bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
“Citizenship for the College Girl”: Challenges and Opportunities in Higher Education for Women in the United States in the 1930s
Authors: Nash Margaret A. , Romero Lisa S. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Little research has been done on higher education for women during the 1930s, even though scholars have pointed to this period as a turning point because the proportion of female students declined during this decade. The decline was only relative, however, as men's enrollments skyrocketed while women's increased more slowly. This article seeks to understand women's continually increasing numbers, rather than the relative decline in enrollment. Purpose/Objective/Research Question During a time of economic hardship, what justifications were used to encourage women to attend college? What purposes or rationales were part of the national discourse that made it possible for ever-increasing numbers of young women to attend and graduate from college? Research Design Our research consists of historical analysis of printed archival material from 1929-1940. Primary material was drawn from original print editions of the Readers’ Guide to Periodic Literature and the electronic version of Reader's Guide Retro. We divided journals into popular magazines and academic journals, and coded all articles indexed under the terms “College, students, women,” “Education of women,” and “College women.” We analyzed 128 articles from popular magazines and 85 articles from academic journals. This provided a rich source of magazine and journal articles considered significant during the period studied. After coding and choosing the themes for our focus, we looked for related articles from newspapers; we used electronically archived materials from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. To avoid an east/west coast urban bias, and in an effort to include an African-American perspective, we supplemented this with material from smaller Midwestern and African-American presses including the Daily Illini, The Chicago Defender, Columbia Missourian, Hannibal Courier, and the Urbana Daily Courier. Conclusions Two primary discourses were evident in newspapers, periodicals, and academic journals that encouraged women to attend college in the 1930s. The first was that of eugenics. Previous scholarship on eugenics tends to emphasize how eugenics was used to discourage women from advanced schooling, as postponing childbearing meant a reduction in the birthrate. We argue that while this argument was indeed present in national literature, eugenic arguments were used as well to encourage women's college attendance. In this view, educated women produced healthier future generations and therefore served eugenic interests. The second primary discourse was that of the need for education for citizenship. The periodical literature reveals an emphasis on colleges teaching women about the responsibilities of voting, volunteerism, and promoting peace and social unity.
Tensions in Teacher Development and Community: Variations on a Recurring School Reform Theme
Authors: Craig Cheryl J. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Conducted in the fourth-largest urban center in the United States, this research depicts how different reform initiatives were introduced to one middle school context over the decade from 1999 to 2009. Purposes/Objectives/Research Question/Focus of Study The study focuses on teachers’ experiences of three reform endeavors and how tensions in teacher knowledge and community developed as a consequence of each. The study's overall purpose is to contribute the often-overlooked teacher perspective to the curriculum, teaching, and school reform literatures. Setting The setting for the research is a middle school located in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States. The campus's social narrative history parallels the city's development. The school currently serves some of America's richest and poorest youth. Population/Participants/Subjects Nineteen educators, including several main teacher participants as well as some supporting teacher and administrator participants, contributed anonymously to the narrative account. Research Design Narrative inquiry is the research method used to excavate a story serial that emerged during the longitudinal research study. Four interpretive devices—broadening, burrowing, storying and restorying, and fictionalization—aided in the comparison and contrast of three eruptions in teacher community that occurred as a result of the different reform emphases. Presented in story serial form, these eruptions suggest a rhythm to school reform. The article ends with a discussion of the value of narrative inquiry in studying phenomena at the interstices of teacher knowledge, teacher community, school milieu, and organized school reform. Connections between fine- and coarse-grained inquiries are made, and the notion of stories traveling from one school site to another is also probed. Finally, the idea of a perennial educational problem being made public and visible through an innovative research approach is taken up, along with some suggestions concerning how school reform could more productively be lived.
