Penn GSE faculty and researchers explore the issues at the forefront of
American education today—urban education, equity and diversity, educational
opportunity and educational excellence, and the management of complex organizations.
They engage in high-impact research, innovation, and training in public education,
as well as in literacy, psychology, social policy, and higher and adult education.
The following pages present a sampling of recent studies and findings from Penn
GSE faculty and researchers.
Civics Lessons
In an
era of test scores and standards, how well do America’s schools perform
in preparing citizens? The answer, according to Michael Johanek and John Puckett,
depends on what is desired of citizens and what is expected from schools. Writing
in The State of Civic Education: Preparing Citizens in an Era of Accountability,
they examine that relationship, correlating Americans’ expectations of
citizenship and schools to conceptions of civic performance. Focusing first
on the intentional activities—curricular and extracurricular—that
schools provide to prepare young people for citizenship, they go on to consider
different meanings of citizenship and build on previous scholarship to designate
a continuum of citizenship performance that ranges from “thin” to
“strong” democracy. Then they assess the status of citizen development
outcomes in three domains of citizenship performance: knowledge, behaviors,
and dispositions, and they locate young Americans on the citizenship continuum
in terms of these outcomes. School-based civic education, the authors find,
is largely restricted to developing personally responsible citizens, not active
participants working to solve public issues. While civic education seems to
be progressing beyond its traditional spectatorial mode, largely by dint of
service-learning and student volunteerism, it is still a far cry from what might
be called change-agent civics. Johanek and Puckett conclude that preparation
for an advanced democratic conception such as “public work citizenship”
requires an institutional commitment and institutional modeling of citizenship.
This
piece appears in Institutions of American Democracy: The Public Schools,
edited by Susan Fuhrman and Marvin Lazerson (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005).
Monitoring Implementation on the Fly
School
reform is all well and good, but once a district launches a reform, how does
it know that it’s being implemented as intended? Writing in Dashboard
Lights: Monitoring Implementation of District Reform Strategies, Jonathan
Supovitz and John Weathers consider the system implemented by the Duval County
(Florida) Public Schools to monitor the district’s instructional reform
efforts and the influences of the system on teachers, schools, and district
leaders. Their Standards Implementation Snapshot System reveals the depth to
which schools are implementing, at a particular point in time, key elements
of the district’s reform vision. The report outlines how the snapshot
system works and describes its effect on district efforts, as reported by principals
and district administrators. This report is available at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/pdf/snapshotstudy.pdf.
Is Small Better?
Do small,
collaborative learning communities in schools improve teaching and learning?
In Small Learning Communities That Actually Learn: Lessons for School Leaders,
Jonathan Supovitz and Jolley Bruce Christman report that the faith that such
communities can work within existing schools and districts may be misplaced.
In evaluations conducted by the Consortium for Policy Reform in Education in
two cities (Philadelphia and Cincinnati), researchers found that, despite the
fact that small learning communities improved the school environment, they did
not, all on their own, translate into greater instructional focus. In both cities,
those communities that showed significant gains in student learning engaged
in structured and sustained efforts to improve instructional practice. The authors
recommend key strategies for school leaders who want to build effective small
communities focused on instruction. This article appears in the May 2005 issue
of Phi Delta Kappan. To request a copy, e-mail insites@gse.upenn.edu.
We’ve Got High Hopes
Researchers
at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education have taken a look at how
teachers and administrators at the high school level are responding to accountability
systems. Holding High Hopes: How High Schools Respond to State Accountability
Practices, by Margaret Goertz and Diane Massell, examines how 48 low-performing
high schools located in 34 school districts across six states respond to state
accountability policies and found that accountability systems can indeed focus
educators on reform although they are not, in and of themselves, a guarantee
of success: strong district leadership played a crucial role in the response
of high school staff. That said, comprehensive reform was rare, with most schools
implementing marginal or incremental changes. In most of the high schools studied,
decision-making tended to be haphazard, generally ending up in the hands of
individual teachers and rarely resulting in a schoolwide or departmental effort.
The study also found few avenues through which outside agents (universities,
regional education centers, or other outside providers) could provide support.
Since the district’s influence is so important, building district capacity
is critical to school improvement. “States must strengthen the capacity
of school districts,” the authors write, “just as they expect districts
to build the capacity of their low-performing schools, or the new accountability
systems will not bring the improvements their architects envisioned.”
