Table Of ContentLearning and Doing Policy Analysis in Education
COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION:
A Diversity of Voices
Volume 16
Series Editors
Allan Pitman
University of Western Ontario, Canada
Vandra Masemann
University of Toronto, Canada
Miguel A. Pereyra
University of Granada
Editorial Board
Mark Bray, International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris, France
Ali Abdi, University of Alberta, Canada
Christina Fox, University of Wollongong, Australia
Steven Klees, University of Maryland, USA
Nagwa Megahed, Ain Shams University, Egypt
Crain Soudain, University of Cape Town, South Africa
David Turner, University of Glamorgan, England
Medardo Tapia Uribe, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico
Scope
Comparative and International Education: A Diversity of Voices aims to provide a
comprehensive range of titles, making available to readers work from across the
comparative and international education research community. Authors will represent
as broad a range of voices as possible, from geographic, cultural and ideological
standpoints. The editors are making a conscious effort to disseminate the work of
newer scholars as well as that of well-established writers. The series includes
authored books and edited works focusing upon current issues and controversies in
a field that is undergoing changes as profound as the geopolitical and economic
forces that are reshaping our worlds. The series aims to provide books which
present new work, in which the range of methodologies associated with comparative
education and international education are both exemplified and opened up for
debate. As the series develops, it is intended that new writers from settings and
locations not frequently part of the English language discourse will find a place in
the list
Learnning and DDoing Policy Analyssis in Educcation
Examinning Diverse AApproaches too Increasing EEducational AAccess
Editor:
Maria Teresa Tatto
Michigaan State Univerrsity
Contribuutors:
Justin Brruner
Fida Hussain Chang
Corvell GGeorge Cranfield
Tara Miyyoko Kintz
Nai-Cheeng Kuo
Sandra KKurtti Pylvaineen
Andleebb Sharif
Maria Teresa Tatto
Michigaan State Univerrsity
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6091-931-2 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6091-932-9 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6091-933-6 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
https://www.sensepublishers.com/
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2012 Sense Publishers
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or
otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, with the exception of any material
supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system,
for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement vii
1. On Constructing a Framework for Policy Analysis in
the Global Era 1
Maria Teresa Tatto
2. Is Poverty Reduction Enough? 13
Justin L. Bruner
3. The Effectiveness of Policy and Practice for “Universal
Primary Education” Within Education for All 41
Fida H Chang
4. School Capacity the Neglected Paradigm in EFA Movement 61
Andleeb Sharif
5. Achieving Education for All –Together 93
Nai-Cheng Kuo
6. The Effect of the No Child Left Behind Accountability
Mechanisms on Middle School Mathematics Teaching
and Student Performance 117
Tara Kintz
7. Teacher Perceptions of Curriculum Under No Child Left Behind 163
Sandra K. Pylvainen
8. The Implementation of Mathematical Literacy as a New
Subject in the South African Curriculum 207
Corvell Cranfield
9. The Reach and Possibilities of Educational Reform for the
Rural Poor in Mexico 233
Maria Teresa Tatto
10. Scholarly Teaching 253
Maria Teresa Tatto, Justin Bruner, Fida Hussain Chang,
Corvell Cranfield, Tara Miyoko Kintz, Nai-Cheng Kuo,
Sandra Pylvainen and Andleeb Sharif
Appendix 267
Notes on Contributors 295
v
Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the valuable help of Dr. Douglas Campbell of the College of
Education's Office of Student Writing Assistance for helping us improve our
manuscripts.
vii
CHAPTER 1
MARIA TERESA TATTO
On Constructing a Framework for Policy Analysis in
the Global Era
The Effects Of The Global Introduction Of Performance Standards And
Regulations To Promote And Improve Education For All
How is education policy made? What choices are preferable, for whom, in what
context, and for what purpose? How are competing choices investigated before
they are made into policy? In other words, how are current and potential policies
analyzed to produce “usable knowledge”? How does policy analysis serve to
enlighten current thinking, future policy studies, and prospective policy making?1
This book originated in a policy analysis class taught during 2010, “TE 919:
Policy Analysis in Education2,” a course that seeks to engage doctoral students
with the conception, generation, and analysis of educational policies in a
number of contexts, such as diverse levels of governance across national
settings, and it includes the examination of the ethics, uses and limitations of
policy analysis.
