incumbent school board members won a larger share of the total vote in a precinct when test scores in that precinct improved. We estimate that improvement from the 25th to the 75th percentile of test-score change—that is, moving from a loss of 4 percentile points to a gain of 3.8 percentile points between 1999 and 2000—produced on average an increase of 3 percentage points in an incumbent’s vote share. If precinct test scores dropped from the 75th to the 25th percentile of test-score change, the associated 3-percentage-point decrease in an incumbent’s vote share could substantially erode an incumbent’s margin of victory.
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Accountability Lost : Education Next - 0 views
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percentile scores had increased in the year preceding the election, incumbents won 81 percent of the time in competitive elections; in districts where scores had declined, incumbents won only 69 percent of the time.
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significant relationship with precinct test scores and the absence of a relationship with district scores suggests that voters were more concerned with school performance within their immediate neighborhood than across the district.
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all indications of a relationship between school performance and an incumbent school board member’s vote share vanished after the passage of NCLB in 2002.
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None of these approaches yielded clear evidence of a link between school performance and voter behavior in school board elections.
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the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicated that school board members were not being judged on improvement or weakening in school test scores.
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School performance as measured by test scores may have helped determine which candidates sought reelection and which faced a challenger.
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assess the relationship between test-score trends and incumbents’ decisions to run for reelection, and then to estimate the effect of test-score trends on the probability that an incumbent who runs faces an opponent.
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incumbents may bow out in anticipation of being held accountable for poor test-score performance by schools in their district.
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drop from the 75th to the 25th percentile of test-score change, our results lead us to expect that incumbents will be 13 percentage points less likely to run for reelection. In fact, 76 percent of incumbents sought reelection in districts with improving test scores; in districts with falling scores, only 66 percent did.
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we failed to find any indication that incumbents in 2002 and 2004 based their decisions about running for reelection on student learning trends.
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In these years, only 30 and 34 percent of articles, respectively, touched on test scores. The decline in media attention leads us to suspect that concerns about student learning trends probably did not stand at the forefront of voters’ or candidates’ thinking in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
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“The PACT needs to be seen for what it is: a vehicle for politicians to say that they are tough on education (and educators). This may make for good politics, but it makes for bad educational policy.”
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Reacting to the rising criticisms directed toward PACT, voters may have grown disenchanted with the state’s accountability system and removed test-score performance from among the criteria on which they evaluated school board candidates.
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if most schools appeared to be average or better, parents may not have been prompted to hold incumbents accountable for poor school performance. Incumbents and potential challengers may also have become less responsive to scores when the testing regimen began to give nearly every school a passing mark.
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School board elections give the public the leverage to improve their schools. If voters do not cast out incumbents when local school performance is poor, they forfeit that opportunity. As debate continues over components of NCLB, policymakers should consider whether it is realistic to assume voters will in fact use the polls to drive school improvement.
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Neither the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) nor the states impose direct sanctions on members of school boards that oversee large numbers of underperforming schools.
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According to a 2002 national survey, student achievement ranks second only to financial concerns as school board members’ highest priority.
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the basic purpose of all school board activities is to facilitate the day-to-day functioning of schools.
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analyzed test-score data and election results from 499 races over three election cycles in South Carolina to study whether voters punish and reward incumbent school board members on the basis of changes in student learning, as measured by standardized tests, in district schools
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impact of school performance on incumbents’ decisions to seek reelection and potential challengers’ decisions to join the race.
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All but 4 of the state’s 46 counties hold nonpartisan school board elections. Approximately 80 percent of school board members receive some compensation, either a salary, per diem payments, or reimbursement for their expenses. Over 90 percent of South Carolina’s 85 school boards have between 5 and 9 members, while the largest board has 11. And, as is common practice in other states, nearly 9 out of 10 South Carolina school districts hold board elections during the general election in November.
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the most important difference between South Carolina and most other states when it comes to local school politics is the role played by the state’s teachers unions, which are among the weakest in the country.
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South Carolina school boards are unlikely to be beholden to the unions, which should make the boards more responsive to the broader public.
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examine whether voters are more concerned with student performance districtwide or in their local neighborhood, we computed two measures of average school performance to include in our analysis.
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separate the effect of school performance from the effects of other factors that could reasonably influence an incumbent school board member’s vote share
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Details about research on the impact school performance has on how people vote for school board members. The authors conclude "If voters do not cast out incumbents when local school performance is poor, they forfeit that opportunity. As debate continues over components of NCLB, policymakers should consider whether it is realistic to assume voters will in fact use the polls to drive school improvement."
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A Board's Eye View : Education Next - 0 views
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“Code of Conduct for School Board Members.” This was intended, wrote the superintendent, in recommending the code, “to set standards for how the Board interacts with itself.” Sounded like sex to me. But the preoccupation with board member behavior was the result of the long-standing tension between the democracy represented by elected officials who oversaw the schools and the professionalism of those hired to run them. The superintendent was definitely attempting to tip the balance in favor of the pros. “We will not attempt to exercise individual authority over the district’s operations, staff, or personnel decisions,” read one of the rules he was proposing for us. Another: “We will not express individual judgments about the performance of the superintendent or staff. . . . We recognize the value of the chain of command. When approached by staff, constituents or the public, we will channel all inquiries to the administrator.” I e-mailed the superintendent, “Is this a joke?” He called and laughed lamely.
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“We should let people know we are looking for quality, of course, but not to the point of advertising outside official channels.”
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the board never reviewed other major expenditures, such as the installation of a new computer system.
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I asked the superintendent how a new asphalt parking lot was installed at the Greenport School without board approval–or even a bid or a notice or a need. He informed me that a bid wasn’t necessary for a job worth less than $10,000.
