Education Commons^™

Seeing Beneath The Surface: Using Critical Race Theory To Uncover Racial Inequities In The U.S. Public School System, Lauren Harkins

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

Many policies and practices perpetuate racial inequities and stereotypes, harming and neglecting the young people in American schools. This paper uses Critical Race Theory as a lens or framework to understand the circumstances in which educational inequities are exacerbated and what systemic barriers and beliefs maintain them.

The Technocratic Politics Of The Common Core State Standards In History, Kate Duguid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper shows that the explicit aims of the American educational standards for public schools, the Common Core State Standards to teach history to create “college and career ready” students, marks a shift from preparing students for political participation to preparing them for market participation. I trace the intellectual and pedagogical origins of the Common Core’s pretense of technocratic apolitical values back through the previous two major American curricular reform efforts. In the first section I discuss the origins and development of the National History Standards and show how Cold War anxiety prompted a shift in evaluating students as potential …

Increasing Superintendent Longevity In Kansas, Cory Lee Gibson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to illuminate the factors that may impact a superintendent’s longevity in the same district. Specifically, this study is motivated by four research questions: (1) What factors do superintendents in Kansas attribute to remaining in the same position greater than six years? (2) What factors do superintendents in Kansas attribute as the causes for leaving a district? (3) What is the current level of satisfaction of Kansas school superintendents within their current roles? and (4) What are some changes in policy or practice that may increase superintendent longevity in Kansas?

According to Dale Dennis, Kansas Deputy Commissioner of …

Too Little Stem Workforce In The United States: Framing The Discourse In A Global Setting, Patrice-Andre P. Prud'homme

Theses and Dissertations

Policymakers and industry leaders are claiming that the U.S. has an insufficient number of STEM graduates. As the rhetoric of a shortage of skilled scholars and employees in STEM-related fields expands, there is a plethora of publications that refers to a phenomenon dating back to the 1950s. Nonetheless, this new paradigm presents a critical challenge to policies and programs that surround STEM education in countries around the world. While STEM, including the underlying human capital component is a major factor of economic growth in the United States, it is also in Australia and Germany. The policy analysis study is presented …

Historical Trends And Emerging Issues In Teacher Education Programs In The United States, Karl M. Lorenz

Education Faculty Publications

US national and state educational polices are advocating for more teacher accountability with respect to student performance, and accrediting agencies are requiring more evidence of teachers’ mastery of subject area knowledge and professional skills. This paper examines some of the significant educational and social issues currently facing basic education and teacher preparation programs in the United States. It addresses numerous topics and focuses on five general issues that confront K-12 education and either directly or indirectly Teacher Preparation Programs.

Las políticas educativas nacionales y estatales de Estados Unidos están abogando por una mayor responsabilidad de los maestros con respecto al …

Assessment Standards, ‘Intentional Alignment’, And Dialogic Inquiry, Claire Wyatt-Smith

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Internationally, the policy move towards standards-aligned instruction is gaining momentum. In Australia, standards have assumed unprecedented prominence in education policy relating both to classroom practice and to teacher preparation and career progression. The move is also evident in the United States, where the lure of standards to inform improvement is clear: significant investment has been committed to longitudinal research to examine at state and district levels the desirable conditions for implementing standards, their impact on developing college- and career-ready teachers, and in turn, the impact on teacher instruction and student outcomes. Moves such as this are occurring in the absence …

Designing The New American University: A Review, Philip Shapira

Philip Shapira

This paper reviews Designing the New American University, by Michael M. Crow and Willam B. Dabars (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2015). The paper probes the New American University model detailed in the book and implemented at Arizona State University.

A Comparative Analysis: Indigenous Students And Education Models In Canada And The United States, Alison M. Perkins

Global Honors Theses

Equity in education for minority students is an issue that has been ignored for quite some time. This is important to note because education is an important aspect to human development. This thesis focuses on education models in Canada and the United States, and how those models affect indigenous students specifically. Indigenous peoples are a historically marginalized group that have faced inequity in their educational experiences. This paper explores the historical context of education for indigenous peoples in both nations in order to understand their current educational issues. I used the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples …

What Can Pisa Tell Us About U.S. Education Policy?, Linda Darling-Hammond

New England Journal of Public Policy

Despite years of attention to “reform” in the United States, overall achievement on international assessments such as PISA has not improved during the period from 2000 to 2012. Reforms focused on high-stakes testing attached to sanctions, expansions of charter schools, and a market-based approach to teaching have been unsuccessful in changing outcomes. Meanwhile, growing childhood poverty, along with increasing segregation, income inequality, and disparities in school spending, have expanded the opportunity gap. Lessons from other nations and successful states indicate that systematic government investments in high-need schools along with capacity-building that improves the knowledge and skills of educators and the …

How To Tame A Wild Tongue: Language Rights In The United States, Panayota Gounari

Panayota Gounari

The call for a "common language" and a "shared identity that makes us Americans" not only hides a more pernicious social and cultural agenda but it is also part of the present attempt toward the 'reorganization of a 'cultural hegemony' as evidenced in the conservatives on the multiplicity of languages spoken in the United States. This ultimately guarantees that these groups will remain repressed, marginalized and cut off from the wealth of resources that the dominant group has full access. As a result, the current debate over bilingual education has very little to do with language per se; the real …

The Impact Of U.S. National And State Level Policy On The Nature And Scope Of K-12 Virtual Schooling, Anna Lukemeyer, Kent J. Crippen, Leanna Archambeault

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications

During the past five years, virtual schools in the United States have gained popularity and acceptance as viable alternatives to the traditional school system through provisions for charter schools under Title V, Part B, Subpart 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This paper describes the existing federal policies that are driving the online virtual school movement, and how one state, Nevada, has set forth and interpreted specific policies regarding online distance education. In addition, this paper identifies the beliefs acting as the driving forces …

Grade Retention: A History Of Failure, William A. Owings, Susan Magliaro

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

Although almost 50 years of research has shown that grade-level retention affords no academic advantages to students, this practice is gaining increasing attention as schools face political pressure to be accountable for student achievement. The negative effect that retention has on children is ignored in favor of an overly simplistic view of it as a panacea for education woes. In an attempt to better meet student needs, educators historically have seen retention as a way to reduce skill variance in the classroom. However, this practice has not achieved its objective. An at-risk population is cognitively and affectively harmed by retention. …

Violence Prevention In The Schools, Deborah B. Prothrow-Stith

New England Journal of Public Policy

Violence and its consequent injury and death represent a major health problem in this country. The United States has one of the highest homicide rates in the industrialized world: ten times higher than that of England and twenty times higher than that of Spain. Fatalities from violence represent only the tip of the iceberg: nonfatal intentional injuries occur as many as one hundred times more frequently: assault and intentional injuries identified in medical studies can be four times those reported to the police, suggesting that medical institutions are a primary site for identification of individuals with violence-related problems. Violence and …

Local Autonomy, Educational Equity, And School Choice: Constitutional Criticism Of School Reform, James J. Hilton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Many critics of America's public education system hail parental or school choice, a program that allows public school systems to compete against one another and, under some proposals, against private educational institutions, for students and educational funding, as the answer to Americas educational crisis. Proponents argue that competition will force public schools to offer students a quality education or close. This article does not evaluate the claims of the parental-choice proposals; rather, it examines the difficulties inherent in funding such a system through traditional school finance mechanisms.