Search results

This article employs a system analytic framework to categorize the available research literature on the politics of education in order to explain the inter‐relationship of private and public interests and of different levels in primary and secondary American schools. The objectives are several: to explain and develop the analytical framework of David Easton; to illustrate its heuristic utility by categorizing empirically‐based research within the components of that framework, and to suggest and encourage future research directions in the subject. Education has escaped application of traditional policy analysis in America because educators have convinced scholars and laymen that they are “non‐political,” a label which even most political scientists have accepted without challenge. However, during the 1960s, a few scholars in education and political science began to apply political analytical methods to public school conflict. This research has begun to change perceptions of education and to provide a beginning set of research projects whose data support tentative generalization about the policy‐making process and the total system of public schools. This orientation is bound to increase because of increasing national government intervention in local schools, both through integration and financial policies. These have provoked growing conflict locally over the proper direction of school policies. In this article, we see how such stress is transmitted in the form of “demands” and “supports” into the “political system”, that persistent social mechanism known in all societies in different forms provides an “authoritative allocation of values and resources”. The political system, in this case public school bodies, “converts” such “inputs” into “outputs” of public policy, which in their administration create outcomes which later cause a “feedback” into the political system as the material for new policy demands. For each component of this Eastonian system, this article examines relevant research, providing an extensive annotated bibliography. From this review, it is possible to suggest lines of needed research.

Systematic oppression and marginalization of queer (sometimes also referred to as LGBTQ) people has affected all aspects of U.S. society, including education at all levels. Despite the heavy policing of queer sexuality and gender both inside and outside higher education, these aspects of identity have been overlooked in educational policy. This paper discusses federal educational policy that affects queer students, faculty, and staff in higher education.

Discussion in this paper is informed by three guiding tenets: sexuality is both central and marginal to queer identities; trans* identities are both inclusive of and beyond those who are in the process of confirming their gender identity through hormones and/or surgery; discussion of educational policy must acknowledge queer theory’s utility and nonutility.

The status of queer people in colleges and universities is reviewed first. Then, challenges of developing policy to address queer issues are acknowledged, while also illustrating recent policy changes and judicial rulings that have positive implications for queer people in higher education.

The paper concludes by identifying remaining gaps and recommendations for future policy development, including the need for federal nondiscrimination laws that cover sexual and gender minorities and restructuring policies for queer inclusion.

Research, spanning half a century, points to the critical role of school administration and to the successful implementation of US government policies and programs. In part these findings reflect the times and a US educational governance system characterized by local control, a constitutionally‐constrained federal government, resource‐poor state governments, and an overall system of segment arrangements for governing education. However, the US education policy environment has changed dramatically over the past several decades, with standards and high stakes accountability becoming commonplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine the entailments of shifts in the policy environment for school administrative practice, focusing on how school leaders manage in the middle between this shifting external policy environment and classroom teachers.

The paper's focus is on how school administration manages the dual organizational imperatives of legitimacy and integrity in a changing institutional environment. This paper is an essay in which the authors reflect on the entailments of shifts in the education sector for school administration over the past quarter century in the USA.

While considerable change for school administrative practice is suggested, the authors argue that organizational legitimacy and organizational integrity are still central concerns for school leaders.

Although the paper's account is based entirely on the US education sector, several aspects of the framing may be relevant in other countries.

Achieving the elimination of racial differences in test performance, as set forth in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), requires education policies that engage the reality that African American test performances are not only about race but also about gender and residential status. In an effort to inform education policymaking with research that explores race–gender and residential inequality, I assess the growth of reading gaps in school and non-school contexts using a national and city sample of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal, Kindergarten Cohort 1998–1999. I found that inequality in test performances was greater in the city than elsewhere, and African American boys shoulder a disproportionate educational burden related to city residency and enrollment in city schools. Additionally, children in city neighborhoods – where drugs and burglary are big problems – experience large shortfalls in reading in school and non-school contexts. I conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications for future educational policy, practice, and research, especially NCLB, which mandates that public schools achieve parity among racial groups by the end of the 2013–2014 academic year.

Research has already uncovered a great deal of evidence about the individual and organizational qualities that enhance effective teaching and the kinds of qualifications (attributes) that are associated with effective teaching and learning. From a research perspective, increased precision and specificity in the definition and refinement of specific concepts (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge) will increase academic knowledge about the relationship between teacher characteristics, working conditions, and the quality of instruction that takes place. This knowledge may have little effect on policy formation. From a policy perspective, a holistic or organic conception of teacher quality will be critical for effective policy formation and implementation. At some point, academic knowledge about different aspects of effective or “quality” teaching need to be connected to a general concept of a quality teacher in order to be effectively inserted into policy debates and the general media. Systematic use of academic knowledge is often hindered by either the narrow focus of the research, or by its limited application to actual teacher practice. In spite of these limitations in academic research, there are areas where academics, policymakers, and practitioners have achieved consensus or are converging on shared constructs of promise. In other areas, both academic and political debates seem locked into conflict over constructs related to teacher quality. Identifying these three broad categories of consensus, convergence, and conflict provides a broad framework to assess the kinds of research and the kinds of reform that need to be carried out in order to promote and sustain teachers’ development and implementation of their professional skills in the classroom.

