Long-term effects of school-starting-age rules

To study the long-term effects of school-starting-age rules in a setting with early ability tracking, we exploit the birth month threshold used in the Netherlands. We find that students born just after the threshold perform better at the end of primary school than students born just before it. This translates into increased placement in high ability tracks in secondary education. This difference diminishes gradually during subsequent stages, and we find no effect on the highest attained educational level. Those born just before the threshold enter the labor market somewhat younger and have therefore more labor market experience and higher earnings at any age until 40. We conclude that early ability tracking does not harm long-term outcomes of children who were, for exogenous reasons, placed in a lower track.     

Leadership development programs: investing in school principals

Considering that some university-based principal preparation programmes may not be properly training principals for leadership roles, “grow your own” leadership development programmes have become more popular across the US. This study provides a contribution to previous research in terms of the specific components a district leadership development programme may incorporate into its curriculum in order to positively influence school principals’ effectiveness as school leaders. A purposeful sample of second-, third- and fourth-year campus principals working in a large urban school district in the south-west region of the US who had participated in their district’s leadership development programme were administered the Principal Effectiveness Survey and participated in semi-structured interviews to examine the influence of the programme on the participants’ effectiveness as leaders. Survey results indicated that principals consider training activities related to human capital, executive leadership, school culture and strategic operations as having a “high” influence on their effectiveness as school leaders. In addition, interview data revealed the importance of supervisor support and building relationships with peers as critical to their continued success as leaders.     

A New Politics of the Principalship? Accountability-Driven Change in New York City

How do principals adjust to new standards and measurement rulers of school performance when they are coupled with high-stakes consequences? Adopting a contingent view of leadership and a multiple accountabilities framework, this qualitative study explores how high school principals enacted their accountability in New York City, by comparing two periods: just before such policy changes took effect and just after. We observed large differences in principals' attention to external political, bureaucratic, and market accountabilities; how much accountability conflict or alignment was experienced; and how principals' sense of professionalism was constructed. These differences may portend a new politics of the principalship.     

CSR Principal Perceptions of Support from the State Department of Education

Elementary school principals who received a Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) award in January or August 2002 (n = 21) were invited to be interviewed in the late spring and summer of 2003. A total of 19 principals consented to audiotaped interviews. The interviews focused on several CSR dimensions, including principals' beliefs about the extent to which schoolwide achievement would increase with CSR implementation, where achievement gains were most likely to occur, and the degree of teacher support for the program. In this article, our focus is on principals' perceptions of their relationship with the Arizona State Department of Education (ADE). In summary, principals perceived the relationship between ADE and CSR schools to be one of benign neglect. The state was only a vehicle for transferring funds and did not provide guidance or oversight after funds were awarded. Hence, federal CSR policies, as mediated by the ADE, resulted in single-school reform, not district or state reform.     

Problem solvers or provocateurs? How elementary school principals respond to tensions in schoolbased development

As elementary school principals increase efforts to stimulate school‐based development, they face complex and often conflicting choices about ways to make decisions, strategies to support teacher development, and approaches that foster a constructive working environment. This paper examines how forty‐six elementary principals respond to tensions in an inservice program designed to facilitate their leadership development through participation in school improvement projects. Most view tensions as problems to solve [as comptrollers, accommodators, or processors]; a few live as provocateurs and construe tensions as dilemmas to manage. The effectiveness of school‐based development depends on the capacity of principals, in concert with their teachers, to understand and consistently cope with tensions that emerge as they try to improve their individual and collectives practices.     

Awards and recognition: Do they matter in teachers’ income trajectory?

Do teaching awards affect the growth in income of teachers recognized for excellence? Our study is one of the firsts to use income as the primary indicator of success when evaluating the impact of an award. Taking the case of Metrobank Foundation Award for Outstanding Teachers in the Philippines, our analysis reveals that the award had a higher impact on the income of winners who were in the middle of their career when they received the award. This implies that timing as to when an award is received matters. Relatively younger winners, in their mid-career, have more years in their professional career to capitalize on the award.     

Implementation Effects of a Program for the Training of Coaching Skills with School Principals∗

In this study, the implementation effects of a program for the training of coaching skills to Dutch primary school principals are described. Coaching is a form of in‐class support intended to provide teachers with feedback on their own functioning, and thereby to stimulate self‐reflection and self‐analysis in order to improve instructional effectiveness. To assist school principals in their attempts to coach teachers, a training program was designed and evaluated. Based on the pre‐ and post‐training ratings of coaching conferences, a significant treatment effect was found for the coaching skills concerned with the development of autonomy (empowerment), feedback, and agreement on classroom observational goals. The pre‐ and post‐training ratings from the coached teachers themselves showed a significant treatment effect for the coaching skills concerned with the development of improvement plans. Although the training provided for the school principals was directed at the coaching functions of consulting and confronting, the majority of the school principals conducted coaching conferences that emphasized predominantly the function of consulting.

