Making Sense of Distributed Leadership: How Secondary School Educators Look at Job Redesign

This paper examines how teachers and administrators who were involved in a multi-year effort to engage in distributed leadership interpreted their experiences. We lay out and apply an argument for using an interpretive perspective to study distributed leadership.Collective sensemaking around distributed leadership is illustrated by an in-depth analysis of a single high school. The school was part of a larger study of six schools, and was selected to illustrate sensemaking over time in a large, complex school. There were three years of on-site interviews, observations and document analysis. We found that distributed leadership is a potential “disruption” to traditional patterns of leadership, work performance and influence in high schools. One-quarter of the school’s faculty engaged with the “disruption” but all had a chance to process the change. The end result was that many became sense-givers and kept the momentum for teacher leadership going during significant personnel turnover among faculty and administration. The success of the efforts to create more broadly distributed leadership was facilitated by its integration into an existing improvement initiative

Rethinking “High Stakes”: Lessons from the United States and England and Wales

Based on fieldwork conducted in England, Wales, and two American states, this paper suggests six themes about “high stakes testing.” First, not all stakes are perceived to be equally high. Second, pressure to respond to a test comes from more than just formal stakes. Third, external pressure leads to symbolic responses outside the classroom. Fourth, external pressure can be useful for changing content taught. Fifth, external pressure is less effective in changing instructional strategy than content taught. Sixth, the effects of stakes will depend on a variety of other policy factors. </jats:p

District stressors and teacher evaluation ratings

Purpose Federal and state policymakers in the USA have sought to better differentiate the performance of K-12 teachers by enacting more rigorous evaluation policies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether these policies are working as intended and explore whether district stressors such as funding, enrollment, and governance are associated with outcomes. Design/methodology/approach The authors examined teacher evaluation ratings from 687 districts in Michigan to identify the relationship between district stressors and two outcomes of interest to policymakers: frequency of high ratings and variation of ratings within districts. A qualitative index of variation was used to measure variation of the categorical rating variable. Findings About 97 percent of teachers in Michigan are rated effective or highly effective, and variation measures indicate overwhelming use of only two ratings. Charter school districts have fewer teachers rated highly than traditional districts, and districts with higher fund balances have more teachers rated highly. Districts with increasing fund balances have higher variation. Practical implications The findings suggest that district stressors presumably unrelated to teacher performance may influence teacher evaluation ratings. State teacher evaluation reforms that give districts considerable discretion in designing their teacher evaluation models may not be sufficient for differentiating the performance of teachers. Originality/value This research is important as policymakers refine state systems of support for teacher evaluation and provides new evidence that current enactment of teacher evaluation reform may be limiting the value of evaluation ratings for use in personnel decisions. </jats:sec

Science and Politics in<i>Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association</i>

In March 2017, the Supreme Court decided Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association and upheld the constitutionality of agency fees for nonunion teachers. We examine how Friedrichs reflects a host of issues grouped around a patchwork of ideological commitments regarding teachers unions and public-sector unions more generally, partisan politics, and empirically oriented claims about the impact of teachers unions on students’ educational opportunities. We particularly argue that the case reflects a tension between judicial, scientific, and democratic decision-making, and that courts and reformers should be sensitive to this tension as they consider similar cases moving forward.</jats:p

The Ambiguity of Test Preparation: A Multimethod Analysis in One State

We studied test preparation activity among fourth-grade math and science teachers in New Jersey, using a survey of almost 300 teachers and observations of and interviews with almost 60. New Jersey uses a mix of open-ended and multiple-choice tests; links few stakes to test results, except for publication of scores; and offers limited professional development to teachers. New Jersey teachers are adopting specific techniques associated with more inquiry-oriented instruction, but their basic approach does not appear to be changing. Teachers do teach the content on the test with a new wrinkle. When more students are passing a test in one subject area than in another, emphasis shifts to the area with low scores. We found more direct instruction in lower socioeconomic districts but not less inquiry-oriented instruction. Finally, principal support has more influence on the test preparation strategies teachers use than does pressure to comply.</jats:p