Systemic school reform

Smith, Marshall S.; O’Day, Jennifer

doi:10.1080/02680939008549074

Cited by 327 publications

(297 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

293

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Scholars argue that such alignment is necessary to produce clear policy guidance that teachers can follow (Herman & Webb, 2007;Knapp, 1997;M. Smith & O'Day, 1991).…”

Section: Alignment As a Policy Instrument For Promoting Curriculum Immentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Policies intended to effect systemic change require the coordinated use of multiple policy instruments aimed at multiple levels of complex school systems (M. Smith & O'Day, 1991). Among the most widespread of systemic change efforts in recent years have been those aimed at promoting greater alignment among standards, curriculum, assessments, and professional development.…”

Section: Background To the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a solution to the problem of implementation in other subject areas, policy makers have sought to promote greater alignment among standards, curriculum, assessment, and professional development (Fuhrman, 1993a(Fuhrman, , 1993bM. Smith & O'Day, 1991).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Is alignment enough? Investigating the effects of state policies and professional development on science curriculum implementation

et al. 2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Implementation of science curriculum materials has been a fundamental challenge in science education for decades. Policy researchers have argued that alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessment are the key to supporting implementation. This paper focuses on teachers' perceptions of curricular alignment and on curriculum implementation using empirical data from a statewide systemic inquiry science reform effort targeting students from kindergarten to eighth grade. We find that the success of alignment policies depends on teachers' construal of the relationship between standards and curriculum materials and on allocation of time for planning at the school level.

show abstract

“…Scholars argue that such alignment is necessary to produce clear policy guidance that teachers can follow (Herman & Webb, 2007;Knapp, 1997;M. Smith & O'Day, 1991).…”

Section: Alignment As a Policy Instrument For Promoting Curriculum Immentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Background To the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Is alignment enough? Investigating the effects of state policies and professional development on science curriculum implementation

et al. 2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They propose a high-level, three-pronged strategy to improve educational achievement as well as suggestions on the roles best played by different stakeholders including governments, educators, and communities. Through their elaboration of this strategy they are, in effect, offering a radical updating of the standards-based reform strategy contained in their seminal papers of the early 1990s (Smith and O'Day 1991 ;O'Day and Smith 1993 ). The chapter concludes with a review of current developments in education fi nance and policy in California and speculates on what this might portend for the country as a whole (Kirst 2013 ).…”

Section: Part Iii: Education and Opportunitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Opportunity in America—Setting the Stage

Braun

Kirsch

2016

The Dynamics of Opportunity in America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Opportunity has long been the bedrock of American society. Today, however, the solid foundation that once grounded the lives of millions is fracturing along economic and social lines. Human capital, encompassing a broad set of cognitive and interpersonal skills, has become increasingly important in determining labor market outcomes as the evolving economic landscape, shaped by the interplay of globalization and technology, as well as governmental and business policies, changes who is working and what they are paid. There is now also a tighter link between human and social capital, which is the set of networks, norms, and values that serve to foster development and success. The strengthening of this relationship has contributed to a polarization in the accumulation of human and social capital that translates into distinctly different life outcomes for individuals. This changing landscape also affects the intergenerational transmission of opportunity, with children's circumstances at birth becoming more determinative of their prospects as adults. This introduction sets the stage for the chapters that follow, which offer perspectives on opportunity from fi elds ranging from education and demography to economics and political science. The authors of these chapters, national leaders in their fi elds, offer their insights into policies and practices that could help us move forward to improve equality of opportunity and better realize America's values and ideals.

show abstract

“…Cohen and Moffitt (2009) also connected their work to a longstanding discussion about the problems of governance in American education (Fuhrman 1993), suggesting that the American fear of centralized control produces fragmentation. In these ways, the recent Cohen and Moffitt book picks up on the well-known Smith and O'Day (1991) paper, which argues for the need to use state standards-based reform as a way to coordinate and align the many actors across the system to build an integrated educational system within a federalist paradigm.…”

Section: The Importance Of Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing values back in: How purposes shape practices in coherent school designs

Mehta¹,

Fine²

2015

J Educ Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:Perhaps the most daunting challenge in building good educational systems is generating quality practice consistently across classrooms. Recent work has suggested that one way to address this dilemma is by building an educational infrastructure that would guide the work of practitioners. This article seeks to build upon and complicate this work on infrastructure by examining why two very different schools are able to achieve consistency of practice where many other schools do not. Findings suggest that infrastructure is not self-enacting and needs to be coupled to school level design in ways that are coherent and mutually reinforcing if infrastructure is going to lead to consistency of outcomes. At the same time, we find that the schools differ substantially in their visions of knowledge, learning, and teaching (purposes), which in turn imply very different kinds of organizational designs (practices). In conclusion, we suggest that the notion of infrastructure is plural rather than singular, and that different designs are appropriate for different pedagogical visions and social contexts. 3 Bringing Values Back In: How Purposes Shape Practices in Coherent School DesignsOne of the most daunting challenges in building good educational systems is generating quality teaching practice consistently across the nation's many classrooms (Elmore 1996). Study after study reveals what American parents long have known: that teachers are the most important non-family input into students' academic successes, and that there is considerable variation in teacher quality from classroom to classroom (Sanders and Rivers 1996). Despite images of successful suburban schools and failing inner city schools, research consistently suggests that there is more variation among teachers within schools than across them (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005).Researchers and reform advocates advance two different interpretations of this reality.For some, it suggests that the American K-12 sector needs systems that can measure individual teacher's contributions to student outcomes, which can in turn allow administrators to identify weak teachers and remove them from the field. Others argue that the problem lies less in "teachers" than in "teaching" (Hill and Herlihy 2011), meaning that the field as a whole needs to develop certain features that would enable ordinary teachers to produce quality practice. David Cohen and his colleagues, in particular, argue that the major challenge is to build the kind of "infrastructure" that exists in other professions and that functions to create more consistency of high schools that have succeeded in achieving considerable consistency across classrooms. In the pages that follow, we explicate the norms, structures, processes, and materials that enable these schools to enact their visions, and use this to develop an argument about how these schools differ from other schools we studied which had larger gaps between their espoused values and their enacted practices. (Of course, whether realizing one's values more...

show abstract

Systemic school reform

Cited by 327 publications

References 14 publications

Is alignment enough? Investigating the effects of state policies and professional development on science curriculum implementation

Is alignment enough? Investigating the effects of state policies and professional development on science curriculum implementation

Introduction: Opportunity in America—Setting the Stage

Bringing values back in: How purposes shape practices in coherent school designs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About