Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA)
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Sharing the Wealth: National Board Certified Teachers and the Students Who Need Them Most
Daniel C. Humphrey, Julia E. Koppich, and Heather J. Hough
It is a commonly understood problem in education that many highly qualified teachers tend to gravitate toward higher performing schools, including schools with lower minority enrollments and lower incidence of poverty. This article explores the distribution of a subset of teachers, namely, those who are National Board Certified. To what extent do these teachers’ assignment choices mirror the pattern of their non-Board Certified colleagues and to what extent are they different?
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Las Prácticas De Asesoramiento A Centros Educativos: Una Revisión Del Modelo De Proceso
Jesús Domingo Segovia
… This article analyzes practices in consulting with schools and it presents a critical revision of the process pattern using the following: (1) the process of consulting in the journey to improvement (moments, partial processes and purposes); (2) the process of consulting is not a technology but rather a tool; and (3) it describes the learned lessons, the contradictions and the cautions one must take into consideration in the process of consultation.
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The Impact of Degree Field on the Earnings of Male and Female College Graduates
Catherine E. Freeman, Thomas D. Snyder, and Brooke Connolly
Since the gender demographics across majors have dramatically changed over the last few decades, a re-examination of the relationship between gender, undergraduate major selection, and compensation levels once in the workforce is important. This article will focus on how the salaries of college graduates have changed over the last decade. The analyses will explore the extent to which undergraduate major selection contributes to any male-female salary gap. ...
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Designing Finance Structures to Satisfy Equity and Adequacy Goals
Richard A. King, Austin D. Swanson, and Scott R. Sweetland
… In this exploration of school finance policy, we advance a conception of adequacy as the ideal state of vertical equity, examine the evolution of this concept through judicial reviews, and discuss methods for determining the level of funding required to achieve adequacy. We then discuss economic and political problems inherent in institutional inefficiencies that are likely to derail efforts to raise achievement in poorly performing schools even after granting them an adequate level of resources. The paper concludes with a description of how a state funding formula might provide a foundation for adequacy in all districts.
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Staking Out the Successful Student
Christopher Brown
With the performance of students, teachers, and schools defining success under current standards-based accountability policies ...; No Child Left Behind Act, ... school districts are implementing various forms of intervention programs as a means to improve student performance. By examining a pilot summer school program that is transitioning from a ‘low-stakes’ to a ‘high-stakes’ intervention program, this article examines the possibilities that exist for students to author themselves as learners, and it questions whether opportunities for students to identify themselves as successful learners are lost when an intervention program, such as summer school, becomes mandatory. ...
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Mundo de la Vida Versus Habitus Escolar: El Caldo de Cultivo del Rezago Educativo en un México de Migrantes
Teresa Yurén, Miriam de la Cruz, Alfonso Cruz, S. Stella Araújo-Olivera, and Marcos J. Estrada
In this article, three topics are interrelated: school desertion, poverty and migration. The situation in Mexico with respect to desertion and the relationship between this and several factors associated with poverty is presented. It is argued that scholastic desertion has an expanding effect which depends on the concurrence of two factors: disenchantment with schools and the “habitus” people adopt in cases of extreme poverty to assure their survival. ...
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Globalization, Statist Political Economy, and Unsuccessful Education Reform in South Korea, 1993-2003
Ki Su Kim
This article examines the relationship between globalization and national education reforms, especially those of educational systems. Instead of exploring the much debated issues of how globalization affects national educational systems and how the nations react by what kinds of systemic education reform, however, it focuses on what such a method often leaves out – the internal conditions of a nation that facilitates or hampers reform efforts. Taking South Korea as an example, it explores that country’s unique national context which restricts and even inhibits education reforms. ...
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Policymaking in Education: Understanding Influences on the Reading Excellence Act
Jacqueline Edmondson
Educators and researchers are being called to participate in language and literacy policy making (Roller & Long, 2001). In order to do so, however, there needs to be an understanding of how policy is made. Although policymaking often appears to be an irrational process, there are theories that exist to explain the influences and mechanisms that work to shape policies. In what follows, I adapt Theodoulou and Cahn’s (1995) typology on policymaking in order to discuss how policy is made.
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Factors Affecting the Impact of Professional Development Programs on Teachers' Knowledge, Practice, Student Outcomes & Efficacy
Lawrence Ingvarson, Marion Meiers, and Adrian Beavis
This report examines effects of structural and process features of professional development programs on teachers’ knowledge, practice and efficacy. It is based on four recent (2002-2003) studies undertaken through the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme, designed to enhance teacher quality. ...
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Trends in State Education Policy in Greece: 1976 to 1997 Reform
Nikos M. Georgiadis
This article deals with the education policy in Greece during the period 1976 to 1997, with special focus on the policy that is in practice since 1997. During the early 1990s, the important changes at international and local levels had established the foudations for this policy, which is significantly different from the ones implemented during the twenty five years before that and has effected the total transformation of the Greek educational system. ...
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La Ley Federal de Educación en la Argentina: Su Aplicación en la Provincia de Buenos Aires
María Fernanda Arias
The present work seeks to analyze the results of the educational reform of the secondary school system in Argentina initiated by the Ley Federal de Educación in 1993. This article has chosen Greater Buenos Aires, the biggest conurbation in the country, as a “case study.” ...
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Catching Up with the Vaughn Express: Six Years of Standards-Based Teacher Evaluation and Performance Pay
Eileen M. Kellor
Traditional methods of paying and evaluating teachers in the United States are longstanding, but discussions about changing these systems to support teacher quality and student achievement goals are becoming more common. Efforts to make significant changes to these programs can be difficult and take many years to design, gain approval, and implement; thus, few examples of alternative teacher compensation and evaluation systems exist. ...
