From Teacher to Politician: How State Education Agency Content Coordinators Navigate Politics

• In Event: Positionality and Research Use in Educational Policy and Practice: Toward Evidence-Informed Decisions

Abstract

1. Objectives
Within each state education agency (SEA), a small team of content-area coordinators provide subject-specific support for curriculum, professional development, and assessment to teachers across an entire state. SEA content coordinators are almost universally former K–12 practitioners suddenly navigating complex relationships with interest groups and politicians in the governor’s office, state boards, and state legislatures. In this study, we describe how the positionality of SEA coordinators for English Language Arts influences how they negotiate relationships with politicians and interest groups.
2. Perspectives
In considering SEA coordinators’ positionality as teachers-turned-politicians, we use literature on knowledge brokering (e.g., Malin & Brown, 2020) and the changing role of the SEA in educational improvement. Hopkins et al. (2018) identify coordinators’ job responsibilities as including what they call “between-state brokering” and “dual brokering,” in which coordinators play a key role in sharing information across states as well as both within and outside of the state (p. 469). These multiple forms of brokering occur in a political environment and within state agencies that have gradually taken on more responsibility for instructional improvement (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2013; Brown et al., 2011; VanGronigen & Meyers, 2019), making the role of the coordinator—at the nexus of practitioners, organizations, and policymakers—all the more important to study.
3. Data and Methods
Data consisted of an initial survey (N = 21) and single, in-depth follow up interview (N = 18) (Spradley, 1979) of at least an hour conducted and recorded via video conferencing software in Fall 2017. Interviews were initially coded with broad “index codes” based on our protocol (Deterding & Waters, 2021) and then recoded for evidence of policy and politics negotiation via an iterative process of collaborative coding (Saldaña, 2015).
4. Results
Findings suggest that SEA English Language Arts coordinators were caught off guard by their positions’ political nature. As former teachers who pursued state agency work to be of service to the teaching profession more broadly, many coordinators described being surprised and unprepared for the political dimension of their jobs. For example, a coordinator in a Midwestern state described how the position “put[s] you in a place of having one foot in policy and one foot in practice,” but that coordinators “didn’t go into education to be politicians” and are suddenly required to “play these political games that you are in no way, shape, or form trained to do.” Coordinators responded by seeking out guidance from each other in professional organizations.
5. Significance
In line with the 2026 conference theme, Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research, this study foregrounds the perspectives of teachers moving into political roles with more influence on policy enactment. In contrast to policymakers unfamiliar with the intimacies of the K–12 context, this study examines the experience of state coordinators with deep K–12 experience who must work closely with politicians to enact policy in ways meaningful for educators. This study reveals key lessons for how SEA content coordinators communicate across the distinctly positioned communities of site-based practitioners and politicians.

Authors

• Emily M. Hodge, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Serena J. Salloum, Ball State University

• Susanna Latham Benko, Ball State University