How Educators Process and Respond to State-Level Education Reform Policies: The Case of Oregon.

Abstract

This paper reports on an investigation of educator reaction to one state's systemic school reform legislation. Educators have generally been reticent to embrace state-level legislation reform initiatives while simultaneously agreeing with their ultimate goals. Findings are the latest data in a 5-year longitudinal study begun in 1992 that focused on educator reactions to Oregon's 1991 comprehensive educational reform legislation (creating initial and advanced certificates of mastery and school-site councils) . This report summarizes previous findings and builds upon them within an institutionalism and compliance-theory framework. Data were gathered from a series of 6 self-administered questionnaires distributed at 24 to 92 schools during fall 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, and spring and fall 1997. Survey instruments contained various multiquestion dimensions: changes in teaching context, curriculum change, teachers' engagement in reform activities, teacher support of reform provisions, assessment changes, attentiveness to at-risk students, and other factors. Primary effects of reform where more teachers agreed than disagreed were: to increase teacher workload; focus curriculum on state standards; increase schools' accountability; increase curriculum integration; increase teacher collaboration; and increase social-service integration into schools. Teacher attitudes toward reform are ambivalent, though teachers are moving slowly to accept reform requirements. Policy drift may have occurred, and compliance and institutionalist forces have slowed implementation. (Contains 57 references.) (MLH) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** How Educators Process and Respond to State-Level Education Reform Policies: The Case of Oregon David T. Conley and Paul Goldman, Associate Professors University. of Oregon, College of Education, Eugene, OR 97403 david_conley@ccmail.uoregon.edu; pgoldman@oregon U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) ff/...fhis document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. O Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 2 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) How Educators Process and Respond to State-Level Education Reform Policies: The Case of Oregon David T. Conley and Paul Goldman, Associate Professors University of Oregon, College of Education, Eugene, OR 97403 david_conley@ccmail.uoregon.edu; pgoldman@oregon This research investigates the phenomenon of educator reaction to state systemic school reform legislation. This reaction can be characterized in terms of the reticence educators have shown to embrace state-level education reform initiatives while simultaneously agreeing with its ultimate goals. Our research findings reported here are the latest data in a five-year longitudinal study begun in 1992 focused on educator reactions to comprehensive education reform legislation passed in Oregon in 1991. We summarize previous findings, then build upon them within the theoretical framework of institutionalism and compliance theory, which we have adapted and extended to understand educator reactions to reform legislation, individually and at the level of the school building. The challenge of state-level reform of education It has become increasingly common over the past 25 years for state legislatures to initiate large-scale education reform programs (Chira, 1994; Med ler, 1994; Steffy, 1993). This has occurred as the control of education funding has concomitantly moved from the local to the state level (Fuhrman, 1994; Hirth, 1996; Verstegen, 1994). While these reform initiatives have been relatively easy to create, they have proven much more difficult to implement successfully (Frahm, 1994; Harp, 1994). This difficulty can be ascribed to a range of factors. Important among them are: a) the perception by educators that reforms will not be sustained; b) educators' world views based on a fundamental assumption that new resources must be provided for any new policy; c) legislators who have only recently assumed responsibility at the state level for providing the bulk of funding for education, and who now feel empowered to formulate broad schemes for educational redesign but lack experience, staff support, or any clear sense of how schools will respond; d) a public that seems ambivalent at best toward educational reform, and lack of a clear constituency for change; e) deeply-ingrained cynicism that schools cannot be changed; f) the view that the reform programs are overly ambitious, take too much time to implement, or are otherwise impractical when overlaid on the current model of schooling (Conley 1997; Goldman and Conley 1997; Conk ling, 1997; National Governors' Association, 1994; The Nelson Report, 1997; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). While the goals of reforms have increasingly been centered on improved student learning (Rothman, 1993), states seem unsure if the appropriate focus of reform policy is to change teachers, change schools, change governance and accountability structures, or change all in some combination (Fuhrman, 1993).

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