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Systemic educational policy recommends creating more ambitious instruction in schools through a centralized strategy of mandatory curriculum frameworks, high-stakes student assessments, and coordinated teacher training. This article suggests serious problems with such a strategy and recommends a decentralized alternative involving local choice of curricula, technical assistance, and professional development. Arguments for, problems with, and alternatives to the centralized strategy are examined in eight dimensions of educational policy: curriculum development, curriculum stratification, educational indicators, high-stakes examinations for students, school improvement, educational finance, educational governance, and teacher training. The article concludes with recommendations for policy and research.

The results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 2012 were announced on December 2, 2013 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The results r...

International rule-governed activity also includes nonstate actors on the national as well as on the international and transnational levels. This chapter first discusses the relationship between educational governance and regime theory, then some observations on the theoretical perspective and the analytical categories are outlined. Second, a concise discussion of regime theory is presented and a definition of an emerging international education regime (IER) is elaborated, including some of the key elements and features that illustrate the adopted theoretical framework. Third, the chapter addresses some methodological questions and presents one possible research design to discuss empirical implications of an emerging IER.

Contrapondo-se ao retrospecto da existência de uma relação volátil entre o Estado e "seu" sistema educacional, este trabalho enfoca dois conceitos que podem ser empregados como ferramentas de análise para estudar as transformações em curso. O termo "governança" está mais relacionado a aspectos técnicos: tratam-se de instrumentos e modos, procedimentos e atores, além de suas constelações e formas de cooperação. Ele concentra a pesquisa em questões como: quem oferece serviços educacionais, qual é a relação entre ensino público e privado etc. Ele também é extremamente útil na investigação da relação entre os diversos níveis de análise e provou-se particularmente importante para a compreensão teórica adequada do papel das organizações internacionais na formulação de políticas educacionais. A sociologia e a ciência política são duas disciplinas cuja associação se mostra mais notável na elaboração do conceito sob diversas perspectivas. "Governamentalidade", por sua vez, apesar de compartilhar muitas características com governança, é um termo foucautiano dedicado à geração de subjetividades distintas por meio de técnicas e modos de regulação e conduta em sentido lato. Assim, governamentalidade inclui investigações do nexo tipicamente foucautiano conhecimento/poder. Consideramos ambas as perspectivas em conjunto para discutir suas implicações para a educação comparada. Against the background of a changing relation between the state and "its" education system, the present contribution focuses on two concepts that can be used as analytical tools in order to analyze the current transformations. "Governance" is more concerned with technical issues: with instruments and modes, procedures and actors, with their constellations and forms of cooperation. It focuses research on questions such as: who provides educational services, what is the relation between public and private education etc. It is also very useful in investigating the relation between the various levels of analysis and has proven particularly useful for an adequate theoretical understanding of the role of international organizations in shaping educational policies. Sociology and political science are the two disciplines most prominently associated with elaborating the concept under various perspectives. Governmentality, on the other hand, although sharing many characteristics with governance, is a Foucauldian term concerned with the generation of different subjectivities through techniques and modes of ruling and guiding in an encompassing sense. Governmentality thus includes investigations of the typical Foucauldian knowledge/power nexus. Both perspectives are brought together to discuss the implications for comparative education.

