State strategies to improve low-performing schools: California's high priority schools grant program

Teachers College Record

Volumn 112, Issue 7, 2010, Pages 1897-1936

  Timar, Thomas B ^a   Chyu, Kris Kim ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77951198462     PISSN: 01614681     EISSN: 14679620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. The scale is from 200 to 1,000.
2. The actual number of students is understated. While 94% of students in Decile 1-3 schools were tested, in some schools, mostly high schools, just over 50% of students were tested. The percent of students eligible for free lunch is probably also understated since some students, mostly in high schools, either do not eat in the school cafeteria or do not admit that they are eligible.
3. J. O'Day and C. Bitter, Evaluation Study of the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program and the High Achieving/Improving Schools Program of the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 (Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research, 2003).
4. M. Yudof, D. Kirp, B. Levin, and R. Moran, Educational Policy and the Law (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group/Thompson Learning, 1992), 699.
5. F. Wirt and M. Kirst, The Political Dynamics of American Education (Richmond. CA: McCutchan, 2001).
6. D. Kirp, "Introduction: The Fourth R," in School Days, Rule Days, ed. D. Kirp and D. Jensen (Philadelphia: Falmer Press, 1986), 1-17.
7. T. Timar, "Federal Education Policy and Practice: Building Educational Capacity through Title 1," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 16, no. 1 (1994): 51-66.
8. See ;http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/lp/hp/resources.asp.
9. See California Education Code Section 52055.650 (1) (A)
10. C. Bidwell, The School as a Formal Organization," in The Handbook of Organizations, ed. James G. March (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), 972-1022.
11. R. Scott, Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Simon & Schuster, 1992). Also J. Meyer and R. Scott, Organizational Environments: Ritual and Rationality (Beverly Hills: CA. Sage, 1983).
12. T. Sergiovanni and F. D. Carver, The New School Executive: A Theory of Administration (New York: Harper and Row, 1980).
13. M. Cohen and E. Sproull, eds., Organizational Learning (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996).
14. March differentiates, for instance, between organizational "exploitation" and organizational "exploration." Exploitation essentially means doing what you have been doing, particularly if you are doing it successfully. Exploration, on the other hand, means finding new directions and new ways of doing things in order to be successful. See James G. March, The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Business, 1999).
15. Several evaluations by the American Institutes for Research of the II/USP and HPSGP have shown that the programs have either no impact or insignificant impact on student achievement. See C. Bitter et al., Evaluation Study of the Immediate Intervention/ Underperforming Schools Program of Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 (Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research, 2005).
16. Also C. Bitter and J. O'Day, "California's Accountability System," in Crucial Issues in California Education 2006: Rekindling Reform, ed. H. Hatami (Berkeley: Policy Analysis for California Education, School of Education, University of California, 2006), 51-74.
17. See J. Harr, T. Parrish, M. Socias, P. Gubbins, and A. Spain, Evaluation Study of California's High Priority Schools Grant Program: Year 1 (Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes For Research, 2006).
18. See D. Cohen, S. Raudenbush, and D. Lowenberg-Ball, "Resources, Instruction, and Research," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25, no. 2 (2003): 119-42.
19. See also W. N. Grubb, "Multiple Resources, Multiple Outcomes: Testing the 'Improved' School Finance with NELS88" (Unpublished manuscript, School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, 2006);
20. W. N. Grubb, "What Should Be Equalized? Litigation, Equity, and the 'Improved School Finance'" (Paper prepared for the Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity Project on "Rethinking Rodriguez: Education as A Fundamental Right," University of California, Berkeley, 2006);
21. W. N. Grubb and L. Huerta, Straw into Gold, Resources into Results: Spinning Out the Implications of the "New" School Finance (Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley, 2000).
22. Grubb, "Multiple Resources," 13.
23. Cohen et al., "Resources, Instruction, and Research."
24. Each school in California is required to have a school site council. The council comprises parents of children in the school, teachers, and administrators. School site councils had to sign off on the school's HPSGP plan and its budget Site councils also had to approve any changes in plans or budgets.
25. E. Patton and S. H. Appelbaum, The Case for Case Studies in Management Research," Management Research News 26, no. 5 (2003): 60-71.
26. R. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1994).
27. A. Tashakori and C. Teddlie, Mixed Methods in Social Science and Behavioral Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).
28. Adequate progress for state accountability purposes is a 5% growth schoolwide and by subgroups toward the state-designated API goal of 800. Selected schools were also those that met AYP growth targets under No Child Left Behind.
29. In selecting sample schools, we did not use cutoff points for "improving" and "nonimproving." Among improving schools, we looked for those that had made the largest API gains among all schools that we had classified as improving. Among nonimproving schools, we selected those that had made the least (or in some instances, negative gain) in API scores. Our ability to select on this basis alone was somewhat limited in order to achieve variation in location and type of school. We did not want a sample of study schools that were all urban or rural with mostly children of migrant farm workers.
30. For a discussion of the theoretical framework for ad hoc/need-driven funding on the one hand and goal-driven funding on the other, see Cohen et al., "Resources, Instruction, and Research."
31. A. S. Bryk and B. Schneider, Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).
32. J. S. Coleman , "Social Capital and the Creation of Human Capital," American Journal of Sociology 94, s1 (1988): 95-120.
33. Bryk and Schneider, Trust in Schools.
34. March, The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence.
35. Cohen et al., "Resources, Instruction, and Research."
36. Grubb, "Multiple Resources, Multiple Outcomes."
37. Also T. Timar and M. Roza, "A False Dilemma: Should Decisions about Education Resource Use Be Made at the State or Local Level?" Connecting the Dots and Closing the Gap (Papers prepared for CA State Superintendent Jack O'Connell's P-16 Council Symposium on Closing the Achievement Gap, Center for Applied Policy in Education, University of California, Davis, May 18, 2008). Paper available at http://cap-ed.ucdavis.edu.