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Policy debates about charter schools are often dominated by polarizing emotional narratives. However scholarly attention on narratives in education policy, and especially narratives about charter schools in local contexts, has been limited. The recently developed Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) approach offers guidelines to systematically study the narrative elements and strategies that policy actors use to influence policy debates. Relying on NPF, we conducted a content analysis of editorials and op-eds on charter schools from three local newspapers published in the 10 year period before the adoption of the legislation to answer the following questions: How did the editorials and op-eds in local newspapers cover charter schools prior to adoption of the legislation? Specifically, is it possible to identify core structural elements e.g. setting, characters, plot, and morals of policy stories in these narratives? Do these elements differ by endorsed policy solution? Narrative elements in the form of policy solutions, story types, causal mechanisms, and characters were identifiable, and their use differed by the endorsed policy solution. The concluding section discusses the role of local policy stories in public policy making, and proposes directions for future research.

While state culpability in compounding disasters is nothing new, in the aftermath of the recent earthquake in Turkey the extent of state dysfunction characterized by paralysis of the administrative institutions was unprecedented. Autocratization does not mesh well with effective disaster and crisis management, neither in theory nor in practice. Over the last two decades, rising competitive authoritarianism in the country has undermined accountability, participation, predictability, and transparency in Turkish governance structures, all of which are key factors that support risk reduction and disaster management. Relying on a conceptual and theoretical inquiry informed by the concepts of autocratic legalism and tailor-made laws, this case study argues that countries characterized by competitive authoritarianism are less effective in managing disasters, because they abuse state institutions for partisan goals, create disparities in access to public resources, and diminish accountability mechanisms. The elimination of democracy as a guiding principle in public-sector management is proving ever more disastrous as details concerning the response to the earthquake emerge. This analysis offers lessons and insights regarding the strategies that were used to sideline the bureaucracy and oversight processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the vocabulary and frameworks offered by two theories of public policy process: the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) and the narrative policy framework (NPF) and what they offer to the study of global education reform. The foci of ACF are policy subsystems, formation of advocacy coalitions around policy issues, and their impact on policy change; the emphasis of NPF is the divergent narratives developed and used by these coalitions. This paper reviews each theoretical framework, summarizes existing research literature on their education policy applications, and then poses alternative questions and suggest alternatives to study global education policies, especially those presently critiqued using the term neoliberal which we position as nebulous in its current usage. The aim is to open channels of communication for scholars from different disciplines by introducing different theoretical approaches to analyse the role of the numerous elements that shape global education policy.

For-profit educational management organizations (EMOs) are a growing phenomenon in public education, and they are an integral part of charter school reform in many states. Research suggests that charter schools operated by for-profit entities may take a more entrepreneurial approach when expanding their operations and thus may be more inclined to serve less disadvantaged and less costly students. In this article, we examine empirically whether charter schools are less likely to serve disadvantaged students by comparing the distribution of students across traditional public schools, nonprofit charter schools, and those managed by private companies. We base our analysis on data from the National Center of Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core Data (CCD), and we combine this data with information on the types of management organizations operating charter schools. Our results suggest that charter schools managed by EMOs draw students differently to their schools than those charter schools not managed by EMOs. They seem to seek out more Black students but are also focused on selecting fewer poor students than we see among regular public schools. When examining differences in the size of EMOs, we find that these effects appear most likely to occur among schools operated by large-sized EMOs.

Charter school legislation permits new actors to compete for public funds to provide education to K-12 students across the United States. Proponents of market-oriented policies predict that privatization cuts costs and improves service quality, by removing bureaucracy and boosting creativity. These schools were predicted to become laboratories of innovation that would use their flexibility from state and local requirements to improve public education. This study suggests that the less regulated service systems may have also propagated an environment susceptible to managerial and accountability inadequacies, if not outright integrity violations and corruption. Using systematic document review and the existing literature on corruption in education, a typology of integrity violations and corruption in the charter school sector is developed in this paper. A better understanding of the characteristics of the institutional environment that enable corrupt behavior is necessary to develop effective strategies to prevent corruption, protect children, and manage public funds effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has found that public and nonprofit employees volunteer at a higher rate than their for-profit-sector counterparts, with the disparity typically explained as a behavioral consequence of their higher public service motivation (PSM). This article considers an alternative explanation that public and nonprofit jobs might offer greater formal avenues for participation, and hence that differences in volunteering might simply be an indicator of ease of access to such opportunities, rather than of inherent prosocial orientation. Examining whether individuals in different sectors use different pathways to access volunteer roles may improve our understanding of sectoral differences in prosocial behavior. This study accordingly examines how public, nonprofit, and for-profit private-sector employees access organizational volunteer roles. The results show a few significant differences in access to volunteer roles by occupation sector. The implications of these findings for voluntary management, corporate social responsibility research, and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volunteer management careers and the influence of workplace factors on volunteer manager turnover intentions have received relatively little attention in the empirical research literature. This study uses original survey data collected from over 400 volunteer managers to examine relationships between turnover intention and work motivation factors, person–organization fit (P-O fit), and emotional labor. Work motivation factors includes perceptions of advancement opportunities, task significance, autonomy, and pay satisfaction. P-O fit reflects the degree of congruence between an individual's values and goals, and the characteristics of their workplace. Emotional labor reflects the degree to which employees are engaged in the management of emotions to adhere to the emotional expectations of their jobs. Results emphasize a lack of advancement opportunities as the primary driver of turnover, and P-O fit as a main factor for retention. In addition, the ability to regulate emotions was found to result in reduced quit intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scarcity of citizen involvement in the public sphere is an ongoing concern within the literature on democratic citizenship. This study examines two dimensions of engagement—attentiveness and participation—in several political voice activities, looking at citizens working in the public and non-profit sectors in comparison with private-sector employees. Government employees serve the public interest by providing public services in various ways, but they are also individual citizens with varying values, opinions, and attitudes. How does this dual role shape their civic engagement behaviors and habits of political attentiveness? Are they more politically attentive or more likely to engage in political voice activities than individuals working in other sectors? How do non-profit workers fare? Are they more similar to public workers or private workers with regard to participation in these activities? Using the Current Population Survey (CPS) Special Supplement on civic engagement, the analyses here indicate that both government and non-profit employees are significantly more likely to engage in political voice activities than those working in the private sector. By focusing on political voice activities, knowledge, and media use, the study contributes to the literature by providing a more comprehensive profile of individual participation by sector. The findings generate new questions about what such participation might mean for democratic citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that individuals with greater public service motivation (PSM) values are more likely to work for government, because government jobs offer more public service opportunities; the question then arises of whether they are also drawn into other activities that offer service opportunities, such as participation in voluntary organizations. This study examined the volunteering behavior of government employees in different domains. Using the Americans’ Changing Lives survey, logistic regression models were estimated to examine the relationship between employment in the government sector and self-reported volunteering in five different types of organization. The results indicated that government employees engage in significantly more volunteering than their private-sector counterparts. When separate models were run for volunteering in each organization type, controlling for several other factors, the results showed that these initial big differences were driven primarily by their volunteering in two specific types of organization: Educational institutions and political groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]