Shifting the Zone of Mediation in a Suburban New Immigrant Destination: Community Boundary Spanners and School District Policymaking

This paper explores the context of reception for immigrant students and English learners in one medium-sized suburban school district in the northeastern United States. Using qualitative methods, the authors describe how, despite a troubling context of reception emerging from a normative and political community context that harbored resentment toward the new immigrant population, a community-based organization whose members served as boundary spanners between the school district and the community helped prompt district leaders toward more equity-minded policies. Given increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student populations in suburban school districts across the United States, findings from this paper have important implications for community engagement and school district policymaking.     

“Really Just Lip Service”: Talking About Diversity in Suburban Schools

Suburban school districts are in the midst of rapid racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversification, although the teaching force remains much more homogenous. This article examines how educators in increasingly more diverse suburban schools conceptualize diversity. Qualitative data comes from interviews of 40 teachers, 23 principals and assistant principals, and 16 other school staff in six suburban school districts across the country. Using critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1993), I identify three primary discourses: an aspirational commitment to preparing students for a diverse society; color-muteness and insistence on individuality; and a deficit perspective on students from diverse racial/ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In particular, educators perceived cultural deficits in students’ families and communities (Valencia, 2010). Finally, a small number of participants recognized structural forces that impeded the achievement of students of color. The discussion analyzes how such discourses threaten to reproduce educational inequality as suburban districts continue to diversify and concludes with recommendations for districts and schools.     

School Board Leadership and Policymaking in Changing Political Environments

As the demographic make-up of public schools (and neighborhoods) shift and schools become increasingly segregated, the role of school boards becomes critically important in maintaining policies designed to remedy segregation and promote equal opportunity, policies which may challenge the status quo. Specifically, in school districts and communities where politics are fluctuating, longstanding diversity policies that have assisted in creating integrated learning environments can be overturned by a single school board election. Further, as suburbanization within countywide school districts creates distinct enclaves—where student populations are significantly whiter and more affluent than the district as a whole and political fragmentation is perpetuated—school board members representing elite enclaves may be less supportive of policies that would lessen the privilege of these residents. This paper explores school board leadership and policymaking in two Southern school districts where politics are currently in flux: Jefferson County (Louisville), Kentucky and Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina. Specifically, we seek to: (1) understand how demographic change—particularly the creation of suburban enclaves—influences public support for and implementation of integration policies; (2) examine the politics of diversity in a larger environment skeptical of race-conscious policies; and (3) analyze local policymaking and leadership.     

Relationship Between Educational Resources and School Achievement: A Mixed Method Intra-District Analysis

This study examines the relationship between educational resources (fiscal, personnel and facilities) and school achievement within a large urban/suburban elementary school district. A sequential mixed methods approach reveals inequitable resource allocation trends and patterns between schools within a school district by producing different student outcomes. The educational resources positively correlated to higher school achievement are: higher teacher salaries, newer schools, more multi-purpose space per pupil and less portable classrooms. Without question, White students receive more of these resources than Latino students, low-income students and English Language learners. This study also conducts a multiple comparative case study analysis comparing between Title I and non-Title I schools, within Title I schools and within non-Title I schools. The study contains policy and practice implications to improve opportunity and school achievement in urban/suburban school districts.     

Promising or Potentially Harmful? Suburban School Responses to Racial Change

Over the last several decades, suburban schools have become increasingly more diverse and now must respond to racial change, so that they can successfully educate an increasingly more diverse and multiracial student body. This article analyzes interview responses of administrators, teachers, and staff at 19 schools in six diversifying suburban school districts across the United States to explore how they adapt their policies and practices in response to racial change. Findings indicate that school responses are mixed, with each school adapting some policies that demonstrate promise for creating inclusive, enriching, and academically rigorous environments and other responses that are potentially harmful. Promising responses include facilitating diverse student groupings, modifying curriculum and instruction, developing an inclusive school climate, and implementing diversity efforts with teachers and staff. Potentially harmful responses include isolating English Language Learners, narrowing curriculum to focus on test preparation, developing an exclusionary school climate, and failing to respond at all. Schools with the greatest degree of racial change, strong school leadership, and district support often adopt the most promising responses.     

