Tina Trujillo

The Modern Cult of Efficiency: Intermediary Organizations and the New Scientific Management.

This article analyzes one intermediary organization. It draws on critical policy studies to frame the agency’s behaviors amid a discourse of managerialism in the public sector, and critical studies of education markets to explain the relationships between its reforms and education policy. Findings illustrate how the intermediary enacted managerial data monitoring systems as the core drivers of its reforms; how it framed leadership and teaching as reductive, managerialist pursuits; and why its reliance on business-inspired logics, roles, and language enabled it to compete in a marketplace and preserve its industry niche. In this way, its behaviors resembled those of the “efficiency experts” during the industrial revolution. The result was an intermediary that erroneously equated data with professional judgment, and that guided decisions based not on a century’s worth of evidence about the limitations of purely managerial reforms, but on an enduring ideological faith in technocratic solutions to complex social problems.

Equity-Oriented Reform Amid Standards-Based Accountability: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of an Intermediary’s Instructional Practices

Intermediary organizations increasingly provide support for schools serving marginalized students. Some attribute this trend to growing ideological support for market-based strategies to further the public good. This article investigates one intermediary that marketed equity-oriented instructional goals for schools serving high numbers of students of color and English Learners. Drawing on critical policy studies and political science, we analyze its behavior amid a high-stakes accountability environment, its reasons for adopting certain reforms, and the consequences for instruction. We use qualitative comparative analysis to show how policy forces shaped reforms and content in its schools, but not pedagogy specific to students of color or English Learners. We discuss the implications for the research on intermediaries and the democratic control of public education.

The Disproportionate Erosion of Local Control Urban School Boards, High-Stakes Accountability, and Democracy

This case study of an urban school board’s experiences under high-stakes accountability demonstrates how the district leaders eschewed democratic governance processes in favor of autocratic behaviors. They possessed narrowly defined goals for teaching and learning that emphasized competitive, individualized means of achievement. Their decision making was private; opportunities for local input were missing. They promoted centrally determined, standardized instructional and administrative practices, not locally driven ones. It concludes that accountability policies that are framed in terms of their potential to further democratic aims by granting greater liberty in exchange for results, and by holding all districts to the same high standards, may disproportionately reduce democratic control in urban settings.

The reincarnation of the effective schools research: rethinking the literature on district effectiveness

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the district effectiveness literature. It begins by summarizing the school effectiveness research, the correlates of effective schools, and the conceptual and methodological characteristics of this field. It then describes the findings from a review of 50 studies of district effectiveness, the most frequently identified correlates of effective districts, and the conceptual and methodological features of this research. From there, it compares and contrasts the two fields, paying attention to the ways in which they frame notions of success, purposes of education, the contextualized nature of school performance, and theoretical explanations for student success.Design/methodology/approach – Data sources for this literature review included 50 primary documents on district effectiveness. The studies were bound to those that presented the original results from investigations of the relationship between district‐level policies, routines, behaviors, or other charac...

The Politics of District Instructional Policy Formation Compromising Equity and Rigor

This qualitative case study extends the literature on urban district instructional policymaking by analyzing the ways in which normative and political pressures shaped district leaders’ instructional policy decisions. Drawing on concepts from the politics of education, it shows how teachers and principals repeatedly nullified policies that aimed for equity-oriented, rigorous changes in one urban district when leaders opted to pacify constituents, rather than uphold controversial policies. It complements present explanations of how district instructional policies come to be by comparing the consistency between the values and ideologies of district leaders, principals, and teachers and those implicit in district policies.

Community Schools as Urban District Reform: Analyzing Oakland's Policy Landscape through Oral Histories.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the multiple political histories that have coalesced to produce support for or resistance to the Oakland Unified School District’s full-service community schools policy. It analyzes oral history interview data from eight stakeholders who represent the district’s major constituencies to explore the reasons why each individual, positioned differently within the larger district system, may or may not support a seemingly democratic, community-based reform. Through their voices, the article explains how different constituencies can interpret an urban district’s policies and form community-based coalitions that either further or obstruct a democratic, equity-minded reform.

Framing Social Justice Leadership in a University-Based Preparation Program The University of California’s Principal Leadership Institute

Scholars are increasingly considering how theoretical concepts about social justice might permeate leadership preparation programs’ design. Yet the degree to which these concepts actually anchor these programs is unclear. This article addresses this gap by analyzing how the University of California’s Principal Leadership Institute bridges theory and practice according to a social justice framework. It applies a theoretical framework for guiding social justice leadership preparation to guide a content analysis of program syllabi. It identifies specific features of the program’s curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment that reflect or contradict this framework, and then discusses the implications for research and practice.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Teach For America and the Making of Educational Leaders

This article reports findings from a study that explores how Teach For America (TFA) alumni interpret the causes of and interventions for educational inequality, the leadership pathways for remedying inequality, and the career opportunities available to them as TFA affiliates. Analyzing data from 117 alumni interviews, we find that the majority of participants attribute the roots of educational inequality to perceived managerial shortcomings of the public school system. We also demonstrate how TFA alumni embrace largely managerial, technocratic responses to inequality. Finally, we reveal how the majority of alumni who work in education do so in privatized settings that emphasize management, entrepreneurship, and accountability. These findings contribute to the literature on school reform, the politics of educational policy and leadership, and the discourse and policy environment in which the organization is embedded.