The main goal of this book is to discuss practices of evaluation in education. Evaluation creates new knowledge; in parallel, it sometimes also creates new blind spots. The authors' reflections are connected to practices such as large-scale assessments (PISA), the implementation of educational standards, national monitoring in education, governance of schools, and instruments such as "portfolios." There are many complex relationships between politics, evaluation and fields of practice and institutionalized communication is complemented by various means of informal communication and interaction. The authors of the book illustrate evaluation and knowledge creation on the macro-level and difficulties in using it on lower levels. Due to the complexity of the topic, this book can neither reflect in depth nor explicitly classify different forms of knowledge characteristics and their usefulness. Various methods of data infiltration, causal links, and forms of interpretation are analyzed through the lens of knowledge creation. Ziel des Buches ist es, die aktuelle Evaluationspraxis im Bildungssektor kritisch zu diskutieren. Durch Evaluation entsteht neues Wissen und (teilweise) Nichtwissen. Dies geschieht im Rahmen von wichtigen Anwendungskontexten, bspw. PISA, Implementierung von Bildungsstandards, Bildungsberichterstattung und auch Governance von Schulen bis hin zu Portfolioansätzen. Die Rezeptions- und Austauschwege zwischen Politik, Evaluation und Praxis sind vielfältig, neben institutionalisierter Kommunikation stehen verschiedenste informelle Interaktionsbeziehungen. Von den beteiligten Autorinnen und Autoren werden für verschiedene Evaluationsfelder Entstehungszusammenhänge von Wissen und Nichtwissen auf Makroebenen und Anwendungsprobleme auf nachgelagerten Ebenen aufgezeigt. Die Komplexität des Untersuchungsgegenstands bringt es mit sich, dass in diesem Band weder die erwähnten Bereiche erschöpfend reflektiert werden können, noch eine Einordnung in einen übergeordneten Zusammenhang geleistet werden kann. Es werden verschiedene Wege des "Einsickerns" von Daten, Kausalannahmen und Interpretationsmuster erfasst und durch eine wissensbezogene Perspektive analysiert. El objetivo principal de este libro es discutir las prácticas de la evaluación en la educación. La evaluación crea conocimiento nuevo; al mismo tiempo, algunas veces crea también puntos ciegos. Las reflexiones de los autores están conectadas a prácticas tales como las evaluaciones a gran escala, la implementación de estándares educacionales, monitoreo nacional en la educación, gobierno de escuelas, e instrumentos como los "portafolios". Hay muchas relaciones complejas entre políticas, evaluación y campos de práctica y comunicación institucionalizada que se complementan por varios medios de comunicación e interacción informales. Los autores del libro ilustran la evaluación y la creación del conocimiento en el nivel macro y las dificultades al usarlos en niveles más bajos. Debido a la complejidad del tema, este libro no puede reflejar de manera profunda ni clasificar explícitamente diferentes formas de las características del conocimiento y su utilidad. Se analizan varios métodos de infiltración de datos, vínculos causales y formas de interpretación a través del lente de la creación del conocimiento.

Kirja-arvostelu teoksesta Restructuring the truth of schooling : essays on discursive practices in the sociology and politics of education : a festschrift for Hannu Simola / Jaakko Kauko, Risto Rinne & Heli Kynkäänniemi (toim.). [Helsinki], 2010. nonPeerReviewed

Two models have dominated the study of school boards: a professional model which views educational governance as a primarily technical process, and a political model, which sees governance as a process of bargaining among the superintendent, board, and community. This study examines New Jersey school boards and investigates what factors affect whether boards operate according to the professional or political model and whether or not professional and political boards differ in their role in school district governance. It was found that a majority of boards adopt the professional orientation and that both contextual and political variables are related to board orientations. However, board orientations are only weakly related to district governance. The article concludes that the influence of school boards depends primarily on board acceptance of superintendents' claims of expertise in specific issue areas and secondarily on whether board behavior follows the professional or political model.

