Education Policy Analysis Archives (E-Journal - Arizona State University)
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Merging Educational Finance Reform and Desegregation Goals
Get PDFEducational finance reforms and desegregation have both sought to address inequities in educational opportunities for minorities and low income families. The recent methods of addressing desegregation issues have tended to focus on attaining racial balance rather than educational quality, however. This paper explores how desegregation goals can be merged with educational finance reform to more systematically address educational quality in schools serving low income and minority populations. By moving toward centralized control over school financing, the inequity of school outcomes that are based on unequal school resources can be reduced. In addition, state determined expenditures when combined with desegregation monies, would meet the original intention of desegregation funds by clearly providing add-on monies for additional services for minority children, while at the same time, creating a better monitoring mechanism
The Devil's Bargain: Educational Research and the Teacher
Get PDFThe concern of this paper is to explore why it is that so much educational research has tended to be manifestly irrelevant to the teacher. A secondary question is how that irrelevance has been structured and maintained over the years. There are I think three particularly acute problems. Firstly the role of the older foundational disciplines in studying education. Secondly, the role of faculties of education generally. Thirdly, related to the decline of foundational disciplines and the crisis in the faculties of education, the dangers implicit in too hasty an embrace of the panacea of more practical study of education
Why Production Function Analysis is Irrelevant in Policy Deliberations Concerning Educational Funding Equity
Get PDFHanushek and Walberg use production function methodology to contend that there is no relationship between school expenditures and student achievement. Production function methodology uses correlational methods to demonstrate relationships between input and output in an economic system. These correlational methods may serve to hide rather than reveal these relationships. In this paper threats to the validity of these correlational methods for analysis of expenditure-achievement data are discussed and an alternative method of investigation is proposed. The proposed method is illustrated using data from two states (Ohio and Missouri). The method demonstrates relationships between expenditures and achievement that were overlooked by the production function method
Educational Reform in an Era of Disinformation
Get PDFData which suggest the failure of America's schools to educate its youth well do not survive careful scrutiny. School reforms based on these questionable data are wrongheaded and potentially distructive of quality education. Reforms of the kind proposed by those who have started from an assumption that America's schools have failed will exacerbate the differences between the "have" and the "have-not" school districts
Three Book Reviews
No full textThis issue of the Archives contains reviews of three books: Robert Leestma and Herbert J. Walberg (Eds.), Japanese Educational Productivity, reviewed by Steven J. Fountaine, Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas, reviewed by Susan Haag, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Theodor Rebarbar (Eds.), Education Reform in the '90s, reviewed by Kent Parades Scribne
Learning on the Job: Understanding the Cooperative Education Work Experience
Get PDFCooperative learning programs in Ontario provide on the job learning experiences for students. This paper analyzes three cases of student work placements described in extensive interviews with students, teachers and co-workers. Some students had enjoyed their work experience while others had not. When the student experiences were situated in the socially organized work processes of the work sites, the diverse experiences were found to have a common theme. When students are able to participate in and make sense of the work process, their work placement experience was seen to be useful for making future employment decisions. Where students were marginal to the work process, their lack of knowledge often translates into an unpleasant work experience and decisions about employment based on an experience of failure. This article suggests that our understanding of student learning on the job would be strengthened by a focus on the socially organized work process
Is Water an Input to a Fish? Problems with the Production-Function Model in Education
Get PDFThe concept of a production-function as a metaphor of the educational process is critiqued. In particular, Monk's (1992) discussion of the production-function is seen as typical of the final stages of a dying paradigm
Against "Values": Reflections on Moral Language and Moral Education
Get PDFIt is increasingly popular to ask educational institutions to do something about values. It is also becoming possible to take substantive moral positions in schools. We have become increasingly concerned about the morals of our children. Much of the discussion of values is incoherent. Many educators contribute to the public babble about ethics because of how they talk about moral questions; they have acquired a dysfunctional and obfuscating vocabulary ("values speak") for describing ethical phenomena and ethical issues. Assertions about values are distinct from assertions about character. The question of how to form democratic character is a crucial question that society has almost stopped asking. We do occasionally put the question as one about democratic values. While "values speak" seems initially liberating, nevertheless, it easily contributes to an authoritarian outlook. Four pieces of advice to educators are offered: 1) do not let "values speak" make you deaf to the nuances of the complex moral vocabularies; 2) learn to think of a liberal arts education as part of professional training; 3) an essential moral practice is dialogue; 4) support those trends in educational reform that increase opportunities for conscientious moral dialogue among members of school communities
Technology Refusal
Get PDFAnalyses of the deployment of technology in schools usually note its lack of impact on the day-to-day values and practices of teachers, administrators, and students. This is generally construed as an implementation failure, or as resulting from a temperamental shortcoming on the part of teachers or technologists. It is predicated on the tacit assumption that the technology itself is value-free. This paper proposes that technology is never neutral: that its values and practices must always either support or subvert those of the organization into which it is placed; and that the failures of technology to alter the look-and-feel of schools more generally results from a mismatch between the values of school organization and those embedded within the contested technology