Popular but Unstable: Explaining Why State Performance Funding Systems in the United States Often Do Not Persist
Authors: Dougherty Kevin J. , Natow Rebecca S. , Vega Blanca E. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Performance funding in higher education ties government funding to institutional performance on indicators such as retention, graduation, and job placement. Performance funding can also be found in state K-12 funding policies and higher education quality assurance programs abroad. One of the puzzles about higher education performance funding is that half of the states establishing it later abandoned it. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study examines the factors that have led many states to drop performance funding for higher education. Research Design This qualitative case study contrasts the experiences of three states that dropped performance funding in whole or in part (Missouri, Washington, and Florida) and a fourth (Tennessee) that has retained it more than 30 years. Discussion Our analysis is based on documentary records and extensive interviews with higher education officials, legislators and staff, governors and advisors, business leaders, minority group leaders, researchers, and outside consultants. Our findings concur with but also go beyond prior analyses of the demise of state performance funding systems. We concur that higher education opposition played a key role in this demise, stimulated by a perception of inadequate consultation with higher education institutions, use of performance indicators that institutions found invalid, high implementation costs to institutions, and erosion of campus autonomy. At the same time, our analysis turned up other causes of higher education opposition to performance funding that were not discovered by previous studies. A major cause of higher education opposition was the downturn in state finances in the early 2000s, which led institutions to focus on preserving their core state funding and giving up performance funding. Higher education opposition was also provoked if performance funding took the form not of adding to existing state funding but instead holding back a portion of the state appropriation and requiring institutions to earn it back through improved performance. These findings agree and disagree with theories and findings in the research literatures on policy termination and program sustainability. Conclusions/Recommendations If its advocates are to create a sustainable basis for state performance funding, they must find ways to insulate its funding from the ups and downs of the state revenue cycle, better secure the support of public institutions, and expand its breadth of political support by reaching out, for example, to business and to social groups driven primarily by the values of educational equality rather than educational efficiency.
How Teachers and Schools Contribute to Racial Differences in the Realization of Academic Potential
Authors: Wildhagen Tina 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context The fulfillment of academic potential is an underdeveloped area of inquiry as it relates to explaining racial differences in academic outcomes. Examining this issue is important for addressing not only differences in the typical outcomes for African American and White students but also the severe underrepresentation of African American students among the highest achieving students. Whereas other studies have operationalized lost academic potential as unfulfilled expectations for educational attainment, this study takes a different approach, measuring whether students earn higher or lower grades than the grades predicted by earlier tests of academic skills. Students whose grades are equal to or exceed those predicted by their earlier test scores are said to have fulfilled their academic potential, whereas those whose grades are lower than predicted have not realized their potential. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study finds that African American high school students are less likely than their White peers to realize their academic potential. The analyses test several explanations for the racial gap in the realization of academic potential, focusing on the students themselves, their teachers, and their schools. Research Design This study uses hierarchical linear modeling to analyze data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Conclusions/Recommendations The results suggest that teachers perceive African American students as exerting less classroom effort than White students, which accounts for a substantial proportion of the racial gap in unrealized academic potential, even with several student characteristics held constant. At the school level, there are larger racial gaps in unrealized academic potential in segregated schools and schools with strict disciplinary climates. Strikingly, the negative effect of strict disciplinary climate exists net of students’ own receipt of disciplinary actions. That is, the negative association between strict disciplinary climate and the realization of academic potential for African American students applies to African American students regardless of whether they themselves have been in trouble at school. This study reveals that characteristics of schools that lack immediately obvious racial implications, such as a school's approach to student discipline, may be just as harmful as overtly racialized inequality within and between schools.
