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The ‘noble lie’ has tangible impacts on policy design, which seem informed by an underlying belief that the actors need to be controlled (Dupre & Durak, 2008; Harris, 2004) and constrained via policy levers (Schneider and Ingram, 1990) or accountability measures (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006) or prescriptive policy (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006). This most often leads to a policy environment in which curriculum, content, and pedagogical practices of teachers are increasingly dictated by top-down directives (Achinsetine & Ogawa, 2006). Governance and Management scholarship is a vast umbrella that applies a multi-level lens to measure the effectiveness of array of governance tools, market-based approaches on programmatic outcomes, as well as management styles (Sandfort and Moulton, 2015).
Governance tools are mechanisms used by top-down authorities to incentivize implementing organizations and individuals to change their daily behavior in ways that are congruent with policy objectives (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Governance tools are also referred to as policy levers (Schneider and Ingram, 1990) and can include: mandates, incentives, contracts, and accountability measures (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Schneider and Ingram (1990) put forth a behavioral theory of policy tools. Their research categorized policy tools as either: Authority, Incentive, and Capacity instruments. In their testing of the efficacy of policy levers, Febey et al (2008) concluded that the state political culture: be it decentralized, centralized, or independent, influenced the impact that particular policy levers would have on implementation practice.
Studies of incentives and mandates in education policy research are abundant. While Purkey and Smith (1985) lauded the promise of balancing incentives and mandates at the district level in order to engender teacher collaboration and responsiveness to reform. Teacher collaboration and collegiality is a necessary component of education reforms, especially those that call for learning communities and shared leadership amongst staff (Kelchtermans, 2006). Meter (1994) in a study of Kentucky’s school based management reform, found that the use of mandates in decentralization plans, were incongruent with the nature of local governance.
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Hanushek (1996) in his study on educational inputs found that incentivizing teachers with higher pay did not lead to greater student achievement. The accountability movement, prompted in part by the No Child Left behind act, posited that tying teacher’s pay or careers to student outcomes would raise student achievement. This market-based approach has been tested by several scholars, Jacob (2002) utilizes panel to test the efficacy of accountability measures embedded within No Child Left Behind. His research concluded, that accountability resulted in a large gains on high-stakes test, but those gains were reflected on low-stakes exams. He concludes, that accountability measures didn’t result in increasing student learning, but instead teaching of skills and content specific to tests.
School districts are held accountable by four levels of governance, according to Meier and colleagues (2001): the school board, the superintendent, the principal and central office administrators, and the teachers themselves. As such, education policy researchers, often urge for schools to be conceptualized as multi-level organizations. Bryk and colleagues (2010) asserted that the overall structure and bureaucratic organization of schools impacted their ability to reform. It is the contention of the authors that paperwork processes, coherence between state and district processes, and school-level policies contribute the effective organization of schools, which thereby contributes to their ability to successfully implement reforms.
Authority tools, such as often frame fidelity of implementation as paramount to the success of policy initiatives. Achinsten & Ogawa (2006) contend, however, that political atmospheres that focus on fidelity lead to a ‘technical and moralistic’ environment. According to Elmore (1980), ‘The harder we try to use conventional tools of hierarchal control, the less likely we are able to achieve’ (p.607). Improving schools, it has been found, requires a shift from attempting to control the actions of individuals, and instead, view organizations as complex systems (Leithwood et al., 2009). Sandfort & Moulton (2015) contend that the determination of policy tools is not inherently rational, but functions as a response to political pressures and error in practice. Thus the value in categorization may be limited.
Governance and Management perspectives on implementation provide rich information on the efficacy of particular tools and designs leveraged within hierarchal organizations in order to lead to favorable implementation outcomes. However, the categorizing and testing of particular levers, does not inherently equate to a study of implementation processes. Moreover, in order to rightfully understand the outcomes of particular levers, governance structures as note by Louis (2006) as well as organizational level, factors such as those explored in the next section are crucial.
Policy/ Program Evaluation
Policy and program evaluators have explored the efficacy and outcomes of school reform in an effort to contribute to evidence-based practices and replication of outcomes in other contexts. Sandfort and Moulton (2015) claim behavioral economics, policy analysis, and implementation as the three predominate approaches to policy evaluation. Many policy evaluations in education take advantage of natural experiments, fueled by the changing of policies in real world settings.
There is immense promise of the “simplicity and precision” employed by quantitative policy analysis which has allowed researchers to make causational or, at least, correlational arguments regarding a variety of educational issues, ranging from: curricular initiatives, like Reading First (Bean et al., 2015), to whole school interventions, such as Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) (Aladejem & Borman, 2006; Bean et al., 2015), principal leadership styles (Hallinger et al., 1996; Harris, 2004; Horng & Loeb, 2010), voucher programs (Carlson et al, 2013; Witte et al., 2014;), optimal schooling and classroom environments, like class size for students (Hanushek 1996, Krueger 1999), the impact that teacher education and teacher compensation (Chetty, friedmand & rockoff 2014) has on achievement, the relationship between peers and educational outcomes (Burke & Sass 2006) the import of school resources (Coleman 1966, Hanushek 1996), the impact of charter schools on student achievement (Imberman 2011, Abdulkadiroglu et al), the relationship between ability tracking and student achievement (duflo, dupas, kremer 2012, Imberman, Kugler, sacerdote 2012, carrel, fullerton, and west 2009, bui, craig, imberman 2014). However, predominant econometric evaluations of policies, do not equate studies of implementation, often reducing complex social problems to variables.
