Session Information
23 SES 04 A, Policies and Practices of Evaluation of Quality in Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Evaluation has expanded at all levels of governance as part of the broad doctrine of New Public Management (NPM) (Hood 1991; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). According to this doctrine, market mechanisms should be introduced to enhance efficiency and, in the context of school governance, to support competition between schools, free school choice, improved educational quality, and school effectiveness (Lubienski 2009; Lundahl 2013 et al; Merki 2011). Education systems guided by NPM and characterized by results-based management and local autonomy increasingly rely on evaluation at all levels (Mintrop and Trujillo 2007; OECD 2013). Strengthened accountability is assumed to enhance education quality and promote school development (OECD 2015; SOU 2015:22), and a combination of control- and improvement-oriented evaluation systems has been institutionalized at various levels of the school system to promote school development and enhance education quality. However, this development is contested by research claiming that the consequences of growing accountability pressure are problematic for school practice (Hoyle and Wallace 2009; Ravitch 2010). It may create multiple accountability problems, i.e. uncertainty among target groups as to which evaluation system is supposed to do what and for whom and with what authority (Schillemans and Bovens, 2011). Teachers are subjected to too much accountability that can have negative effects on professionals and education (Green 2011; Koretz 2009; Lingard and Sellar, 2013; Hargreaves 1994, Day 2002, Ball 2003, Mausethagen 2013a, 2013b).
Although evaluation is a cornerstone in local school governance it has not been studied much in this context. Local school governance refers to all the public and private school actors’ and institutions’ (e.g. education committees, opposition parties, school principals, teachers and parents) steering of local schools and education. We need more knowledge of the role and consequences of evaluation systems at the local governance level, and into how local school actors respond to these systems. What local decision makers, school providers, principals, and teachers consider relevant, useful, and actionable knowledge (Stehr & Grundmann 2012) is crucial in understanding the role of evaluation in local school governance.
This paper explores how local school actors in Swedish compulsory education have responded to prevailing evaluation systems and the growing accountability pressure emerging from the recentralization, marketization, and globalization of education governance. It synthesizes results from a Swedish research project (see method) and aims to improve our understanding of the role and consequences of evaluation in local school governance. It contributes with knowledge of the role and consequences of evaluation at the municipal, school, classroom, and parent/citizen levels. Special attention is paid to the value and consequences of various evaluations for local school development. A close look at evaluation in Sweden is an illustrative case as the education evaluation arena is overcrowded and the decentralised education system provides freedom of choice that actors operating in other education systems in Europe (OECD, 2015; Lawn, 2011) and elsewhere can learn from.
The paper is developed as part of a larger research project; Consequences of evaluation for school praxis –steering, accountability and school development, financed by the Swedish Research Council (2012-2015). The project explores evaluation in compulsory schools (age 13-15) in four municipalities, and this paper synthesises and discusses the results presented in detail five separate papers.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Dahler-Larsen, P. (2013). Constitutive effects of performance indicators: getting beyond unintended consequences. Public Management Review, 16(7), 969–986. Day, C. (2002). School reform and transitions in teacher professionalism and identity. International Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 37, No. 8, 677-692. Hanberger, A. (2012) Framework for exploring the interplay of governance and evaluation, Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration 16(3),9–28. Hanberger, A. (manuscript) Evaluation in Local School Governance: a framework of analysis Hoyle, Eric & Wallace, Mike (2009) Leadership for professional practice. In S. Gewirtz, P. Mahony & A. Cribb (Eds.) Changing Teacher Professionalism. International trends, challenges and ways forward, 67-80. London & New York: Routledge. Lawn, M. (2011). Standardizing the European education policy space, European Educational Research Journal, 10(2), 259-272. Lingard, B., & Sellar, S. (2013). “Catalyst data”: Perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling. Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 634-656. Lundahl, Lisbeth; Erixon Arreman, Inger; Holm, Ann-Sofie & Lundström, Ulf (2013) Educational marketization the Swedish way. Education Inquiry 4(3):497-517. Mausethagen, S (2013a). Accountable for what and to whom? Changing representations and new legitimation discourse among teachers under increased external control. Journal of Educational Change, Vol. 14, 423-444. Merki, K.M. (2011) Special issue: Accountability systems and their effects on school processes and student learning’. Studies in Educational Evaluation,37:177-179. Mintrop, H. & Trujillo, T. (2007) ‘The Practical Relevance of Accountability Systems for School Improvement: A Descriptive Analysis of California Schools’, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 29(4):319-352. OECD (2013). Synergies for better learning: An international perspective on evaluation and assessment. Paris: OECD Publishing OECD (2015) Improving Schools in Sweden: An OECD Perspective. Paris: OECD Publishing. Pollitt, C. & Bouckaert, G. (2011) Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis - New Public Management, Governance, and the Neo-Weberian State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: how testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books. Schillemans, T. & Bovens, M. (2011) The Challenge of Multiple Accountability: Does redundancy lead to Overload? In Dubnick, M.J. and Frederickson, H.G. (Eds.) Accountable Governance. Problems and Promises (pp. 3-21). Armonk: ME Sharpe. SOU 2015:22 Rektorn och styrkedjan. Betänkande av Utredningen om rektorernas arbetssituation inom skolväsendet [The principal and the chain of command. Investigation of principals’ work situation in compulsory education]. Stockholm: Fritzes. Stehr, N. and Grundmann, (2012). How does knowledge relate to political action?, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 25(1), 29-44.
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