Ziel des Buches ist es, die aktuelle Evaluationspraxis im Bildungssektor kritisch zu diskutieren. Durch Evaluation entsteht neues Wissen und (teilweise) Nichtwissen. Dies geschieht im Rahmen von wichtigen Anwendungskontexten, bspw. PISA, Implementierung von Bildungsstandards, Bildungsberichterstattung und auch Governance von Schulen bis hin zu Portfolioansätzen. Die Rezeptions- und Austauschwege zwischen Politik, Evaluation und Praxis sind vielfältig, neben institutionalisierter Kommunikation stehen verschiedenste informelle Interaktionsbeziehungen. Von den beteiligten Autorinnen und Autoren werden für verschiedene Evaluationsfelder Entstehungszusammenhänge von Wissen und Nichtwissen auf Makroebenen und Anwendungsprobleme auf nachgelagerten Ebenen aufgezeigt. Die Komplexität des Untersuchungsgegenstands bringt es mit sich, dass in diesem Band weder die erwähnten Bereiche erschöpfend reflektiert werden können, noch eine Einordnung in einen übergeordneten Zusammenhang geleistet werden kann. Es werden verschiedene Wege des "Einsickerns" von Daten, Kausalannahmen und Interpretationsmuster erfasst und durch eine wissensbezogene Perspektive analysiert. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1001164, The main goal of this book is to discuss practices of evaluation in education. Evaluation creates new knowledge; in parallel, it sometimes also creates new blind spots. The authors' reflections are connected to practices such as large-scale assessments (PISA), the implementation of educational standards, national monitoring in education, governance of schools, and instruments such as "portfolios." There are many complex relationships between politics, evaluation and fields of practice and institutionalized communication is complemented by various means of informal communication and interaction. The authors of the book illustrate evaluation and knowledge creation on the macro-level and difficulties in using it on lower levels. Due to the complexity of the topic, this book can neither reflect in depth nor explicitly classify different forms of knowledge characteristics and their usefulness. Various methods of data infiltration, causal links, and forms of interpretation are analyzed through the lens of knowledge creation. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1001164, El objetivo principal de este libro es discutir las prácticas de la evaluación en la educación. La evaluación crea conocimiento nuevo; al mismo tiempo, algunas veces crea también puntos ciegos. Las reflexiones de los autores están conectadas a prácticas tales como las evaluaciones a gran escala, la implementación de estándares educacionales, monitoreo nacional en la educación, gobierno de escuelas, e instrumentos como los "portafolios". Hay muchas relaciones complejas entre políticas, evaluación y campos de práctica y comunicación institucionalizada que se complementan por varios medios de comunicación e interacción informales. Los autores del libro ilustran la evaluación y la creación del conocimiento en el nivel macro y las dificultades al usarlos en niveles más bajos. Debido a la complejidad del tema, este libro no puede reflejar de manera profunda ni clasificar explícitamente diferentes formas de las características del conocimiento y su utilidad. Se analizan varios métodos de infiltración de datos, vínculos causales y formas de interpretación a través del lente de la creación del conocimiento. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1001164

This chapter argues that for decentralised education systems, the role of the central and regional governments is critical in ensuring equity and protection of minority interests. It is suggested that the final outcomes of decentralisation are conditioned by a large number of factors, such as formulated policy, type of decentralisation, whether market mechanisms such as freedom of choice have been included, implemented policy, and local cultural, economic and political contexts. The chapter concludes that the country cases and a review of research indicate that the decentralisation programs have been successful in changing existing administrative and decision-making structures and in installing new ones, but they seem to be less successful in terms of genuine local participation.

