Education Policy Commons^™

Rewriting The School Calendar: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Four-Day School Week Implementation In Arkansas, Kate Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The four-day school week (4DSW) has gained traction across the United States, particularly in rural districts seeking innovative responses to mounting challenges. Despite its expanding adoption, key questions remain regarding the motivations for implementing 4DSW schedules and their implications for teacher well-being and student achievement. This dissertation examines the emergence and effects of the 4DSW in Arkansas, where adoption has increased rapidly in recent years, offering a unique context shaped by state-level policy and rural dynamics. Employing a mixed-methods, this dissertation investigates (1) why and how districts adopt the 4DSW, (2) whether the policy alleviates teacher burnout, and (3) how …

A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Microsociety® Model: An Assessment Of Civic Engagement Outcomes Amongst Fourth And Fifth Grade Students, Jewel Hurt

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Despite existing as a democratic country, America has wavered in prioritizing civics education in schools. This thesis analyzes the work of MicroSociety® as one program that helps students ‘learn by doing’ in the enactment of a school-wide community simulation. To test the program outcomes, a reliable survey was administered to fourth and fifth grade students at two different MicroSociety schools. The results showed that MicroSociety students reported higher average levels of civic engagement when compared to a national sample. The positive results were also consistent across both MicroSociety samples despite stark differences in the demographic profiles of each school. …

Hope For Struggling School Districts, Mary D. Travis

Master's Theses

Education improves the opportunities and life-chance outcomes of our children, and is a key factory in both economic and community development. Although high school graduation rates have shown improvement nationwide in recent years, public education is suffering from increasing inequality between different school districts and within the same school districts. Such inequalities widen academic outcome gaps and can result in entire school districts being branded as academic failures. However, there is also encouraging evidence of struggling schools and school districts moving toward improvement. Innovative leaders who are committed to inclusive and rigorous academics, shared leadership, and an in-depth understanding of …

Flyer: Bill Clinton On Education

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A leaflet presenting the Clinton campaign’s education reform package, including bullet points on the Clinton record in Arkansas regarding education.

Flyer: Bill Clinton On American Families

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A leaflet presenting the Clinton campaign’s plan to help families with tax relief programs, educational reform, affordable health care, and safety initiatives to deter violence and . Includes bullet points on the social reform implemented in Arkansas. No date given.

Conversations In Education Reform: Socioeconomic Integration As A Tool For Student Success, Anjani Kapadia

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

Background

Since the U.S. Supreme Court deemed racially segregated schooling unconstitutional in 1954, education reformers have strived to find the most effective methods to ensure that students of all socioeconomic backgrounds have access to an effective and equitable education. Despite many efforts to address this challenge, exemplified by the highly decentralized U.S. education system, the achievement gap between students of ranging socioeconomic backgrounds persists. Mounting research, beginning with the foundational Coleman Report of 1966, demonstrates that the socioeconomic make-up of a student’s classroom is the most influential factor on his or her success. Consequently, this paper seeks to determine if …

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Fall 2017

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

No abstract provided.

Flip The Script, Kevin K. Kumashiro, Erica Meiners

Occasional Paper Series

"Each one of us must understand education reform as inseparable from our concurrent struggles in other sectors, including labor and healthcare, and the movements to secure full human and civil rights for all." --Authors.

A Phenomenological Exploration Of The Experiences Of High School Students Enrolled In School-Wide College Readiness Programs, Sherlina Thomas

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the early 1980s, the United States experienced a high school dropout epidemic, leading school systems to adopt reform efforts. College readiness programs (CRPs) became a tool to address educational disparities in secondary and postsecondary education for over three decades. While decreases occurred in the overall high school dropout rate across racial and ethnic groups, they have been minimal. This study addressed a research gap on the lack of student input and perceptions about their experiences in CRP programs. This phenomenological study used in-depth, semi-structured interviews with criterion-selected former high school students from 3 schools within the ABC County School …

Wide As The Waters: Comparing Student Performance In Alabama And Florida From 1992-2011, Kellie Slappey Nothstine

Master's Theses

The school choice movement has been making significant traction within the United States in the last decade and a record number of states have implemented school choice programs that introduce competition to the traditional public schools and treat education like a market. The marketization of education and making traditional public school truly compete against alternative schooling options is more often discussed in theory but in reality is infrequently applied on a large scale. In an attempt to truly gauge the advantages, disadvantages, and real life application of what can result when market forces are applied to a state’s education system …