The
policy brief is available at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rb42.pdf.
The CPRE research report on which it is based, edited by Betheny Gross and Margaret
Goertz, is available at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rr56.pdf.
No Child Left Behind?
Enacted
in 1968, the Bilingual Education Act has formed the basis of American language
education policy for more than 30 years. With an emphasis on bilingual education,
the Act provided options for students to develop both English and their native
language, but when it expired in 2002, English language development was enshrined
as the sine qua non of academic achievement. Part of the landmark No
Child Left Behind legislation, the English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement,
and Academic Achievement Act calls for schools to develop students’ English
language proficiency and to move them into English-only classrooms as quickly
as possible.
Writing
in No Child Left Behind: Repealing and Unpeeling Federal Language Education
Policy in the United States, Bruce Evans and Nancy Hornberger consider
NCLB’s impact on language-minority students from a national, institutional,
and interpersonal perspective. At the national level, they describe a shift
from the notion of “language as resource,” as expressed in the Bilingual
Education Act, to the more proscriptive perception of “language as problem,”
characteristic of NCLB. At the institutional level, they perceive a disconnect
between NCLB and “findings from research and educational experience that
serve as the ... foundations for university teacher preparation programs, state
education plans and programs, and local school district and school instructional
programs and practices.” Moreover, the authors argue that NCLB’s
definition of “scientific research” raises serious concerns, among
them its devaluation of qualitative research and the legal and ethical concerns
raised by randomized trials. And, finally, at the interpersonal, or classroom,
level, they observe mixed feelings among teachers who, on the one hand, welcome
the support and funding promised by NCLB but, on the other, take issue with
its underlying pedagogical philosophy.
In their
concluding remarks, Evans and Hornberger maintain that NCLB, as written and
funded, is likely to have an overall negative impact on the field. However,
given the tensions between the legislation and the real world, they seem skeptical
about its chances for success: “The No Child Left Behind Act,” they
write, “is likely to founder on the differences between what the act prescribes
and assumes and practitioners’ and researchers’ on-the-ground ...
attitudes, beliefs, and understandings about what constitutes effective education
for language minority students.”
This article appears in Language
Policy 4 (March 2005).
Remember the New Math?
In the
late 1950s, education experts hailed the New Math as the latest innovation in
mathematics teaching. But a failure to grasp the central role teachers play
in classroom practices undermined the reforms, gradually leading to their demise.
Writing
in Examining Key Concepts in Research on Teachers’ Use of Mathematics
Curricula, Janine Remillard asks whether the experts have learned from
the mistakes of the past. Although the last 25 years have seen numerous studies
on the role that curriculum materials play in the mathematics classroom, they
have yet to shed much light on how teachers use them.
On reviewing
the research, Remillard found that the theoretical underpinning of much of the
current literature is murky and set out to clarify what is understood about
the complex interaction between the teacher and the materials. She identifies
four different perspectives through which researchers have viewed curriculum
material use: text as starting point, text as one of many resources, teacher
as interpreter of text, and text and teacher as collaborators. With her analysis
revealing the need for researchers to take up critical theoretical issues, Remillard
goes on to propose conceptualizations of teaching and curriculum materials that
might serve in the development of a framework for future research.
This
article appears in Review of Educational Research, 75(2). To contact
this journal, go to http://www.aera.net/publications/?id=319.
Show Me the Money
Monetary
incentives have attracted a lot of attention, but most studies of their use
in schools focus on the impact these incentives have on students’ intrinsic
motivation. In Monetary Incentives in Support of Academic Achievement: Results
of a Randomized Field Trial Involving High-Achieving, Low-Resource, Ethnically
Diverse Urban Adolescents, Margaret Beale Spencer, Elizabeth Noll, and
Elaine Cassidy take a look at incentives through a developmental framework that
focuses on identity formation.
Evaluating
an existing program in which a private foundation provides a monthly stipend
to students who maintain good academic standing, the authors examine how monetary
incentives may promote resiliency. For the evaluation, participating students
were given psychosocial tests and split into two groups: one that received the
monthly stipend immediately, and one that received the stipend after a year’s
delay.
After
one year, students who had been receiving the stipend had a program retention
rate 10 percent higher than those in the delayed group. But the data also suggest
that the effectiveness of incentives might depend on several factors, including
student self-perception. A student who views strong academic performance as
part of his or her identity is likely to see monetary incentives as validation
of that identity, making such a reward system a potentially useful means of
support in both the academic and socioemotional development of at-risk youth.