What a Difference the Community Makes: Zero Tolerance Policy Interpretation and Implementation

The implementation of zero tolerance policies raises important questions. In this article we explore how zero tolerance policies are interpreted, implemented, and enforced differently in urban, rural, and suburban districts, and how this results in unequal numbers of expulsions and suspensions. Using a policy analysis framework, we explored how administrators from economically and culturally distinct communities developed an understanding of zero tolerance policy. In some cases, administrators modified the policy to meet the needs and culture of their districts, while in other situations, administrators adhered to the policy as written. The varying interpretations allowed some children to remain in school for particular offenses while other children were expelled immediately for similar infractions. Our data show that this policy adversely impacts a disproportionately higher number of students color in urban school districts.     

4 Public choice perspectives on urban schools

Using public choice theory as a conceptual orientation, the authors argue that politics in urban school districts have differed from those in suburban school districts. Urban school politics have been characterized by relatively well‐organized interest groups and weak market controls, although politics in suburban school districts vary also, as a function of the strength of market controls. The strength of these interest groups in city school systems is reflected in school board politics, in the administrative structure and in district policies. Interest group liberalism in urban school districts may be lessening due to the changing educational needs of urban students and due to reformers’ efforts to give parents more educational choices. However, the success of market reforms depends on a number of conditions which will be a severe challenge to reformers.     

The Structure and Substance of Teachers’ Opportunities to Learn about Teacher Evaluation Reform: Promise or Pitfall for Equity?

Despite growing momentum to overhaul teacher evaluation policies and practices, scant research examines how educators at the street level of such reform—principals and teachers—make sense of them, and almost no research examines the implications of current evaluation reforms for equity. This article provides findings based on a study of 14 districts implementing a new teacher evaluation policy in Connecticut. It focuses on how principals shaped teachers’ opportunities to learn about the new policy. We find that the majority of teachers’ opportunities to learn were formal and in whole group or one-on-one formats. We find important differences in the quantity and quality of learning opportunities at the district level, with districts serving greater shares of low-income students, students of color, and English language learners generally offering teachers fewer and lower quality opportunities to learn about the new reform than their counterparts. As such, this article builds on prior research illustrating the potential of new evaluation systems to exacerbate inequities and raises important cautions regarding the extent to which the unprecedented teacher evaluation reforms (currently underway) may exacerbate inequities among school districts.     

Career mobility of elementary school principals and conflict with the central office

Recent attention on the principal as instructional leader of the school has overshadowed the dual nature of the principal's role as a subordinate of the central office as well as superordinate of the school. An understanding of how principals respond to this dual role is useful in developing appropriate school improvement strategies. This study examines the diversity of principals' responses to one aspect of this dual role, the potential conflict between principal and central office. The investigation, involving a sample of 89 suburban elementary school principals, uses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The study found that principals vary in their responses to this potential conflict depending on their career histories. Principals who have moved among several districts are more likely to have conflict with CO, while principals who have remained in the current district throughout their careers are less likely to have this conflict. Several features of career mobility are examined as possible explanations for the findings.     

No one way: Differentiating school district leadership and support for school improvement

This article examines findings from a qualitative investigation of how school district administrators in four mid to large sized urban school districts (10,000–50,000) identify and address differences in school performance. The analysis explores the interaction between district policies and actions that centralize and standardize expectations for teaching, learning, and leadership, and those that lead to the differentiation of district support to schools depending upon their identified needs. The findings demonstrate variability in district orientation and capacity to understand school needs to improve performance, as well as in district strategies for actually differentiating support to schools. Differentiated assistance can focus both on strengthening implementation of district expectations in order to improve school performance, and on supporting experimentation with non-standard solutions to performance challenges that are not solvable through use of established programs and practices.     

