Risky Teachers: High-Stakes Rationales for Teacher Evaluation in the USA
Author(s):
Jessica Holloway (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

23 SES 14 A, Education Reforms and Teachers' Work Experiences

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-25
15:30-17:00
Room:
K4.02
Chair:
Anne Larson

Contribution

The past three decades have brought about a significant increase in numbers-based accountability systems that contribute to a (re)articulation of education in the image of the market (Anagnostopoulos, Rutledge, and Jacobsen 2013; Lingard, Martino, and Rezai-Rashti, 2013; Lingard, Martino, Rezai-Rashti, and Sellar, 2015). Teachers, in particular, have been subjected to high-stakes accountability policies and practices that rely on calculating tools (e.g., value-added models, performance rubrics) and punitive actions (e.g., merit pay, termination) that have fundamentally reshaped teacher subjectivities (Ball, 2003; Furlong, Cochran-Smith, and Brennan, 2009). This paper investigates the discursive conditions of this movement and the possibilities that have resulted in its legitimation.  While this is a global phenomenon, the USA has been a leader in developing and implementing high-stakes, market-based mechanisms for teacher accountability.

Employing Bacchi’s (2000) notion of policy-as-discourse, the purpose of this paper is to unpack and understand the ways in which contemporary teacher evaluation policies operate as a “regime of truth” (Foucault, 1980), and thus “make up” (Hacking, 1999) the contemporary “teacher”. As a post-structural critique of policy, this paper aims to disrupt accepted conceptualizations of teachers by: (1) identifying discursive constructions of teachers in political talk, action, and legislation; (2) unpacking the ways in which these “truths” have conditioned the possibilities for punitive accountability policies and practices; and (3) mapping the accountability policies and practices used by one school district to understand how they function to manage teacher behavior accordingly. Drawing on data that include official federal- and state-level policy documents (e.g., legislation related to teacher accountability), policy supplemental materials (e.g., press releases and political speeches about teacher accountability policy), and local teacher accountability policy enactment materials (e.g., evaluation protocols and instruments), this analysis demonstrates how teachers have been discursively positioned as risky subjects. In doing so, high-stakes accountability policies and practices that can help mitigate the “risk” are rationalized as necessary mechanisms for protecting the wellbeing of the country. This has enabled a set of intrusive and punitive mechanisms that monitor, assess, and discipline teachers to behave as “docile subjects” (Foucault, 1984).

Working from a Foucauldian perspective, I am defining discourse as frameworks of thought that make and define possibilities; discourse is that which constitutes the knowable and the imaginable; it is a “regime of truth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 131), rather than truth itself (McWilliams & Jones, 2005). In other words, discourse is the language, practices, and fields of knowledge that operate to construct our reality. As discourse is historically, socially, and politically situated, “reality” is constantly being negotiated and renegotiated in any given moment and space. Accordingly, the analyst attempts to understand how language, over time, has worked to shape reality and constitute particular ways of knowing, doing, and being. Foremost, the analyst assumes that “no one stands [or can stand] outside discourse” (Bacchi, 2000, p. 45). Foucault, specifically, was interested in how discourses work to produce docile subjects (Foucault, 1984). For example, “a post-structural analytical framework provides a tool to question our taken-for-granted assumptions about the dominant messages we hear about teachers, and to be aware of ‘how language works to both constrain and open up the everyday lived experiences of those working in education’” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 484). To this end, this paper seeks to understand how high-stakes teacher accountability policies and practices have been made to “make sense” and then operationalized to produce docile teachers. 

Method

To bound it to a manageable dataset, I started with one Southwestern school district comprehensive, performance-based pay and evaluation system (i.e., the National Institute on Excellence in Teaching’s TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement). Then I situated the district’s TAP System within the state and federal policies that influenced the adoption and implementation of it. These included: Race to the Top (RttT), Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers, the state’s framework for teacher accountability (which was developed in response to the above-stated federal policies), as well as the state’s applications for RttT and NCLB flexibility and the district’s application for a TIF grant. Specifically, data included: policy statutes, related promotional materials political speeches, official position statements, and all other relevant and available literature on the official U.S. Department of Education website (i.e., ed.gov) and the TAP System website (i.e., TAPsystem.org). I also collected data on the TAP System practices and instruments (e.g., rubrics, VAM protocol information, evaluator forms, etc.). I also attended the 35-hour TAP System evaluator certification course, where I took field notes and collected evaluator training materials. For data analysis, I was interested in the notion that practices “systematically form the objects of which they speak; they do not identify objects, they constitute them and in the practice of doing so conceal their own invention’ (Foucault, 1977, cited in Ball, 1990, p. 17). I paid specific attention to how teachers were positioned within policy discussions and documents (Foucault, 1985; McWilliam & Jones, 2005), focusing on how teachers were described, as well as how they were presented as solutions to particular problems, or how they were presented as problems themselves. This allowed me to unpack how the accountability policies and practices were constructed as “common sense” solutions to a pressing national “problem”. Then, employing a ‘governmentality lens (Foucault, 1977; Rose, 1999), I focused on how system procedures and tools were either suggested or legislated to discipline teacher behavior accordingly. I created a list of all mechanisms, techniques, and practices that were used in the evaluation process (e.g., VAMs, rubrics, one-on-one conferences, observations) and determined how these techniques functioned as mechanisms of governance (i.e., behavior control or discipline). Finally, I mapped the techniques onto Foucault’s (1977) and Rose’s (1999) technologies of governance in order to draw conclusions about how the evaluation practices were working to discipline teachers’ behavior.

