School innovation in district context: Comparing traditional public schools and charter schools

Market reforms in education are part of the educational policy landscape in many countries. Central to arguments for market reforms is the idea that competition and choice will spur changes in schools to be more innovative, which in turn will lead to better student outcomes. We define innovation in terms of a practice's relative prevalence in a local district context. A charter school is innovative in its use of a practice if the traditional public schools in its local school district are not using that practice. We explore factors based on arguments for charter schools that may affect a charter schools’ propensity toward innovation to explain variation in levels of innovation across charter schools. We find that, on the whole, charter schools do not fulfill their promise of innovation. Teacher tenure is the most notable exception. Parental involvement is the only characteristic of charter schools that significantly predicts variation in levels of organizational innovativeness.     

Teaching writing in Brazilian public high schools

Reading and Writing - Writing skills are crucial for high school students’ academic, social, and professional success in Brazil. Developing the ability to write, however, is a demanding...     

Finance, management, and costs of public and private schools in Indonesia

This paper investigates the impact of public vs private finance of education and public vs private management of schools on school cost and efficiency, using school-level data on revenues, expenditures, enrollments, examination scores and student characteristics from Indonesian primary schools. We find that in Indonesia, where schools generally operate at very low funding levels, more money is likely to bring better school quality. Private management is more efficient than public management in achieving academic quality. Private funding also improves efficiency whether the schools are publicly or privately managed, but the incremental effect declines as the local funding share increases.     

Dimensions of student alienation and characteristics of public high schools

This research paper investigates the relationship between characteristics of public schools and student alienation from schools. As hypothesized, custodialism in pupil control orientation and some aspects of school climate were related to variants of student alienation. However, organizational characteristics that were related to one type of alienation were not necessarily related to others, and occasionally they were related in unexpected ways.

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Résumé Ce rapport de recherche est consacré à l'étude de la relation qui existe entre les caractéristiques des écoles publiques et la désaffection des étudiants vis-à-vis des écoles. Comme on le supposait, la responsabilité du contrôle de l'orientation des élèves ainsi que certains aspects du climat scolaire sont à l'origine des variantes de la désaffection estudiantine. Toutefois les caractéristiques de l'organisation qui sont à l'origine d'un type donné de désaffection ne sont pas à l'origine d'autres désaffections et il est arrivé que ces caractéristiques aient des rapports inattendus entre elles.

     

The contradictions of suppression: Notes from a study of approaches to gangs in three public high schools

This article is based on data collected from two years of ethnographic gang research in three inner-city high schools. Two of the schools are situated in the same city on the West Coast, and the third is located on the East Coast. The aim of the research was to describe and analyze the range of responses of three secondary schools as they struggled to cope with the problem of youth gangs among their student populations. I argue that the common repertoire of suppression strategies used by the schools, although based on commonsense reactions to rising student violence, are futile responses to the problems of gangs and have antieducational “unintentional consequences” for the pursuance of a democratic public pedagogy. Dr. David Brotherton gained his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and is currently an assistant professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. During the early research for this article, he was a research fellow at the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Alcohol Research Group. Dr. Brotherton was also a senior analyst at the Institute for Scientific Analysis working on the Home Boy Study supervised by Dan Waldorf.     

Comparing State SAT Scores: Problems, Biases, and Corrections

Comparing SAT scores among states using regression analysis leads to biased results because states differ in the proportion of students taking the exam. When the proportion of students taking the exam is included in the regression equation, the results can be biased because of misspecifieation bias. A method intended to correct for selection bias is presented, and empirical results suggest that sample selection bias is present in SAT score regressions. Regression equations and state rankings are compared between the selection-corrected equation and equations for which the selection problem is not addressed. The proposed method is one of many available as possible solutions to the selection problem. Alternative methods may produce different results     

Public schools,private schools,and the common school ideal

According to the ethos of the nineteenth century common school, all students are assigned the same tasks, and in all the same powers developed. Twentieth century innovations such as ability grouping are foreign to the common school's egalitarian ideal. Such innovations may reinforce connections between students' ascribed background characteristics and school achievement. Proponents of the common school sought to sever these connections. Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore, inHigh School Achievement (1982), argue that private schools are more in keeping with the common school tradition than public schools. In their view, private schools offer greater meritocratic justice than public schools; this is due to the fact that private schools minimize the impact of students' background characteristics, such as race and family income, on achievement. Our findings, however, are inconsistent with those of Coleman et al. We use a data set provided by the Educational Testing Service in which public and private subgroups are approximately equal with respect to measured background factors, and we employ a more adequate complement of independent variables, along with outcome measures which appear to be more curriculum sensitive than those employed by Coleman et al. Our regression results indicate that private secondary schools are no more effective than public schools at severing the connections between background characteristics and measured achievement in English, math, and American history.     

