Splintered Accountability

Arnold F Shober

Description

The No Child Left Behind Act declared that improving education in every school in the United States was a top national priority. However, this act did not acknowledge how state departments of education have successfully constructed reforms for the past few decades, despite the power struggle between governors, legislators, school districts, and state boards of education. Drawing upon archival sources, state budget documents, interviews, and statistical analysis, Splintered Accountability amply demonstrates that sustained education reform is best left in the hands of the relatively autonomous state departments of education in order to maintain curriculum standards, school finance, and teacher licensure systems. Comprehensive and successful education reform originates from within state education agencies, propelled by savvy state superintendents.

Arnold F. Shober is Assistant Professor of Government at Lawrence University.
List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Part 1

1. Introduction

2. Autonomy and Scope in Government Agencies

3. Expectations for Scope-Seeking Agencies

Part 2

4. Historical Roots of State Involvement

5. Bringing Them to the Table: Managing Interests

6. Leading by Example: State Superintendents' Influence

7. Making New Friends: Institutional Turnover

Part 3

8. The View from the Dome: Legislative Salience

9. Budgeting for Success

10.Conclusions and Implications

APPENDIX A
Historical Appendix

APPENDIX B
Statistical Appendix

APPENDIX C
A Note on the Sources

Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Central government
• Region
• Regional
• Central
• États-Unis
• National

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438430775
• Langue: English

Extrait

SUNY series in Public Policy

Anne L. Schneider and Helen M. Ingram, editors

Splintered Accountability
State Governance and Education Reform
ARNOLD F. SHOBER

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2010 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shober, Arnold F., 1976–
Splintered accountability : state governance and education reform / Arnold F. Shober.
p. cm. — (Suny series in public policy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3075-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. State departments of education—United States—States. 2. Educational accountability—United States—States. 3. Education—Standards—United States—States. 4. School improvement programs—United States—States. I. Title.
LB2809.A2S43 2010
379.1'520973—dc22                                                     2009024753
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Clara

Tables 1.1 State Educational Governance Structures 18 5.1 Wisconsin PI34 Teacher Licensure Standards 83 5.2 Major Interest Group Opposition to the Georgia Kindergarten Assessment Program 88 5.3 Organizations and Interest Groups Directly Involved with the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding 93 5.4 Selected “Components of School Funding Reform” from the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding 94 5.5 Variables in Ohio's Initial Funding Formula in Response to DeRolph , 1995 97 6.1 Correspondence with Journalists by Superintendent Herbert Grover, 1981–1984 112 8.1 Number of Education Bills Introduced with Selected Subjects, 1983–2001 168 8.2 Number of Bills Introduced Relating to Education 179 A.1 List of Chief State School Officers 217 B.1 All Legislators' Likelihood of Serving on an Education Committee, 1983–2002 223 B.2 Likelihood of a Legislator Exiting the Education Committee, 1983–2002 224 B.3 Negative Binomial Regression Estimating the Number of Education Bills in a Session, 1983–2002 225 B.4 Education Bills' Time to be Reported from Committee, 1983–2002 226 B.5 Education Bills' Time to be Passed by Both Houses, 1983–2002 227 B.6 Factors Affecting the Percentage Change in All State Agency Budget Requests 229 B.7 Absolute Budget Residuals for All State Agencies as a Percentage of Prior Appropriations, 1982–2002 230 B.8 Summary Statistics for Table B.1 231 B.9 Summary Statistics for Table B.2 232 B.10 Summary Statistics for Table B.3 232 B.11 Summary Statistics for Tables B.4 and B.5 233 B.12 Summary Statistics for Table B.6 233 B.13 Summary Statistics for Table B.7 234

Figures 1.1 Payroll in State Education Agencies, 1991 19 2.1 Factors Influencing Agency Autonomy and Scope 26 4.1 State Superintendents' Tenure by State, to 2000 70 7.1 Frequency of Education as a Topic in Wisconsin Gubernatorial Messages 156 8.1 Predicted Probability of Education Committee Service, 1983–2002 176 8.2 Predicted Probability of Leaving the Education Committee, 1983–2002 178 8.3 Predicted Time That Education Bills Remain in Committee, by State, 1983–2002 186 9.1 Per Capita Appropriations for State Education Agencies, Excluding School Foundation Supports 190 9.2 Budget Residuals for State Education Agencies as a Percentage of Total Agency Appropriations 197

