Abstracts of Articles Published in Volume 6, 1998

Education Policy Analysis Archives

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Volume 6 Number 1

January 2, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

The Political Legacy of School Accountability Systems

Sherman Dorn
University of South Florida

ABSTRACT:  The recent battle reported from Washington about proposed national testing program does not tell the most important political story about high stakes tests. Politically popular school accountability systems in many states already revolve around statistical results of testing with high-stakes environments. The future of high stakes tests thus does not depend on what happens on Capitol Hill. Rather, the existence of tests depends largely on the political culture of published test results. Most critics of high-stakes testing do not talk about that culture, however. They typically focus on the practice legacy of testing, the ways in which testing creates perverse incentives against good teaching. More important may be the political legacy, or how testing defines legitimate discussion about school politics. The consequence of statistical accountability systems will be the narrowing of purpose for schools, impatience with reform, and the continuing erosion of political support for publicly funded schools. Dissent from the high-stakes accountability regime that has developed around standardized testing, including proposals for professionalism and performance assessment, commonly fails to consider these political legacies. Alternatives to standardized testing which do not also connect schooling with the public at large will not be politically viable.

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Volume 6 Number 2

January 9, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Review of Stephen Arons' Short Route to Chaos

Charles L. Glenn
Boston University

Stephen Arons, (1997). Short Route to Chaos : Conscience, Community, and the Re-constitution of American Schooling. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1997, 154 pp plus notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 1-55849-078-7.

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Volume 6 Number 3

January 9, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Planting Land Mines In Common Ground:
A review of Charles Glenn's review of Short Route To Chaos

Stephen Arons
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Stephen Arons responds to Charles L. Glenn's review of Short Route to Chaos.

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Volume 6 Number 4

January 30, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Comparative Issues of Selection in Europe:
The Case of Greece

Dionysius Gouvias
University of Manchester

ABSTRACT:  This article deals with inequality of access to higher education in Greece, and especially, the case of the Metropolitan Area of Athens. Specifically, I deal with a general overview of the debates about "selection" in the educational systems of Euro pe, with special reference to the case of Greece. It is argued here that in those levels of the educational "ladder" where the degree of specialisation and the need for individual selection is insignificant, inequalities exist, but are not profound. On the contrary, in the upper levels, and especially as the time to enter (or to be trained to enter) the labour market comes closer, students' success depends much more on externally assessed exami nation performance and, therefore, a more rigorous selection process emerges--a process that is decisively influenced by the labour- market requirements and limitations. Finally, an extended examination of the evolution of the Greek school-system and the changes in examination practices, and the relationship between the structure of the school system and the job-market, will be attempted.

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Volume 6 Number 5

February 5, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

A Remarkable Move of Restructuring: Chinese Higher Education

Fang Zhao
University of Western Sydney
Australia

ABSTRACT:  In this article, the current remarkable trend of institutional amalgamation and the establishment of cross-institutional consortiums in China are examined. The principal purpose of this study is to explore policy options on issues connected with the trend and the significant implications of the trend for the future development of higher education in China. I discuss the outstanding issues raised in the restructuring, the main factors behind them and proposes policy options to redress the adversities of the trend at the end. The article draws on national data as well as a case study. The research reported here is constructive for comparative and empirical research of similar issues in international perspectives.

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Volume 6 Number 6

March 1, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

School Improvement Policy:
Have Administrative Functions of Principals Changed
in Schools Where Site-Based Management is Practiced?

C. Kenneth Tanner
The University of Georgia

Cheryl D. Stone
M. G. Barksdale Elementary School
Conyers, GA

ABSTRACT: Have administrative functions of principals changed in schools practicing site-based management (SBM) with shared governance? To deal with this issue we employed the Delphi technique and a panel of 24 experts from 14 states. The experts, which included educational specialists, researchers, writers, and elementary school principals, agreed that the implementation of SBM dramatically influences the roles of the principal in management/administration and leadership. Data revealed that the elementary principal's leadership role requires specialized skills to support shared governance, making it necessary to form professional development programs that adapt to innovations evolving from the implementation of SBM.

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Volume 6 Number 7

March 30, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Educational Research in Latin America:
Review and Perspectives

Abdeljalil Akkari
University of Maryland Baltimore County

Soledad Perez
Geneva University

ABSTRACT: The present paper consists of four primary sections. First, we describe the historical context of educational research in Latin America. In the second section, we focus on various theoretical frameworks that are applied to educational research in the region. We identify the main institutions involved in this research in the third section. Finally, in conclusion we offer suggestions that we consider to be of greatest priority for the future of educational research in Latin America.

