Principals and teachers “craft coherence” among accountability policies
| Date | 09 April 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-10-2016-0124 |
| Published date | 09 April 2018 |
| Author | Elizabeth Leisy Stosich |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Principals and teachers
“craft coherence”among
accountability policies
Elizabeth Leisy Stosich
Division of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy,
Fordham University –Lincoln Center Campus, New York, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine how US school leaders and teachers make sense of
multiple accountability policies, including the Common Core State Standards and teacher evaluation, and how
this process relates to school priorities and classroom practice.
Design/methodology/approach –This study uses a comparative case study approach to understand how
principals and teachers in three high-poverty urban schools respond to policy.
Findings –Although principals and teachers viewed academic standards and the teacher evaluation
framework as complementary, two of the three schools focused on meeting the expectations of the teacher
evaluation framework at the expense of attention to academic standards. Without attention to the connections
among policies and school priorities, the introduction of new policies may detract from rather than reinforce
attention to academic standards.
Research limitations/implications –Principals who are stronger instructional leaders may be better able
to “craft coherence”among multiple standards-based policies and school priorities for instruction and student
learning. Although their experiences are not generalizable, findings suggest that attending to standards for
student and teacher performance without connecting to the implications for content and students’learning
may lead to superficial integration of accountability policies with school priorities.
Practical implications –Findings provide further evidence that principals play an essential role in
responding to policy and suggest that districts and external support providers can assist their efforts by
creating opportunities for professional learning about the connections among multiple policies and their
implications for practice.
Originality/value –This paper extends Honig and Hatch’s conceptualization of “crafting coherence”to the
work of teachers and the implications for classroom practice.
Keywords Principals, Policy, Standards, Teacher evaluation, Common core
Paper type Research paper
Efforts to improve instructional quality and student performance through the adoption of
standards for student learning (Hargreaves et al., 2010; Volante, 2012) and teacher
performance (Flores, 2012; Hallinger et al., 2014; Liu and Zhao, 2013) have gained
prominence internationally. Standards-based reforms focus on setting learning standards,
administering assessments to measure students’progress, and imposing accountability
(Mehta, 2015). In a recent outgrowth of the accountability movement, teacher evaluation
policies have been developed to improve instruction and, ultimately, student learning by
setting rigorous expectations for teachers’practice, providing feedback on the extent to
which teachers meet these expectations, and linking performance to consequential
personnel decisions (i.e. tenure, dismissal) (Firestone, 2014; Hallinger et al., 2014). Although
there is substantial research on standards and teacher evaluation, scholars argue that
research is needed to understand how standards and accountability policies interact to
influence teaching and learning (Coburn et al., 2016; Reinhorn et al., 2017).
This study explores the relationship between the implementation of the Common Core
State Standards (CCSS) and the Danielson (2013) Framework for teacher evaluation in three
high-poverty schools in a large urban district in New York. A highly decentralized education
system, the USA has relied primarily on test-based accountability policies for providing
instructional guidance over the past two decades, whereas many countries provide
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 56 No. 2, 2018
pp. 203-219
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-10-2016-0124
Received 14 October 2016
Accepted 21 August 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
203
Craft
coherence
additional instructional guidance through the adoption of national curriculum, assessments,
and teacher education criteria (Hopmann, 2008). Although federal control over education in
the USA is limited, support from recent federal policy, including Race to the Top
and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers, has led to widespread state adoption of
college- and career-ready standards and teacher evaluation programs. In fact, 42 states have
adopted the CCSS (www.corestandards.org) and 40 states have redesigned their teacher
evaluation policies (Headden and Silva, 2011). New York adopted the CCSS in 2010, passed
teacher evaluation legislation in 2010 (Education Law §3012-c), made CCSS-aligned
curriculum available in 2011, and administered CCSS-aligned state assessments in
spring 2013. These actions represented a significant attempt to align instructional policies.
To inform the design of accountability policies in the USA and internationally, it is critical to
understand whether and how standards and accountability policies provide complementary
or conflicting information and the conditions that support or constrain the effects of
these policies.
As educators confront multiple policies, they “craft coherence”or negotiate connections
among policy and school goals for teaching and learning (Honig and Hatch, 2004). Notably,
teaching and learning is made up of many complex relationships (Cuban, 2013), including
the interactions among teachers’pedagogical content knowledge, academic content, and
students’engagement as learners (Cohen and Ball, 1999). The teacher evaluation framework
describes expectations for teachers’pedagogy, whereas the CCSS describe expectations for
students’learning in ELA and mathematics but leave teachers to use their professional
judgment to determine how to support students in meeting these expectations
(Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010). Thus, crafting coherence among these
policies and teaching and learning would entail addressing the role of pedagogy, content,
and students’role as learners.
Conceptual framework: crafting coherence
Achieving coherence among multiple policies depends on both initial policy design and the
response of educators in schools. When policies align to support shared goals, educators
receive clear guidance as well as coordinated support for achieving these goals. By contrast,
policy incoherence can impede school improvement by dividing educators’attention among
multiple initiatives, resulting in a diluted, hybrid of multiple ideas that are layered on top of
old practices and have little if any effect on student learning (Elmore, 2004). Weak alignment
of previous state standards with other policies and instructional resources may have
diminished the influence of standards on teachers’practice and students’learning
(e.g. Polikoff, 2012; Spillane, 2004). Coburn et al. (2016) argue that policymakers have
developed increasingly more sophisticated approaches to aligning academic standards with
curriculum, assessments, professional development (PD), and teacher evaluation.
Nevertheless, questions remain about how educators respond to more recent standards
and accountability policies and the educator capabilities and organizational conditions that
support or constrain their response.
Rather than viewing policy coherence as something that is inherent in a set of reforms,
Honig and Hatch (2004) argue that educators must actively engage in a process of “crafting”
coherence among the external policies they encounter and internal goals. During this
process of negotiation, educators may “bridge”or make connections between policies and
their work as a school or “buffer”themselves from policies by responding only superficially
or not at all (Honig and Hatch, 2004). Although bridging and buffering represent opposite
ends of a continuum, they are not mutually exclusive. This framework has been used in
education to understand how educators manage the technical core, teaching, and learning,
in the face of external pressure for change (DiPaola and Tschannen-Moran, 2005;
Jaffe-Walter, 2008; Ogawa, 1998).
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56,2
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