This
article appears in Evaluation
Review 29:3.
A Philadelphia Story: Recruiting New Teachers
The
second report in a series on teacher quality, The Quest for Quality: Recruiting
and Retaining Teachers in Philadelphia focuses on the plight of new teachers.
The authors, led by Ruth Curran Neild, assessed the School District of Philadelphia’s
progress in hiring and retaining teachers and in addressing teacher quality.
New
initiatives have produced some encouraging results, with recruitment numbers
growing, turnover among new teachers falling, the percentage of certified teachers
rising, and hiring and school assignment practices reformed. And more is on
the way: leadership-development programs for principals, districtwide site selection
of new teachers, an accelerated hiring timeline, and an automated employment
process.
Despite
the progress, Neild and her colleagues doubt the district’s ability to
reach the NCLB-mandated requirement that all its teachers be “highly qualified”
by June 2006. Turnover is still high, and the lowest-performing schools still
have the highest proportion of minimally qualified teachers.
This
report, co-written by Elizabeth Useem and Elizabeth Farley, is available at http://www.researchforaction.org/.
Faculty and Fundraising at HBCUs
To parse
the role that professors at Black colleges play in the acquisition of institutional
funds, Marybeth Gasman conducted interviews with 40 individuals, including advancement
professionals, alumni relations directors, faculty, and alumni. Writing in The
Role of Faculty in Fund Raising at Black Colleges: What Is It and What Can It
Become?, she paints a picture that portrays faculty members playing a number
of roles: identifying potential fund-raising sources; headlining donor events;
and keeping connected to their institution’s advancement department through
the academic dean. But what could the role of faculty be?
Noting
a generalized reluctance among faculty to participate in fundraising activities,
she argues that faculty need to understand more fully the role of philanthropy
in society at large, even urging the establishment of academic programs on Black
giving and perhaps a master’s program in minority philanthropy. In addition,
she sees a role for faculty members in connecting fundraisers and alumni by
encouraging giving without stepping across the line into soliciting individual
gifts. Whatever the specifics, Gasman argues that faculty have a responsibility
to engage with their institution’s fundraising program precisely to guard
against the “unholy alliances” between the academy and commerce
that so concern them. This
article appears in The International Journal of Educational Advancement
5(2).
Social Interaction & Learning
With
the current emphasis on standardized curricula and testing, it is easy to overlook
the important role that social interaction plays in learning. But in two recent
articles, Stanton Wortham examines how processes of social identification in
the classroom are interwoven with learning processes.
In each
study, Wortham traces the identity development of a single student in a ninth-grade
history and English class. From Good Student to Outcast: The Emergence of
a Classroom Identity shows how Tyisha is first positioned by teachers and
students as a valuable contributor because her tendency to present her own opinions
rather than simply repeat information fits the seminar discussion model of the
class. Once the majority of the class has adapted to this model, however, Tyisha
is increasingly treated as a disruptive outsider who presents unsupported opinions
instead of logical arguments.
Similarly, The Interdependence of Social Identification and Learning relates the
example of Maurice, a student in the same class who finds himself caught between
social expectations. His participation in class discussion runs contrary to
a common perception of boys as less likely to actively engage in schoolwork,
and Maurice comes to be viewed by teachers and female students as a kind of
transgressor or misfit. Classroom transcripts show how his conflicting identities
of “good student” and “one of the boys” are repeatedly
brought to his attention.
The
mechanisms of social identity are particularly noticeable in what Wortham calls
participant examples—moments when individual class members are used as
instructive stand-ins. When the class studies Cicero, for instance, his position
as a person with divided loyalties is illustrated by comparing him with a local
analogue: Maurice. Over the course of the year, Tyisha and Maurice are involved
in a disproportionate percentage of participant examples, which serves to reinforce
their social categorization as outcasts or outsiders. At the same time, the
use of familiar examples helps students identify with and learn the curricular
material.
The
experiences of these two students help to show the multiple, heterogeneous resources
involved in social identification, as well as the complex ways that interactional
positioning affects and is affected by learning.
From
Good Student to Outcast appears in Ethos 32, and The Interdependence of Social Identification and Learning
appears in the American
Education Research Journal 41.
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