L’école et la justice sociale. Une étude de cas autour de No Child Left Behind

Cet article est fondé sur une revue de la littérature concernant la loi américaine No Child Left Behind (NCLB). À partir de l’étude de cette loi, de son implantation et de ses effets sur l’équité et les performances scolaires, cet article vise à comprendre dans quelle mesure une politique d’équité parvient — ou pas — à limiter les inégalités scolaires. Après avoir décrit les instruments mobilisés par NCLB, nous explicitons le rôle de sa mise en œuvre dans la répartition des biens éducatifs, en nous demandant quels principes institutionnels organisent cette répartition et en mettant en lumière les mécanismes de découplage entre les intentions de NCLB et leur réalisation. Il ressort de nos analyses que la loi présente des effets pervers : les écoles pauvres et ethniquement diverses ont plus de probabilités de ne pas respecter les exigences de NCLB et d’en être sanctionnées, notamment financièrement. Ainsi, le principe de « pressure without support » pénalise les plus défavorisés. In fine, la thèse défendue dans cet article est qu’une politique éducative de justice sociale ne peut se réaliser que si elle se fonde sur une vision juste des sources des inégalités et si elle considère de façon équitable l’ensemble des acteurs des processus éducatifs.

Improving Low-Performing Schools: A Meta-Analysis of Impact Evaluation Studies

The public narrative surrounding efforts to improve low-performing K–12 schools in the United States has been notably gloomy. But what is known empirically about whether school improvement works, which policies are most effective, which contexts respond best to intervention, and how long it takes? We meta-analyze 141 estimates from 67 studies of post–No Child Left Behind Act turnaround policies. On average, policies had moderate positive effects on math and no effect on English Language Arts achievement on high-stakes exams. We find positive impacts on low-stakes exams and no evidence of harm on nontest outcomes. Extended learning time and teacher replacements predict greater effects. Contexts serving majority-Latina/o populations saw the largest improvements. We cannot rule out publication bias entirely but find no differences between peer-reviewed versus nonpeer-reviewed estimates.

Barriers of School Transition for Children with Disability: Lived Experience of Parents in Kathmandu Valley

This study aimed to explore the barrier of school transition for the children with disability from the parent's prospective. This study adopted qualitative method along with hermeneutics phenomenology. On the behalf of philosophical orientation, multiple realities were ontological basis and lived experiences of participants were epistemological assumption. The construct of critical disability theory was applied in this study. Purposefully 5 parents were selected from Kathmandu Valley. Data sources included field's notes, indepth interviews and artifacts. Interviewed data were transcribed and categorized to develop theme. Result revealed that several challenges such as awareness, attitude, accessibility, misconception, infrastructure, lack of policy implementation and ill motivation about disability are the major barrier towards transition. The perception of parents toward special school and rehabilitation centre are inadequately supporting to smooth transition. This study might be valuable support for policy maker in ensuring the no child left behind for the welfare state.

Agile Scrum Pedagogy: Leveraging Collaborative Corporate Practices to Enhance Engagement

Accountability legislation such as No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act ushered in an era of right-answer based reforms. Teachers, students, parents as well as community and corporate leaders lament the legislation’s negative impact on critical and creative thinking skills. Recent educational reform proposals focus on reversing the accountability trends. The change is propelling instructors at all levels to consider making contextually relevant pedagogical modifications. Business entities increasing resolve to adopt Agile Scrum principles offers educators an intriguing, authentic teamwork learning strategy. This article presents a business professor’s journey from content-driven to Agile Scrum’s context-embracing classroom instruction. Results from this action research affirm Agile Scrum principles that suggest engagement increases when instructors provide students flexibility, fast-paced opportunities to absorb content.

No child left behind, nor singled out: is it possible to combine adaptive instruction and inclusive pedagogy in early math software?

