High-stakes testing has grown in scope and impact in recent years, as accountability decisions regarding funding, school sanctions, and teacher evaluations often depend on standardized test results. The shift toward more stringent and punitive testing mandates has not gone unchallenged however, as pockets of resistance have emerged among teachers, parents, and scholars, and a growing "opt-out" movement has picked up steam nationwide. Teachers in particular have played a critical role in resistance to high-stakes testing, even while adhering to these same policies in their professional roles. This study examines resistance to standardized testing via the 'opt-out' movement organizing process. I specifically look at teachers' participation in organizing and resistance, and how positions as teachers and sometimes parents influence their participation. I frame the project with a post-structuralism lens, utilizing the Deleuzoguattarian concept of the rhizome to illustrate the complex and connected nature of teachers' involvement in this social movement.

abstract: In their criticism of various approaches to upbringing and related American family law jurisprudence, liberal theorists tend to underweight the interests of parents in directing the development of children’s values. Considered through the lens of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism, providing a good upbringing is not a matter of identifying children’s “best interests” or acting in accordance with overriding end-state principles. Rather, children should be raised in accordance with principles for the general regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement. The process of ascertaining such principles requires an understanding of relevant values; a good upbringing is what children receive when parents properly value their children, enabling them to appropriately recognize what it is that they have reason to do given the roles that they play. By developing the account of upbringing hinted at in Scanlon’s contractualist monograph, What We Owe to Each Other, this project identifies and responds to some common mistakes in contemporary liberal theorizing on childhood, suggests that contractualism yields a more plausible account of upbringing than alternative approaches, and along the way identifies some implications of contractualism for public policy where individuals properly value the children of others in their community. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Philosophy 2019

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The purpose of this policy analysis was to examine the responses of selected states to the special education monitoring requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEA) with particular attention paid to the years after this most recent reauthorization. This study examined the legislative and litigative history of students with disabilities including the gradually increasing role of the federal government in both general and special education.;The various approaches used by the selected states to monitor special education procedures and student outcomes were identified as well as the procedures used by these states in order to remediate non-compliance issues. Information was reviewed in order to determine the extent that selected states met or failed to meet state indicator targets.;Once the non-compliance issues and due process issues had been associated with their respective priority areas, an analysis was made of the relationship between these two variables. It was determined that a correlation was found to exist between due process proceedings and identified areas of non-compliance. Through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods, the results obtained from this study indicated that the selected states use similar methods for monitoring special education as well as for remediating non-compliance.

Educational intermediary organizations, as defined by Honig (2004a), are characterized by their internal placement within schools as they mediate change among groups during the policymaking process. As intermediary organizations work to bring about internal changes, however, they are still performing their core external functions by operating as independent organizations. This case study examined the alliance between a school district and an intermediary organization and how together they designed and implemented a well-received pay-for-performance program that evolved into a wider school improvement program, using the following research questions: (a) How did ISIP act as an intermediary organization in the North Plains Community School District during the policymaking process to influence the program's success and influence the change beliefs of those it affected, (b) How did ISIP act as an intermediary organization in the North Plains Community School District during the professional development sessions to influence the change beliefs of those it affected and influence the program's success, and (c) How did the evolving school improvement efforts challenge the collaboration between ISIP and the North Plains Community School District? Data collection for this descriptive case study occurred during the 2008-2010 school years in the North Plains Community School District as it participated in a state-funded, pay-for-performance grant. District administrators and teacher participants were interviewed, state and district documents were reviewed, and observations were conducted of the pay-for-performance committee meetings and professional development series that accompanied the pay-for-performance assessment. Findings from this study demonstrate how the pay-for-performance policy was the vehicle for change that provided the opportunity and motivation for the school district, via the pay-for-performance committee, to develop and implement new programs. The district hired the intermediary organization to be the facilitator and driver of their change vehicle, giving the pay-for-performance committee the capability to design an accepted policy and implement it. In addition to facilitative duties, the intermediary organization performed its primary function by providing professional development to district teachers. Furthermore, the findings expand previous research of intermediary organizations by examining the challenges brought about by the unique and complicated internal-yet-external roles of intermediary organizations during the policymaking process.

This research seeks to examine the impact of charter schools on Latino performance in Los Angeles Unified School District. Using school-level data from the Ed-Data database provided by the California Department of Education, this study compares Latino academic achievement in charter high schools and non-charter public high schools across five dimensions of academic achievement: math performance, reading performance, graduation rate, dropout rate, and University of California and/or California State University (UC/CSU) eligibility. The results find a positive, significant charter school impact for Latino students in math performance, dropout rate, and UC/CSU eligibility. Analyses also indicate that charter schools positively impact Latino reading performance and graduation rate, however the results are marginally significant.

State legislators in the Midwestern United States implemented a Third Grade Reading Guarantee law to prevent the promotion of Grade 3 students with poor reading skills to Grade 4. As a result, schools implemented innovative reading interventions, thereby driving a need to determine teachers' concerns and levels of use (LoU) of these innovative interventions. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand Grade 3 reading teachers' stages of concerns (SoC) and LoU in implementing reading interventions, and teachers' comprehension of the innovation configurations, in view of the new Third Grade Reading Guarantee law. The conceptual framework used to undergird this study was the concerns-based adoption model. The SoC described 7 categories of possible concerns for an innovation, and the LoU described 8 behavioral profiles that educators used in practice. Data collection occurred through in-depth interview sessions using a purposeful sample of 10 Ohio Grade 3 reading teachers. Emergent themes were identified through a coding and thematic data-analysis process. Findings revealed that Ohio Grade 3 teachers' dominant SoC was a need for collaboration with other teachers. The second dominant SoC was a need to refocus on how the reading interventions would be used for the following school year. Findings showed that teachers' level of usage in Year 1 were at the mechanical level, focusing on the daily usage of the manual. In Year 2, teachers refined their practice and were better able to vary implementation format. Teachers' use of innovations improve at-risk students' reading skills, making them better scholars, who are then able to compete on many levels, and as future adults they will be able to make a positive social change by giving back to their communities.

