Rebecca Jacobsen

When Accountability Strategies Collide Do Policy Changes That Raise Accountability Standards Also Erode Public Satisfaction

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires that two accountability strategies—raising standards and public pressure through publicizing performance data—be implemented simultaneously. However, when coupled, they may produce an inappropriate consequence for public opinion. The public may misunderstand the drop in achievement that occurs when the bar is raised and become dissatisfied with school performance. To examine this potential negative consequence, the authors analyze data from New York City. The authors find parent satisfaction declined when school performance grades dropped after the implementation of higher standards. This article contributes to our understanding of how the public responds to school accountability data. Because public support for sustained and successful reforms is key, understanding how accountability policies may erode support is critical.

Diverse Schools in a Democratic Society: New Ways of Understanding How School Demographics Affect Civic and Political Learning

The 2010 Census revealed the extent to which today’s metropolitan areas are growing increasingly diverse. At the forefront of this change are schools. Yet, research on school context continues to rely upon a traditional, cross-sectional bifurcation that designates schools as either diverse or not. This classification may be especially inaccurate for some educational outcomes such as whether schools are cultivating effective citizenship for a diverse democracy. Because of changing demographics, this paper considers whether a new framework for conceptualizing school racial composition, including the number and identity of specific racial groups and the stability of those groups, can determine more precisely the ways in which school diversity impacts students’ citizenship learning.

Worth the Price? Weighing the Evidence on Charter School Achievement

In the summer of 2004, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) published data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showing that average fourth-grade achievement is higher in regular public schools than in charter schools, both for students overall and for low-income students. For black students, a group that many charter schools are designed to serve, the analysis showed that average achievement is no better in charter schools than in regular public schools. These conclusions were reported in a front-page article in the New York Times. Their accuracy has not subsequently been challenged.1

Informing or Shaping Public Opinion? The Influence of School Accountability Data Format on Public Perceptions of School Quality

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act requires local education agencies to publicly disseminate school performance data. In response, districts and state departments of education have created “school report cards” that vary widely. While data dissemination policies can improve institutional legitimacy and ensure ongoing support, we suggest that the potential to diminish or undermine legitimacy also exists. Using data from a population-based survey experiment, we demonstrate that people assign significantly different meanings to some formats. We find that format influences not only the average rating individuals assign to schools with the same performance levels but also difference perceived among schools of varying performance.

Will Performance Management Restore Citizens’ Faith in Public Education?

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade, policymakers have expanded the use of performance management in public education in the United States. Education researchers have focused heavily on the ways these practices and policies shape teaching and learning, but have given much less attention to other expected outcomes of performance management. This article explores two specific areas where more research is needed: whether performance management improves public satisfaction and trust in public education, and whether it improves public oversight of education. We provide background on relevant educational issues and context for the study of performance management in education scholarship. Our goal is to draw additional researchers into this important line of inquiry.

Teaching with Evidence.

In this age of real and fake news, students need to be able to assess the trustworthiness of evidence. The authors’ current research examines students’ use of evidence in secondary social studies classrooms as students deliberate contemporary public policy issues. The authors found that students shifted their evaluations of the trustworthiness of evidence depending on whether they were making these assessments in the abstract or in the context of a specific issue. In the abstract, evidence like statistical data ranked high, but when students considered a policy issue, they gave greater weight to anecdote and personal experience. The authors offer several recommendations for teaching good evidence use.

Exploring the Supply Side: Factors Related to Charter School Openings in NYC

School choice policies have led to a proliferation of new schools opening. While economic theory suggests that new charters would open in high demand locations, limited work examines whether this is, indeed, occurring. Framing our study in geography, we explore both space factors and place factors as contrasting explanations for where new charters may open. By using geographic information system (GIS) mapping, we explore where new charters open in New York City (NYC) using data from NYC public schools and the Census. Results suggest that charters are responding to poor student achievement and possibly to poverty density, but not to parental satisfaction.

The New Politics of Accountability: Research in Retrospect and Prospect

This article describes the origins and goals for this special double issue of Educational Policy, which also represents the 2013 Politics of Education Association Yearbook. We provide an overview of each of the articles that comprise this issue and discuss key themes concerning the new politics of accountability that emerge when we consider the articles collectively. These themes include (a) accountability policy has expanded the number and diversity of political actors; (b) accountability policy has contributed to shifts in traditional alliances; (c) political actors are using traditional and new strategies to influence and respond to accountability policy; (d) accountability policy has altered institutional structures and norms, shifting the distribution of power and resources; (e) accountability policy creates more accountability policy; and (f) the focus on performance- or test-based based accountability has contributed to a decline in democratic accountability.

The Short Supply of Saints: Limits on Replication of Models That “Beat the Odds”

Researchers have identified effective practices that allow schools to “beat the odds” and close the reading achievement gap. Although identifying these practices is important, researchers have paid little attention to the work it takes to implement them. Through interviews with teachers who work at schools identified as beating the odds, this research documents the amount of work it takes to implement effective practices and demonstrates that this extraordinarily time-consuming work is difficult to sustain and not easily replicated. Therefore, experts must not rely on these practices alone to close the reading achievement gap.

Less arguing, more listening: Improving civility in classrooms

Today’s youth increasingly are being expected to engage in civil deliberation in classrooms while simultaneously living in a society with a high level of political incivility. However, teaching students to argue — particularly in oral form — is enormously complex and challenging work. In this article, the authors report on a study of four high school social studies classrooms in which teachers facilitated argumentation via deliberations on immigration policy. Based on their research, they provide recommendations related to argumentation, deliberation, and the promotion of civility in classrooms.