0.13 Sampson, p., & Roberts, k. (october 2011). historical comparison

Ncpea education leadership review: portland conference special edition, volume 12, number 3 (october 2011)

Introduction

Increasingly public schools are criticized from many stakeholders. These criticisms create suggested reform and implementation of those reforms. Public school leaders have been responsive to reform efforts during the different eras in American history. However, some reforms have been initiated with little understanding of past reforms (Sarason, 1993). Time is needed to re-examine past reforms, the leaders behind the reforms, and the legislative acts that impacted the reforms for the purpose of understanding the reforms in the context of history.

The importance of historical examination is not new as it was presented earlier by Tyack and Cuban (1995) because “institutions and people are the product of history and they interpret past events when they make choices about the present and future” (p. 6). Other authors suggested that a majority of reforms have been simple redesigns, reforms around peripheral issues, or different names for similar initiatives (Fullan, 2010; Lunenburg, 2011; Reese, 2011). Cuban (1990) stated that reforms could be called first order changes or second order changes for how they played out in classrooms. One example of a reform was a first order change in the Chicago schools. Byrk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppesca,&Easton (2010) identified the changes in the Chicago Schools around instructional guidance, professional capacity, learning climate, and parent/community relations. They found that leadership was a key force of the changes in order for there to be improvements. Others have also identified the principal’s leadership style, teacher’s professional community, and assistance rather than contextual variables of the school (Kurki, Boyle,&Aladjem, 2006).

The discourse analysis of this study examined the nature of the words in speeches and legislation juxtaposed against social, economic, and political contexts that actually guided the educational leaders to implement the reforms. It is this examination that can help current educational leaders more clearly understand school reforms (Woodside-Jiron&Gehsmann, 2009). As Katz (1975) stated, “no historian can entirely divorce the categories with which he approaches the contemporary world from those with which he studies the past” (p.xxiii).

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study focused on leaders’ speeches and legislative acts that impacted public education and reforms over the last 100 years. This analysis was conducted to present a clearer understanding of the different reforms, their impact on school improvement, the sustainability of the reforms, and educate leaders on future decisions for reform in the United States. Further, the study examined the political and social influences by using a historical comparative analysis with a linguistic examination of presidential speeches and legislative acts.