Black Achievers’ Experiences with Racial Spotlighting and Ignoring in a Predominantly White High School
Authors: Andrews Dorinda J. Carter 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Despite a history of racial oppression and degradation in U.S. schools, African Americans have responded to racism and discrimination in ways that promote educational attainment and school success. Many Black adolescents have been empowered to succeed academically partly because of their awareness of racist practices in education and society. This empowerment to succeed in the face of racism is also seen as resiliency. A growing body of research suggests that despite experiencing racism in schools, many African Americans possess an achievement ethos that demands a commitment to excellence; despite experiencing racism as a stressor, these students develop resilient strategies for resisting racism in the school context. Purpose/Objective/Focus of Study The purpose of this study was to understand the adaptive behaviors that high-achieving Black students employed in a predominantly White high school to maintain school success and a positive racial self-definition. The focus of this article is to examine how these students describe, understand, and respond to experiencing racial microaggressions in classroom, social, and extracurricular domains within their school. Research Design The article includes data from a yearlong qualitative investigation of high-achieving Black students in a predominantly White high school. The author analyzed interview data, participant observations, and field notes and used a grounded theory approach to analyzing the data to arrive at an understanding of how students perceived experiences with racial microaggressions in their school. Findings/Results Findings indicate that students experienced racial microaggressions in the form of sometimes being spotlighted because of their race (i.e., racial spotlighting) and sometimes being ignored because of their race (i.e., racial ignoring). Students managed these experiences by utilizing a variety of resilient strategies that represent varying degrees of resistance. The use of these behavioral strategies demonstrates their resilience not only to racism but also to a school climate in which racism acts as a structural barrier to potentially constrain or impede achievement. These strategies allow students to effectively navigate within and across classroom and nonclassroom domains despite experiencing racial discrimination and to acquire and maintain school success without rejecting their racial identity. Conclusions/Recommendations The article concludes with implications for teacher education and creating culturally inclusive school and classroom environments. The article challenges educators to critically examine the relationships between race, racism, Whiteness, and teaching and learning. Specifically, recommendations are offered for preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development.
The Effects of Accountability System Design on Teachers’ Use of Test Score Data
Authors: Jennings Jennifer 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Many studies have concluded that educational accountability policies increase data use, but we know little about how to design accountability systems to encourage productive versus distortive uses of test score data. Purpose I propose that five features of accountability systems affect how test score data are used and examine how individual and organizational characteristics interact with system features to influence teachers’ data use. First, systems apply varying amounts of pressure. Second, the locus of pressure varies across systems. Third, systems diverge in the distributional goals they set for student performance. Fourth, the characteristics of assessments vary across systems. Finally, systems differ in scope—that is, whether they incorporate multiple measures or are process- or outcome oriented. Research Design I review the literature on the effects of accountability systems on teachers’ data use and propose a research agenda to further our understanding of this area. Conclusions/Recommendations Researchers have spent much more time analyzing test score data than investigating how teachers use data in their work. Evolving accountability systems provide new opportunities for scholars to study how the interactions between accountability features, individual characteristics, and organizational contexts affect teachers’ test score data use.
How Does Parents Involved in Community Schools Matter? Legal and Political Influence in Education Politics and Policy
Authors: Mcdermott Kathryn A. , Debray Elizabeth , Frankenberg Erica 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context On June 28, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1 (PICS) that school districts not currently under court order for racial desegregation could not, under most circumstances, use race as a criterion for assigning students to schools. Purpose In this article, we analyze patterns of response to PICS within and outside the judicial system in order to determine where and how the decision has mattered. We examine post-PICS developments in Seattle and Jefferson County, Kentucky, the districts where the lawsuits began; post-PICS developments in the federal courts; and policy changes at the school district level, including both responses to court decisions and changes undertaken voluntarily by school boards, and in the federal government. Research Design This article is a secondary analysis of national and local media articles, legal filings, and policy documents. Conclusion The decision, interacting with other issues, has indeed affected school districts, both via the courts and via effects on politics and policy making. Four years later, although PICS has not had a sweeping national effect on which students attend which schools— making the situation not dissimilar to Brown's initial effects—it has shaped the legal and political landscape in numerous school districts and has interacted with state and federal policy in ways that are still evolving.
