Jane Clark Lindle

Principals as Political Agents in The Implementation of IDEA's Least Restrictive Environment Mandate

This study focused on federal policy for education of students with disabilities. Assuming that principals occupy a pivotal policy implementation role, this analysis centered on selected elementary principals’ discourse about Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) clause in the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The study used a vertical discourse analysis looking from federal policy documents and case law through state and local guidance documents and finally into principals’ responses to open-ended interviews. These principals exhibited caution in their attempts to interpret LRE. They enforced a distance between regular and special education, ultimately yielding their political agency to others.

Introduction: School Leadership and the Politics of Education

This special issue concerns the development of knowledge among scholars studying politics in education. Educational Administration Quarterly sponsors such a special issue because the contentions outlined here strike at the knotty core of purposefully and properly educating all students. The demands of an applied field such as educational leadership always outstrip the available knowledge base (Lather, 1992; Murphy, 1992; Murphy & Louis, 1999). Consequently, the tensions of schooling challenge scholarship to confront the conflicts inherent to practice (Ogawa, Crowson, & Goldring, 1999; Stout, Tallerico, & Scribner, 1995; Wirt & Kirst, 1992). Accordingly, the politics of the education field, which specializes in the study of conflict, appeals to many practitioners and scholars of educational leadership (Ball, 1987; Bolman & Deal, 1991; Boyd, 1974; Malen, 1995; Mawhinney, 1999; Slater & Boyd, 1999). School leaders consistently frame their practice as political (Ball, 1987; Blase, 1986, 1989, 1991; Bolman & Deal, 1991; Lindle, 1994; Marshall & Scribner, 1991). Educational leaders and school administrators find themselves in a continually contentious arena and vie for ways of balancing, directing, controlling, manipulating, managing, and surviving their edgy environments (Ball, 1987; Blase, 1986, 1989, 1991; Iannacone, 1991; Lindle, 1994; Malen, 1995; Townsend, 1990). To what scholarship can they turn to make visible the politics of education that we have so far inadequately understood? Four articles attempt to delineate this dilemma and in doing so provocatively suggest more questions than answers about the prevailing scholarship in the politics of education. This

Consequential Validity of Accountability Policy: Public Understanding of Assessments.

Educational accountability policy rests heavily on the assessments used to influence teaching, learning, and school improvement. A long-debated aspect of assessment use, consequential validity, plays an important role in public interpretation of assessment use whether for individual students or for state policy. The purpose of this survey study was to explore stakeholders’ perceptions of the variety of tests used in classrooms and schools, especially how testing is used to improve teaching and learning. Results indicated that the majority of stakeholders do not value state assessments and do not see the assessments as useful in the teaching and learning process. However, a proportion of minority respondents were optimistic that state assessments have potential for school improvement.

A Summing Up.

I n 1988, Norman Boyan edited the first Handbook of Research on Educa tional Administration. It was a straightforward report to the scholarly community on the output of normal science inquiry in the field over the previous 30 years. This archival work provided a framework that influenced how subsequent empirical work was organized and reported; it also established a benchmark against which such efforts were to be judged. The tripartite organizing framework that Boyan used in the first Handbookemerged from Andrew Halpin’s (1957) recommendations for framing the study of human behavior and consisted of sections relating to the administrator, organizations, and the environment. This framework, however, was supplemented by an addendum or Special Topics section to attend to emerging and nontraditional areas and research methods that did not fit neatly into the larger structure. Although the volume edited by Boyan admittedly left out a number of important areas of research on educational administration and suffered from some unevenness in writing and disconnection among the chapters, it made a significant contribution by capturing the warp and weft of established lines of inquiry in the field. It was not only well regarded for its substantive reviews but also for its critical commentary on work in the field and its observations about promising directions for future research. In editing the first volume, Boyan was successful in avoiding narrow scholarship, revisionist history, and those championing particular ideological preferences of the moment to influence future directions in the study of educational administration. Both Norman Boyan and Don Willower made important observations at the time about the first volume that provide insight into issues related to its successor.

