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The limits of legibility: why accountability-based education reforms have not been a panacea
Descriptive
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Title
The limits of legibility: why accountability-based education reforms have not been a panacea
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Hersh
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David
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1981-
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David Hersh
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author
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Jagannathan
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Radha
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Radha Jagannathan
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Advisory Committee
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chair
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Salzman
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Hal
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Hal Salzman
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Advisory Committee
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internal member
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Sass Rubin
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Julia
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Julia Sass Rubin
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Advisory Committee
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internal member
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Gitomer
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Drew
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Drew Gitomer
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Advisory Committee
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Rutgers University
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degree grantor
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School of Graduate Studies
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theses
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2020
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2020-01
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2020
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English
Abstract
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For over a century, reformers have sought to fix public education with an increasingly intense focus on individual accountability. The round of reforms beginning with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2003 and culminating with state-implementation of Race to the Top (RTT) initiatives over a decade later was arguably the biggest bet yet on accountability. Neither past reforms nor this latest effort has achieved the lofty goal of dramatically changing outcomes for America’s students. This dissertation aims to explain why, applying a framework derived from similar failed efforts to govern complex natural and social processes in other fields to case studies of three school districts in New Jersey. Using this framework, I argue that accountability efforts as implemented in education fail because they meet three conditions: they over-simplify the highly complex social process of educating children, they shift expertise from educators with local knowledge to distant “objective” outsiders and they ignore contextual differences between students, schools and districts. These three conditions lead to failure because they trigger at least four mechanisms that get in the way of improving outcomes. They lead to policies based on mischaracterizations of the problem that engender resistance and undermine conditions necessary for successful instruction. Given the difficulty of designing a summative accountability scheme that does not meet these three conditions of failure, a better path may require prioritizing formative efforts over summative accountability.
Subject
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Topic
Planning and Public Policy
Subject
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Topic
Education
Subject
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Topic
Educational change
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Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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ETD_10512
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1 online resource (ix, 199 pages) : illustrations
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Ph.D.
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Includes bibliographical references
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School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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rucore10001600001
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doi:10.7282/t3-gfcb-y081
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ETD doctoral
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Rights
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The author owns the copyright to this work.
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Name
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Hersh
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David
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Permission or license
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2020-01-07 18:42:35
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David Hersh
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Rutgers University. School of Graduate Studies
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Author Agreement License
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
Copyright
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Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
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2020-01-09T16:54:18
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2020-01-09T16:54:18
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