Responses to cultural diversity in Botswana’s schools: links between national policy,school actions and students’ civic equality

This article examines nation state policies that have prioritized toleration of diversity over recognition through comparative case studies of three junior secondary schools in Botswana. Through data collected in observations, focus groups, interviews and participatory action research, we demonstrate how the schools, which varied in the ethnic composition of their students, teachers and surrounding communities, responded differently to the reality of their multicultural student bodies. Two followed national policies closely, while the third crafted school-level policies adapted to its student population, yet tightly constricted by national policies and curriculum. In all three schools, students of ethnic minority backgrounds experienced varying degrees of shame, discrimination and a sense of exclusion from the nation and found little recourse to discuss and address these experiences within the structures of their schools. We argue that schools could better develop students’ capacity for equal citizenship were they supported by national education policies and curriculum to recognize the cultural, historical and linguistic diversity of Botswana’s ethnic minorities explicitly in schools.     

Marketing diversity: selling school districts in a racialized marketplace

Schools in the US and across the globe are increasingly engaged in marketing practices to attract and retain students and families. This study examines why and how administrators and school board members in two public school systems in the US seek to market their schools. Using in-depth case studies, a socio-cultural approach to policy, and critical race perspectives, I trace administrators’ and school board members’ logics about marketing, and specifically their emphasis on marketing the racial ‘diversity’ of their students. I find that despite differences in economic circumstances and community orientations to racial inclusion, leaders in these two competitive, under-resourced, and demographically changing school districts target upper- and middle-class White families, draw on discourses of global cosmopolitanism, and commodify racial diversity as a competitive advantage for upper- and middle-class White families that leaders believe do not see inherent value in students of color. This attempt to use racial diversity as a ‘selling point,’ varies in its particularities in each district–one district acknowledges and emphasizes how all students may gain from interracial and intercultural interactions and knowledge while the other district leverages abstract notions of diversity, removed from actual children of color – a consequence, in part, of district leaders’ uniquely racialized marketplaces. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings.     

Melding Internal and External Support for School Improvement: How the District Role Changes When Working Closely With External Instructional Support Providers

To support instruction, school districts must provide a wide array of assistance to schools. Broadly speaking, districts play the roles of authority in holding schools accountable for their activities and performance, support in assisting school faculties to build their capacity to better instruct students, and brokerage between schools and outside providers of service and materials. The roles of authority, support, and brokerage typically contend with each other, producing a set of perennial tensions for district leaders. This article examines the influence on these three roles of external support providers working in close partnership with districts on instructional improvement efforts. First, the article reviews the literature on district/provider partnerships for examples of role adjustment. Second, using a case study of a deep partnership between a district and an external provider, this article empirically examines the influence of a district/provider partnership on the balance of district roles. The findings illustrate how the traditional district roles of authority, support, and brokerage are adjusted by partnerships with external providers.     

Regional Governance in Education: A Case Study of the Metro Area Learning Community in Omaha,Nebraska

This article examines the first regional governance reform in public education, created in the Omaha, Nebraska metropolitan area in 2007. The legislation creating this regional reform, which is called the Learning Community, established a regional governing body, the Learning Community Coordinating Council, consisting of an elected 21-member board. The board oversees a tax-sharing plan that redistributes general revenue, an interdistrict diversity transfer program, and programming aimed at enhancing early childhood and after-school opportunities for low-income students. In this article, we examine the implementation of the Learning Community, evaluating the extent to which the regional governing body has been able to advance the regional goals with which it has been charged. This article also illustrates how, as a result of the regional governance reforms, school districts within the Omaha metropolitan area are reevaluating the very definition of “local community.”     

School Choice as a Civil Right: District Responses to Competition and Equal Educational Opportunity

Using geographic representations to examine choice policies and patterns in a major urban area, this analysis considers how districts in a metropolitan area are responding to competitive incentives in arranging options for African American students. The findings demonstrate that the distribution of districts' school choice policies exclude poorer students of color from the more preferred school options. The decision of districts to open or close their boundaries to non-residents is tied to both the physical proximity of districts to poorer communities, and to their relative status within the local market hierarchy. Thus, rather than seeing districts compete to attract students (and per-pupil funding) from failing schools, we are instead witnessing a process of districts targeting more preferred students—effectively ignoring the potentially lucrative pool of dissatisfied families (and per-pupil funding) in failing districts. This suggests that districts are responding to a set of incentives quite different from the ones envisioned by reformers, so that although choice is opening up school options, better choices are less available for poor students and students of color.     

