School district takeovers--when a state education agency (SEA) assumes control of a low-performing district--are the most aggressive accountability intervention available to SEAs. Much of the scholarship on takeovers has been skeptical on both normative and pragmatic grounds, but these analyses don't wrestle with what else to do when students'…

Funding for public higher education has been cut in Kentucky in the decade starting 2008 (Spalding, 2019). Due to several contributing factors, including entitlement programs, healthcare costs, the great recession, and other competing demands at the state level, this is a nationwide trend and is not predicted to reverse any time soon. This funding…

In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education released "A Nation at Risk", which triggered an extended era of school reform culminating in today's accountability movement. In Kentucky the school improvement process, in which principals play an integral part, is based on the "Standards and Indicators for School…

Public education has long been the subject of public discontent. Historical events such as the Soviet launch of "Sputnik" in 1957, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and repeated media reports that U.S. students were outscored by students in many other countries on international tests each prompted federal and state…