Musings on Paul Peterson's "School Politics Chicago Style" and on the Utility of Decision-Making Models (original) (raw)
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2003
This paper reports on a study of the implementation of a new mathematics curriculum and its effect on the teachers implementing it. The study focused on understanding the barriers teachers faced with implementing new curriculum that relies on a different theoretical base than the teachers had previously experienced. Participants in the study were six middle-school teachers and six high-school teachers in a small rural district. Data for the study were gathered from direct observation of the teachers in the classroom and from interviews completed at the beginning of the teachers' second semester using the new curriculum. The study identified the following barriers to the teachers' successful implementation of the new curriculum: (1) concern over the teachers' vision about their roles and beliefs about what their job as a math teacher should be; (2) an assumed student success rate built in by curriculum designers; (3) parents' reactions to their children's test scores; (4) a lack of materials needed to enact the new curriculum; (5) a lack of teacher's technical skills and content knowledge; and (6) factors inherent in the newness of any change. (Contains 26 references.) (WFA)
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Identifying low self-esteem as the underlying factor contributing to poor school attitudes, negative self feelings, difficulty making friends, and difficulty in working independently and completing assignments, this action research project evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention incorporating cooperative learning and teaching to the multiple intelligences in a third grade class. The targeted population consisted of 22 third graders attending a midwestern elementary school in which almost half of the population comes from low income families. The problem of low self-esteem was documented through teacher anecdotal records, a teacher questionnaire, a student survey, and a parent survey. A survey of the literature revealed potential solutions to self-esteem problems, including experiencing self-accomplishment through real effort, feeling valued at home and school, and learning interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. The 4-month intervention was comprised of a program incorporating weekly cooperative learning activities and teaching to the multiple intelligences. Weekly student journal entries were also included to encourage student reflection. Assessment methods of program effectiveness included a modified student survey, teacher anecdotal records, and student journal entries. Post-intervention data revealed an increase in students' self-esteem, an improvement in attitudes about school, more positive feelings about self, development of friendship skills, and an improvement in independent work completion. (Four appendices include the parent questionnaire, student survey, and teacher survey. Contains 16 references.) (Author/KB)
An educational indicator is a statistic revealing something about the education system's health or performance. Indicators must meet certain substantive and technical standards that define the kind of information they should provide and the features they should measure. There are two types of statistical indicators. Whereas single statistics provide readings about education (such as class size or number of schools using microcomputers), composite statistics (such as the pupil/teacher ratio) provide information concerning relationships among factors. Indicator systems measure separate components and interactions between components. Complete educational indicator systems are nonexistent. Indicators can supposedly help to: (1) report the status of American schooling and make district, state, and international comparisons; (2) monitor changes over time; (3) explain the causes of various conditions ana changes; (4) predict likely changes; (5) profile system strengths and weaknessses; and (6) suggest improvement strategies for policymakers. Some of these claims can be met, while others are unrealistic, as this report shows. Indicator data are unlikely to produce unequivocably good or bad news and will be open to various interpretations. Decisions (mostly political) about desired schooling outcomes and conditions will determine the nature of any indicator system. There are numerous implementation issues, including desired level of information, the need to make fair comparisons, appropriate scope, political pressures, and reconciliation concerning priorities among policymakers and professional educators. A list of information sources is provided. (MLH) * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Rationality and Utility of Evaluation Reseach in Policy Making
2011
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1975
The study guide is designed to be used with other instructional materials in a one-semester. curriculum/program which is linked to topics outlined in the American Issues ForAm calendar. It is intended for use at the local level. In the course, students examine some of the principal conditions affecting the dOrelopment of American ideas and institutions. The course focuses Ion the settlement \\ of the North American continent, the changing patterns/ of the natural landscape, the emergence of a political ideology for a free society,-___a_nd_the-formati-Of a democratic political structure. Thei issues are discussed in light of their bearing on the United States in 1976.. Four units, which correspond to units in the reader)and newspaper articles, comprise this study guide. They are A Natlon of Nations; , The Land of Plenty; Certain Unalienable Rights; and I More Perfect Union: The American Government. Each unit includes k y concepts to consider, discussions of the newspaper articles and eadings in the reader, study questions for the readings, and an anno ated bibliography for each of the units. The guide conc1udé with a chronological time chart of events in U.S. history. (A thor/ND) Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished materiah not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality. of the miCroliche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS)., EDRS is not responsible for the quality of-the original document. Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original.
