Democratic Dilemmas: Joint Work, Education Politics, and Community (School Districts Res Pol Refor)

Explores how to engage citizens in the process of educational improvement. Drawing on three years of field research and extensive theoretical and empirical literature, Democratic Dilemmas chronicles the day-to-day efforts of educators and laypersons working together to advance student learning in two California school districts. Julie A. Marsh reveals how power, values, organizational climates, and trust played key roles in these two districts achieving vastly different results. In one district, parents, citizens, teachers, and administrators effectively developed and implemented districtwide improvement strategies; in the other, community and district leaders unsuccessfully attempted to improve systemwide accountability through dialogue. The book highlights the inherent tensions of deliberative democracy, competing notions of representation, limitations of current conceptions of educational accountability, and the foundational importance of trust to democracy and education reform. It further provides a framework for improving community-educator collaboration and lessons for policy and practice.

Education & Teaching

Marsh, Julie A.

Schools & Teaching

State University of New York Press

Explores how to engage citizens in the process of educational improvement. Drawing on three years of field research and extensive theoretical and empirical literature, Democratic Dilemmas chronicles the day-to-day efforts of educators and laypersons working together to advance student learning in two California school districts. Julie A. Marsh reveals how power, values, organizational climates, and trust played key roles in these two districts achieving vastly different results. In one district, parents, citizens, teachers, and administrators effectively developed and implemented districtwide improvement strategies; in the other, community and district leaders unsuccessfully attempted to improve systemwide accountability through dialogue. The book highlights the inherent tensions of deliberative democracy, competing notions of representation, limitations of current conceptions of educational accountability, and the foundational importance of trust to democracy and education reform. It further provides a framework for improving community-educator collaboration and lessons for policy and practice.

In 2000, Edison Schools, the nation's largest education management organization, asked Rand to analyze its achievement outcomes and design implementation. RAND evaluated Edison's strategies for promoting student achievement in its schools, how it implemented those strategies, how its management affected student achievement, and what factors explained differences in achievement trends among its schools.

Inspiration Perspiration & Time:Operations & Achievement

Politics & Social Sciences

Lockwood, J. R.

RAND Corporation

Hamilton, Laura

Social Sciences

The current high-stakes accountability environment brought on by the federal No Child Left Behind Act places great pressure on school districts to demonstrate success by meeting yearly progress goals for student achievement and eventually demonstrating that all students achieve at high standards. Many urban school districts, in particular, face great challenges in meeting these goals. This study analyzes three urban districts’ efforts to face these challenges and assesses the contribution to those efforts made by an intermediary organization, the Institute for Learning. It describes the districts’ work in four areas: promoting principals’ instructional leadership; supporting teachers’ professional learning, in particular through school-based coaching models; specifying curriculum; and promoting data-based decisionmaking for planning and instructional improvement. For each area, it identifies constraints and enablers of district success, assesses the nature and effect of district-intermediary partnerships, and makes recommendations for districts undertaking similar instructional reforms.

The Role of Districts in Fostering Instructional Improvements: Lessons from Three Urban Districts Partnered with the Institute for Learning

Business & Money

Business Culture

Since 2001-2002, standards-based accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 have shaped the work of public school teachers and administrators in the United States. This book sheds light on how accountability policies have been translated into actions at the district, school, and classroom levels in three states.

Standards-Based Accountability Under No Child Left Behind: Experiences of Teachers and Administrators in Three States

McCombs, Jennifer Sloan

Hamilton, Laura S.

Stecher, Brian M.

Robyn, Abby

Challenging the One Best System: The Portfolio Management Model and Urban School Governance (Education Politics and Policy)

In Challenging the One Best System, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the "portfolio management model." They investigate the degree to which this model--a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy--challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as "the one best system." The authors examine the design and enactment of the portfolio management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model--planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports--and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, Challenging the One Best System represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education.

Harris, Douglas N.

Bulkley, Katrina E.

Strunk, Katharine O.

Hashim, Ayesha K.

Harvard Education Press

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Books by Marsh, Julie A.