State Takeover: Managing Emotions, Policy Implementation, and the Support/Sanction Duality in the Holyoke Public Schools Receivership

In this portrait, Simone A. Fried investigates the first six months of a state education department's takeover of a public school district. Using interviews, observations, and artifact analysis, the article explores how school district employees experience the significant reorganization of governance structures and policies that accompanies receivership, illustrating the challenges of managing the “human side” of reform, particularly during the chaotic initial period of a new initiative. The portrait highlights a tension inherent to takeover policy: the state's dual role in providing both support and sanction generates fear and uncertainty in the very communities where they must also build trust, vision, and motivation for change.

Political Roles: Who Needs to Know?

Up to this point in the book, we have established that educators’ ability to develop and defend claims about the benefits of conveying certain types of information depends on the logic of competence, a prospective learner’s values, and framing decisions. For the purpose of this chapter, I proceed as if an educator has developed such a defense and turn attention to an important procedural question. To increase a competence, who needs to know what? For example, citizens have opportunities to vote for other people (i.e., candidates) who then make decisions on their behalf. If an educator is seeking to increase a competence using a criterion that produces particular kinds of policy outcomes, then competence depends not only on citizens’ direct actions, but also on the subsequent actions of those whom they elect. Suppose, for example, that an educator’s goal is to increase math proficiency among second-graders in a given school district. If a citizen votes for a school board candidate who voices the same desire, this vote is not sufficient to produce the desired outcome. That candidate must actually win the election—which requires votes from other voters. If elected, the candidate must work with other school board members to write the desired policies and then must count on others, such as school district employees, to enforce the policies. If we evaluate a citizen’s school board voting competence by whether it makes increased math proficiency more likely, many decisions other than her vote affect the evaluation. As a result, the kinds of information that can increase this competence depend on how the voter can use them. Variations in political roles affect who needs to know what. By political role, I mean a person’s opportunities to affect political outcomes. Some individuals, like a president or governor, have roles with great authority. Their singular actions can change important social outcomes. Other roles carry less political authority—such as being one of several million voters in a two-candidate election whose lone vote is unlikely to affect who wins the election.

A Public Sector Health Promotion Program

The use of a volunteer model in the provision of health promotion programs in the public sector is described based on the experiences of the Carolina Healthstyle Project, originally a health promotion project for state employees in the Columbia, South Carolina metropolitan area and now expanding to all state employees, public school district employees, and, in a more limited fashion, to state government retirees. The revised models for this project may be particularly helpful to other modestly-funded health promotion efforts.