Expected Outcomes

Teachers were positioned as a threat to the economic and security wellbeing of the country, providing a high-stakes rationale for strict governance of teacher behavior. As education is remade in the image of the market, so too have teachers been remade into market-based subjects. As investments are weighed against outputs, and maximizing the return on investment (ROI) is key, the investment in teachers is also a risky endeavor that necessitates regulation. In the current study, data analysis pointed towards a conceptualization of teachers as a “risky” investment. In response, risk-management was framed as the responsibility of policymakers and the entrepreneurs who were able to develop such systems (e.g., the TAP System). Contemporary teacher accountability systems provide the mitigation needed for the threat associated with the “risky teacher”. Not only do these systems provide the material incentives to manage risk, such as threats of termination or discipline plans, but the systems also operate in symbolic ways that encourage teachers to manage themselves in relation to risk (Saul, 2005). As such, there manifests a need to minimize the risk and develop tools for managing the potentially risky subjects.Various instruments, tools, and practices have not only been developed to discipline teachers to behave in particular ways, but they have also encouraged teachers to discipline and manage themselves. When the economic and safety wellbeing of the country is equated with teacher success, it “makes sense” that stringent and punitive accountability polices and practices were necessary to ensure the security of the nation. When teachers bear the burden of keeping the country safe, then guaranteeing teacher success is a national priority, and high-stakes evaluation, by any means necessary, is a legitimized endeavor. While this particular case is from the USA, similar logics are shaping teacher accountability policies and practices worldwide.

References

Anagnostopoulos, D., Rutledge, S. A., & Jacobsen, R. (2013). The infrastructure of accountability: Data use and the transformation of American education. Bacchi, C. (2000). Policy as discourse: What does it mean? Where does it get us?. Discourse, 21(1), 45-57. Ball, S. J. (Ed.). (1990). Foucault and education: Disciplines and knowledge. Routledge. Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of education policy, 18(2), 215-228. Davies, B., & Bansel, P. (2010). Governmentality and academic work: Shaping the hearts and minds of academic workers. JCT (Online), 26(3), 5. Dean, M. (2002). Critical and effective histories: Foucault's methods and historical sociology. Routledge. Fenwick, T. (2003) The 'good' teacher in a neo-liberal risk society: a Foucaultian analysis of professional growth plans. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35:3, 335-354. DOI: 10.1080/00220270210151089 Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1984). The foucault reader. Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1985). The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality (vol. 2). R. Hurley, Trans. London, Penguin. Foucault, M. (1991) Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 87–104. Graham, C., & Neu, D. (2004). Standardized testing and the construction of governable persons. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(3), 295-319. Hacking, I. (1999). Making up people. The science studies reader, 18, 590. Lingard, B., Martino, W., & Rezai-Rashti, G. (2013). Testing regimes, accountabilities and education policy: Commensurate global and national developments. Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 539-556. Lingard, B., Martino, W., Rezai-Rashti, G., & Sellar, S. (2015). Globalizing Educational Accountabilities. Routledge. McWilliam, E. (2002). Against Professional Development. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 34(3), 289-299. doi:10.1080/00131850220150246 McWilliam, E., & Jones, A. (2005). An unprotected species? On teachers as risky subjects. British Educational Research Journal, 31(1), 109-120. Miller, P., & Rose, N. (2008). Governing the present. Polity Press. Rabinow, P. (1984). The Foucault reader. Pantheon Ransom, J. (1997). Foucault’s discipline: The politics of subjectivity. Duke University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge university press. Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage. Saul, J. R. (2005). The collapse of globalism and the reinvention of the world. Camberwell: Viking. St. Pierre, E. A. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 477-515.

Author Information

Jessica Holloway (presenting / submitting)
Deakin University, Victoria, Australia

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