The quality of an education system or a comparative international assessment refers more and more to quantitative parameters, i.e. “educational indicators”. The paper aims to analyse the structure of several educational indicators and indicator systems and answer the question “What can educational indicators achieve?”

Starting with a general consideration of the term “indicator” the findings are applied to the educational area and the development of educational indicators is analysed critically.

Indicators allow for the illustration of outcomes and of system processes. Beginning in the 1950s, following the empirical turn in research methods, and the growing significance of approaches from economics of education, indicators are now applied in national and international settings. The findings show that the combination of the quantitative and qualitative approach is more successful as the isolated research.

The research is based on secondary analysis. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodology should be undertaken in following the progress of educational systems.

The findings of quantitative research based on educational indicators determine the general public and political discussion and often the discourse in the scientific community. The analysis shows that a critical distance especially when preparing political decisions is a necessary attitude.

As students increasingly incur debt to finance their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals’ trajectory into adulthood. Based on 50 interviews with young adults who incurred $30,000–180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes, the findings are presented in terms of a categorization schema (income level by level of cultural capital) and a conceptual model of borrowing. The results illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt can have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, with borrowers from low-income, low cultural capital backgrounds more likely to struggle throughout and after college with their loans.

Anne Bartlett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She holds a degree in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of the West of England and Masters degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Prior to this, she worked in various capacities in the British government for over fifteen years. Her Ph.D. research centers on the changing nature of political subjectivity in London, particularly as it pertains to the lives of refugees and migrants. Her other areas of interest include sociological theory, globalization, human rights and evolving forms of political culture.Katie Cangemi is a student at DePaul University.Terry Nichols Clark is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He holds MA and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, University of Florence, and UCLA. He has worked at the Brookings Institution, The Urban Institute, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and US Conference of Mayors. His books include Citizen Politics in Post-Industrial Society, City Money, The New Political Culture, and Urban Innovation. Since 1982 he has been Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation (FAUI) Project, which includes a data base of over 10,000 municipalities in up to 35 countries. It is the most extensive study to date of local government in the world, including data, some 700 participants, a budget exceeding $20 million, and 50 published books, much available on the website http://www.src.uchicago.edu/depts/faui/archive.htmlRichard Florida is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure Community and Everyday Life Basic Books 2002, stressing the rise of creativity as an economic force. He is the H. John Heinz III Professor of Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is founder and co-director of the Software Industry Center. He has been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-author of five other books, including Industrializing Knowledge; Beyond Mass Production and The Breakthrough Illusion, and more than 100 articles in academic journals. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and Ph.D. from Columbia University.Gary Gates works in the Population Studies Center of The Urban Institute in Washington DC 20037. He completed his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, and is a leading researcher on gays in the U.S.Edward Glaeser is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He teaches urban and social economics and microeconomic theory. He has published dozens of papers on cities, economic growth, and law and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He also edits the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992.Pushpam Jain completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.Jed Kolko is at the Department of Economics, Harvard University.Lauren Langman is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University, Chicago. His interests include alienation studies, Marxist sociology and cultural sociology. Recent publications include: Suppose They Gave a Culture War and No-one Came: Zippergate and the Carnivalization of Political Culture, American Behavioral Scientist (December, 2002); The Body and the Mediation of Hegemony: From Subject to Citizen to Audience, in Richard Brown (Ed.) Body, Self and Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2002); From the Poetics of Pleasure to the Poetics of Protest, in Paul Kennedy (Ed.) Identity in the Global Age (Macmillan & Palmore, 2001); with Douglas Morris and Jackie Zalewski, Globalization, Domination and Cyberactivism, in Wilma A. Dunaway (Ed.) The 21st Century World-System: Systemic Crises and Antisystemic Resistance (Greenwood Press, 2002).Richard Lloyd teaches at Vanderbilt University, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. His research interests include urban culture. Postindustrial economy, and labor force participation.Dennis Merritt completed a BA at the University of Chicago and MA at DePaul University. He was Analysis Manager of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project for four years.Albert Saiz is in the Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He completed a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard.Lenka Siroky studied at the Universities of Prague and Budapest, spent two years at the University of Chicago, and is currently studying at Harvard University.Kenneth Wong is Professor of Public Policy and Education and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as Associate Director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt University. He was Associate Professor in the Department of Education and the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in political science. He has conducted research in American government, urban school reform, state finance and educational policies, intergovernmental relations, and federal educational policies (Title I). He is author of Funding Public Schools: Politics and Policy (1999), and City Choices: Education and Housing (1990), and a co-author of When Federalism Works (1986). He is currently the President of the Politics of Education Association.Alexei Zelenev is an Associate Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago.

Dynamics of social and symbolic capital within diverse school settings affect how stakeholders (i.e., administrators, teachers, parents, students) influence, interpret, and/or implement the complex demands of education leadership. Educational leadership, as simultaneously possessing both constant and fluid tendencies, is fundamental to establishing benchmarks to successfully impact the educational experience. Having the requisite social and symbolic capital serves as a conduit for accessing quality networks as well as the signification of having gained reputable, legitimate schooling experiences. Notwithstanding, the transferability of those forms of capital provides the venue for K-12 administration to ‘teach effectively’ and ‘lead responsibly’ within leadership contexts, particularly given this era of accountability. The intersection of the theoretical (teaching) and applied (leading) functions of educational leadership lends a democratic model for managing the resulting politics and generating leadership strategies as representative of social and symbolic capital.