The article addresses the challenge of combining adaptive and inclusive instruction in early math software, that is, to provide different kinds of support and challenges to different individuals in response to their different needs—yet avoid exposing children (whether far behind or far ahead) as being different. Arguments for adaption as well as inclusion are discussed, and an evaluative user study is conducted in which 42 3- to 6-year-old preschool children made use of a digital play-&-learn game for early math designed to combine adaptive instruction with inclusion during a period of 6 weeks. Data logging, performance measures, observations of children playing, and interviews with teachers are used to evaluate whether the adaptive and inclusive strategies worked out as intended. Results indicate that the goals of inclusion as well as the goals of adaptivity were met. A preliminary conclusion is that it is possible to combine adaptation and inclusion in early math software.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF U.S. INCLUSIVE EDUCATION FEDERAL LEGISLATION

The relevance of the research problem tackling the inclusive education evolution in the United States is explained by the fact that it the USA has been a leader in developing a rights-based model of inclusive education. The research is conditioned by the current stage of national education that undergoes modernization, the steady course of Ukraine to create an inclusive school, and government’s request to implement its initiatives. The purpose of this article is to present a reconsidered historical analysis of the inclusive education in the USA that represents an expansion of earlier research conducted by the author. Methods applied include historical and comparative research. The author’s periodization that describes the phases in the inclusive education development in the USA is presented. This is based on the chronologically arranged U.S. federal legislation related to ensuring equal rights and opportunities. It is stated that some court decisions and federal legislation that incorporated court decisions clearly marked the phases in inclusive education development. These legislative milestones beginning each phase include the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), the Education of the Handicapped Students Act Amendments (1986), No Child Left Behind Act (2001), and Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). Consequently, there are five phases in the inclusive education development and each phase reflects the general trend in the U.S. inclusive education. The initial phase is referred to as the active social movement for the right to education (1954–1974). In the second phase, children with disabilities were integrated into regular schools through mainstreaming (1975–1985). Then comes the so-called Regular Education Initiative phase or full inclusion (1986–2000), followed by the accountable inclusive education phase (2001–2014). Finally, the phase of the high-quality inclusive education started in 2015 and continues today.

Serbian Sign Language: officially recognised, yet not used in deaf education

The No Child Left Behind Act in the US (2001), the programme “Write it Right” in Australia (1994) and the Council of Europe’s project Languages of Schooling (2006) point towards a growing awareness of unequal access to education. All over the world legislative initiatives have been taken to ensure that all students have access, both in terms of social cost and linguistic barriers (Reffell & McKee, 2009). However, in some countries, the deaf community with its often invisible cultural linguistic identity appears not to benefit from the change in ideology towards equal education. In this paper we are looking at one such deaf community, i.e. the Serbian deaf community, and at past and present language ideologies, attitudes and practices with respect to their language, i.e. Serbian Sign Language or SZJ. We start by situating these ideological positions of language users and educators within a broader historical context by giving the first account of SZJ, its place in education and its history within the Western Balkan sociopolitical and linguistic context. We then focus on a thematic analysis of data from interviews with deaf signers and teachers about how they experienced and perceived language in education. This revealed that deaf signers see SZJ as the most important building block in their learning process whilst the teachers emphasise hearing as the major factor in learning. The findings clearly point at a discrepancy in sign language ideologies between deaf SZJ users and their teachers resulting in conflicting attitudes and practices in Serbia today. Keywords: Serbian Sign Language, deaf education, language policy, practice, language attitudes

Test-Based Accountability and the Effectiveness of School Finance Reforms

A recent literature provides new evidence that school resources are important for student outcomes. This paper examines whether school accountability systems that incentivize performance (such as No Child Left Behind) raise the efficiency with which additional resources get spent. We leverage the timing of school finance reforms to compare funding impacts on student test scores between states that had accountability in place at the time of the reform and states that did not. The results show that finance-reform-induced increases in student performance are driven by those states where the reform was accompanied by the presence of test-based accountability.