Purpose: The dual purpose of this paper is to determine how superintendents in US school districts work with stakeholders in the decision-making process and to learn how different choices superintendents make affect decision outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: This multiple case study of three school districts employs qualitative methodology to…

In too many places, community members have abdicated their collective responsibility for education, thinking it only happens in schools. But if their role as citizens is to wrestle with tough problems together, and education is a primary societal function, then it stands to reason that educational accountability focused solely on schools would…

Reformers hope that by unbundling schools--taking apart the current structures and routines and putting them together in new ways--we can create better schools. But there is no guarantee that it would improve schools in three areas that we know matter: coherence and infrastructure, the instructional core, and political accountability. However,…

The focus of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on accountability created a high stakes educational environment. Although accountability is an important goal, guidance on how schools go about building the capacity to effectively accomplish the goals set in NCLB was not part of the legislation. This article supports the premise that a skillful balance of…

This article examines how five teachers, who participated in a national program, supported and sustained collaborative teacher inquiry as a means for addressing inequities in their classrooms and schools. Their efforts illustrate both the possibilities and challenges that emerge as teachers interact, analyze data together, and write about…

Dozens of schools are slated for aggressive interventions over the next three years under a new, multistate effort that aims to clear hurdles that have hindered previous attempts to improve underperforming schools. Education officials in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New York have agreed to partner with Mass Insight…

Standard setting is a systematic process that uses a combination of judgmental and empirical procedures to make recommendations about where on the score continuum "cut scores" should be placed. Cut scores divide the score scale into categories consistent with the descriptions of student performance associated with multiple levels of achievement.…

The proliferation of instruments reporting learning/cognitive style with school pupils is of particular interest, because most research on them focuses on applications in higher education, training and the adult workplace, where criticisms of their integrity, reliability and validity have been significant. This study examines two such popular…

The author reflects on his experiences with standardized tests, emphasizing the dreadful consequences of our continued allegiance to them. In doing so, the author expounds on how public schools have kowtowed to a harmful societal preference for results regardless of processes, decision-makers' desires to quantify learning, and the desires of…

To what extent and in what ways should researchers share their views with research participants during ethnographic fieldwork? This article discusses the author's experience of adopting different communicative stances with respondents in the context of an ethnographic study of the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy in a "failing"…

The literature base on using formative assessment for instructional and intervention decisions is formidable, but the history of the practice of formative assessment is spotty. Even with the pressures of high-stakes accountability, its definition is fuzzy, its adoption is inconsistent, and the prognosis for future use is questionable. A historical…

Over the last two decades institutions of higher education have been subject to new modes of regulatory governance. This essay applies a "regulatory lens" to higher education governance with a view to understanding the sometimes contradictory relationship between the globalisation and regionalisation of higher education and the…

Every year, newspaper articles and news releases from education departments around the nation report that test scores are up again, often dramatically. The main story line is usually positive: performance is getting better, and rapidly. Unfortunately, this good news is often more apparent than real. Scores on the tests used for accountability have…

This paper describes some of the findings of a project which set out to explore and develop teachers' understanding and practices in their summative assessments. The focus was on those summative assessments that are used on a regular basis within schools for guiding the progress of pupils and for internal accountability. The project combined both…

Using the case of a secondary English department in Ontario, Canada, this article examines the constraints that academic departments face in transforming themselves from communities of practice into learning communities. This distinction between a community of practice and a learning community has taken on heightened importance as increasing…