Getting To The Core And Evolving The Education Reform Movement To A System Of Continuous Improvement, Fernando M. Reimers, Eleonora Villegas-Reimers

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article places the most recent study of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in historical perspective, reviewing the role of international comparisons in efforts to build public education systems as key institutions of democratic societies. It discusses the findings for the United States, examining differences with other participating countries. It also looks at a paradox. Despite the high priority education has received in the United States in the past two decades, the country underperformed in a number of indicators in the PISA in comparison with many other countries participating in the study. The authors explain the findings as the …

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 …

The National Commission On Education Excellence And Equity: Hypotheses About Movement Building, Christopher Edley Jr.

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 2013, the congressionally chartered national Commission on Education Equity and Excellence issued unanimous recommendations for P–12 policy changes at the federal, state, and local levels. This remarkably broad consensus, with unusual pragmatism and concreteness, is comprehensive in its scope and predominantly research based. As a clarion call and reform strategy, the commission report, For Each and Every Child, is a successor to A Nation at Risk (1983); the commission’s grand if not grandiose intention was to provide a framework for the next decade or more of nationwide policy struggle. This article, after briefly summarizing the recommendations, focuses on …

Risky Business? An Analysis Of Teacher Characteristics And Compensation Preferences, Daniel Henry Bowen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teacher quality has a significant impact on both student learning gains and later life outcomes. With this is mind, policymakers implement reforms to attract and retain more effective educators. A major obstacle for designing these policies is that the ingredients for training, as well as initially identifying, effective teachers remain largely a mystery. However, there are strong theoretical arguments for certain education policy reforms producing improvements in the quality of the teacher workforce. One increasingly popular example is performance-based pay. Performance pay has the potential to better align teachers' incentives to produce increases in student achievement. Paying teachers based on …

Research Brief: "A Call To Duty: Educational Policy And School Reform Addressing The Needs Of Children From Military Families", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

The purpose of this study was to identify the unique circumstantial stressors faced by military children and identify what type of educational support can be provided through implementation of supportive educational policies. Further research is necessary for the sustainability of proposed practice and policy.

Aboriginal Education: Current Crisis And Future Alternatives, Julie Peters, Jerry P. White

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

No abstract provided.

What's Wrong With Reform?, James H. Case

New England Journal of Public Policy

The conservative educational reform movement, which still, after more than a decade, is the dominant force in school reform, has had little success in improving schools because it is based on invalid and self-defeating theoretical assumptions. Taken together, these assumptions have the effect of substituting nostalgia — a longing for the schools the reformers themselves attended —for policy and for increasing standardization at the expense of individual growth and development. The reformers (Bloom, Hirsch, Ravitch, Finn, Bennett, et al.) have particular difficulty, given their assumptions, in dealing both with individual differences among students and with ethnic and racial differences among …

Follies: Education Reform And The Promise Of Technology, Nicholas Paleologos

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article offers an overview of forty years of American education and suggests why technology may save us from ourselves.

Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman

New England Journal of Public Policy

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated program, can provide valuable data to educational policymakers in Massachusetts and other New England states about the status of their educational reform initiatives and their performance standards. The three purposes of this article are to describe NAEP and its goals and structure, to present some of the results of the 1992 Mathematics NAEP Assessment as an example of the utility of this national assessment program, and to highlight ways in which background data collected by NAEP can be helpful in interpreting assessment results and monitoring educational reform. The six New …

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.

The Willis-Harrington Commission: The Politics Of Education Reform, Robert D. Gaudet

New England Journal of Public Policy

The 1980s have witnessed a nationwide movement to upgrade public education, including reform efforts in the New England states. Massachusetts periodically has grappled with the challenge of improving its schools. During the 1960s, the Massachusetts legislature authorized a thorough examination of education in the state. This mandate was carried out by a blue-ribbon panel that came to be known popularly as the Willis-Harrington Commission. In 1965, the commission issued a 624-page final report that included findings and recommendations relating to many aspects of public education in the state. This article chronicles the history of Willis-Harrington and discusses the problems that …