State-directed school intervention in Santee: A comparative case?

• In Event: Indigenous and southern voices

Proposal

The most recent era educational reform efforts have moved schools “toward a constrained curriculum, supposedly high standards, greater focus on employability, and a proliferation of standards and accountability (Carr, 2008), as has been documented across varied international contexts (Jaffer, 2010; Murchan, 2018; Patrinos et al., 2015; You, 2017). This ethnographically-informed, exploratory, policy- implementation case study chronicles the work of a state board of education (SBOE) legislatively authorized to direct intervention in up to three priority schools as a part of a broader legislated accountability system. Among 87 schools eligible for priority school selection, three schools (one in a working-class, mostly white, rural-community with declining enrollment; one was in North Omaha and served primarily a low-income African American student population; and one located on an American Indian reservation). This study focuses on the initial implementation of intervention in the latter, a school located on the Santee Sioux reservation. As such, the case here provides an opportunity to explore (a) what comparative education study proposes to be, (b) what the long-term cost of neoliberal education policy (i.e., that promises productivity, industrialization) might be, and (c) what might be learned by applying a comparative education lens (Getao, 1996; Kubow, 2007; Noah & Eckstein, 1969) to education policymaking.
Hamann and Rosen (2011) posit that policy is a
…form of sociocultural practice that involves efforts by a range of actors to: (1) define what is problematic in education; (2) shape interpretations and means of how problems should be resolved; and (3) determine to what vision of the future change efforts should be directed (p. 465).
If we think of policy and its implementation as more than text or efforts intended to organize individuals’ behavior, but as artifacts of politics and its processes and negotiation, then approaching a study complex school reform requires an understanding not only of the history of education reform, but also the intersections of democracy, power, and education that have shaped and that will, I contend, continue to shape the direction of policy and public education in the future. Historically, policy has often framed its beneficiaries as the “other,” employing deviant or deficit frames and positioning the government (or in this case the SDE) as a “corrective force” (Stein, 2004, p. 19). This deficit-perspective has been particularly evident in education policies carried out toward Indigenous peoples in the United States (Brayboy & Castagno, 2009; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). Rust et al., (2009) described this phenomenon in comparative education as “reproduction,” or “…the forced implementation of educational systems by an external, dominant society.” (p. 133). Thus, the study of a state-directed intervention in a public school on the Santee Sioux Reservation illustrates how state policymakers saw, understood, and responded local educators and the community, highlighting questions about why Santee was not conceptualized as a comparative education case among the schools selected for state-directed intervention.
As with any inquiry, the questions asked should guide the methodology and the research strategy employed and should be “…eclectic in its methods, broad in its vision of what it takes to understand man” (Nader, 1972, p. 293). As the questions for this particular study focus on the sociocultural context of an SDE engaged in the development and initial implementation of a complex school reform, I selected a methodology that allowed for an examination of the practice of policy implementation as well as the policy-culture among actors engaged in the messy work of policy implementation. An ethnographically-informed approach was appropriate allowed for both proximity to and familiarity with a socially constructed spaces of the state department of education (SDE) and the school site in Santee (Levinson & Sutton, 2001; Stein, 2004) as well as applying a comparative lens (Yang, 2014). Data for the study were collected between December 2013 and August 2016 and included legislative floor transcripts, education committee hearings, state board of education observations and transcriptions, and an array of documents and video-clips included in the public telling of AQuESTT’s implementation. Just as an archaeologist searches for material artifacts that contribute to an understanding of a historical culture, I collected state-level policymaker’s “material culture” (Hodder, 2012) and observed the historical present in order to document the “lifeways of a social group” (Levinson, 2000, p. 3). Using the qualitative software MaxQDA, I analyzed these artifacts through an iterative process that included review, coding of themes, and analytic memos (Bowen, 2009; Owen, 2014), which allowed for triangulation.
Nebraska’s priority school intervention model was designed around an external consultant’s “levers” of improvement around which she organized each priority school’s progress plans: clear, compelling direction; student and staff culture; instructional leadership. Each school’s priority plan implementation focused on instructional leadership coaching particular to assessed areas (i.e., reading, math). Models for developing progress plans and coaching principals were standardized across the three rather diverse schooling contexts, of which the school on an American Indian reservation is the focus of this case-study.
Just as McCarty (2010) asked whether a school could be “a place to be Navajo,” this study concludes that, “schooling constructed in Indigenous communities can be a counter-force to the myriad of forces that seek to marginalize and erase Indigenous voices and identities” (p. 18). That being said, I posit that educational reforms like the one chronicled in Nebraska’s priority school intervention that promise career-readiness, productivity, and modernity come at great cost, limiting what can be possible. I echo Rust et al.’s (2009) call that we, as comparative education researchers, “…cooperatively consider a meaning of education that advances humanity instead of modernity” (p. 134). Despite stated good intentions at every level, the state missed the opportunity to see and respond to Santee as a comparative case—as a way of understanding.

Author

• Aprille Phillips, Southern Oregon University