2001
One of Matt Groening's popular cartoons offers two different perspectives regarding the purpose and value of formal education in America: "Bongo's" belief that a good education must consist of an engaging classroom environment and proper emotional, intellectual, and structural resources; and "Bongo's" father's belief that a good education is a completed education. The way in which these two characters engage in discussions of education is not all that different from the ways in which student participants (two groups of students enrolled in an introductory speech communication course and two groups of graduate teaching assistants enlisted to teach the introductory communication course) in a study engaged such discussions, or even, for that matter, the way in which any set of two or more people might discuss educational issues. This paper seeks to illuminate the processes by which mundane understandings of educational success and failure may complicate educational reform. Findings demonstrate that participants: (1) did not offer stable and uniform definitions of educational success and non-success, suggesting that these experiences are constructs, built rather than given; (2) in (re)constructing their definitions of educational success and nonsuccess, articulated understandings of themselves as apart from or outside the creation and maintenance of social systems; (3) in establishing a sense of themselves as apart from the workings of social systems, seemed to create for themselves a sense of personal empowerment; (4) while they worked to articulate their individual agency, constructed definitions which served to reinscribe the power of those social forces they perceive to be beyond their control; and (5) by communicating in ways that elide their participation in social systems, ensured that they are unable to change those systems. Contains 6 notes and 42 references. (NKA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
2000
In a study in 1996, the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that many classroom assignments in writing and mathematics made only modest academic demands on high school students. In this study, the nature of assignments in schools participating in the. Annenberg Challenge reform effort in 1998-1999 was studied, to determine whether teachers were assigning more demanding tasks. The analysis was based on 349 assignments from 74 teachers in 1997, 953 assignments from 116 teachers in 1998, and 715 assignments from 87 teachers in 1999. Each summer following the year in which the assignments were collected, a team of 14 to 20 teachers from other Chicago public schools applied scoring rubrics to assess the authenticity of the intellectual work demanded in these assignments. After each assignment had been scored, the numerical scores were analyzed using a many-facet Rasch measurement model to create separate scales for each grade and subject, and then to divide scores by degree of challenge. The quality of classroom assignments in the field sample of Annenberg Challenge schools improved between 1997 and 1999. The level of authenticity in those assignments described as challenging had clearly risen in the period, but for those described as typical,, the results were more mixed. While these improvements are encouraging, the overall level of challenge in mathematics assignments remains quite low. More than 80% of the sixth and eighth grade assignments in 1999 provided only minimal or no challenge..Writing assignments showed more evidence of challenge. A round of data collection in 2000-2001 will provide a more definitive basis for conclusions about school improvement. (Contains 4 figures, 2 tables, 9 endnotes, and 10 references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the ori inal document.
Critical Reading Response: Rational Institutions
2013
Rational choice institutionalism is a set of tools and theoretical approaches that seeks to explain the emergence and functioning of political institutions based on a particular model of human nature, and with reference to particular types of problems. 1 Terry Moe summarizes the approach concisely, asking: "How can individuals who are self-interested and opportunistic overcome their collective action problems to cooperate for mutual gain?" 2 The approach is applicable in many distinct policy areas, including education, the environment, and the regulation of primary resource industries. The approach is largely derived from the study of institutions like the U.S. Congress, and is frequently deployed to analyze deliberative institutions of this type, often in a highly model-driven and quantitative way. It is also deeply associated with economics, both methodologically and in terms of its perspective on how human behaviour can be most parsimoniously and effectively modelled. The power of the approach derives from the wide variety of circumstances in which individuals can be reasonably well modelled as rational and self-interested actors, as well as cases where political problems can be interpreted as a process of organizing collective action. The limitations of the approach arise partly in cases where its underlying assumptions are challenged, as well as in relation to problems not easily or comprehensively modelled as efforts at collective action. The five readings considered here illustrate both the power and limitations of the approach, while raising questions about the way in which it can enrich scholarly understanding of public policy-making.
On the occasion of the 50th volume of Policy Sciences, a former editor considers which concept from the policy sciences has diffused most widely outside the pages of the journal. If textbooks on the policy process are any indicator of what’s most valuable about Lasswell’s policy sciences framework, then, the decision process is his most enduring contribution. Unfortunately, many textbooks conflate the decision process with derivative policy process concepts, thereby distorting the original, and isolating it from a complete set of diagnostic and prescriptive tools all meant to be deployed together.