     

Managing senior management team boundaries and school improvement: an investigation of the school leader role

The present study purpose was to investigate the unique role and activities of school principals in managing their senior management team (SMT) boundaries. The study examined how school principals’ internal and external activities mediate the relationship of principals’ personal factors from the Big Five typology, the team and contextual characteristics of functional heterogeneity and goal interdependence to SMT effectiveness and school outcomes of teachers’ absenteeism, school violence and academic emphasis. The results of the structural equation model from a sample of 92 schools indicate that internal activities fully mediate the relationship between principal extraversion and conscientiousness, SMT functional heterogeneity, intra-and inter-team goal interdependence to SMT effectiveness. The external activities were found to fully mediate the relationship between principal extraversion, SMT functional heterogeneity, intra-and inter-team goal interdependence to school outcomes. By concluding that both internal and external activities remain fundamental to overall effectiveness, this study may provide principals with boundary management techniques and practices. The findings may encourage principals to establish priorities and allocate their time, resources and attention effectively both inward and outward the SMT boundary so as to improve SMT and school outcomes.     

Compounding roles: A study of Washington’s principals

A survey of principals and assistant principals in Washington State has revealed mounting changes in the role of these school leaders. In addition to impacts felt from state-wide education reform activities, the school principals of Washington State who participated indicated that their role is becoming more complex and onerous; the image suggested is ‘layer-upon-layer’ of devolved responsibility. Through analysis of the survey data, a picture emerges of a complex role engaged by committed (if overloaded) professionals. Three themes of principal role change are discussed: complexity, capacity, and threats to morale. New means of understanding principal roles, combined with clear understanding by policy-makers is crucial to ensure the on-going effectiveness of school leaders.     

Book reviews

This study examines Black student and parental perceptions of exclusionary practices of Black school principals. I ask why students and parents viewed two Black principals as contributing to abusive and exclusionary school environments that marginalized Black students. After a two-year ethnographic study, it was revealed that exclusionary behaviors toward Black students—which was viewed as “abuse” by students and parents—was a reproduction of the district's racism, and thus adds new considerations for discussions around the value of racially-like (i.e., all Black) educators and students. Parents perceived these two Black principals as dealing more harshly and rigidly with the Black students and their families; moreover, analysis of the interview data revealed that the principals rejected the cultural and social capital, and proclivities of Black students, and blamed Black students for their lower achievement and unique behaviors. I draw significant attention to the larger contexts of White supremacy and racism as I examine how Black principals negotiate their own roles, how they understand their own treatment of urban Black students, and how they are (knowing or unknowingly) reproducing oppressive practices of White supremacy on Black students in school.     

Academic Labor Markets and Assistant Professors’ Employment Outcomes

Using data for 638 assistant professors who joined graduate sociology departments between 1975 and 1992, I examine the claim that when the labor market for new doctorates is weak, assistant professors experience less favorable employment outcomes than when that labor market is strong. Surprisingly, I find that those hired during the weak sociological labor market during the early to late 1980s had more favorable employment outcomes than those hired before or after that period. I also find that those hired during the weak labor market years had higher average journal publication rates than those hired before or after. I interpret these patterns as showing that those hired during a weak labor market are likely to turn in better academic performances during their probationary periods than those hired during stronger labor markets. These results imply that it is difficult to test the labor market model of employment outcomes, and can explain why earlier studies have generally found little support for it.     

Educational performance and child labor in Paraguay

In this paper, the schooling attainment and labor characteristics of those aged 12–19 years is assessed using data from the 1990 household survey from Paraguay. Although schooling is compulsory to age 13, it was found that 28% of those 12 years of age are already out of school. Among those out of school, 19% work formally in the labor market and contribute about a quarter of total family income. Among the 12-year-olds still in school, one-quarter have repeated a grade or more. The analysis suggests that language strongly influences school attainment and performance. Those who speak only Guarani at home may receive equal access to schooling, but their performance in school (in terms of years of attainment and grade repetition), is considerably inferior to that of Spanish-only and bilingual pupils. The number of siblings was found not to have had much of an effect on school enrollment, although it did have a significant impact on the probability of child labor. These findings may be evidence of ‘specialization’ in the household, whereby some children work, while their siblings are permitted to attend school and concentrate on studying. The results indicate that subsidies to poor households may be necessary to enable them to maintain their children in school for at least the duration of the primary cycle.     

Declining Support for Higher-Education Leadership Preparation Programs: An Analysis

University-based leadership preparation programs no longer enjoy a near monopoly on the right to prepare school principals and other administrative leaders, and now compete with a growing number of alternative providers. This article utilizes the new institutionalism literature to analyze this shift. Practitioners and policymakers demanded reforms beginning in the 1980s. Two alternative state responses are discussed—increased regulation alongside deregulation. University-based providers have been weakened by value disagreements, inability to monitor quality, and weak research on program effectiveness. Strategies are discussed for creating a market of providers that is more strongly regulated around quality.     

