This study takes advantage of natural variation in alignment and accountability to analyze educator sensemaking of a complex policy environment. It describes how educators in two large, high-accountability districts in New York and Florida made sense of multiple policy changes, including new standards, curriculum, assessments, and teacher…

When the U.S. Department of Education (ED) signaled that the broad waivers for state assessments it had offered in 2019-20 would not be widely offered in 2021, it sought to balance the need for student learning data to inform pandemic recovery with the very real operational challenges states face in administering tests this year. This policy…

No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act have made accountability central to conversations about education policy. But neither statute articulates a clear vision of what constitutes "quality" or "equity" in education, nor do they include a mechanism to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to pursue that…

Background and Context: Grassroots activism is on the rise in American education, leading some scholars to announce the arrival of a "New Politics of Education" in which political elites and grassroots actors clash over foundational questions of policy and power. However, little research has examined just how consequential grassroots…

In this paper, we report on our investigation of news coverage of accountability reform in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal during the implementation and assessment of New York's Race to the Top-inspired teacher evaluation system. In systemically analyzing how these prominent media outlets narrated this contentious moment in…

This article examines the needs in New York State for public policy to address disparities in educational outcomes, opportunities to learn and appropriate evaluations that assess student readiness to advance in their education or work opportunities. Several proposals for educational public policy changes and practices are offered in the conclusion…

This qualitative case study explored the teachers' and administrators' perceptions of a newly implemented teacher evaluation policy in a high-stakes testing state, and how this policy impacted their motivation. Five science teachers and their immediate supervisors were interviewed, and their perceptions were analyzed through motivational theories…

Charter schools face high-stakes accountability. When charter schools fail to perform as expected, including as measured on state tests, authorizers are often expected to close them. While the details of charter school oversight are shaped by each state's charter school policy, federal law influences how states test children and evaluate all…

State policymakers are in a unique position to enable the innovations in education necessary to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. Working with 8,000 educators nationwide, the Aurora Institute identified the top 10 issues to address in state policy for transforming the K-12 education system: (1) Profile of a Graduate; (2) Innovation…

In this speech, Hursh shows how public education in the United States is undergoing profound changes. Education policy has been hijacked by the unelected and unaccountable corporate reformers who aspire to overhaul the education system through a corporate model of privatization and market competition. They aim to privatize education through…

The Seal of Biliteracy is an official state award that recognizes high school seniors who graduate with demonstrated proficiency in English and one or more other world languages. The policies and practices that support the Seal of Biliteracy promote twenty-first century skills and intercultural communication competencies that are critical in…

Opting out of state standardized tests has recently become a movement--a series of grassroots, organized efforts to refuse to take high-stakes state standardized tests. In particular, the opt-out rates in the state of New York reached 20% in 2015 and 21% in 2016. This study aims to illustrate the social networks and examine the paradoxes that have…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how US school leaders and teachers make sense of multiple accountability policies, including the Common Core State Standards and teacher evaluation, and how this process relates to school priorities and classroom practice. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a comparative case study…

This paper examines the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) "PISA for Schools," a new variant of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that compares school-level performance on reading, math and science with international schooling systems (e.g., Shanghai-China, Finland). Specifically, I…

The United States has undergone a revamping of education standards in an effort to systematize rigorous learning standards across the country and prepare students to be college- and career-ready. In addition, new accountability requirements have been put in place to determine the effectiveness of the school leader. Certainly, educational reforms…