Examining relational engagement across the transition to high schools in three US high schools reformed to improve relationship quality

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in students’ relational engagement across the transition to high school in three schools reformed to improve the quality of student–teacher relationships. In order to analyze this data we employed latent growth curve (LGC) modeling techniques (n = 637). We ran three LGC models on three indicators of relational engagement: perceived teacher press (Middleton and Midgley in Contemp Educat Psychol 27:373–391, 2002), perceived teacher support (Goodenow in Psychol Sch 30:79–90, 1993a), and perceived school belonging (Goodenow in J Early Adolesc 13, 21–43, 1993b). For each model we estimated the latent means of the observed variables, the intercept, and the slope. Our hypothesized model for each of the variables included estimates for the contribution of team status (no team, cross-team, pure teamed), total absences in 8th grade, race (white/non-white), gender, gifted status, and socio-economic status. Alternate models were run dropping non-significant exogenous variables from the model one at a time. In each case, the hypothesized models, including five exogenous predictors, evidenced poor fit. However, alternate models including fewer exogenous predictors evidenced better fit, allowed for the estimation of intercept differences and rate of change, and accounted for significant amounts of variance in relational engagement. Findings are situated within the context of school reform designed to improve relational engagement.     

Denominational schools and public schooling

The author argues that the critical question in determining whether denominational schools should receive public funding is: Does the school provide an education in accordance with publicly accepted criteria for that concept and in accordance with the dominant values in society? A public system of schooling has itsraison d'être in the need to provide a common understanding. This is not incompatible with acceptance of private schools, nor, despiteprima facie oddity, is there anything incoherent about the idea of providing state funding for private schools. So far as denominational schools go, therefore, the conclusion is that they are deserving of state support provided that they do not promote values and beliefs antithetical to the larger community, and, specifically, that they do not engage in the anti-educational practice of indoctrination.     

The dynamics and intricacy of budgeting in secondary schools in Lesotho: Case studies of three high schools

Abstract

This paper reports on the qualitative study that used in-depth interviews and document reviews on financial management practices in their schools. The participants were school principals of the case study schools. The findings of the study highlighted problems regarding the implementation of the policy – despite the Manual for Principals of Secondary Schools on financial planning and organisation, there are still problems regarding the collection and recording of school fees, budgeting, as well as a lack of administrative support. Findings further suggest that during the process of budgeting, power relations surface where principals play a dominant role in decision making regarding both departmental budgets and the school's main budget. Findings also suggest that lack of policies on the use of fees affects issues of budgeting in these schools. Moreover, most school principals are not provided with sufficient capacity building on financial matters, which cripples them in performing the budgetary tasks. The implications of the study are that there should be adequate capacity building of the principals in regards to budgeting and systems should be put in place regarding policies on how the school fees are to be used.     

Instructional systems design and public schools

This article is a reply to the commentary of Shrock and Higgins, which appears elsewhere in this issue. The original article by Martin and Clemente that sparked the discussion appeared inEducational Technology Research and Development, Volume 38, Number 2 (pp. 61–75).     

Instructional systems design and public schools

A great deal has been written in the last several years about the use or lack of use of instructional systems design (ISD) in public schools. The general discussion has revolved around why ISD has not been accepted by public schools; why instructional design experts have not been hired by public school systems; and primarily what an educational technologist can do to change the situation. The focus of most discussions by educational technologists is: how can schools and teachers alter their practice to benefit from ISD? In this article, we maintain that one reason why ISD has not been adopted in schools is that there may not be a fit between the philosophies, needs, resources, and constraints of schools and the benefits of adopting ISD. We also argue that for ISD to have a significant influence in public schools, it must be accepted by teachers. The general question we ask in this paper is this: are we attempting to redesign schools and classrooms to accommodate our technologies with insufficient attention to the perceived needs of clients and to the consequences of adopting ISD? Our approach to answering this question was to search the literature to uncover perceived inconsistencies between ISD theory and practice on the one hand and teacher needs, wants, and practices on the other.     

大数据在高中生物实验教学中的应用

大数据在教育领域受到广泛关注,但在高中实验教学方面的研究还有待深入。以高中生物学科为例,阐述了传统实验教学的现状,从实验设计、实验组织、结果分析与评价3个方面分析了大数据在生物实验教学上的应用,为生物实验教学的优化提供了新的思维和方法。     

在中学化学教学中培养学生的公众化学素质

本站在社会对公众科学素养要求的角度，介绍了作对中学化教学的一些看法，着重阐明作为基础教育的中学化学应着力培养学生的公众化学素质，并讨论了培养公众化学素质的内容与途径。     

民办教育教师的困境及其应对措施

民办教育教师是一个特殊的群体,是我国人民教师队伍中的一个重要组成部分,为我国的教育事业做出了杰出的贡献。然而这个特殊群体的生活现状却游离于人们的视野之外。文章从社会、学校、个体本身三方面剖析了民办教育教师的困境,并从该三方面提出了应对措施,以帮助民办教育教师重拾职业幸福感。