Promoting the quality of school education has been an issue of international, national and local significance in Australia over the past three decades. Since 1973 the pursuit of quality in school education has been embedded in the rhetoric of educational discourse and framed by the wider policy context. This study focuses on the Commonwealth (federal) government's policy agenda to promote the quality of schooling between 1987 and 1996. During this ten year period, successive Labor governments sought to promote quality through a range of policy initiatives and funding programs. Through extensive documentary research, fifty semi-structured interviews and one focus group with elite policy makers and stakeholders, the study examines how the Commonwealth government's 'quality agenda' was constructed and perceived. An analysis of relevant government reports and ministerial statements provides documentary evidence of this agenda, both in terms of stated policy intentions and the actual policy initiatives and funding programs set in place in the period 1987-1996. Set against this analysis are elite informants' perspectives on Commonwealth policy-making in this period - how quality was conceptualised as a policy construct and as a policy solution, the influences on Commonwealth policies for schools, whether there was a 'quality agenda' and how that agenda was constructed and implemented. Informants generally perceived quality as a diffuse, but all-encompassing concept which had symbolic and substantive value as a policy construct. In the context of Commonwealth schools' policies, quality was closely associated with promoting equity, outcomes, accountability, national consistency in schooling and teacher quality. Promoting the quality of 'teaching and learning' in Australian schools took on particular significance in the 1990s through a number of national policy initiatives brokered by the Commonwealth government. An exploration of policy processes through interview data reveals the multi-layered nature of policy-making in this period, involving key individuals, intergovernmental and national forums. In particular, it highlights the importance of a strong, reformist Commonwealth Minister (John Dawkins), a number of 'policy brokers' within and outside government and national collaboration in constructing and maintaining the Commonwealth's 'quality agenda' for schools. While several Australian education ii policy analysts have described policy-making in this period in terms of 'corporate federalism' (Lingard, 1991, 1998; Bartlett, Knight and Lingard, 1991; Lingard, O'Brien and Knight, 1993), a different perspective emerges from this study on policymaking at the national level. Despite unprecedented levels of national collaboration on matters related to schooling in this period, this research reveals an apparent ambivalence on the part of some elite policy makers towards the Commonwealth's policy agenda and its approach to schools' policy-making within the federal arena. Policy coherence emerged as a relevant issue in this study through analysis of interview data and a review of related Australian and international policy literature. Overall, informants perceived the Commonwealth's quality agenda to be relatively coherent in terms of policy intentions, but much less coherent in terms of policy implementation. Perceptions of Commonwealth domination, state parochialism, rivalry, delaying tactics and a general lack of trust and cooperation between policy players and stakeholders were cited as major obstacles to 'coherent' policy-making. An analysis of informants' views on policy-making in this period highlights features of coherent policy-making which have theoretical and practical significance in the Australian context. This research also demonstrates the benefits of going beyond the study of written policy texts to a richer analysis of recent policy history based on elite interviewing. The wide range of views offered by elite policy makers and stakeholders in this study both confirms and challenges established views about policy-making in the period 1987-1996. Elite interviewing lent itself to a grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). This approach was significant in that it allowed relevant issues to emerge in the process of research, rather than relying on 'up front' theoretical frameworks for the analysis of data.

This study was designed to examine how the teacher education program impacts preservice teacher candidates' knowledge of culturally responsive teaching and the implementation of these practices in their classroom. For the purposes of this study, a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach was utilized to collect and analyze data through semi-structured interviews, focus groups and surveys. The participants in this study were (n=82) elementary preservice teachers and (n=11) teacher educators who taught a professional education course or supervised field or clinical experiences. This mixed method study was fourfold. First, this study sought to examine preservice teacher candidates' perceptions of the teacher education program in developing culturally responsive teachers. Second, it sought to examine if preservice teacher candidates perceptions about culturally responsive teaching change as a result of their student teaching experiences. Third, it was designed to examine how teacher educators prepare preservice teachers to teach culturally diverse student populations? Finally, how are teacher educators preparing elementary preservice teacher candidates to work in urban educational settings? / The study revealed several key findings: (a) preservice teacher candidates' professional preparation has an effect on their preparedness to teach culturally diverse student populations; (b) preservice teachers believed that more diverse field experiences is one factor that has the potential to increase participant preparedness to teach in a diverse educational setting; (c) teacher educators prepared teacher candidates to differentiate instruction for diverse learners; and (d) teacher educators preparation of preservice teacher candidates to teach in a diverse educational setting is limited because of the locale of the university. / Keywords: preservice teacher candidate, culturally responsive teaching, diversity, multicultural education, critical race theory

In an increasing globalized society, the number of professionals, including teachers working in foreign countries has increased. Additionally, the growing diversity in U.S. schools today and the added challenge of equipping students with 21st century skills has necessitated the recruitment of international teachers in U.S. public schools. Although state agencies use the recruitment of international teachers as a way to enhance the global awareness of high school graduates and specifically their knowledge of other cultures, little is known about international teachers' transition to teaching in the U.S. / This study aims at enhancing an understanding of the experiences of international teachers in U.S. public schools in order to interrogate transitional challenges and ruminate on implications for educational leadership. Using a narrative research design eight teachers narrate their stories of transition, adjustment and negotiation. These stories inform the reader about the different identity transitional resources that international teachers utilize as they negotiate who they are as teachers in a foreign space.