Hard Choices in School Consolidation: Providing Education in the Best Interests of Students or Preserving Community Identity.

Educational leaders face difficult decisions in ensuring that all students learn despite ongoing scarcity of resources. School communities play an important role in establishing positive learning environments and supplying the resources for student learning. Declining community conditions often present school leaders with tough choices between facilities management and instructional needs. This case illustrates how school districts maintain a focus on the best interest of students in the face of economic decline in surrounding communities. How does a district address school consolidation? How can two communities focus on their children’s futures rather than grieving over past distinctions in community identity?

Parents, professionalism, and partnership in school-community relations

Abstract Finding a balance for the competing needs of parents and educators represents a classic challenge in school-community relations. Current reform efforts renew the challenge by simultaneously suggesting expanded professionalism for educators and increased parent involvement for improved schools. Given the changing demographics and declines in the numbers of families rearing children, the perceptions parents hold about school community relations are particularly important. To explore these perceptions, parents in four elementary schools (2 public and 2 parochial), representing both lower and middle socioeconomic status communities, were interviewed. The findings of the study suggest that the greater professionalism now being sought for educators needs to be tempered and transformed by a recognition that a truly collaborative partnership between parents and teachers is more imperative than ever, because of the decline of the nuclear family and of cohesive, neighborhood communities.

Ensuring the Capacity of University-Based Educational Leadership Preparation: The Collected Works of the National Commission for the Advancement of Educational Leadership Preparation

The Educational Administration Quarterly’s (EAQ’s) editorial team at the University of Kentucky welcomes two special issue guest editors, University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) executive director, Michelle D. Young, and UCEA’s associate director, George J. Petersen. This special issue demonstrates the ongoing role that UCEA has played in ensuring continued attention to university-based school leadership preparation. EAQ itself is a 38-year-old testimony to UCEA’s stewardship in developing a strong knowledge base for the complexities of an applied field such as educational leadership. The University of Kentucky’s EAQ editorial team read these manuscripts, much as we thought our readership might, anticipating insights into the demands for high-quality school leadership in our information age. If our readers react as we did, then this issue ought to generate debate and raise questions about the relevancy of university-based preparation programs to the complicated, tumultuous, and practical conditions of educational leadership today. Like commentator Usdan, we believe that this debate has barely begun with the presentation of these special issue articles. We strongly encourage our readers to comment and react.

School-Based Decision-Making Councils and the Hiring Process

The 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act provided for broad-based commu nity involvement in hiring decisions. Heres how the process works.

The Politics, Problems, and Potential Promise of School-Linked Social Services: Insights and New Directions From the Work of William Lowe Boyd

The purpose of this article is to illustrate Professor William L. Boyds insights into the political ecology of schooling and his contributions and collaboration with others concerned about ensuring the well-being of students, families, and communities. Over his career, Boyd investigated the subtle and complex organizational constraints to school-linked coordinated services, including examining the reasons for the unrelenting resistance of public organizations to change, despite repeated efforts to reform them. We trace the history of the community schools movement and explore the influential, and at times prophetic, scholarly contributions of William L. Boyd to the research and discussion on the effectiveness, challenges, and future promise of this reform strategy. We hope that current and future researchers can learn from and build on his scholarship to develop new pathways to improve the lives of at-risk children.

William P. Foster's Promises for Educational Leadership: Critical Idealism in an Applied Field

In 1986, William P. Foster added another measure of insight to the growing awareness that traditional approaches to explaining leadership phenomena in schooling had proven more illusion than illumination. With the publication of Paradigms and Promises: New Approaches to Educational Administration (1986), Foster’s scrutiny on market-bound and orthodox views of organizations challenged conventional scholarship on schooling and leadership. His promotion of a dialectically engaged and dynamic construction of education and educational leadership provided yet another impetus for the ensuing decades of reform in scholarship, preparation, and practices of the field. Upon the first anniversary of his death, Educational Administration Quarterly dedicates this edition to recognize and probe Foster’s scholarly legacy in addition to celebrating his generosity as a colleague and mentor.