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no clarification of what any of this meant–or cost. Don’t ask. “Mandated” was the knowing word from veteran board members.
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almost 16 percent of the children in the school district were disabled, almost double the national average.
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more than 350, were either “emotionally disturbed,” “learning disabled,” or “speech impaired.” These were the kind of catchall categories that allowed a district to dispose of many problem children–in Hudson those children were mostly black–with expensive baby-sitting.
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over the next several months as I learned that the district had been running a deficit for several years. In fact, the state comptroller’s office, which oversees the fiscal integrity of all state and local government agencies, had conducted its own audit and found the same thing: “overexpenditure of budgetary appropriations and the overestimation of revenues.” Money was being moved around, from one fund to another, which was also against the rules, the comptroller noted. And when auditors had asked for records, they couldn’t be found.
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The teacher union president, normally a regular presence at school board meetings, stopped coming so that he wouldn’t have to answer my questions about what was being done to improve things that his teachers controlled. (He had already stopped responding to my phone calls and letters.)
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the debate was as much cultural–and racial–as educational,
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“Mandates” and laws sprouted acres of explanatory weeds–most of them unnecessary. No one ever read the original “mandate.”
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no one seemed to know why the “Parent/Family/Community Involvement Policy” was necessary, but it was assumed that it was required by some Oz-like authority, passed through the policy-writing machinery at some school board association office, and sent to us for our “approval.”
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No one else on the board expressed any hint of having read it. And I was beginning to discern a pattern: the more written, the less understood.
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Does Whole-School Performance Pay Improve Student Learning? - 0 views
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shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Feb 11
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Accreditation Discrimination: Impact on School Choice, Costs, and Professional Prospect... - 0 views
www.academicleadership.org/...essional-prospects-in-academia
ADMS707 reform education politics Federal states
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"we see a society built around profit and monetary gains where the major force driving educational institutions and their enrollees is money; pure profit and economic factors for the majority" "As a result of the uncontrollable turn that modern society has taken in terms of our emergence in a contemporary world built on profit maximization and survivalist economics and materialism, and propulsion toward a future of uncertainty for which we must gather wealth by any means necessary, the degree of competition among us in all walks of life and on all platforms has dramatically increased, and the workplace or proscenium upon which the dramatis personae of economic theories; firms, households, and governments must play, has turned into the battleground where technological advancement, increased knowledge, and the need for more specialized and skilled workers have driven us to commoditize learning opportunities in the form of training and education at an alarming rate. The rate of consumption which the market demands of education and training - knowledge and skills demand and consumption, has left schools, colleges, and universities competing among each other in desperate and even despicable ways, such that education in the form of mere training and book-scanning that the majority offers, has become just another "player" and card in Capitalism's game and race to the bottom of the consciousness funnel."
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Americans Support Federal Involvement in Education - 1 views
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Forty-three percent of U.S. adults want the federal government to be more involved in education than it is currently and 20% want it to keep the same level of involvement,
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Parents of school-aged children are particularly supportive of expanding the government's role in education, with 56% favoring more involvement.
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Americans are, at a minimum, content with the current level of federal involvement in education. Still, views on this are highly partisan. Sixty percent of Republicans favor less federal involvement in education while 63% of Democrats want to see more. By 44% to 33%, independents tend to favor more involvement over less.
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54% of Americans dissatisfied with the quality of K-12 education in the United States today, the highest Gallup has recorded since August 2000.
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By contrast, American parents have remained largely satisfied with the quality of education their own children are receiving. The 80% currently saying they are either completely (35%) or somewhat (45%) satisfied is the most positive assessment Gallup has measured since the question was first asked in 1999.
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"A combined 63% of Americans want the federal government's role in education either maintained at its current level or increased. The figure is 72% among parents of K-12 schoolchildren. The fact that a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the status of education today may give added support to an expanded federal role."
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Gallup poll results reported Sep-2010 r.e. role of the federal government in education.
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shared by REL N on 01 Feb 11
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The "Big Three" of Education Reform - NYTimes.com - 1 views
freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/...-big-three-of-education-reform
Research Findings Accountability Nonprofit Foundations
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Hampton School Board vs. Patrick Russo trial scheduled for March - dailypress.com - 3 views
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The Hampton School Board's lawsuit against former superintendent Patrick Russo is back on the court docket. A two-day jury trial has been scheduled for March 21-22 in Hampton Circuit Court. The board is suing Russo for the $102,220 it paid into a retirement account before he resigned in February 2009 to leave for nearby Henrico County Public Schools, where he is still at the helm.
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Hmmm...Philip. I wish I had some insight here. This is a contract issue and the worst grade I got in law school was in Contracts class :-)
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Mixed Results on Wake County's Busing Policy - 0 views
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Professionalism and Receptivity to Change. - 1 views
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Deals with the struggle of public service professionals that resist changing the occupational norms that would decrease their power even though it would benefit their clients. To examine the relationship between professionalism and change, data were collected from elementary school principals, local school board members, and lay members of community health planning. Principals were slightly less inclined than school board members to accept change. The least professional of the three groups, community health members, were the most negative about change. The mixed findings may result partially from the spurious relationship between professionalism and change. Two additional variables were introduced to test this hypothesis: amount of "turbulence" or dissatisfaction among clients and diversity of viewpoints within groups. Controlling for the former variable yielded little difference; however, there was a strong positive relationship between diversity of viewpoints and change. Consequently, group consensus is seen as a major variable in predicting acceptance of change.
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Aligned instructional policy and ambitious pedagogy: Exploring instructional reform fro... - 0 views
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