education policy analysis archives

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a peer-reviewed, independent,
open-access, multilingual journal

The Citizen School: Inclusive policies and practices

Vol 18 (2010), 2
The experience of Porto Alegre Citizen school is discussed in this study, being analyzed how this democratic participation based project has produced advances in the educational inclusion issue. The Citizen School project is discussed in the context of conquests and advances within the Brazilian legislation. Education is discussed as a right, which analyses the contradictions of the inclusion process limited by the excludent socioeconomical system. The assumptions and the pedagogical practises which produce the schooling failure are examined by presenting a critical view towards the merit conception-based evaluation. It is discussed the need of rethinking school centering the concerns with inclusion and educators training intended to gather the “different ones” and allow dialogues with the cultural contexts. The ongoing project at the Citizen School is being analyzed as an updated pedagogical practice reference. The data examined is referred to the Municipal net and indicates a rise in enrollments, in the different modalities of attending, in evasion reduction, in failing and shows a drastic decrease of illiteracy in the city. It also testifies a continuance of an integrating, cooperative, solidary, participative and democratic pedagogical practice commited to social inclusion.
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Why Shouldn’t Rural Kids Have It All? Place-conscious Leadership in an Era of Extralocal Reform Policy

Vol 18 (2010), 1
This article explores school and community leaders' beliefs about standards-based reform and the purposes of local schooling in a single rural community in the western United States. The study used interviews of 11 community and school leaders in the community. Participants engage in a balancing act between serving local interests and satisfying extralocal mandates. They care about both the students they serve and the place they inhabit, and their own assessment of the educational enterprise indicated that state and federal policy had had little constructive influence on either. The conclusion explores critical place-consciousness as a possible tool to refocus rural educators' attention on the intent of the standards-based movement and to ensure that schooling supports individual student success and the needs of rural communities.
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Comprehensive School Reform: Meta-Analytic Evidence of Black-White Achievement Gap Narrowing

Vol 17 (2009), 25
This meta-analysis extends a previous review of the achievement effects of comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs (Borman, Hewes, Overman, & Brown, 2003). That meta-analysis observed significant effects of well endowed and well-researched programs, but it did not account for race/ethnicity. This article synthesizes 34 cohort or quasi-experimental outcomes of studies that incorporated the policy-critical characteristic of race/ethnicity. Findings: compared with matched traditional schools, the black-white achievement gap narrowed significantly more among students in CSR schools. In addition, the aggregate effects were large, substantially to completely eliminating the achievement gap between African American and non-Hispanic white students in elementary and middle schools. Title I policies before or after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 seem to have had essentially no impact on the black-white achievement gap. Curricular and testing mandates along with the threat of sanctions without concomitant resource supports seem to have failed. This study suggests that educational achievement inequities need not be America’s destiny. It seems that they could be eliminated through concerted political will and ample resource commitments to evidence-based educational programs.
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The world-system of academic capitalism: Process of consolidation of the entrepeneurial university

Vol 17 (2009), 24
This article presents an analysis of the system of the faculty evaluation by their students at the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). The study was conducted following an interpretative and ethnographic methodology; empirical data was obtained based on participative observation. My presence on a daily basis allows me to register the processes in detail. In this methodology, the subjectivity, ideology and political stand of the researcher are made explicit. Results from the study indicate that for the perspective of the university administration, the faculty evaluation validates the teaching quality, and it is a referent to justify the professor exclusion from the university's incentive program. The faculty views the student evaluation as a control of their labor and as a revenge mechanism from those students who felt that will fail the course. The student perceives the evaluation as a mandatory and unimportant task, because its results do not modify the faculty pedagogic practice. Although there is an agreement between the administration and the faculty to maintain the student evaluation process for merit incentive purpose, faculty questions if this type of evaluation is appropriate for all the disciplines; the validity of peer evaluations; and, the student's judgment to leave them without labor economic incentives. As a result of the found divergence, it is proposed a dialogue among the professors; University's administration, and the students to generate an opinion poll in agreement to the context.
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