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Volume 6 Number 8

April 19, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

"The Art of Punishing": The Research Assessment Exercise and the
Ritualisation of Power in Higher Education

Lee-Anne Broadhead
University of Bradford (U.K.)

Sean Howard
University of Bradford (U.K.)

ABSTRACT:   In this article it is argued that the recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)--undertaken by the United Kingdom's Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFC)--is part of a much larger process of assessment in education generally. By taking the RAE as its focus, this article uses a Foucaultian analysis to amplify the nature and practice of disciplinary power in the setting of Higher Education. Foucault's notion of an "integrated system" of control and production, with its routine operation of surveillance and assessment--and its dependence on coercion and consent--is directly applied to the RAE. The impact on research and teaching is discussed. The critical response of academics to the exercise has failed to challenge the process in any fundamental way. it is argued here that this failure is a reflection of the degree to which disciplinary logic is embedded in the academic system.

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Volume 6 Number 9

April 27, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

SOCRATES Invades Central Europe

Joseph Slowinski
Indiana University

Abstract

The objective of this article is to explore the current reality faced by higher education students in Central and Eastern Europe and to draw out the implications of this current reality for policy makers in the future. In the article, I explore the influence of transnational corporations' training programs on education as it currently pertains to Central and Eastern European higher education and employment. In addition, multinational corporate entities exercise influence on European Union policy through the role of lobby organizations and activities. I explore the influence of these practices on education with an emphasis on the emerging importance of Western language skills. In addition, I focus on the European Union and its efforts to expand into Central and Eastern Europe in order to provide a focal point for analysis.

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Volume 6 Number 10

May 22, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Educational Standards and the Problem of Error

Noel Wilson
The Flinders University of South Australia

Abstract

This study is about the categorisation of people in educational settings. It is clearly positioned from the perspective of the person categorised, and is particularly concerned with the violations involved when the error components of such categorisations are made invisible. Such categorisations are important. The study establishes the centrality of the measurement of educational standards to the production and control of the individual in society, and indicates the destabilising effect of doubts about the accuracy of such categorisations. Educational measurement is based on the notion of error, yet both the literature and practice of educational assessment trivialises that error. The study examines in detail how this trivialisation and obfuscation is accomplished. In particular the notion of validity is examined and is seen to be an advocacy for the examiner, for authority. The notion of invalidity has therefore been reconceptualised in a way that enables epistemological and ontological slides, and other contradictions and confusions to be highlighted, so that more genuine estimates of categorisation error might be specified.

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Volume 6 Number 11

June 12, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Public Policy on Distance Learning in Higher Education:
California State and Western Governors Association Initiatives

Gary A. Berg
Chapman University

Abstract

The Western Governors University (WGU) and the California Virtual University (CVU) are revealing examples of the complex issues involved in implementing distance learning on the public policy level. Although technology is certainly important, it has masked the fact that the WGU and CVU initiatives mark the rise of learner-centered higher education and the increased role of business in the academy. In comparing and contrasting WGU and CVU, it is clear that the WGU is a more radical proposition because of competency-based credit and the connection with private industry. Two important issues driving public policy are raised in these two efforts: First, are the California and Western Governors Association initiatives the product of the commercialization of education or the result of a reform of higher education that may lead to an increased learner-centered orientation? Second, what is the appropriate role of private industry in higher education?

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Volume 6 Number 12

July 11, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Counseling in Turkey: Current Status and Future Challenges

Suleyman Dogan
Gazi University
Ankara, Turkey

Abstract

In this article a special emphasis is placed on the current status and the future challenges of counseling in Turkey. A brief history of counseling in Turkey, current developments, and the basic issues in this field are pointed out. Finally, the future challenges and recommendations to improve the current status of counseling are discussed.

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Volume 6 Number 13

July 14, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Consequences of Assessment: What is the Evidence?

William A. Mehrens
Michigan State University

Abstract

Attention is here directed toward the prevalence of large scale assessments (focusing primarily on state assessments). I examine the purposes of these assessment programs; enumerate both potential dangers and benefits of such assessments; investigate what the research evidence says about assessment consequences (including a discussion of the quality of the evidence); discuss how to evaluate whether the consequences are good or bad; present some ideas about what variables may influence the probabilities for good or bad consequences; and present some tentative conclusions about the whole issue of the consequences of assessment and the amount of evidence available and needed.