From school leader to educational leader

ABSTRACT

This study builds on research which contends that just as effective principals must lead across a broad purview of responsibilities in order to build successful schools, so too must middle leaders. Decentralisation of school management has resulted in an expansion of school principals’ responsibilities, contributing to a further distribution of leadership responsibility to middle leaders. This conception of middle leadership requires a shift in understanding of the nature of middle leaders’ work. There is vast potential for middle leaders to contribute to their schools beyond subject administration, yet the research base yields limited insight on such work and on how middle leaders can be supported to accomplish it. This research finds that middle leaders who expand their leadership responsibilities do so in contexts that utilise school mission, policy enactment and organisational design as platforms for enhanced middle leadership.     

(Em)Powered by Science? Estimating the Relative Labor Market Returns to Majoring in Science in High School in India

Despite widespread belief that majoring in science in high school has a greater payoff in the Indian labor market than majoring in business/humanities, there is no hard evidence to substantiate this thought. Here I provide the first evidence of the causal effect of majoring in science on individuals’ labor market outcomes relative to majoring in business/humanities using microdata from India. Estimating the causal effect, however, is a formidable task since selection into high school major is nonrandom and exclusion restrictions are unavailable. I circumvent these difficulties by employing an econometric technique that does not rely on valid exclusion restriction for identification. I find that majoring in science has a negative causal effect on individuals’ employment probability. Conditional on being employed, however, majoring in science has a positive causal effect on individuals’ earnings and probability of being engaged in a professional occupation. These findings suggest, in contrast to conventional wisdom, the labor market effects of majoring in science in high school in India is not a plain tale of ‘science premium’ - while majoring in science might lead to relatively better labor market outcomes for those who are able to find employment, finding employment itself is more difficult for science majors.     

论奖惩

奖惩使受教育者有德行善便有福,而缺德作恶便有祸,无疑符合同等利害相交换——等利交换与等害交换——的公正原则,因而是公正的、道德的、应该的、善的。诚然,奖惩的直接作用是使受教育者为了得到奖赏而遵守道德和欲求美德,是为了利己而求美德;但奖惩的最终作用却能够使受教育者为了美德而求美德：奖惩甚至是使受教育者达到为美德而求美德的崇高道德境界的唯一途径和方法。     

Leadership's Role in Inclusive LGBTQ-Supportive Schools

The field of school-leadership preparation has recently been making a concerted effort to embed social justice issues into the curriculum experiences of aspiring principals. Although much of this effort has focused on the academic achievement among students who are poor, nonnative speakers of English, or non-White, very little attention has been paid to students who identify or are perceived as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ). Informed by both their personal and professional perspectives, we expand the discussion on what it means to lead for social justice by focusing specifically on both changes that need to occur in the training (both preservice and in-service) of aspiring principals and specific strategies underlying the implementation of these changes, all of which are necessary if school leaders are to meet the needs of LGBTQ students.     

Learning to label: socialisation,gender, and the hidden curriculum of high‐stakes testing

Although high‐stakes tests play an increasing role in students’ schooling experiences, scholars have not examined these tests as sites for socialisation. Drawing on qualitative data collected at an American urban primary school, this study explores what educators teach students about motivation and effort through high‐stakes testing, how students interpret and internalise these messages, and how student hierarchies develop as a result. I found that teachers located boys’ failure in their poor behavior and attitudes, while arguing that girls simply needed more self‐esteem to pass the test. Most boys accepted their teachers’ diagnosis of the problem. However, the boys who felt that they were already ‘doing their best’ and ‘working hard’ began to doubt that educational success is a function of merit and effort. I conclude that students learn about much more than the three Rs through their experiences with high‐stakes testing, and argue that future research should attend to the social dimensions of these experiences.     

The effect of school inputs on labor market returns that account for selective migration

In this paper, I estimate the effect of state school inputs on labor market returns to schooling. The method follows Card and Krueger (1992) and Heckman et al. (1996), but I extend their analysis in two ways. First, I correct state-level returns to schooling for selective migration, adapting a method from Dahl (2002). Second, I use more recent data and assess the degree to which the 1999 labor market capitalized school inputs (with 2000 Census data). Higher state-level school inputs are associated with higher returns to schooling after correcting for selective migration. These positive effects are present in all Census years I study.     

GOVERNANCE OF EDUCATION IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA: THE ROLE OF BOARDS OF GOVERNORS

Boards of Governors have been in existence since the early 1970s as part of Papua New Guinea's effort to allow local participation in educational decision-making. This study investigates their role in the governance of provincial high schools in Papua New Guinea. From the findings, lessons that can be learnt by those who are intending to introduce school governance at the individual institution level have been stated. The data were obtained through a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, observation of meetings, and document analysis. Participants included principals, teachers, students and community representatives. In general the Boards are involved in administrative functions only. They are not involved in the main technology of the schools: teaching and learning. It is recommended that consideration be given to delegating some curriculum powers to the Boards. Further, training is required for principals and Board members to strengthen the Boards' effectiveness.