Abstracts of Articles Published in Volume 2, 1994

Education Policy Analysis Archives

Note: to view the article in full simply click on the EPAA icon that precedes the abstract.

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Volume 2 Number 1

January 5, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

"PAYMENT BY RESULTS": An Example of Assessment in
Elementary Education from Nineteenth Century Britain

Brendan A. Rapple
Boston College

Rappleb@bcvms.bc.edu

ABSTRACT: Today the public is demanding that it exercise more control over how tax dollars are spent in the educational sphere, with multitudes also canvassing that education become closely aligned to the marketplace's economic forces. In this paper I examine an historical precedent for such demands, i.e. the comprehensive 19th century system of accountability, "Payment by Results," which endured in English and Welsh elementary schools from 1862 until 1897. Particular emphasis is focused on the economic market-driven aspect of the system whereby every pupil was examined annually by an Inspector, the amount of the governmental grant being largely dependent on the answering. I argue that this was a narrow, restrictive system of educational accountability though one totally in keeping with the age's pervasive utilitarian belief in laissez-faire. I conclude by observing that this Victorian system might be suggestive to us today when calls for analogous schemes of educational accountability are shrill.

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Volume 2 Number 2

January 14, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

DEALING WITH DIVERSITY: SOME PROPOSITIONS FROM CANADIAN EDUCATION

Benjamin Levin and J. Anthony Riffel

Department of Educational Administration and Foundations
Faculty of Education
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada R3T 2N2

LEVIN@CCU.UMANITOBA.CA
Fax (204) 275-5963

ABSTRACT: Increasing diversity in the population is a major issue for educators in North America, presenting political as well as educational challenges. This paper examines Canadian educational policy responses to four kinds of diversity - bilingualism (French/English), multiculturalism, the situation of aboriginal peoples, and the problem of poverty. A description of each issue leads to some speculations or propositions on the nature of diversity and appropriate educational responses to it.

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Volume 2 Number 3

January 24, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

This issue of the EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES comprises two book reviews: An essay review of R. G. Brown's Schools of Thought by Craig Howley and Aimee Howley, and a review of Ernest R. House's Professional Evaluation by Kent P. Scribner.
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Lower Literacies for Hire:
How the Politics of Discourse
Shapes "Schools of Thought"

A Review Essay of Rexford G. Brown's Schools of Thought: How the
Politics of Literacy Shape Thinking in the Classroom. San Francisco:
Jossey Bass. 1991. $28.95 (Hardcover) $14.95 (Paperback)

by
Craig B. Howley
Appalachia Educational Laboratory

U56E3@WVNVM.bitnet

Aimee Howley
Marshall University

U176C@WNNVM.bitnet

This is an ungenerous review of a very generous book, a book in which people concerned with the intellectual tenor of schooling will find much to approve. At the same time, the book will make sense to people who consider that the most important national project is international economic preeminence. Strange bedfellows, we think. Still, at the outset, we advise: Read this book.

Review of Ernest R. House, Professional Evaluation: Social
Impact and Political Consequences.

Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 1993 $24.95

by
Kent P. Scribner
Arizona State University

KSCRIB@asu.edu

Ernest R. House of the University of Colorado-Boulder, in Professional Evaluation: Social Impact and Political Consequences, tackles the complex contextual and philosophical issues that promise to shape the future of the field.

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Volume 2 Number 4

February 1, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

The Educational System and Resistance to Reform:
The Limits of Policy

John F. Covaleskie
Northern Michigan University

facv@nmumus.bitnet

ABSTRACT: In this paper I suggest some reasons why education has proved so resistant to reform. That the educational system is a system is, in some respects, more significant to this question than the fact that it deals with education; that it is a system militates against certain sorts of reforms being successfully adopted. I will also argue that policymakers' efforts to reform education are made more difficult because of lack of clarity of purpose. Though all agree that "excellence" is the goal to be pursued, there is little attention to the meaning of excellence, nor how we would recognize it if we saw it. Often, "excellence" is used synonymously with "competitiveness." I explore the limits of policy, and suggest that these limits are inescapable. Recognition of these limits may allow us to attend to those policy areas where success may be more likely.

