In this article, Jennifer Jellison

For the last two-and-a-half years, authors Amy Stuart Wells, Alejandra Lopez, Janelle Scott, and Jennifer Jellison Holme have been engaged with a team of researchers in a comprehensive qualitative study of charter schools in ten California school districts. They have emerged from this study with a new understanding of how the implementation of a specific education policy can reflect much broader social changes, including the transformation from modernity to postmodernity. Given that much of the literature on postmodernity is theoretical in nature, this article invites readers to wrestle with the complexity that results when theory meets the day-to-day experiences of people trying to start schools. In their study, the authors examined how people in different social locations define the possibilities for localized social movements, and how they see the potential threat of greater inequality resulting from this reform within and among communities. They started with a framework that questioned how charter schools came into being at this particular time that is characterized by global economic developments and demands for a more deregulated state education system. This framework allowed the authors to examine the particularistic nature of a reform that defies universal definitions. Their purpose was not to definitively state whether or not charter school reform is "working," or whether or not it is leading to greater social stratification across broad categories of race, class, and gender. Rather, the authors focused on understanding how modern identities and postmodern ideologies converge and, thus, for whom charter school reform is "working," under what conditions, and on whose terms.

While there is a robust literature examining the patterns and causes of teacher turnover, few articles to date have critically examined the measures of turnover used in these studies. Yet, an assessment of the way turnover is measured is important, as the measures become the means by which the “problem” of turnover becomes defined and its varying dimensions understood. In this conceptual essay, we outline a typology of teacher turnover measures, discussing both measures used in existing teacher turnover literature as well as new measures that we have developed. We illustrate each of the measures using 10 years of administrative data from Texas. We discuss how the measures can help illuminate different ways in which staff instability can affect schools and identify schools that suffer from particularly severe staffing issues. We conclude with implications for policymakers and researchers who may seek to apply these measures to future empirical studies.

High school exit exams are affecting a growing majority of high school students. Although exit testing polices were enacted with the goal of improving student achievement as well as postsecondary outcomes, they also have the potential for negative effects. To better understand the effects of exit testing policies, in this article the authors systematically review 46 unique studies that pertain to four domains of expected influence: student achievement, graduation, postsecondary outcomes, and school response. The evidence reviewed indicates that exit tests have produced few of the expected benefits and have been associated with costs for the most disadvantaged students. This review suggests policy modifications that may attenuate some of the negative effects.

No abstract