In this course the professor follows a “problem centered” approach to engage
students individually and as a group with policy analysis. The approach is based on
the idea that students learn better from their own experiences as they select a policy
issue and then actively struggle to understand the complexity of designing,
implementing, and assessing social policy, within the learning community of the
class. The first day of class, the professor and students agree to create a course
designed to represent a reflective and grounded experience in policy analysis on a
current and relevant issue with global ramifications; we begin by exploring
policies that have been developed at the global level and implemented locally. In
this class in particular, we investigated the surge of globally developed standards
and regulations in an effort to improve education for all.
Our goal was to learn cross-nationally about policies that promote
standardization in education such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
Education for All (EFA) and its cousin in the United States of America, No Child
Left Behind (NCLB), and similar policies that seek to reform curriculum and
instruction under efficiency and global competitiveness arguments.
We knew our work would be bounded by the time available in a one-semester
class, and by resource constraints. We did exploratory inquiry supported by
Maria Teresa Tatto, (Ed.), Learning and Doing Policy Analysis in Education:
Examining Diverse Approaches to Increasing Educational Access, 1–12.
© 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
MARIA TERESA TATTO
literature reviews, reports of rigorous research studies, and in one case an
exploratory case study.
The policies we chose to explore, such as MDGs, EFA and NCLB, offered us
the opportunity to examine current reform tendencies that provide access to quality
education for all children, prepare teachers and organize schools to accommodate
children in response to vague policy mandates, and affect different constituencies
and stakeholders. The effects of these and other policies were difficult to track as
the research on them is scant, and decisions are often made based on
impressionistic information, ideology or political persuasion.
Our purpose was to begin to explore the critical issues that originate such
policies, and to investigate how much the effectiveness with which they have
achieved their intended outcomes has been documented. Similarly, we worked to
investigate the factors that seem to interfere with successful implementation.
We began with the idea that policy analysis relies on the assumption that policy
actors are rational, and that if available they would use valid and reliable
information to design or improve policy, staying away from approaches that have
proven untenable. Thus, this course explored what it takes to produce “usable
knowledge” within the frameworks of the social sciences.
We uncovered in examinations of the available literature that rigorous policy
studies are scarce, and when they are available they often fail to assess
comprehensively the effectiveness of the policy in question. Through engagement
with on-going (or “living) policies, we learned that there are not ready-set
frameworks for policy analysis but that rather these have to be constructed
according to the issues that emerge from lived experiences as policies when
implemented are adjusted to fit local contexts and needs.
As waves of educational reform bring about the development of innovative
ways to address the many shortcomings of schooling, there is increased public
interest in understanding whether and how old and current policy have had the
expected results, and whether the social investment in these innovations is cost-
effective. The call to document the projected and actual effectiveness of policies at
all levels of the system in the context of shrinking resources has rapidly evolved
into systems of accountability and regulation, a global dynamic that is bound to
increase over the next decade.
ON THE EMERGENCE OF PERFORMANCE STANDARDS AND REGULATIONS
The nature of policy making in the USA and globally is changing dramatically.
Increasing requirements for accountability at all levels of education systems
necessitate not only that policy be informed by valid and reliable data but that once
implemented, policies be subject to scrutiny through systematic analysis,
assessment, and evaluation. What we will call in this book the “new culture of
accountability” in education, is emerging as a global phenomenon.
A key tool for the implementation of accountability cultures in policy making is
the assessment of outcomes; and assessment systems are also of a global character.
For instance, a number of international evaluations of student progress have shown
2
