Robert Bickel

Toward a Political Economy of Educational Innovation

Many policymakers and researchers still maintain that “modernization” of education through sustained and well-focused investment in educational innovation can improve the quality of education, significantly ameliorate social and economic problems, and lower educational costs as well. By restructuring management and teaching practices, putting more reliance on prepackaged curriculum materials, exploiting the possibilities of computers, radio, and TV, and changing teachers’ roles, it is believed that children and youth would be better prepared to meet the requirements of the modern workplace. We contend, however, that these benefits have failed to materialize. In an attempt to understand why the promise of educational innovation has not been realized, we critically examine educational innovation, its ideological and paradigmatic underpinnings, and the major stages of the innovation process. Review of a large body of research suggests that conventional theory fails to understand the nature of structural and institutional factors and processes that characterize class-based societies. A political economy of educational innovation perspective is elaborated that focuses on the centrality of power and the generation of correspondence and contradiction as key analytical concepts. It is argued that this “radical” perspective better explains the failure of innovation. Recent arguments that the central ideas behind educational innovation are still valid, but that greater emphasis must be put on the implementation process and participation of potential adopters, are also critically reviewed and found to represent no substantive shift from the “failed” model of innovation. Although shortcomings of the radical view are acknowledged and some of its theoretical weaknesses underscored, it demonstrates how the innovation process actively extends and creates a “technological” ideology that is self-legitimating, providing the illusion of change, not its substance. Yet despite the predominance of this reproductive function, we discuss how the radical paradigm also posits that educational innovation yields contradictions and resistances that have the potential for social transformation.

Opportunities, costs, and high school completion in West Virginia: a replication of Florida research

Abstract Usual explanations of why students drop out of high school focus on characteristics of individual students, their families, and their particular schools. Although this research is informative, it ignores structurally determined contextual factors, especially the prevailing and anticipated opportunities and social and psychological costs associated with continued investment in secondary education. School district-level data for West Virginia in 1986–87 were used to investigate the value of focusing on structurally determined opportunities and costs to explain dropping out. This research builds on two previous Florida analyses and one previous West Virginia analysis that addressed the same issue and that have been reported elsewhere. Limitations of the earlier West Virginia research were addressed in the present study, which replicates the second Florida analysis. Insofar as similar relationships hold in states as different as Florida and West Virginia, the plausibility of the present findings is e...

Poor Rural Neighborhoods and Early School Achievement

ABSTRACT School consolidation and the search for economies of scale are threatening to render the neighborhood school obsolete. Nevertheless, students and their families do live in neighborhoods. Consequently, education researchers have asked if there are neighborhood-based advantages and disadvantages which influence student achievement. Research has yielded conflicting results. This may be due to failure to properly define and measure neighborhood, acknowledging variation in its nature from place to place. We use ethnographic material to help operationalize the concept neighborhood for use in quantitative research in two very poor, rural counties in West Virginia. We then do a contextual analysis to gauge neighborhood effects among kindergarten children in twelve randomly selected elementary schools. Poor, rural West Virginia neighborhoods turn out not to be the uniformly socially disorganized, culturally pernicious contexts which gave rise to the dubious concept culture of poverty. Instead, they can be sources of safety and stability, where extended families endure, like-minded neighbors are socially accessible and supportive, and early school achievement is enhanced.

Early Achievement Gains and Poverty-Linked Social Distress: The Case of Post-Head Start Transition.

Public policymakers in West Virginia have an intense interest in early and continuing educational intervention for the poor. In this view, interventions such as Head Start are a good idea, but they start too late and end too soon. Properly executed, early and continuing intervention is expected to provide a basis for later achievement-driven improvements in occupational and income attainments. Rural poverty and its correlates, which manifest and cause social distress in a variety of forms, is then diminished. We report on an evaluation of the West Virginia site of a federally-funded program intended to maintain early achievement gains viewed as crucial in alleviating poverty-linked social distress. Results of the evaluation of Post-Head Start Transition show no achievement gains. This undercuts the rationale for the program. Furthermore, it provides no support for a general policy of early and continuing educational intervention to foster achievement-driven diminution of poverty. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that achievement rises and falls in response to the prevalence and intensity of social distress. Context determines educational outcomes, not the other way around. Reasons are suggested for this.

Opportunity, Community, and Reckless Lives: Social Distress among Adolescents in West Virginia.

Social distress among West Virginia adolescents has many manifestations. Among the most conspicuous of these are dropping out of high school, teen pregnancy, and violent death. For more than 30 years, state policy makers have explained these behaviors by invoking the notion of a pervasive culture of poverty and morbidity which is transmitted from generation to generation. Participants in this primitive and fatalistic culture, it is commonly claimed, lack the prudence and foresight needed to make best use of the opportunities offered by our modern world. Education-intensive strategies aimed at enabling West Virginia adolescents and their families to overcome this disabling world view seem the best responses. By contrast, however, based on 8 years of empirical research in West Virginia, we contend that an “Oh, what the Hell!” sort of recklessness is interpretable as a rational response to deteriorating social and economic circumstances. West Virginia communities have become increasingly anomic and devoid of economic opportunity. In this economically uncertain, culturally insubstantial world, adolescents rightly judge their prospects to be poor. In this social context, seemingly irrational acts make more sense. Why be prudent in the absence of opportunity and community? Why be prudent in the absence of a future?

Caffeine Consumption Patterns and Beliefs of College Freshmen

Abstract Background: Caffeine consumption by young people has increased dramatically over the last decade through increased coffee consumption and “energy drinks.” In higher amounts, caffeine causes many adverse effects that are cause for concern. Purpose: Purposes of this study were to determine: (1) the amount of caffeine consumed by a sample of college students, (2) beliefs regarding caffeine consumption, (3) reported perceived benefits and adverse effects of caffeine consumption, (4) reasons for consuming caffeine, and (5) predictors of caffeine consumption. Methods: An anonymous survey was administered 300 freshmen attending a southeastern university. Results: Eighty-three percent of the students reported having at least one sign/symptom of caffeine intoxication in the past; 51% reported having at least one sign/symptom of caffeine withdrawal. Students consumed three to five times the recommended amount of caffeine. Fathers social index, participation in organized activity in college and three alertness items (concentration, keep awake, wake up) were significant predictors of caffeine consumption. Discussion: Students ingested caffeine at levels that could cause negative health effects and seemed unaware of the total amount of caffeine consumed. Translation to Health Education Practice: More information about caffeine should be incorporated into health education at all levels, so students can identify and avoid negative effects along with caffeine withdrawal and addiction.

Comparing public and private high schools using three SAT data sets

Proponents of private schooling claim that private high schools, on the average, more effectively promote measured academic achievement than public high schools. They have also argued that private high schools increase high school completion rates and improve college enrollment rates among high school graduates. Their antagonists, typically, hold that there is little or no difference between public and private high schools with respect to any of these outcomes. We address two of these school effectivenes issues by applying multiple-regression analysis to two SAT data sets for Florida and a national SAT data set. We ask whether there are differences between public and private high schools in promoting achievement as measured by the high-profile SAT verbal and math tests. At the same time, we are asking, at least implicity, if either public or private high schools provide an SAT soore advantage in promoting college enrollments. Our analysis finds a consistent advantage for public high schools with respect to SAT math attainment. For high schools generally, however, it seems clear that school effects outweigh the impact of socially ascribed traits, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class.