Charter schools began as an experiment to improve public education in the United States of America (Weil, 2000). The theory was that these schools would operate outside of traditional public schools and would be free of the oversight and regulatory requirements constraining the current educational systems, in exchange for increased accountability…

School improvement is an iterative process through which districts and schools develop their capacity, implement and refine new policies and practices, and respond to new developments and needs over time. School improvement policy can also be considered an iterative process, with policy implementors learning from previous rounds of a policy.…

This mixed-method study examines Michigan's Partnership policy for school turnaround, which positions the district and superintendents as key policy implementation actors. We first interviewed 21 of 35 Partnership superintendents/leaders across Michigan and surveyed teachers to understand the initial response to the turnaround policy and the…

In recent years, policymakers and scholars argued that state education agencies (SEAs) should move away from simply acting as compliance monitors and take on more prominent roles as providers of technical support to schools and school districts. Scholars find that SEAs have struggled to do so, yet there is little empirical work to explain what…

COVID-19 upended schooling across the United States, but with what consequences for the state-level institutions that drive most education policy? This paper reports findings on two related research questions. First, what were the most important ways state government education policymakers changed schools and schooling from the moment they began…

Purpose: As school districts evolve in their ability to actively support schools and educators, they must simultaneously contend with external policies that create additional demands on time and resources. This includes accountability policies aimed at increasing district and school capacity. This study uses Malen and Rice's (2004) dual dimensions…

The recent Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to identify and turn around their lowest performing schools, but it breaks somewhat from prior policies by granting states significant autonomy over how they identify and turn around these schools. This mixed-methods study, which draws on administrative, qualitative, and survey data,…

Although it is critical for students with autism to be included in large-scale assessment and accountability systems, it is not clear how to best measure their underlying academic skills and knowledge. Additional empirically-supported guidance is necessary to assist school teams that need to make decisions about how to best include students with…

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education granted states the opportunity to apply for waivers from the core requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In exchange, many states implemented systems of differentiated accountability that included a focus on schools with the largest achievement gaps between subgroups of students. We use…

Based extensive fieldwork and interviews, this study explains teacher evaluation policy enactment as shaped by three conditions: (1) a principal's backgrounds, role perceptions, knowledge of instruction, and interactions with teachers; (2) teachers' perspectives; and (3) environmental demands. Notably, principals may lack the backgrounds,…

In this article, we use originally collected survey data to determine how nonprofit charter school board members in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota define accountability. We find that charter board members generally define accountability downward toward student achievement and staff performance, inward toward board performance, or…

While researchers have shown great interest in understanding teacher evaluation, little is known about how teachers' actions and interactions surrounding evaluation affect the dual goals of evaluation--accountability and development. Using data collected during a yearlong ethnographic study at three schools (combined with follow-up interviews four…

In 2009, the United States Department of Education (USDOE) incentivised states to create more rigorous teacher evaluation systems that better differentiated teacher performance as well as provided more information on what makes a high-quality teacher. One result of these revised teacher evaluation systems was principals, in most cases the primary…

Charter schools are an integral part of the public school systems across America, but understanding these complex organizations has proved challenging. One unique attribute of charter school organizational structure is the charter school authorizer. These oversight agencies have a unique role in overseeing, and holding accountable, the schools…

This study illustrates a method for evaluating the accuracy of performance metrics and identifies potential institutional and student attributes that may increase the likelihood of classification errors. Longitudinal data were obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Eduation Data System for public 4-year institutions (N = 558) to evaluate…