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Volume 2 Number 5

February 6, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

PUBLIC SPEECH:
The DeGarmo Lecture for 1993

Thomas F. Green
Syracuse University

tfgreen@mailbox.syr.edu

ABSTRACT: The State is constituted by law; the public by public speech. But "What makes public speech public?" Two views are contrasted: the forum view by which speech is public only if it is truth functional, and the idea of umbilical narratives in which speech is public when placed in some community of memory. Offered instead is the auditory principle, namely that speech is public when what is said by A is heard by B as candidate for B's speech. This principle is explored and applied and currently popular fallacies of public speech are exposed.

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Volume 2 Number 6

February 20, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

School Choice: A Discussion with Herbert Gintis

Compiled and Edited
by
Gene V Glass
College of Education
Arizona State University

Glass@asu.edu

ABSTRACT: Eighteen educators and scholars discuss vouchers as a means of promoting school choice and introducing competition into education. The discussion centers around the thinking of the economist Herbert Gintis, who participated in the discussion, and his notion of market socialism as it might apply to education. In 1976, Gintis published, with Samuel Bowles, Schooling in Capitalist America; in 1994, he is arguing for competitive markets for the delivery of schooling.

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Volume 2 Number 7

April 15, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

POLICY QUESTIONS: A CONCEPTUAL STUDY

Thomas F. Green
Professor Emeritus
Syracuse University

tfgreen@suvm.bitnet

ABSTRACT: A policy question is a request for a fairly stable, but modifiable authoritative line of action aimed at securing an optimal balance between different goods, all of which must be pursued, but cannot be jointly maximized. To such questions there are no purely technical solutions, a point that is revealed by the etiology of policy questions. They appear to arise from conflicts among humans over the distribution of goods, i.e., conflicts of interest. However, the deeper roots of such questions lie not in a conflict of human interests, but in the incompatibility of the actual goods that human beings seek. Policy questions ask how to allocate such goods. But this allocation is the business of politics. No policy without politics nor politics without polity.

Policy questions must be distinguished from constitutional questions, moral questions, and questions aimed at forming the set of alternatives from which policies might be selected. Finally, different facets of the policy process are distinguished -- policy analysis, formation, decision and the political analysis of policy. These never occur discretely or in fixed sequence. But they are different activities, having different theories and requiring different skills, and capacities. Together, they model what is required for that most comprehensive of all offices within our political system - - the office of citizen.

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Volume 2 Number 8

May 16, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

CHOOSING HIGHER EDUCATION:
EDUCATIONALLY AMBITIOUS CHICANOS AND THE PATH TO SOCIAL MOBILITY

Patricia Gandara
University of California-Davis

pcgandara@ucdavis.edu

ABSTRACT: This is a study of high academic achievement found in the most unlikely places: among low-income Mexican Americans from homes with little formal education. It examines the backgrounds of 50 persons, male and female from one age cohort, who met most of the predictors for school failure or "dropping out." All came from families in which neither parent completed high school or held a job higher than skilled labor; the average father finished grade four and most were sons and daughters of farmworkers and other unskilled laborers. Most began school with Spanish as their primary language, yet all completed doctoral-level educations from the country's most prestigious institutions. This study investigates the forces that conspire to create such anomalies. Its aim is to suggest how such outcomes might be the product of design rather than accident.

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Volume 2 Number 9

June, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

Human Life, Human Organizations and Education

Andrew J. Coulson
The Center for Applied Philosophy

AndrewCo@netcom.com

ABSTRACT: The social structures within which we live and work have a profound effect on the success of our pursuits. These effects are too often poorly understood by those who shape public policy, leading to organizations that are antagonistic to the very goals they are meant to achieve. Unfortunately, this has been the case with public education in the United States. Data are presented that illustrate the way in which the incentive structure of our public school system leads the goals of its employees to diverge from those of the families it is intended to serve. Arguments in support of government-run schooling are discussed and refuted. An alternative system of mutually beneficial cooperation within a competitive market is proposed, based on its proven success in the more liberal parts of our economy. It is demonstrated that such a market system would unite the goals of educators and families, encourage innovation, and discourage many of the inefficient and educationally irrelevant practices engendered by the public school system.

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Volume 2 Number 10

July 11, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

On the Academic Performance of New Jersey's Public School
Children: Fourth and Eighth Grade Mathematics in 1992

Howard Wainer
Educational Testing Service

hwainer@rosedale.org

ABSTRACT: Data from the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress are used to compare the performance of New Jersey public school children with those from other participating states. The comparisons are made with the raw means scores and after standardizing all state scores to a common (National U.S.) demographic mixture. It is argued that for most plausible questions about the performance of public schools the standardized scores are more useful. Also, it is shown that if New Jersey is viewed as an independent nation, its students finished sixth among all the nations participating in the 1991 International Mathematics Assessment.