La exclusión social es un concepto que trata de explicar teóricamente una serie de fenómenos fundamentalmente sociales y económicos, que se relacionan con la pérdida, o la negación, de derechos esenciales que definen la ciudadanía social. Listas de factores que provocan exclusión, paradigmas explicativos, ámbitos causales, etc., son las propuestas que los analistas sociales ofrecen para aprehender este complejo fenómeno, mencionando con insistencia su carácter procesual y multidimensional. Pero es necesario dar un paso más y comprender las causas, la génesis y la historia que hay detrás de cada caso, para captar cabalmente el verdadero significado de la exclusión social. La educación institucionalizada, con las embestidas neoliberales y mercantilistas, aparece en este debate como un ámbito esencial para su determinación, ya que la falta de ésta, o si ha sido inadecuada, producirá en los sujetos una serie de acontecimientos en su devenir académico, en su biografía personal, en sus relaciones, en sus apoyos afectivos y sociales, etc., que lo harán vulnerable, como analfabeto, como sujeto sin la titulación básica o falto de competencias esenciales para desenvolverse como ciudadano activo en las sociedades plurales de este siglo. La equidad, la formación integral de todos, el aprecio por lo social, son principios pedagógicos que deben aparecer en las agendas políticas para que la educación no se alinee con la exclusión social Social exclusion is a concept that aims to explain theoretically a series of facts, generally social and economic, related to the lost or denial of those main rights that define social citizenship. Social analysts offer a list of factors causing exclusion, explanatory paradigms, etc., in order to explain this complex phenomenon, mentioning insistently its character as a multidimensional process. But it is necessary to go one step further and understand the causes, genesis and history of every single case, to grasp the real meaning of social exclusion. Institutionalized education, specially in a neoliberal and mercantilist context, appears in this debate as an essential dimension for its definition, given the fact that the lack of it produces in every individual a series of facts related to their academic career, their personal biographies, their relationships and the existence of emotional and social support, etc., that would make them vulnerable, as illiterates, as individual without the basic qualifications or the main competences that are necessary to cope with as an active citizen in the plural societies of this century. Equity, education in all aspects and dimensions, and the preoccupation for and sensitivity to social problems, are pedagogical principles that should be part of the political agendas so as to avoid the alignment of both concepts: education and social exclusion. Key words: Social exclusion, citizenship, globalization, vulnerability, welfare state, neoliberalism, self-exclusion, educational governance

In recent years, there have been major changes in educational governance and the organization and management of primary and secondary education. This is particularly the case as indicated by debates and deliberations over notions of “good governance” and “public management,” accountability, transparency, effectiveness of public services, performance, and the generation of benchmarks and cross-national comparative data. Among these trends is the debate over educational decentralization, which in the past several decades has become a mode of governance strongly advocated by international policy organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO).

In the U.S., local school boards have long played a prominent role in governing public education. States have authority for public education via the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves powers to the states that the Constitution does not delegate to the federal government or prohibit states from assuming. In the mid-1800s, states began establishing state-wide public school systems. States provide for elementary and secondary public education through their constitutions and statutes, and nearly all states authorize local school boards to govern individual school districts. The majority of funding for public education comes from state governments and local taxes

Both Edith Lucas and Mary Ashworth were instrumental in the lives of minority learners in British Columbia between 1937 and 1988. Although their goals were similar, their professional experiences could not have been more different. Unbridled by the dictates of elected politicians from 1937 to 1963, Lucas provided teachers and students with the necessary resources and services to meet their educational needs directly. Conversely, from 1968 until the late 1970s, Ashworth spent as much of her time lobbying elected officials for adequate resources as she did working with English-as-a-second-language teachers. The professional lives of Edith Lucas and Mary Ashworth illustrate the profound shifts in educational governance and social thought — and their aftermath — that occurred in British Columbia, as elsewhere in North America, from the late 1960s onward.

Similar principles guide the educational reforms currently taking place in most countries: ensuring that all eligible people can attend school, ensuring that the skills and knowledge imparted are relevant to the real world, ensuring educational institutions are accountable for results through more frequent use of evaluations and feedback, and ensuring that parents and students assume more responsibility for education. It is tempting to think that these reforms are spreading because they are encouraged by such international organizations as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Commission, or the World Bank or, alternatively, by influential countries such as the United States. Some authors consider these reforms as representing a new form of colonialism that endangers national cultures. Some even call it an “epidemic.” The movements behind these reforms are all the harder to explain because rich countries are not economically dependent on international organizations’ subsidies. Institutional theory may provide the answer: countries’ educational systems increasingly look alike because countries copy each other. This copying is facilitated by membership in international organizations. This paper postulates that this common model of education is spreading because it fits the current needs of educational governance in highly industrialized societies. Because the requirements educational systems must satisfy are similar, the solutions are similar. Even a cursory examination of the assumptions that

This article investigates changes in educational governance in England and France. Paradigms of new governance are required to make sense of organisational complexity in both countries. English-style educational governance encompasses new forms of central steering, private techniques of public management, a culture of consumer-led evaluation, and new (bounded) forms of school autonomy. French-style educational governance is exemplified by organisational change, enhanced political and administrative decentralisation, the growth of educational partnerships and the circulation of new policy ideas. National administrative, institutional and political traditions provide conceptual lenses to understand change, but the two countries share common ground on many substantive issues of policy

The primary objective of this focus issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Education is to interrogate how East Asian states have explored the globalizing aspects of educational governance in order t...