Acknowledgments
This book could not have been completed without the indulgence of the politicians, bureaucrats, and opinion leaders who all loved kids. Many still work in education and, by their request, they shall remain nameless. They could, of course, never agree on how to help children, but their contribution to this project was invaluable.
The librarians and archivists in Ohio, Georgia, and Wisconsin were exceedingly helpful in winnowing out the reams of records that previous superintendents and governors left in their care. The state archivists in Georgia deserve special mention for their insightful conversations with me on that state's educational history.
David Canon, John Coleman, Meghan Condon, Matthew Dull, Mark Frazier, Bill Hixon, Paul Manna, Julie Mead, David Parker and David Weimer helped push me on in this adventure, both by offering encouragement at the start and scholarly support at various stages of its composition. The predoctoral Interdisciplinary Training Program at the University of Wisconsin, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, provided time and finances for a portion of the research. Lawrence University provided resources to finish it.
John Witte deserves more credit for pushing me through this project than I can express here. His optimism was limitless. His encouragement was persistent but always practical. I only wish that I could somehow absorb even half of his energy and creativity.

Abbreviations AFT American Federation of Teachers APA (Georgia) Administrative Procedures Act CAT California Achievement Test CCSSO Council of Chief State School Officers CESA (Wisconsin) Cooperative Educational Service Agency DOA (Wisconsin) Department of Administration DPI (Wisconsin) Department of Public Instruction ESEA Elementary and Secondary Education Act GADOE Georgia Department of Education GEM (Ohio) Governor's Education Management Council GKAP Georgia Kindergarten Assessment Program NAEYC National Association for the Education of Young Children NASDTEC National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification NCLB No Child Left Behind Act NEA National Education Association NGA National Governors' Association OBE Outcomes-Based Education ODE Ohio Department of Education OEA (Georgia) Office of Educational Accountability OFT Ohio Federation of Teachers QBE (Georgia) Quality Basic Education QEO (Wisconsin) Qualified Economic Offer WASB Wisconsin Association of School Boards WEAC Wisconsin Education Association Council
Part 1

1
Introduction
The most important duty of the state should not be overseen by an unwieldy department with splintered accountability.
—Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, State of the State, February 6, 2008
“You can't do anything! The governor thinks he's God,” bluntly stated Mike Ellis, the Wisconsin senate majority leader. State Superintendent John Benson was on his knees pleading to stay budget cuts that would nearly eliminate the Department of Public Instruction (DPI)—or so remembers one veteran Wisconsin lobbyist. Benson was unsuccessful, but within a year, the Supreme Court had rebuked the governor and restored the DPI.
“We had it just about right. It's amazing in how many ways we anticipated No Child Left Behind. At the beginning, we had everyone behind us, the governor, everyone,” said one employee of Georgia's Department of Education (GADOE). Even though the state's Quality Basic Education program quickly lost the support of key interest groups and “just about killed everyone,” GADOE maintained the program through sometimes vicious political opposition. 1
“They have a bunker mentality over there,” said a lobbyist for the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). “They're too tight with the governor.” But even if ODE allegedly had its head in the sand, it was able to implement a regimented student assessment system and fend off the state supreme court's challenge to the school finance system.
In each of these cases, the state's department of education was able to prevail in setting the direction of state education policy. Yet at other times, departments failed miserably, and ambitious governors and legislators reined in their scope, as if they were afraid of competition. This book explores why.
From the outside, American education governance is a quagmire. Responsibilities for setting standards, distributing funding, and hiring personnel overlap in a crazy-quilt of jurisdictions. School districts raise money; interest groups crowd the hallways of legislatures; and teachers' unions stuff the mailboxes of members. In the middle of this confused environment lies a state agency—sometimes sleepy and sometimes volcanic—charged with the oversight of state schools. In the fifty states, its name varies from an “Office of the Superintendent” to the “Department of Public Instruction.” It employs from dozens to thousands. American education agencies provide fertile ground to understand the bureaucratic policy process.
State education agencies are caught in the American federal system between penurious school districts and an increasingly demanding federal government. Their policy areas may be as restricted as discharging federal monies or as expansive as drafting budgets for financially delinquent school districts. Administrators with seemingly less capable agencies lamented too-great local control: “You could replace ‘America's Dairyland’ with the ‘Home of Local Control’” said one state education official in Wisconsin, referring to the state's license-plate motto. The Iowa department's mission is to streng