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Volume 2 Number 11

August 10, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

On Education and the Common Good: A Reply to Coulson

John Covaleskie
Northern Michigan University

jcovales@nmu.edu

ABSTRACT: This response to Coulson's recent EPAA piece, "Human Life, Human Organizations, and Education," argues that Coulson is wrong about "human nature," social life, and the effects of unregulated capitalist markets. On these grounds, it is argued that his call to remove education from the public sphere should be rejected. The point is that education is certainly beneficial to individuals who receive it, but to think of education as purely a private and personal good properly distributed through the market is seriously to misconstrue the meaning of education. We should not care to be the sort of people who do so.

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Volume 2 Number 12

August 10, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

A Response to John Covaleskie

Andrew J. Coulson
The Center for Applied Philosophy

andrewco@netcom.com

ABSTRACT: I have no doubt that Covaleskie's commentary was well- intentioned. Nonetheless, it is seriously flawed. In this response I shall identify the numerous instances of inaccurate and incomplete data, as well as invalid reasoning, upon which his conclusion is based.

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Volume 2 Number 13

October 7, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

Carrot or Stick? How Do School Performance Reports Work?

Mark E. Fetler
California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office

mfetler@eis.calstate.edu

ABSTRACT: State and federal government espouse school performance reports as a way to promote education reform. Some practicing educators question whether performance reports are effective. While the question of effectiveness deserves study, it accepts the espoused purposes of performance reports at face value, and fails to address the more basic, tacit political and symbolic roles of performance reports. Theories of organization, modern government, and regulation provide a context that helps to clarify these political and symbolic roles. Several performance report and assessment programs in California provide illustrations.

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Volume 2 Number 14

November 30, 1994

ISSN 1068-2341

Worldwide Educational Convergence
Through International Organizations:
Avenues for Research

Connie L. McNeely
Department of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

mcneely@alishaw.ucsb.edu

Yun-Kyung Cha
Department of Education
Hanyang University, Seoul

cha@krhyucc1.bitnet

ABSTRACT: We argue for an examination of the role of the transnational organizational apparatus vis-a-vis nation-states in organizing national educational systems in accordance with world level educational ideologies, structures, and practices. We propose that more analytic attention be given international organizations as an institutionalizing force in examining educational convergence and change, and suggest four primary international organization activities as potentially fruitful avenues for research in this area: 1) the exchange of information, 2) charters and constitutions, 3) standard-setting instruments, and 4) technical and financial resources. Focusing on these activities, we present and discuss evidence of international organizations as world- level agencies influencing the incorporation and diffusion of educational ideologies and practices within and among nation-states.

© Copyright 1993 by the EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES.

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EPAA Editorial Board

John Covaleskie jcovales@nmu.edu	Andrew Coulson andrewco@ix.netcom.com
Alan Davis adavis@castle.cudenver.edu	Mark E. Fetler fetlerctc.aol.com
Thomas F. Green tfgreen@mailbox.syr.edu	Alison I. Griffith agriffith@edu.yorku.ca
Arlen Gullickson gullickson@gw.wmich.edu	Ernest R. House ernie.house@colorado.edu
Aimee Howley ess016@marshall.wvnet.edu	Craig B. Howley u56e3@wvnvm.bitnet
William Hunter hunter@acs.ucalgary.ca	Richard M. Jaeger rmjaeger@iris.uncg.edu
Benjamin Levin levin@ccu.umanitoba.ca	Thomas Mauhs-Pugh thomas.mauhs-pugh@dartmouth.edu
Dewayne Matthews dm@wiche.edu	Mary P. McKeown iadmpm@asuvm.inre.asu.edu
Les McLean lmclean@oise.on.ca	Susan Bobbitt Nolen sunolen@u.washington.edu
Anne L. Pemberton apembert@pen.k12.va.us	Hugh G. Petrie prohugh@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Richard C. Richardson richard.richardson@asu.edu	Anthony G. Rud Jr. rud@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Dennis Sayers dmsayers@ucdavis.edu	Jay Scribner jayscrib@tenet.edu
Robert Stonehill rstonehi@inet.ed.gov	Robert T. Stout stout@asu.edu