Educational policies explicitly implemented in order to reduce educational gaps and promote access and success for disenfranchised youth can backfire—and often have the unintended result of widening those gaps. In this interdisciplinary collection of case studies, contributors examine cases of policy backfire, when policies don’t work, have unintended consequences, and when policies help. Although policy reform is thought of as an effective way to improve schooling structures and to diminish the achievement gap, many such attempts to reform the system do not adequately address the legacy of unequal policies and the historic and pervasive inequalities that persist in schools. Exploring the roots of school inequality and examining often-ignored negative policy outcomes, contributors illuminate the causes and consequences of poor policymaking decisions and demonstrate how policies can backfire, fail, or have unintended success.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Conceptualizing the Intricacies that are Concomitant in Educational Policy Making that Determine Success, Backfire and Everything in Between
Leticia Oseguera, Miguel Abad, Jacob Kirksey, Briana Hinga, Gilberto Conchas, and Michael Gottfried
Part 1: Backfire
Chapter 2: How Equity and Social Justice Urban Education Choice Campaigns in Detroit are Masquerading Backfire and the Worsening the Status Quo
Cassie J. Brownell
Chapter 3: When Policies that Impact Students with Significant Disabilities in Michigan Backfire
Mark E. Deschaine
Chapter 4: When Zero-Tolerance Discipline Policies in the United States Backfire
Hugh Potter and Brian Boggs
Chapter 5: When Free Schools in England and Charter Schools in the United States Backfire
Graham Downes and Catherine A. Simon
Part 2: Failure
Chapter 6: When High-Stakes Accountability Measures Impact Promising Practices in an Indigenous-serving Charter School
V. Anthony-Stevens
Chapter 7: How Public-Private Partnerships Contribute to Educational Policy Failure
Frank Fernandez, Karla I. Loya, and Leticia Oseguera
Chapter 8: The Failure of Accountability in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
Michael R. Ford & William Velez
Chapter 9: How Centralized Implementation Policies Failed the Austrian New Middle School Process
Corinna Geppert
Part 3: Unintended
Chapter 10: The Unintended Consequences of School Vouchers: Rise, Rout and Rebirth
Aaron Saiger
Chapter 11: Challenges and Unintended Consequences of Student Centered Learning
Lea Hubbard and Amanda Datnow
Chapter 12: School Discipline Policies That Result in Unintended Consequences for Latino Male Students’ College Aspirations
Adrian H. Huerta, Shannon M. Calderone, and Patricia M. McDonough
Chapter 13: When Special Education Policy in Ontario Create Unintended Consequences
Lauren Jervis and Sue Winton
Part 4: Success
Chapter 14: Latina/o Farm-Worker Parent Leadership Retreats as Sites of Agency, Community Cultural Wealth, and Success
Pedro E. Nava and Argelia Lara
Chapter 15: Bilingual and Biliterate Skills as Cross-Cultural Competence Success
Ricardo González-Carriedo and Alexandra Babino
Chapter 16: Diversity-Driven Charters and the Construction of Urban School Success
Priscilla Wohlstetter, Amy K. Wang, and Matthew M. Gonzales
Chapter 17: Reflecting on the Institutional Processes for College Success among Chicanos in the Context of CrisisLouie F. Rodríguez, Eduardo Mosqueda, Pedro E. Nava, & Gilberto Q. Conchas
Chapter 18: Reframing the Problematic Achievement Gap Narrative to Structure Educational Success
Robert K. Ream, Sarah Ryan, and Tina Yang
About the Author :
Gilberto Q. Conchas is Professor of Educational Policy and Social Context, University of California, Irvine, USA.
Michael A. Gottfried is Assistant Professor of Education Policy, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
Briana M. Hinga is Assistant Professor of Clinical Education, University of Southern California, USA.
Leticia Oseguera is an Associate Professor of Higher Education at the Pennsylvania State University, USA.