Elmore (1980) argued, that the complexities of organizations, for many policymakers are seen as ‘barriers’ to implementation, rather than ‘instruments’ to be utilized during the policy process (p.606). Fullan (1992) argued that many education reforms fail because their approaches do not reflect the complex problems they are seeking to change. Dupre & Durak (2008) claied that the ability to have a widespread understanding of implementation outcomes can only come to be if researchers report implementation behaviors and processes, consistently in the field. The following section explores the promise of qualitative studies of school reform policy implementation.
Escape Easy Measurement
Some of the most poignant research regarding school reform policy implementation was developed as a result of the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988. The Chicago School Reform Act sought to improve student outcomes by returning governance of public schools to the communities in which the schools were nested. As education researchers endeavored (and continue) to study the impact that the Chicago School Reform Act had on student outcomes, they have produced scholarship that seeks to explain causes for the immense variation in student outcomes between schools.
Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider (2003) conducted a case study of three schools. They found that relational trust between the principal, their staff and students within their schools, and the community writ large, had a direct impact on implementation outcomes. This scholarship produced crucial information regarding the role of social relationships in the success of school reform efforts. Trust continues to be seen as mitigating factor for effective programmatic outcomes (Donaldson, 2013; Dupre & Durak, 2008; Harris, 2004; McDonald, 2014; Thapa, 2013; Van den Heuvel et al., 2015).
Charles Payne (2008) in his book, So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools, According to Payne (2008), many urban schools, after years of policy churn and broken political promises, fail to believe that change is possible. As a result they become less willing to change their own behavior, which is a necessary antecedent to change. Payne (2008) argues that this lack of willingness and belief in change contributes to widespread organizational dysfunction in schools, which further perpetuates dismal student outcomes and undermines reform efforts, no matter how well meaning, he terms this phenomenon, “demoralization”.
While the aforementioned scholarship focus on school-level constructs. MacDonald et al. (2014), Henig et al., (2001), Russakoff (2015), Sizemore (2008), Schneider (2011) consider how broader local, state, and national politics and systems impact large-scale reform efforts. School reform policy implementation largely ignores issues of race (Henig et al, 2001; Sizemore; 2008). However, race and racism is key factor in determining how constituents relate to reformers (Russakoff, 2015), how political actors from different background are able to work with one another (Henig et al., 2001), and, at times, if not considered can be used to undermine reform efforts (Sizemore, 2008). Scholars who urge for policymakers to contend with issues of race and racism in school reform assert that because education is viewed as a ‘redistributive’ as opposed to economic any form of investment is understood as taking from the rich and giving to the poor (Henig et al., 2001, p.16).
Henig and colleagues (2001) argue that school reform research often ‘deemphasizes the importance of politics and coalition building in the viability of reform’ (p.8). It is their assertion that reforms are successful as a result of the civic capacity that is built among local actors. This is furthered by the case study research conducted by McDonald (2014) on the Annenberg Challenge of 1993, within New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland. The authors argue that school reform is, necessarily a political endeavor and undermining the socio-political nature of school reforms works to the detriment of reform implementation. According to the authors, large-scale reforms are able to persist as long as they are within political action-space which requires: professional capacity, civic capacity, and money.
Schneider (2011) reasons that reformers, wielding money and ‘commonsense theories about schools’ (p.138) were able to lead to major school curriculum, school size, and teacher certification reforms with no one politically responsible to restore or reconcile the damage the disruptive nature of the reforms caused when they were abandoned. Russakoff (2015) found that race, political ambitions of stakeholders, fiscal nepotism, resulted in underwhelming results of school reform efforts in Newark, New Jersey, following Mark Zuckerberg’s million dollar investment in public schools.
The Chicago School Reform of 1988, the Annenberg Challenge of 1993, Mark Zuckerberg’s million dollar ‘prize’, and the ‘Excellence for All’ Era all represent major school reform efforts, often prompted by philanthropic organizations. Each of these reform efforts were all radical attempts to improve student outcomes by amending school governance, curriculum, size, or staffing in major cities across the United States. They were multifaceted, layered, dynamic, met with hostility, often returned less than stellar results, and were subsequently abandoned. In the wake of their implementation, scholars have endeavored to re-tell the processes, challenges, pitfalls, and victories, of these reforms. The qualitative approach of this scholarship holds promise not only for the future of evaluation research, but also school reform design and implementation studies.