The Tensions Between Shared Governance and Advancing Educational Equity

This article examines the relationship between shared governance and one school district’s (in)ability to advance educational equity. Specifically, we consider the district’s policies, discourse, and practice around equity within the context of site-based management and shared decision making. We suggest that if equity is indeed a major district responsibility, then it seems inconsistent to leave equity at the mercy of shared governance and occasional externally-imposed mandates because most individual school leaders and educators are not currently taking up this agenda or implementing changes that would result in equitable education. Thus, our work suggests that progress toward educational equity may best be achieved through top-down, directive leadership in districts.     

The Challenge of Improving Instruction in Urban High Schools: Case Studies of the Implementation of the Chicago Academic Standards

As attention shifts to how districts allocate resources to schools, student weighted allocation has emerged as an alternative to traditional staff-based allocation policies. Student-weighted allocation uses student need, rather than staff placement, as the building block of school budgeting. This article examines how the shift to student-weighted allocation affected the pattern of resource distribution within 2 districts: the Houston Independent School District and Cincinnati Public Schools. This study provides evidence that student-weighted allocation can be a means toward greater resource equity among schools within districts. Resource equity is defined here in per-pupil needs-weighted fiscal terms.     

School Choice and Stratification in a Regional Context: Examining the Role of Inter-District Choice

Despite the growing popularity of interdistrict choice plans over the past decade, the policy assumptions underlying their adoption have been subjected to very little empirical research. This study situates school choice within one metropolitan region, Denver, and examines the ways in which choice patterns relate to existing patterns of stratification between school districts. This regional focus offers insight into the patterns of interdistrict choice and the influence these patterns have on equity within a metropolitan region. Findings from this study indicate that relatively higher income students were more likely to take advantage of interdistrict choice, and that choice was more often used by students to exit from a less advantaged context (as measured by socioeconomic status) to a relatively more advantaged one. The article concludes with recommendations for policymakers in designing more equity-minded choice policies.     

A national study of kindergarten transition practices for children with disabilities

This study used data drawn from a large, national sample to describe transition practices provided to 1989 children with disabilities as they entered their kindergarten year, obtained through a survey administered to kindergarten teachers. Using path modeling, we examined the child and family, school, and district factors that predict which children and families receive high- and low-intensity transition support as they enter kindergarten and, in particular, what types of high-intensity practices they receive. The type of support kindergarten teachers provided was generally comparable to or higher than previously reported data, with low-intensity transition supports more commonly used than high-intensity supports. In a path model that included a range of child and family, classroom, and district factors, four variables emerged as predictors of transition support. Children from larger districts and higher poverty districts who were entering kindergarten from a different setting were less likely to receive support during the transition period. Rural districts differed little overall from suburban districts because they are, on average, higher poverty, but smaller in size. Urban districts demonstrated efforts that counterbalanced the barriers of size and poverty. We include policy implications based on these findings.     

Metropolitan school desegregation and parent and student attitudes: A longitudinal case study

This study examines changes in the attitudes of parents and students coincident with desegregation in a new single unified school district, with reassignment of both suburban white students and inner-city minority students. Data are presented for the year immediately preceding desegregation implementation and for three years following implementation. The final sample presented includes only those parents and students for whom complete data were available for each of these four years. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used to examine overall changes in racial and educational attitudes across time and to determine the differential impact of several intervening variables, including race, sex, child's grade level at the time of desegregation, which of five former school districts the families were in prior to desegregation, and the parents' perceived social status. Overall changes were found for several parent and student attitudes, largely during the first year of desegregation implementation. Several of the intervening variables were also significantly related to attitude changes, notably race and child's initial grade level.