Cut From the Same Cloth? Comparing Urban District CBAs Within States and Across the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley D. Marianno ◽  
Tara Kilbride ◽  
Roddy Theobald ◽  
Katharine O. Strunk ◽  
Joshua M. Cowen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban School Districts ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Urban District ◽  
Considerable Heterogeneity ◽  
High Profile ◽  
District Administrators

There is considerable speculation and some empirical evidence that teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in urban school districts are more restrictive to district administrators than CBAs in other districts. We build on prior work by comparing urban with nonurban CBAs in three states—California, Michigan, and Washington—and, for a set of high-profile provisions, with those in CBAs from 72 of the largest districts in the country outside those states. We find that urban CBAs are more restrictive than nonurban CBAs in all three states, but there is still considerable heterogeneity across districts in overall restrictiveness and in high-profile provisions.

Partisan Predictors for Collective Bargaining Agreement Items

2021 ◽  
pp. 089590482110068
Author(s):  
Adam Kirk Edgerton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
Collective Bargaining Agreement ◽  
Probit Regression ◽  
Spatial Autoregression ◽  
High Profile ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
Union Leaders

The United States is rare among nations in its highly decentralized process for negotiating collective bargaining agreements with local teachers’ unions. To determine whether partisanship can predict these highly localized decisions, I construct an original database of Pennsylvania collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) merged with publicly available voter registration records to predict the presence of high-profile contract items. Using spatial autoregression and probit regression, I reveal that the partisanship of a school district is a significant predictor for fewer seniority protections but not for lower salaries. These partisan relationships can guide both district administrators and union leaders in future negotiations.

Fighting for the local: Americans for Prosperity and the struggle for school boards

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Schirmer ◽  
Michael W. Apple
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
School Board ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jefferson County ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
News Reports ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
School Board Elections

Corporate-backed philanthropic groups have become increasingly involved in political processes in the past ten years. The Koch Brothers’ and their political advocacy groups, have become particularly prominent players. Their influence extends beyond high-profile state-level elections and increasingly have begun investing in municipal affairs of small cities and towns, such as school board elections like Kenosha, Wisconsin and Jefferson County, Colorado in the US. This chapter asks, why do groups like Americans for Prosperity care about small-town school board elections? This chapter highlights two particularly significant local examples in the United States: school board elections in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2014 and Jefferson County, Colorado in 2015. Through documentary analysis of school board records, news reports, and district evaluations, in both Wisconsin and Colorado, we chronicle the political contest for control of each school board. Our findings illustrate the ideological and political project of corporate, conservative influence in public education in the United States.

scholarly journals AN EXAMINATION OF ONE FACTOR IN SCHOOL REFORM: INCREASED TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY IN TWO URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICTS

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (27) ◽  
pp. 329-344
Author(s):  
Nadine Bonda
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban School Districts ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
Study Approach

Beginning in 2009, and with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, school districts across the United States began to be held to higher standards and their progress publicly reported.  Student achievement began to be measured by standardized testing and great efforts were being made to reduce the achievement gap. This paper is based on a five-year study of teacher evaluation in two urban districts in Massachusetts where improving teacher practice was seen as an important factor in raising student achievement. This research studied efforts to address those teachers who were identified as underperforming and were supported through individual improvement plans.  This paper used a case study approach to show what the practices of a sampling of these teachers looked like, teachers’ reactions to being rated unsatisfactory, and teachers’ reactions to the improvement planning process.

