Chapter 8: District Policy as an Uncertain Catalyst for School Change: School Sanctioning in Urban High Schools

Since the 1990s, school districts have joined the trend with state legislatures, and most recently the federal government in adopting policies that rely upon standardized testing to identify and intervene in low-performing schools (Cibulka, 1999; Ladd, 2001). Many of these policies, including the No Child Left Behind Act, involve gradations of interventions that allow policymakers to place failing schools on “probation” or academic watch lists before moving to reconstitute school faculty or to close schools. For school districts, sanctioning policies represent one approach to improving school and student achievement. Recent studies on such policies have found that they can prompt principals and teachers to alter their practices. Principals have been found to redirect school improvement and professional development agendas, reallocate managerial tasks and programs, and increase oversight over teachers’ work to comply with sanctioning policies (Keleman, 2001; Malen et al., 2002, Mintrop, 2003, Spillane, Diamond, Burch, Hallett, Jita, & Zoltners, 2002). Similarly, studies suggest that teachers largely comply with testing mandates, though the extent to which they alter their instructional practices has been found to vary considerably across teachers (Archibald & Porter, 1994; Firestone, Mayrowetz & Fairman, 1998; Mintrop, 2003; Johnson, 1990; Smith, 1991; Smylie & Perry, 1998; Spillane & Jennings, 1997).