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What's The Research On...?

Educational Policy and Accountability Studies

Making the best use of limited financial resources continues to challenge schools and districts. Over the years, policy research at WCER has looked into ways to make school finance policies more equitable and more effective. Current district-based school finance structures will require significant modification, if not a complete overhaul, to produce a system that fairly and adequately responds to fiscal and curricular goals. If schools, rather than districts, had the power to determine how to best use the dollars in the education system, teachers could teach students to higher standards. A second line of school finance research at WCER has pointed to better ways of rewarding excellent teachers for their skills and performance. Excellent teaching consists of much more than surviving many years of classrooms and stacking up lots of continuing education units, but the traditional way of measuring teachers' contributions emphasizes just those things. Alternative teacher pay systems can better focus teacher development and build capacity for improved practice, as well as helping to align district human resource management systems. Cincinnati Public Schools, for example, developed a knowledge- and skill-based pay system and evaluation system. Another option lies in school-based performance awards, which pay teachers bonuses when their schools meet performance improvement goals.

Recent advances in teacher assessment hold considerable promise for improving the quality of teaching and learning in U.S. schools and for increasing the status and respect associated with the teaching profession. An examination of the design and operation of three school district evaluation systems used standards for teaching proposed by Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching.

WCER research has helped schools and districts make better use of student achievement data when making policy decisions. When fully integrated into a school's system, student performance data can be transformed from mere numbers to useful information, and then can contribute to school and district knowledge in effective and meaningful ways.

WCER research promotes and advances effective leadership practices. For example, one study found a Chicago public elementary school principal who raised student achievement scores by launching a voluntary monthly breakfast club where teachers gathered to discuss their practice.

WCER research into education policy also finds ways to better educate students from minority populations and low-income populations. Given that a school's socioeconomic status, or poverty index, has a significant, negative effect on student reading and math achievement, and given that Latino students are disadvantaged in their preparation for, access to, and completion of postsecondary education, improving the education of youth from low-income populations along the entire K-16 system will require a comprehensive and radical reform. A recent study predicts a decline in the black-white achievement gap but predicts persistent educational inequality by socioeconomic background.

WCER policy research addresses change systemwide. For example, studies of statewide reform efforts by WCER’s Consortium for Policy Research in Education were the first to look at the equity effect of finance reform by analyzing the structural reasons for inequity and ways to improve equity. An evaluation study found that the National Science Foundation's statewide systemic initiatives (SSI) program helps students learn more challenging math and science content.