Challenging Scripted Curricula With Adaptive Teaching

2021 ◽  
pp. 0013189X2110657
Author(s):  
Margaret Vaughn ◽  
Seth A. Parsons ◽  
Melissa A. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Teacher Professionalism ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Diverse Student ◽  
Adaptive Teaching ◽  
Instructional Needs ◽  
Support Teacher ◽  
Scripted Curricula

Although adaptive teaching is considered a cornerstone of effective instruction, there remains a lack of focus on teacher adaptability in policy, professional practice, and teacher education in the United States. High-profile educational reform efforts have pressured districts and states across the nation to rely on prescriptive curricula that fail to meet the linguistic, cultural, and instructional needs of the nation’s diverse student population. In this article, we describe the development of the Adaptive Teaching Inventory and present validity evidence from our administration in the United States. These findings provide insight into the potential for widespread implementation of adaptability and its focus to support teacher professionalism and decision-making. The discussion centers on moving adaptability to the forefront of policy and practice efforts to counter the prevailing emphasis on restrictive curricula that has stymied teachers in their efforts to support students for far too long. Implications for administrators, policymakers, and researchers are discussed.

Kelsen’s Milieu

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-65
Author(s):  
Robert Schuett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Philosophy And Literature ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Foreign Intelligence

Who shaped the early Kelsen’s style of thinking under the Kaiser? What were the intellectual circles in which he moved in fin-de-siècle Vienna and the interwar period before he left Austria for Cologne, Geneva, Prague, and the United States? The chapter explores ‘the other Kelsen’ by revisiting his formative years, as well as his work in the lecture halls of university and his high-profile roles in the War Ministry, Karl Renner’s state chancellery, and American foreign intelligence after escaping the fascist Continent. A reluctant jurist, Kelsen had a passion for philosophy and literature, and from Freud and the economists he learned that individual and social life was all about drives and desires, instincts and interests. Where Kelsen was, there was no land of utopia.

scholarly journals Socioeconomic Disparities in Vape Shop Density and Proximity to Public Schools in the Conterminous United States, 2018

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 9S-17S ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Dilip Venugopal ◽  
Aura Lee Morse ◽  
Cindy Tworek ◽  
Hoshing Wan Chang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Nearest Neighbor ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
Statistical Relationships ◽  
Vape Shops

We conducted an environmental justice assessment examining the distribution of specialty vape shops in relation to where minority and low-income youth live and attend school. We collated and examined the density of vape shops in public school districts in 2018 throughout the conterminous United States using geographic information systems. We calculated the proximity of vape shops to public middle and high schools through nearest neighbor analysis in QGIS software. We examined the statistical relationships between the density of vape shops in school districts, and proximity to schools, with the proportion of racial/ethnic minorities and those living in poverty. We found that vape shops are more densely distributed, and are in closer proximity to schools, in school districts with higher proportions of Asian and Black or African American populations. However, vape shops were further away from schools in school districts with higher proportions of the population in poverty. The proximity and higher density of vape shops in relationship to schools in Asian and Black or African American communities may result in disproportionate health impacts due to greater access and exposure to vape products and advertisements. Our results may help school district administrators prioritize and target efforts to curb youth vaping (e.g., health education curricula) in these school districts with high density and closer proximity of vape shops to schools. Policy efforts, such as local ordinances restricting the promotion and sale of vaping products close to schools, could help prevent disproportionate human and environmental health impacts to minorities.

scholarly journals Making the Body Electric: The Politics of Body-Worn Cameras and Facial Recognition in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Hood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Facial Recognition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
The Body ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Technological Means ◽  
Rapid Deployment

This paper explores the rapid deployment of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) and the subsequent push for the integration of biometric technologies (i.e., facial recognition) into these devices. To understand the political dangers of these technologies, I outline the concept of “making the body electric” to provide a critical language for cultural practices of identifying, augmenting, and fixing the body through technological means. Further, I argue how these practices reinforce normative understandings of the body and its political functionality, specifically with BWCs and facial recognition. I then analyze the rise of BWCs in a cultural moment of high-profile police violence against unarmed people of color in the United States. In addition to examining the ethics of BWCs, I examine the politics of facial recognition and the dangers that this form of biometric surveillance pose for marginalized groups, arguing against the interface of these two technologies. The pairing of BWCs with facial recognition presents a number of sociopolitical dangers that reinforce the privilege of perspective granted to police in visual understandings of law enforcement activity. It is the goal of this paper to advance critical discussion of BWCs and biometric surveillance as mechanisms for leveraging political power and racial marginalization.

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