From Bureaucracy to Profession: Remaking the Educational Sector for the Twenty-First Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
Monopolistic educational bureaucracy - The dis-ease destroying public education.pdf
The authors, based on their experience as students, teachers, teacher educators, and parents, discuss public schools and their problems. They think public schools are suffering from the effects of a bureaucracy based on a paradigm inappropriate for the task entrusted to them. Further, the authors think the monopolistic nature of the educational bureaucracy has insulated it from virtually allrelevant sources of feedback and pressures for meaningful change and reform. The authors argue for radical changes in the way public schools are funded as a means of breaking the monopoly power of the bureaucracy, forcing it to adopt a different paradigm, and facilitating meaningful changes in publicly supported education. The authors assert that public schools must either undergo radical reform or become extinct or at best irrelevant.
Steady Work. Policy, Practice, and the Reform of American Education
1988
This report analyzes the relationship between educational policymaking and educational practice in schools and classrooms by drawing lessons from recent attempts to reform schools with policy. Educational reform operates on the following loosely connected levels: (1) policy; (2) administration; and (3) practice. Policy can set the conditions for effective administration and practice, but it cannot predetermine how those decisions will be made: in order for reforms to be large-scale or long-term, there must be dialogue among policy, administration, and practice. Federal reform policies of the 1950s and 1960s are analyzed. The &stakes of past policymakers can be remedied by strengthening the connection between policymakers and practitioners. To be effective, reform policies must do the following: (1) close the gap between policy and practice, in part by charging practitioners with the development of solutions rather than mandating requirements that have little or no basis in practice; (2) accommodate variability by creating policies that lead to better understanding of effective practice rather than discouraging and penalizing it; (3) learn that rules only set the standards of fairness and do not prescribe solutions to practical problems; and (4) create organizations that foster and encourage "reforms of practice. (BJV) O 4,40
Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 2005
, where four of the five articles shared here were first presented, although that forum obviously mattered to the creation of this issue. 1 Rather, this issue began taking shape 14 years ago, in 1990, when, as an undergraduate, I took a seminar with the founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, Ted Sizer, and his colleague, Rick Lear. At that time, I learned that the Coalition's efforts were playing a modest but real role in the launch of a broader movement-comprehensive school reform (CSR)-that asserted most schools' organizational structures were problematic and in need of a total and systematic overhaul, not just tweaking, changes for some students, or different efforts from some teachers. I also learned of the Coalition's nascent partnership with the Educational Commission of the States (ECS), a project called RE:Learning, that sought to bridge policy and practice. That partnership acknowledged that comprehensive whole-school changes needed to be complemented by changes at some remove from schools themselves. These entailed making changes at the level of state education policy. ECS then (and now) existed to bring together major state-level education policymakers, like governors and education commissioners, to share ideas and strategies for educational improvement.
Who's in Charge Here?: The Tangled Web of School Governance And Policy
2006
Behind the scenes, a revolution is taking place in primary and secondary education. Once thought sacrosanct, the principle of local lay control has come under growing attack. In the 1970s and 1980s, governors sought greater influence by promulgating academic standards and even taking over failing schools. Mayors soon followed, with some wresting control of struggling local school systems. Atop this, the president and Congress greatly extended their reach into U.S. classrooms with enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which requires annual reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8, tougher yardsticks to measure whether pupils are making sufficient progress, and penalties for schools that persistently fall short. The result is a spider's web of responsibility. It is difficult, if not impossible, to figure out where accountability lies. Not only have municipal, state, and federal authorities reasserted control over the separate education government that the nation l...
School Reform on the Inside: Teacher Agency at one Philadelphia Middle School
Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 2003
Few educators would deny that school reform is complex business, especially in large urban districts like Philadelphia. On many levels, diverse voices compete to forward particular visions of improved schooling; true, in every wave of reform, some calls for change are heard louder than others. In the current political climate, calls for accountability and standards have received the lion's share of attention. Michael Apple writes, "The seemingly contradictory discourse of competition, markets, and choice on the one hand and accountability, performance objectives, standards, national testing, and national curriculum on the other have created such a din that it is hard to hear anything else" (p. 231). Yet, moving beyond media accounts and political rhetoric into the world of classrooms, teachers, and students, alternative voices are sometimes heard. As schools and classrooms are intersections of political, institutional, and sociocultural histories and contexts, the practices therein reflect a diversity of visions of schooling. Moreover, schools are populated with educators with their own histories, cultural understandings and expectations, and personal-professional goals, many of which may run counter to institutional forces behind school practice. Thus, far more complicated than the debates around policy and practice in the formation and institutionalization of reform policy is the reform's life (and, often, eventual death) in the classroom. This classroom-life is also, I would argue, far more interesting and important for those concerned with school improvement.
Education Politics and Policy: Emerging Institutions, Interests, and Ideas
This article reviews the most recent research on K-12 education policy and politics in the United States. The review begins by exploring current reform trends and emerging institutional arrangements governing contemporary U.S. school systems in relation to patterns of increasing federal and state involvement in educational policy arenas. I then examine and synthesize studies from four key areas of educational policy research – accountability and teacher evaluation, market-based reforms, educational research utilization, and local and state capacity building. I conclude with an overview of gaps in the literature and suggestions for future research.
Institutional Constraints on Implementing School Reform: Lessons from Chicago
1999
The role of external partners in school reform in Chicago (Illinois) was studied. The first section of this paper outlines the analytical perspective that guides the study, expressing the view that unless the institutional structure of the system as a whole and teacher autonomy are figured into the design of the program, institutionalizing long-term change is unlikely. The second section presents a brief summary of school reform in Chicago under the 1995 Chicago School Reform Amendatory Act. This section also describes the specific intervention program provided by one partner followed in the study, the LEARN program. LEARN (pseudonym) focused on teachers' instructional practices through a professional development program. The third section describes the research design and data collection strategies, and the fourth section contains findings. The LEARN program was evaluated through interviews with 10 teachers and administrators and classroom observations. Study of the LEARN program provided many insights into institutionalizing school reform, but one of the most important findings is the importance of considering the broader institutional environment of school systems. (Contains 3 tables and 16 references.) (SLD)
1989
The chapters in this yearbook examine the politics of reformtng school administration from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. The chapters are arranged in thre3 parts. In part 1, stmte-level reform initiatives are examined, with legislation-into-practice questions about the impact of reform upon local schools and local administrators. Part 2 explores the micropolitics of reform within schools, for it is ultimately within this context that basic changes in educational administration will have to occur. In part 3, the politics of reforming the profession itself is addressed by exploring the actors, the interests, and the incentives involved in a heated, contemporary debate regarding the training of the nation's cadre of school administrators. References are included with chapters. A list of contributors with brief biographies is provided. (JAM)