howley and Aimee Howley, and a review of Ernest R. House, Professional Evaluation by Kent P. Scribner.
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Dealing with Diversity: Some Propositions from Canadian Education
Benjamin Levin and J. Anthony Riffel
Increasing diversity in the population is a major issue for educators in North America, presenting political as well as educational challenges. This paper examines Canadian educational policy responses to four kinds of diversity - bilingualism (French/English), multiculturalism, the situation of aboriginal peoples, and the problem of poverty. A description of each issue leads to some speculations or propositions on the nature of diversity and appropriate educational responses to it.
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Payment by Results: An Example of Assessment in Elementary Education from Nineteenth Century Britain
Brendan A. Rapple
Today the public is demanding that it exercise more control over how tax dollars are spent in the educational sphere, with multitudes also canvassing that education become closely aligned to the marketplace's economic forces. In this paper I examine an historical precedent for such demands, i.e. the comprehensive 19th century system of accountability, "Payment by Results," which endured in English and Welsh elementary schools from 1862 until 1897. Particular emphasis is focused on the economic market-driven aspect of the system whereby every pupil was examined annually by an Inspector, the amount of the governmental grant being largely dependent on the answering. I argue that this was a narrow, restrictive system of educational accountability though one totally in keeping with the age's pervasive utilitarian belief in laissez-faire. I conclude by observing that this Victorian system might be suggestive to us today when calls for analogous schemes of educational accountability are shrill.
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A Reply to Mr. Hodas
David H. Monk
David Monk offers arguments in rebuttal of the article by Steven Hodas (Problems with the Production Function Model in Education) which was published in this journal as Issue 12 of Volume 1.
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Further Reflections on Moral Education: A Response to Strike
Rick Garlikov
While moral discourse is in need of much help, there is a solution which is not dependent on Kenneth Strike's remedy of understanding or building character, as such, and which teaches moral reasoning without promoting particular moral values or character traits. Further, contrary to Strike's claim, moral skepticism is not the main problem with moral debate today, which often features diametrically opposed, absolutely certain, dogmatic assertions by all sides. The author teaches ethics courses, and has found among students from a variety of ages and socio-economic backgrounds that the understanding of certain topics in ethics is necessary and often sufficient for promoting more reflective and responsible behavior, and for promoting discourse that has a greater chance to resolve differences. ...
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Against "Values": Reflections on Moral Language and Moral Education
Kenneth A. Strike
... The question of how to form democratic character is a crucial question that society has almost stopped asking. We do occasionally put the question as one about democratic values. While "values speak" seems initially liberating, nevertheless, it easily contributes to an authoritarian outlook. Four pieces of advice to educators are offered: 1) do not let "values speak" make you deaf to the nuances of the complex moral vocabularies; 2) learn to think of a liberal arts education as part of professional training; 3) an essential moral practice is dialogue; 4) support those trends in educational reform that increase opportunities for conscientious moral dialogue among members of school communities.
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Why Production Function Analysis is Irrelevant in Policy Deliberations Concerning Educational Funding Equity
Jim C. Fortune
… In this paper threats to the validity of these correlational methods for analysis of expenditure-achievement data are discussed and an alternative method of investigation is proposed. The proposed method is illustrated using data from two states (Ohio and Missouri). The method demonstrates relationships between expenditures and achievement that were overlooked by the production function method.
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Is Water an Input to a Fish? Problems with the Production-Function Model in Education
Steven Hodas
The concept of a production-function as a metaphor of the educational process is critiqued. In particular, Monk's (1992) discussion of the production-function is seen as typical of the final stages of a dying paradigm.
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Technology Refusal and the Organizational Culture of Schools
Steven Hodas
… This paper proposes that technology is never neutral: that its values and practices must always either support or subvert those of the organization into which it is placed; and that the failures of technology to alter the look-and-feel of schools more generally results from a mismatch between the values of school organization and those embedded within the contested technology.
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Evidence, Ethics and Social Policy Dilemmas
Steven I. Miller and L. Arthur Safer
… This paper attempts to examine what we will call the "evidence-ethics-policy triad." Our initial claim will be that while the "ethical" component of the triad has increasingly become an important consideration in the conduct of social policy inquiry, its actual influence on the formulation of social policy is minimal, at best, and, at worse, irrelevant. ...
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Learning on the Job: Understanding the Cooperative Education Work Experience
Alison I. Griffith
Cooperative learning programs in Ontario provide on the job learning experiences for students. This paper analyzes three cases of student work placements described in extensive interviews with students, teachers and co-workers. Some students had enjoyed their work experience while others had not. When the student experiences were situated in the socially organized work processes of the work sites, the diverse experiences were found to have a common theme. When students are able to participate in and make sense of the work process, their work placement experience was seen to be useful for making future employment decisions. Where students were marginal to the work process, their lack of knowledge often translates into an unpleasant work experience and decisions about employment based on an experience of failure. This article suggests that our understanding of student learning on the job would be strengthened by a focus on the socially organized work process.
