Complexity, Accountability, and School Improvement

2002 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer O'Day
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chicago Public Schools ◽  
Baltimore City ◽  
Professional Accountability ◽  
Standards Based Reform ◽  
Research In Education ◽  
City Schools

In this article, Jennifer O'Day builds on her earlier work defining and examining the standards-based reform movement in the United States. Here, O'Day explores accountability mechanisms currently associated with standards-based reform efforts that "take the school as the unit of accountability and seek to improve student learning by improving the functioning of the school organization." She examines such accountability mechanisms using the theoretical framework of complexity theory and focuses on how information travels through complex systems, with the understanding that information, its existence and usage, is key to improving schools. Drawing on work conducted with researchers at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education(CPRE), she contrasts the Chicago Public Schools' outcomes-based bureaucratic accountability approach with the combination of administrative and professional accountability found in the Baltimore City Schools. She argues that the combination of administrative and professional accountability presents a much more promising approach for implementing lasting and meaningful school reform.

Public Education

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Temin
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Failing Schools ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Inner Cities ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
City Schools ◽  
Incarcerated Fathers

The United States has a dual education system; the FTE sector sends its children to suburban public and private schools, and the low-wage sector sends its children to failing urban public schools. This dual system was created in response to the Great Migration as whites left inner cities to incoming black families. It was sustained by the Supreme Court and federal support for suburban growth. City schools are deprived of support and increasingly fail to educate black and brown children properly. Poor low-wage families with incarcerated fathers are forced to use failing schools, and their children grow up to be imprisoned. Reform efforts aim for quick results and fail spectacularly. Charter schools—private public schools—have widely varied effects.

Reimagining complexity: Exploring organizational ambidexterity as a lens for policy research

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea J Bingham ◽  
Patricia Burch
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Educational Change ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Organizational Ambidexterity ◽  
Environmental Pressures ◽  
Critical Step ◽  
Resources And Capabilities

For years, policy implementation scholars have recognized the trend of school improvement policies converging on public schools in such a way that these policies create a paradox – policies aimed at school improvement have often been represented as in such a state of incoherence, that they have been unmanageable. This convergence of reforms asks educators to manage multiple demands – learning and implementing new reforms and ways of teaching, while also leveraging current resources and capabilities. The concept of organizational ambidexterity captures this tension and complexity, giving a name to an organization’s ability to effectively balance conflicting pressures and to simultaneously take advantage of existing capabilities and explore possible innovative practices to increase both efficiency and efficacy. We argue that drawing on the research on organizational ambidexterity and conceptualizing new ways for schools to develop ambidextrous practices may be a critical step toward answering how schools manage environmental pressures and toward educational change.

Gulf Comparative Education Society’s Third Annual Symposium on Global Innovation, Local Transformation: Trends & Reactions

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
English Language ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Transformation ◽  
Annual Symposium ◽  
Global Innovation

"The Gulf Comparative Education Society (GCES) organized its third annual symposium under the sponsorship of the Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research and in collaboration with Bahrain Teachers College. Entitled ‘Global Innovation, Local Transformation: Trends & Reactions,’ the symposium was held at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Kingdom of Bahrain on Saturday March 24 and Sunday March 25, 2012. The symposium consisted of one keynote address, three panels, and four breakout sessions with a total of 45 presentations made by invited speakers as well as those who submitted abstracts. The speakers came from a wide variety of countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Switzerland, England, and the United States and represented different voices in the education sector, ranging from policy makers, academics and researchers, school providers and leaders, consultants, and teachers. The purpose of this year’s GCES symposium was to identify and examine the use of global innovations in education in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as well as the ways in which they are adapted (or not) to suit the needs of the environment. Delivering the keynote on the role of and relationship between professional and vocational education in the GCC was Dr. David Guile, Professor of Education and Work at the Institute of Education, University of LondonThe remaining panels and breakout sessions addressed the following topics: • Education Reforms in Bahrain • Technology & Innovation • Student Participation in Education: Trends & Reactions • Systems & Standards in GCC Schools • Transforming Science Curricula • The Use of E-portfolio in Evaluating Public Schools • Relationships and Academic Achievement • English Language Programs in the GCC In addition, the symposium brought together over 200 participants working in a range of organizations across Bahrain, the Gulf states, and beyond, all of whom shared an interest in comparative education in the GCC. Following the symposium presenters were asked if they would like to submit a 1500 – 3000 word paper on their presentation. This volume is the compilation of those who submitted papers. While it does not cover all of the presentations that were made at the symposium, presentation slides for all the presentations are available on the GCES website (www.gulfcomped.ning.com). Dr. Ali Ibrahim - President Dr. Hamood Al-Harthi - Vice President Samar Farah - Secretary"

Futures Research in Education

1976 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter W. O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Planning ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Futures Research ◽  
Research In Education ◽  
New Research ◽  
Second World

Since the Second World War, new emphases in policy research and long-range planning have emerged, resulting in the growth of a new research discipline called “Futures Research”. This article outlines the growth of futures research and the role accorded to it in Europe, North America and elsewhere, particularly with reference to work being carried out in the United States. It examines some of the futures research techniques used, and contrasts the important place in educational planning which futures research is beginning to occupy in Europe and North America with the position which it occupies in Australia. The article also calls for the establishment in Australia of Educational Policy Research Centres to undertake long-range educational planning studies.

Unification and Its Discontents

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Brian Kovalesky
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School District ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
The State ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
City Schools

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

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