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One of the most important developments in the recent politics of education reform has been the rise of a new group of education reform advocacy organizations (ERAOs) that are working to mobilize parents behind school reform at the district and state levels. The past two years have witnessed an unprecedented wave of state education reforms to increase accountability for student achievement, improve teacher quality, turn around failing schools, and expand school choice, much of this fiercely opposed by the teachers unions. The ERAOs and their efforts to organize parents have played an important role in pushing for these changes in state capitols, and they clearly are reshaping the politics of school reform in the United States in important ways. Despite the increasing number and activity of ERAOs, we know relatively little about them and how they operate. This paper will offer an in-depth examination of ERAOs and what we can learn from their efforts to engage parents in school reform and from other grassroots community organizing experiences. Including academic research, a brief literature review, and field-based case studies and interviews, this paper will assess the circumstances necessary for parent empowerment campaigns to be successful and the factors that may hinder engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars theorize that social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups. Robert Putnam claims to have found support for this theory in his studies of Italy and the United States. In each case he concludes that the presence of social capital - generalized norms of trust and reciprocity - is sufficient to predict progress on a variety of social indicators. Using demographic and public opinion data collected at the state level in the U.S, Putnam links the performance of schools to his measure of social capital. Schools perform best where social capital is found in greater abundance. This paper attempts to replicate Putnam’s finding using data from local communities in North Carolina. Since social contacts and social capital occur at the local level between individuals and groups in a community, a logical extension of Putnam’s work is to verify that these relationships exist locally. I propose and test the following two hypotheses using data from the 100 counties of North Carolina: 1) Students score higher on statewide tests in school districts where social contact is greater among residents; 2) Students drop out of school at lower rates in school districts where social contact is greater among residents. If local evidence exists to support the claim that social contacts matter, then what programs governments fund in the name of social progress may need to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policy makers in the U.S. have long been concerned about achievement gaps between ethnic minorities and white students. The notorious black-white test score gap of a full standard deviation has received special attention (Jencks and Phillips 1998). Although the consensus is strong that such gaps exist and ought to be significantly narrowed if not eliminated, there is little agreement regarding which public policies are likely to be most effective in closing minority student achievement gaps.     In this paper we examine the question of what policy-influenced characteristics of teachers appear to hold the most promise to boost achievement among various disadvantaged groups and whether such achievement gains are likely to come at the expense of other subgroups of students. We pay especially close attention to the question of teacher race and ethnicity and explore what implications teacher race has for the academic achievement of various student groups. We are particularly interested in exploring whether or not teachers of minority races boost the achievement of students of their race, thus demonstrating a [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the Cumulative General Social Survey (GSS) survey data and find that American confidence in schools declined markedly between 1973 and 2010. Those whose confidence declined the most were white, elderly men. In order to determine if this lost confidence was due to poor student performance, we examined NAEP math and reading scores (1978-2008). We found evidence of strong improvements across students of all ages and racial groups. Finally, we re-estimated the NAEP gains by using two different statistical methods that control for changes in the demographic composition of the American student body. We find that failure to control for these factors causes researchers to underestimate NAEP gains by more than 40%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last twenty years, charter schools have been portrayed as a potential solution to educational achievement gaps in the United States. Even though charter schools are public institutions, they exercise significant control over what is taught and how it is taught. This educational flexibility not only distinguishes charters from traditional public schools. It also creates considerable variation among charters themselves. Using an original data set on charter school characteristics, this paper examines the advertised educational mission statements charter schools in California and assesses whether their programmatic variation correlates with the race and wealth of their student bodies. Using multiple regression analysis and GIS mapping software, this study finds that the racial and socioeconomic makeup of charter schools in California varies considerably as do their school mission statements. In addition, certain charter school programs correlate with specific racial and socioeconomic categories. The study has implications for understanding how social groups sort themselves based on educational preferences and for estimating the ability of market-based plans to reform America's schools and close educational achievement gaps between student groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent litigation concerning "educational adequacy" attempts to raise taxes and increase education spending by suing states for under-funding low-performing public schools. This approach, however, ignores the need to increase the efficiency of current spending. It disregards evidence that the U.S. government's monetary investment in public education, despite being significantly higher than that of other industrial democracies, has not translated into improved student achievement. Increased spending may make it easier to avoid tough decisions in funding disputes, but it erodes incentives for districts to be economically savvy and disrupts the democratic process by pursuing policy through the courts, rather than through the legislature. This paper argues that adequacy lawsuits are not an effective avenue for pursuing substantive reform or improved student achievement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his classic work on response to failing organizations, Hirschman (1970) argued that more exit options leads to a reduction in the use of voice to address institutional failures. School choice is premised on the idea that more exit options can lead schools to improve themselves for fear of losing market share, but this change could also lead to a reduction in parental involvement in schools if Hirschman (1970) is correct. We examine how competition among schools influences exit and voice in the schools using the variation in choice context across the United States and a nationally representative sample of parents and students. We find that more choices of a particular type of school do lead to an increase in parental exit to that type of school, but that the effect on voice is more complicated. Specifically, more exit options decreases the use of collective voice intended to affect the functioning of the institution as a whole, but not individual voice focused on the education of one's own child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social promotion has long been the normal practice in American schools. Criticsof this practice, whereby students are promoted to the next grade regardless of academic preparation, have suggested that students would benefit academically if they were made to repeat a grade. Supporters of social promotion claim that retaining students (i.e, holding them back) disrupts them socially, producing greater academic harm than promotion would. A number of states and school districts, including Florida, Texas, Chicago, and New York City, have attempted to curtail social promotion, by requiring students to demonstrate academic preparation on a standardized test before they can be promoted to the next grade.This study analyzes the effects of Florida's test-based promotion policy on student achievement two years after initial retention. It builds upon our previous evaluation of the policy in two ways. First, we examine whether the initial benefits of retention observed in the previous study continue, expand, or contract in the second year after students are retained. Second, we determine whether discrepancies between our evaluation and the evaluation of a test-based promotion policy in Chicago are caused by differences in how researchers examined the issue, or by differences in the nature of the programs. Our analysis shows that, after two years of the policy, retained Florida students made significant reading gains relative to the control group of socially promoted students. These academic benefits grew substantially from the first to the second year after retention. That is, students lacking in basic skills who are socially promoted appear to fall further and further behind over time, whereas retained students appear to be able to catch up on the skills they are lacking. Further, we find these positive results in Florida, both when we use the same research design that we used in our previous study, and when we use a design similar to that employed by the evaluation of the program in Chicago, The differences between the Chicago and Florida evaluations appear to be caused by differences in the details of the programs, and not by differences in how the programs were evaluated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]