Describes how microcomputer technology for processing textual data offers new options for the qualitative researcher in educational administration. Both the potential benefits and the limitations of such computer‐assisted procedures are identified. The discussion is illuminated by examples drawn from a study specific to local educational governance in the USA. Although addressing the composite qualities of the genre of microcomputer software known as “text analysis programs”, the particular product featured in the examples is The ETHNOGRAPH – widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated, yet user‐friendly programs for qualitative data analysis currently available for personal computers.

This paper reports the findings of the Educational Governance Project. A comparative study was conducted of educational policy systems addressing itself to two major issues: (1) a determination of the influential actors in the process through which the states establish public school policy and (2) the factors that account for state-by-state variation in the policymaking influence of a particu lar actor. The Project was directed by Roald F. Campbell and Tim L. Mazzoni, Jr.

The ineffectiveness of citizen participation in local education, commonly attributed to an "information gap" between citizens and administrators, may be exacerbated by the inability of citizens to develop a common cognitive model of local education and educational issues. An analysis of the cognitive models of educational administrators, teachers, citizens, and school board members in two communities supports this explanation and suggests the need for an alternative model of educational governance.

In the highly centralised, state system of public schooling in Australia there has traditionally been little opportunity for members of the community to participate in educational decision making at the state, regional or school level. Educational governance has been the responsibility of professional educators having no direct accountability to the public.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which the Illinois Educational Reform Act of 1985 was being implemented at the local school district level as measured by the number of reform-related board motions, discussions and reports documented in local school board minutes the year preceding passage of the reform act and the 2 years following its passage. The study provides evidence of the amount and nature of local policy-making directly responding to legislated reform. Further, it indicates that school boards are responding to some areas of the reform bill more than to others, and that some school boards are responding to reform provisions more than to others. Finally, the study raises serious policy questions about why local school boards have been neglected in the eighties reform movement and about the role of these boards in the future of educational governance.

The study of educational governance has suffered by being insufficiently concerned with axiomatic-deductive theories. It is behind the times. The theory presented in this paper should move things forward. A public choice theory of school board member behavior makes two major contributions to the study of school governance. First, it provides a theoretical framework for microanalyses of school governance, that is, the focus is on each actor and each school district rather than on aggregates of abstract data. Secondly, the theory has the potential to greatly increase the power to predict behavior and events in school governance. A framework for understanding and predicting the micro, as well as the macro, events of school governance is needed. The theory of school governance proposed in this paper provides such a framework.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses public involvement in school governance in Canada. In dealing with school governance in Canada, it must be acknowledged at the outset that the country's educational system does not lend itself easily to generalizations. Structurally, in fact, Canadian education consists of twelve independent educational systems, representing ten provinces and two northern territories. It should be noted that the structures of educational governance are essentially similar from province to province. Ministries of Education in provincial governments are ultimately responsible to provincial electorates for the conduct of education, and in turn have delegated responsibility for the day-to-day operation of schools to local districts, which are administered by professional staffs and governed by locally-representative boards of elected school trustees. The role of the public in school governance is clearly undergoing redefinition in many school systems. Essentially, the dynamic of change includes, on the one hand, a tendency for school policies such as school closure to directly confront community interests, and on the other, a tendency for centralizing trends such as school district consolidation to widen the distance between elected representatives and the interests of their constituencies.

