The Impact of Neoliberal Evaluation Systems on Rural Schools, Teachers, and their Bilingual Learners

Abstract

Over the past several decades, neoliberal reformers have had immense success advancing their reforms. While studies have pointed to the negative impact of these reforms on students and literacy instruction, there has been limited work focused on the well-being of teachers and the impact these reforms have on growing teacher shortages, especially in rural schools serving growing numbers of bilingual learners. Drawing on data collected from five rural schools during the implementation in New Mexico of what was dubbed the “toughest teacher evaluation system” in the U.S., this article explores how the evaluation system threatened teacher professional autonomy and career satisfaction, leading to teacher shortages that mirror a nationwide trend in the U.S. While existing work has largely taken a resigned stance towards the continual march of neoliberal education reform, this article closes by emphasizing the agency of individuals and organizations to enact change.

Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in English: Insights from Pre-service EFL Teachers

“…The lack of dependable internet access and technology infrastructure in rural setting hinder PSTs' ability to access online learning resources and interactive language learning platforms. The absence of access restricts their exposure to real English language materials and possibilities for real-world communication (Collins et al, 2016;Lopez, 2021;Ruecker, 2020;Ruiz, 2019;Sharif & Channa, 2022;. In order to solve these difficulties and promote a favorable learning atmosphere, it is essential to introduce specific assessment that focuses on enhancing the availability of high-quality language learning materials, offering training opportunities for EFL teachers, and establishing comprehensive and culturally appropriate language learning initiatives that highlight the practical significance of English in students' daily lives (Hargreaves et al, 2009;Mukeredzi, 2016;Yao, 2021).…”

Education policy is spatial policy: Using spatial imaginaries to enhance education policy research

“…Schools in this scenario are enacted within an idealized imaginary of "hometown" and its related constructions. This framing counters a neoliberal one, but neoliberal movements in the future could (and are starting to) undermine the "hometown" imaginaries of rural districts (Ruecker, 2020). Neoliberally imagined schools emerge independent of a local area rather than intimately tied to it.…”

Neoliberal Logics: An Analysis of Texas’s STAAR Exam Writing Prompts

“…The STAAR tests we analyze in this article are part of a state accountability system aligned with a global shift in education policy toward neoliberal discourses of marketbased effectiveness and efficiency (Uljens, 2007). Neoliberalism does not have one definition, but is generally characterized as a political philosophy that foregrounds the value of "free markets" to organize all aspects of political, economic, and social life (Ruecker, 2020). As Phelan (2014) explained, early neoliberal thinkers knew the project's success required politicizing all aspects of social and cultural life such that neoliberal values and practices become "routinized, taken-for-granted dimensions of everyday life that conceal their conditions of emergence" (p. 56).…”

“…The negative washback effects of these testing structures on classroom literacy teaching and learning have been well documented in U.S. contexts (Au, 2007;Dooley & Assaf, 2009;Dutro et al, 2013;Hillocks, 2002;Jacobson, 2015;Pennington, 2004). Institutional pressures continue to promote arhetorical, test-centric writing pedagogies even though teachers know they are fundamentally misaligned with sociocultural understandings of literacy that emphasize context and communicative purpose (Applebee & Langer, 2011;Behizadeh, 2014;Ruecker, 2020). For example, students in U.S. K-12 settings infrequently write more than one paragraph, even in English courses, and the majority of writing students compose is written for the narrow audience of the "teacher-as-examiner" (Applebee, 1984;Applebee & Langer, 2011).…”

“…We support calls to drastically change or even abolish large-scale, direct writing assessments (Allen, 2016;Behizadeh, 2014), but as teacher educators we also find it important to recognize pedagogical possibilities for resistance within current structures. Ruecker's (2020) writing reminds us that the nature of power relations means there is always space for resistance. He defined agency as "the abilities of individuals to be critical of discourses promulgated by the state that attempt to shape their subjectivities and engage in some form of resistance against structures designed to ensure their compliance" (Theoretical Framework section, para.…”