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Volume 6 Number 14

July 21, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Some Comments on Assessment in U.S. Education

Robert Stake
University of Illinois

Abstract

We do not know much about what assessment has accomplished but we know it has not brought about the reform of American Education. The costs and benefits of large scale mandated achievement testing are too complex to be persuasively reported. Therefore, educational policy needs to be based more on deliberated interpretations of assessment, experience, and ideology. Evaluation of assessment consequences, however inconclusive, has an important role to play in the deliberations.

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Volume 6 Number 15

August 19, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

A Note on the Empirical Futility of Labor-Intensive
Scoring Permutations for Assessing Scholarly Productivity:
Implications for Research, Promotion/Tenure, and Mentoring

Christine Hanish
John J. Horan
Bethanne Keen
Ginger Clark
Arizona State University

Abstract The measurement of scholarly productivity is embroiled in a controversy concerning the differential crediting of coauthors. Some researchers assign equivalent shares to each coauthor; others employ weighting systems based on authorship order. Horan and his colleagues use simple publication totals, arguing that the psychometric properties of labor-intensive alternatives are unknown, and relevant ethical guidelines for including coauthors are neither widely understood nor consistently followed. The PsycLIT and SSCI data bases provided exhaustive publication and citation frequencies for 323 counseling psychology faculty. All PsycLIT scoring permutations yielded essentially identical information; inter-correlations ranged from .96 to unity. Moreover, all PsycLIT methods correlated highly with SSCI within a very narrow band. Since attention to the number and/or ordinal position of coauthors yields no useful information, productivity should be defined parsimoniously in terms of simple publication counts. Implications for research, promotion/tenure, and the mentoring of graduate students are discussed.

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Volume 6 Number 16

August 20, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Criticizing the Schools: Then and Now

Benjamin Levin
The University of Manitoba

Abstract Schools in many countries are facing intense and elevated levels of criticism, with much debate over whether the criticism is merited. Much of the criticism embodies a view that things used to be better years ago, when schools were not prey to the many defects they are alleged to show today. Recollections of the past may hide a mixed reality. In this article, criticisms of education from 1957 are compared with contemporary criticisms. Some issues have remained important across forty years, while a few new issues have emerged. Criticisms of forty years ago centered on the dominance of "professional educationists," progressivism, the life adjustment movement, the waning "spirit of competition," lax discipline, the lack of emphasis on classical and modern foreign languages, avoidance of science and math, the neglect of gifted children, the lack of training of children in moral and spiritual values, and low academic standards. Today's debates introduce the alleged test score declines, poor performance on international achievement comparisons, the supposed enormous increase in funding without positive results, the problem of high dropout rates, and the need to connect schooling and work. In addition, modern critics point to economic concerns, whether in terms of funding for education or in regard to the contribution of schooling to economic development.

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Volume 6 Number 17

September 6, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Performance Indicators:
Information in Search of a Valid and Reliable Use

E. Raymond Hackett
Auburn University

Sarah D. Carrigan
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Abstract Measures of overall institutional performance were explored from a decision support perspective with twenty similar Carnegie Classification Baccalaureate II institutions. The study examined the usefulness of performance indicators in campus decision making following both a hypothesis testing and case study approach. Two conclusions were reached: first, that the performance measures most commonly cited in the literature as measures of institutional financial viability are of limited use for institution specific policy development; and second, that performance indicators are most effectively used within an institution specific, whole system framework.

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Volume 6 Number 18

September 8, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

The Transformation of Taiwan's Upper Secondary Education System:
A Policy Analysis

Hueih-Lirng Laih
Su-Lin, Taipei County, Taiwan

Ian Westbury
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract This article explores the policy issues circling around the structural "transition" in upper secondary education implicit in the twenty-year increase in secondary and third-level school enrollment rates in Taiwan. This expansion has taken place within a secondary school system which is rigidly divided into both general, i.e., academic, and vocational tracks and into public and private sectors: the majority of students are enrolled in the private vocational sector which is only loosely articulated with the university sector. These features of the school system are analysed against the background of social and economic developments in Taiwan as well as public opinion. The analysis suggests that the present structures of school must be "reformed" in ways that will result in a more unified secondary system with both greater public funding and better articulation of all school types with the third level. The policy options that circle around the possibility of such reforms in the areas of curriculum, examination structures and second level-third level articulation are discussed and a policy framework for the reform of the Taiwan secondary education sector is outlined.