The generally held belief that the extension of participative administrative arrangements within education systems has necessarily led to democratic educational reform is critically examined. Although restructured systems may afford greater community involvement in educational governance, such involvement is generally bureaucratically mandated and occurs within a social and political context in which power relationships, including the relationship of education to other social spheres, are largely unexamined and remain unaltered. Using the case of Victoria, Australia, as an example it is demonstrated that versions of participation in education need not disturb patterns of managerial control.

Estamos inmersos en un proceso de armonización del globo educativo, en una política educativa mundial. PISA representa su más distinguido instrumento. Esta nueva gobernación mundial tiene sus raíces en el medio cultural del contexto de la Guerra Fría. El fracaso de las iniciativas educativas condujo a un nuevo modelo de gobernación en el cual se estandarizaron los exámenes a gran escala surgidos como el instrumento principal en la gobernación educativa, como PISA. Mi tesis, como conclusión es que precisamente porque la idea de gobernación global está arraigada en una cultura específica, los instrumentos desarrollados corren el riesgo de afectar sólo a estructuras formales en otras culturas. Cerraré mi presentación preguntando qué desafíos esperan a la investigación en educación ante estos acontecimientos., We are immersed in a process of harmonization of the educational globe, in a “world polity”. PISA represents its most distinguished instrument. This new global governance has its roots in a specific cultural milieu in the time of the Cold War. The failure of the educational initiatives led to a new governance model in which standardized large-scale testing emerged as the chief instrument in educational governance, such as PISA. My concluding thesis is that precisely because the idea of global governance is rooted in a specific culture, its developed instruments run the risk of affecting only formal structures in other cultures. I will close my presentation by asking what challenges awaits research in education in the face of these developments., Grupo de Investigación FORCE (Formación Centrada en la Escuela) Universidad de Granada

This chapter focuses on a new school-level instrument for international benchmarking and policy learning the OECD’s PISA-based Test for Schools (“PISA for Schools”) and how it helps to constitute new global spaces and relations of education policymaking and governance. Unlike main PISA, PISA for Schools assesses school performance in reading, mathematics, and science against the schooling systems measured by the main PISA test. Schools are thus positioned within a globally commensurate space of measurement and comparison, and are encouraged to engage with, and learn from, the policy expertise proffered by “high-performing” international schooling systems and the OECD itself. Drawing suggestively across literature and theorizing around new spatialities associated with globalization, the “becoming topological” of culture and “power-topologies,” and informed by document analysis interviews with 33 policy actors from across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, the chapter examines how PISA for Schools helps the OECD to directly “reach into” local schooling spaces. This respatialized PISA for Schools, or “PISA to Schools”, provides the OECD with the means to influence how schooling is practised and conceived at the level of local policy implementation, while limiting mediation by national and/or subnational politics. Moreover, the school-to-system performance comparisons enabled by PISA for Schools arguably provide one of the first if not the only international data-driven catalysts of school-level reform. This furthers the relevance and diffusion of “lessons” from main PISA and the OECD to schools themselves, and helps extend the epistemic communities through which the OECD practices its global epistemological governance of education.

Agonistic critiques of democratic theory conceptualize democracy as a site of conflict and struggle; as the fight against privatization escalates, these critiques become more relevant for educational governance. Public education governance has, in addition, increasingly been the site of growing conflicts between federal, states and local levels, as populist and other types of dissent are now emerging in educational politics. These conflicts reached a new nexus with the nomination of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education. This nomination represents a vivid battle over public school as a “public thing,” a material object, space, institution or place of symbolic and embodied civic importance (Honig 2017). DeVos’ nomination stirred up, in popular imagination, the idea of public schools as “public things” of meaning and value for many citizens who participated in unprecedented ways to (unsuccessfully) block her appointment. It was with this threat to public education that the value of school as a “public thing” became crystalized among a diverse network of citizens. This political moment reveals 1) the nature of schools as public things, 2) the importance of agonist critiques of democracy, and public work, as a means for citizens to help safe-guard the future of schools as public things. I conclude by explaining the limits of agonism as a comprehensive approach to the democratic governance of schooling, advocating for its use as a critique and expansion of current models of public engagement with educational politics.