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The Relationship of High School Graduation Exams to Graduation Rates and SAT Scores
Gregory J. Marchant and Sharon E. Paulson
The current study examined the effect of high school graduation exams on states’ graduation rates, states’ aggregated SAT scores, and individual students’ SAT scores. ...
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Patenting Productivity and Intellectual Property Policies at Research I Universities: An Exploratory Comparative Study
Pilar Mendoza and Joseph B. Berger
… The purpose of this study is to explore the differences across IP policies among nine research universities as potential sources of influence on faculty engagement in for-profit research ventures according to existing models of faculty role performance and achievement.
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Reflexiones a partir de un estudio sobre Educación Intercultural y Participación en Comunidades Mapuche en la Novena Región de La Araucanía, Chile
Guillermo C. Williamson, Jill Pinkney Pastrana, and Patricia R. Gómez
This analysis focuses on a specific dimension of the “indigenous question” in Chile: that of social participation in educational processes, specifically within the context of the current national education reform. ...
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Inclusive Education and Training Systems: Illusion or Reality/ The Story of Nothemba
Lebusa A. Monyooe
This article explores the challenges facing the South African National Department of Education in its commitment to provide equal educational opportunities for all. ...
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Removing Incentines for "Dumbing Down" Through Curriculum Re-Structure and Additional Study Time
Gordon Stanley and Robert G. MacCann
Offering differentiated courses to cater for a wide range of ability can lead to “dumbing down” when brighter students choose easier courses, which they can handle well without undue effort. This occurred when differentiated English courses were introduced in the senior secondary certificate in the state of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia. To avoid this trend continuing, new differentiated courses reported on a common scale were developed. ...
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Change and Continuity in Student Achievement from Grades 3 to 5: A Policy Dilemma
Mary McCaslin, Heidi Legg Burross, and Thomas L. Good
In this article we examine student performance on mandated tests in grades 3, 4, and 5 in one state. We focus on this interval, which we term “the fourth grade window,” based on our hypothesis that students in grade four are particularly vulnerable to decrements in achievement. The national focus on the third grade as the critical benchmark in student performance has distracted researchers and policy makers from recognition that the fourth grade transition is essential to our understanding of how to promote complex thinking and reasoning that is built upon a foundation of basic skills that may be necessary, but are not sufficient, for the more nuanced learning expected in subsequent grades. ...
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The Balance between Higher Education Autonomy and Public Quality Assurance: Development of the Portuguese System for Teacher Education Accreditation
Bártolo Campos
The accreditation systems of higher education institutions and/or programmes are becoming a policy measure used to find a balance between their autonomy and public assurance concerning the quality of the qualifications they award. This article analyses, from the point of view of this balance of power, the process of development of the Portuguese accreditation system aimed at providing public assurance that initial teacher education programmes are more driven by social demand, namely by the changing school education needs. ...
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More than Teacher Directed or Child Initiated: Preschool Curriculum Type, Parent Involvement, and Children's Outcomes in the Child-Parent Centers
Elizabeth Graue, Melissa A. Clements, Arthur J. Reynolds, and Michael D. Niles
This study investigated the contributions of curriculum approach and parent involvement to the short- and long-term effects of preschool participation in the Title I Chicago Child-Parent Centers. …
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Autonomy vs. Control: Quality Assurance and Governmental Policy in Flanders
Kurt De Wit and Jef C. Verhoeven
… In this article, we focus on the tension between the government's aim of improving and controlling the quality of higher education and universities ' concern for their autonomy. We describe the Flemish government's view on issues of quality in higher education and confront these with an account on the basis of case studies of how the quality assurance system was actually implemented in universities. We conclude that the model of the “market state” or the '”evaluative state” is only realised partially in Flanders. ...
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Meeting NCLB Goals for Highly Qualified Teachers: Estimates by State from Survey Data
Rolf K. Blank, Doreen Langesen, Elizabeth Laird, Carla Toye, and Victor Bandeira de Mello
This article presents results of survey data showing teacher qualifications for their assignments that are comparable from state-to-state as well as data trends over time. The analysis is intended to help state leaders, educators, and others obtain a picture of highly qualified teachers in their state, and to be able to compare their state statistics with states across the nation. ...
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Indisciplina Escolar, Gênero e Sexualidade: Práticas De Punição e Produção De Identidades
Maria de Fátima Salum Moreira and Lilian Piorkowsky dos Santos
This paper presents the results of a research where the phenomenon of indiscipline was problematized approaching its possible relationship with the production of gender identities, in and through school. By means of interviews and direct observation, in classes of the 8th grade of a school was carried out a study about the (male and female) teachers’ attitudes towards what they consider their pupils’ indiscipline (which are teenagers, about 13 / 14 years old). ...
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The Advanced Placement Expansion of the 1990s: How did Traditionally Underserved Students Fare?
Kristin Klopfenstein
The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) Program, which allows students to take college-level courses while in high school, enjoyed tremendous growth in the 1990s. Despite overall growth, small rural schools and high poverty schools continue to offer relatively few AP courses, and black, Hispanic, and low income students remain grossly underrepresented in AP classes. During the 1990s, AP incentive programs primarily subsidized test fees for low income students, but this provided no incentive for low income and rural schools to expand their AP course offerings and did nothing to strengthen the weak academic preparation of low income, black and Hispanic students. Recent federal funding changes provide a step in the right direction by supporting a comprehensive approach to increasing the AP access and participation of traditionally underserved students.