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Volume 6 Number 19

October 13, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

The Internet and the Truth about Science:
We Gave a Science War But Nobody Came

George Meadows
Mary Washington College

Aimee Howley
Ohio University

Abstract Even though sophisticated discussion of the nature of scientific claims is taking place in the academy, public school teachers of science and mathematics may harbor naive assumptions about the way that scientific processes function to construct the "truth." Reluctant to change their prior assumptions about science, such teachers may become vulnerable to information technologies (including "low-tech" media such as textbooks and films) that construe science as a collection of facts. An on-line lesson about constructivism provided a forum in which a group of teachers revealed well-established epistemologies seemingly inimical to the principles of conceptual change teaching. Further, the strategies used by the teachers to quell a potentially interesting debate provided preliminary evidence of differences in the motives for communication in virtual, in contrast to real, communities.

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Volume 6 Number 20

November 3, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Critical Evaluation for Education Reform

Gisele A. Waters
Auburn University

Abstract The school reform movement has done little to provide an accurate analysis of the production of inequality or the reproduction of social injustice in the public schools or the larger social order. The ideology that influences this movement has often prevented the realization of any notion of an egalitarian ideal, the elimination of inequality, or the improvement of those who are least well-off. I ask educators and evaluators of education reform efforts to reconsider critically their roles in social science research, to reclaim the battleground of public school reform by focusing on the democratic purpose of public schooling, and the institutional problems in educational programs and practice that often inhibit action toward this ideal. The first part of this article includes an extensive argument explaining the "why" of critical evaluation. The theoretical literature on inquiry in science and social science, the ideology of critical theory, critical social psychology, and Freirean pedagogy are consulted as additional tools for augmenting the practice, policies, and responsibilities of evaluators in education. I review three contemporary perspectives of evaluation in order to begin rethinking the purposes and functions that evaluation serves in education. It also demonstrates how mainstream and contemporary evaluations can be used to serve a particular set of social and political values. The second part of this article begins a preliminary journey toward describing the "how" of critical evaluation. Critical evaluators can fight for social justice by combining the merit criteria of state and federal public education law, and the methods of an adversary oriented evaluation in order to transform educational environments that serve the future potentials of all children. Therefore education involves the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world (Freire, 1985).

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Volume 6 Number 21

December 10, 1998

ISSN 1068-2341

Boundary Breaking:
An Emergent Model for Leadership Development

Charles Webber
University of Calgary

Jan Robertson
University of Waikato

Abstract We summarize the results of a cross-cultural on-line project for graduate students in educational leadership at the University of Calgary in Canada and the University of Waikato in New Zealand. A conceptual framework for the collaborative Internet project is presented in conjunction with a summary of relevant literature and participant views of the project. Finally, the authors propose a model for on-line graduate learning in educational leadership with the following components: construction of meaning, provision of a forum for discussion, validation of personal knowledge, generative learning, formal and informal leadership, sense of community, and international perspectives.

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Copyright 1998 by the Education Policy Analysis Archives

The World Wide Web address for the Education Policy Analysis Archives is http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa

General questions about appropriateness of topics or particular articles may be addressed to the Editor, Gene V Glass, glass@asu.edu or reach him at College of Education, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2411. (602-965-2692). The Book Review Editor is Walter E. Shepherd: shepherd@asu.edu . The Commentary Editor is Casey D. Cobb: casey.cobb@unh.edu .

EPAA Editorial Board

Michael W. Apple University of Wisconsin	Greg Camilli Rutgers University
John Covaleskie Northern Michigan University	Andrew Coulson a_coulson@msn.com
Alan Davis University of Colorado, Denver	Sherman Dorn University of South Florida
Mark E. Fetler California Commission on Teacher Credentialing	Richard Garlikov hmwkhelp@scott.net
Thomas F. Green Syracuse University	Alison I. Griffith York University
Arlen Gullickson Western Michigan University	Ernest R. House University of Colorado
Aimee Howley Marshall University	Craig B. Howley Appalachia Educational Laboratory
William Hunter University of Calgary	Richard M. Jaeger University of North Carolina--Greensboro
Daniel Kallós Umeå University	Benjamin Levin University of Manitoba
Thomas Mauhs-Pugh Rocky Mountain College	Dewayne Matthews Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education
William McInerney Purdue University	Mary P. McKeown Arizona Board of Regents
Les McLean University of Toronto	Susan Bobbitt Nolen University of Washington
Anne L. Pemberton apembert@pen.k12.va.us	Hugh G. Petrie SUNY Buffalo
Richard C. Richardson Arizona State University	Anthony G. Rud Jr. Purdue University
Dennis Sayers University of California at Davis	Jay D. Scribner University of Texas at Austin
Michael Scriven scriven@aol.com	Robert E. Stake University of Illinois--UC
Robert Stonehill U.S. Department of Education	Robert T. Stout Arizona State University

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