Democratic policy making and the arts of engagement

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 89, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 340-346

  Gallagher, Chris W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 38449111433     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003172170808900506     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Gerald W. Bracey, The War Against America's Public Schools (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002).
2. Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), p. 176.
3. John Dewey, "Democracy in Education," in Education Today, John Ratner, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940), p. 64.
4. Ibid., p. 65.
5. See Chris W. Gallagher, Reclaiming Assessment: A Better Alternative to the Accountability Agenda (Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann, 2007).
6. These well-documented consequences include the narrowing and rationing of curriculum, teacher and student disengagement, increasing (but underreported) dropout rates, decreasing (but overreported) graduation rates, growing retention rates in grades preceding high-stakes testing, and cheating.
7. See Pat Roschewski, Jody Isernhagen, and Leon Dappen, "Nebraska STARS: Achieving Results," Phi Delta Kappan, February 2006, pp. 433-37;
8. Eric D. Turley, "Textural Perceptions of Time," Phi Delta Kappan, February 2006, pp. 438-42, 447;
9. Chris W. Gallagher, "A Seat at the Table," Phi Delta Kappan, March 2000, pp. 502-7;
10. idem, "Turning theAccountability Tables," Phi Delta Kappan, January 2004, pp. 352-60;
11. Pat Roschewski, "Nebraska STARS Line Up," Phi Delta Kappan, March 2003, pp. 517-20;
12. and Pat Roschewski, with Chris Gallagher and Jody Isernhagen, "Nebraskans Reach for the STARS," Phi Delta Kappan, April 2001, pp. 611-15.
13. Douglas Christensen, press conference remarks, Lincoln, Nebraska, November 2001.
14. Copies of the annual reports of the Comprehensive Evaluation Project, housed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, may be found at www. nde.state.ne.us/stars/STARSTechnkalReports.htm.
15. See, for example, a staff editorial, "Why the Achievement Gap Persists," New York Times, 8 December 2006, p. A-30.
16. Douglas Christensen, "Building State Assessment from the Classroom Up," School Administrator, December 2001, www.aasa.org/publications/ saarticledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=2746.
17. At the time of this writing, Nebraska had won conditional approval under NCLB for its state system - after a long and very public disagreement with federal officials. See www.nde.state.ne.us/1STARSNCLB/STARSandUSDE.htm.
18. See Roland S. Barth, Learning by Heart (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), p. xxii.
19. In School Reform from the Inside Out (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), Richard Elmore makes a similar point: "Internal accountability precedes external accountability and is a precondition for any process of improvement" (p. 114).
20. See Linda M. McNeil, Contradictions of School Reform (New York: Routledge, 2000);
21. Andy Hargreaves et al., Learning to Change (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001);
22. and Patricia A. Wasley, Teachers Who Lead (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991). McNeil found that in highly standardized environments, teachers resort to "defensive teaching," striking a deal with students: 1 won't ask much of you, and you won't give me any grief. Hargreaves and his colleagues cite multiple studies conducted in England and Wales revealing that prescriptive environments lead teachers to feel less confident, "cynically compliant," and depressed. Similarly, Wasley found that teachers in controlled environments in turn become controlling themselves -and isolated from and distrustful of their colleagues.
23. Allan A. Glatthorn, "From Policy to Practice: The Research," in idem and Jean Fontana, eds., Coping with Standards, Tests, and Accountability: Voices from the Classroom (Washington, D. C.: National Education Association, 2000), p. 18.
24. Linda Darling-Hammond, The Right to Learn (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1997), p.6.
25. McNeil, p. 6.
26. Meier, p. 166.
27. Elmore, p. 237.
28. Robert Linn, "Assessments and Accountability," Educational Researcher, March 2000, p. 15.
29. See http://reporrcard.nde.state.ne.us/main/home.aspx.
30. Peter Sacks, Standardized Minds (New York: Perseus Books, 1999), p. 69.
31. Elmore, p. 68.
32. Roschewski, op. cit.
33. Hargreaves, p. 249;
34. sec also Barth, p. 62.
35. Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Why the U.S. Has the World's Dimmest Bright Kids," Wall Street Journal, 25 February 1998.
36. See Gallagher, Reclaiming Assessment, and the annual reports of the Comprehensive Evaluation Project.
37. Susan Follett Lusi, The Role of State Departments of Education in Complex School Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997);
38. see also Susan Follett Lusi and Patricia Davis Goldberg, "A New Mission for the Department of Education," in Roger S. Pankrantz and Joseph M. Petrosko, eds., All Children Can Learn (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).