ERIC Number: EJ949186
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0268-0939
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Generating, Comparing, Manipulating, Categorizing: Reporting, and Sometimes Fabricating Data to Comply with No Child Left Behind Mandates
Koyama, Jill P.
Journal of Education Policy, v26 n5 p701-720 2011
This article ethnographically examines the ways in which No Child Left Behind (NCLB) links local practices to the centralized processing of data through its narrowing of procedures and measurements aimed at accountability. Framed by actor-network theory, it draws upon data consistently collected between June 2005 and October 2008, and then intermittently through October 2010, to consider the ways in which policy technologies, such as standardized testing, bring together New York City (NYC) public schools, district administrators, for-profit educational support businesses, and government officials to address the accountability requirements of NCLB. This article reveals how, through a range of sophisticated mechanisms that support the generation and comparison of data, NYC schools become reduced to data calculation and management centers. NCLB's standardization, privatization, and marketization encourage local policy actors to become complicit in standardizing and quantifying academic assessment through their reliance on services and products marketed to schools and districts that are not meeting academic benchmarks. These services, mostly offered by for-profit vendors, help keep schools in compliance with policy requirements, but replace a focus on student learning with the production, management, and sometimes the fabrication, of data. (Contains 4 notes.)
Descriptors: Federal Legislation, Ethnography, Accountability, Data Collection, Time Perspective, Data Processing, Standardized Tests, Privatization, Commercialization, Politics of Education, School Districts, Deception, Educational Administration
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New York
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: No Child Left Behind Act 2001
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A