With a focus on the American context, the study investigates a teacher accountability reform as an expanding assemblage of neoliberal governance by providing an account of physical education teachers who were experiencing an accountability reform that required them to document student learning growth for teacher evaluation. Through stratified…

In the United States, higher education institutions must be authorized as postsecondary education providers -- through a process known as state authorization -- to be eligible to receive federal student financial aid funds. Through state authorization policies, state governments play a key role in maintaining accountability for higher education.…

Strategic plans are valuable tools for colleges seeking to cast vision and provide focused guidance for leadership and faculty, but it is not clear how these plans address student success. This study analyzed plans from 55 of the 58 community colleges in North Carolina. First, we analyzed the plans using a 10-step strategic planning framework to…

Higher education institutions often provide physical education activity courses designed to meet learning outcomes associated with physical activity. However, these activity courses were shifted online during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigated the impact of an online learning environment on educational outcomes of physical activity…

Test-based accountability pressures have had mixed effects on the student outcomes that they are intended to improve. Accountability policies have also resulted in transfers of less effective teachers into untested early grades and more effective teachers in early grades into tested grades, which could yield unintended negative consequences. In…

We survey 137 charter school administrators and 129 board members and find that U.S. charter school internal controls are perceived to be relatively strong overall. However, board independence, board communication of internal control responsibilities to school personnel, lines of communication between the board and school personnel, and reporting…

The adoption of market theory as a guiding principle of education policy increased the need for assessments of school performance that families could use to compare academic benefits of attending one school to another. Prominent among measures used by states are the school proficiency and growth indicators resulting from high-stakes tests. Using a…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reverses a trend toward centralization of education policy and instead provides greater authority to the states. This study explores states' interpretation and early implementation of ESSA's equity-related provisions. Using a qualitative case study approach, we find wide variation in the design and…

Out of all the states that have struggled to provide a quality public education over the past decade, perhaps none have seen as precipitous a decline as North Carolina. Once seen as a regional model of progressive education policy, a succession of unfortunate occurrences has severely damaged the public education system. Activists now fight against…

The U.S. Department of Education introduced the four-year adjusted cohort high school graduation rate formula in 2008 to usher high school graduation in as a high-stakes accountability metric. This policy sought to address disparate graduation rates by student race but did not attend to systemic reasons why minoritized students had lower…

In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information about program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement.…

In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information about program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement.…

This study explores the ways in which public schools are evaluated and the results are reported in North Carolina. Currently using a formula that calculates a summative score based on academic achievement and academic growth, the impact of poverty and the complexity of school evaluation is investigated using demographic and testing data from…

Purpose: Written from the prospective of a school of education dean, the article describes how deans worked with researchers and university system staff to develop multiple measures of teacher preparation program (TPP) quality. Design/Approach/Methods: As a key participant in the development of a multi-methods approach to evaluating (TPP) quality,…

This article features a Foucauldian analysis of interview data from a qualitative study of four North Carolina public school teachers who are required to clock in and out of school each day via a virtual time clock. In this article, Michel Foucault's theories of discourse, discipline, power, and surveillance are brought into dialogue with…