Understanding the Institutional-Level Factors of Urban School Quality
Authors: Gottfried Michael A. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context This article addresses which school-level factors contribute to school quality. Previous research has focused on assessing the effects of school-level variables on student-level quality (e.g., achievement). However, the field has been limited in not evaluating the effects of school-level factors directly on measured school-level quality. This present study takes this next step. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of the Study The purpose of this study is to determine which school-level factors across three categories—schoolwide programs, school-level personnel, and institutional environment—are significant predictors of school quality. Population/Participants/Subjects Two data sets from the School District of Philadelphia are employed. The first data set is longitudinal and comprises elementary school student data linked to teachers, classrooms, and neighborhoods. The second data set, linked to the first by way of school and year data, is longitudinal and comprises school-level variables for all elementary schools within the district over 3 years. Research Design This investigation first derives four quantifiable measures of school quality based on the student- and classroom-level data set. These measures are based on student reading achievement scores, math achievement scores, yearly attendance, and behavior grades. In the main analyses, this study separately tests each measure of quality in an empirical model that relates school-level inputs to school-level outputs. Each model does so while holding constant student, teacher, classroom, and neighborhood covariates as well as principal and school budget data. Findings Looking across all four measures of school quality, the study finds school quality to be higher in schools with music and language programs, more disciplinary resources per student with a behavior problem and more special education resources per special education student, having a school nurse, being a smaller sized campus, and being K–5 (versus K–8). Although there is some consistency in the predictors of school quality, this research also indicates that differentiating between all four measures of quality is critical: School-level factors provide distinct outcomes depending on the measure of school quality itself. Conclusions By identifying those school-level factors that directly relate school quality to its programs, personnel, and environment, this study has differentiated between the particular institutional resources of urban elementary schools that can potentially influence schooling experiences, above and beyond student or classroom factors. As such, this study can be used to more effectively identify those significant institutional challenges faced by urban schools, how these challenges are actualized, and, moreover, the types and levels of resources necessary to enhance school quality.
Accounting for Higher Education Accountability: Political Origins of State Performance Funding for Higher Education
Authors: Dougherty Kevin J. , Natow Rebecca S. , Bork Rachel H. , Jones Sosanya M. , Vega Blanca E. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Performance funding finances public higher education institutions based on outcomes such as retention, course and degree completion, and job placement rather than inputs such as enrollments. One of the mysteries of state performance funding for higher education is that despite great interest in it for over 30 years, only half of all states have ever adopted it. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study examines the political forces that have driven the development of performance funding in some states but not others. To do this, the authors draw on theories of policy origins such as the advocacy coalition framework, the policy entrepreneurship perspective, and policy diffusion theory. Research Design This study contrasts the experiences of six states that established performance funding for higher education (Florida, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington) and two that have not (California and Nevada). These states differ considerably in their performance funding programs, higher education governance arrangements, and political and socioeconomic characteristics. Data Collection and Analysis Our study is qualitative, drawing on documentary records and extensive interviews with higher education officials, legislators and staff, governors and advisors, business leaders, and other actors. Findings and Results Our study finds that many of the actors and motives cited by the prevailing perspective on the origins of performance funding did operate in the six states that have established performance funding, including state legislators (particularly Republicans), governors, and business people pursuing performance funding in the name of greater effectiveness and efficiency for higher education. However, the prevailing perspective misses the major role of state higher education coordinating boards and individual higher education institutions (particularly community colleges) that pursued performance funding to secure new funds in an era of greater tax resistance and criticism of higher education. Our findings further move beyond the prevailing explanation by examining how policy entrepreneurs mobilized support for performance funding by finding ideological common ground among different groups, identifying policies that those groups could support, and taking advantage of political openings to put performance funding onto the decision agenda of state elected officials. Conclusions and Recommendations This examination of the origins of performance funding policies sheds light on factors that facilitate and frustrate the development of such policies. For example, our research highlights the important role of higher education opposition and the presence of certain political structures and political values in frustrating the development of performance funding.