CTP STUDY DESCRIPTION

Core Substudy:
State Policy Environments & the Quality of Teaching

Principal Investigator:

Michael Knapp, University of Washington

Overview:

This investigation, largely subsumed within the Core Study, examined two central issues in the way states construct and promulgate teaching policy: (1) how state level actors seek to manage the different elements and strands of the teaching policy environment, and, (2), the way their efforts to do so interact with other state-level educational reforms, especially those aimed at student learning (e.g., standards-based reforms). Case study investigations in four states (CA, NC, NY, and WA) described the teacher policy environment at state level, analyzed how it has developed and what sustained it, identified its points of interface with the local level, traced its implications for individual teachers' practice, and assessed the association between state teaching policy strategies and aggregate-level student performance.

Main Research Questions:

1. What policies have actors at the state level brought to bear on the improvement of teaching (and learning) in the state? Are these policies strategically linked in any way?
2. How have the state's teaching policies—and policy strategy (if any)—come into being? What forces and conditions sustain it over time?
3. In what ways do state teaching policies interact with, reinforce, or interfere with other policies in the state and with key features of the state context?
4. In what ways (if at all) does the state teaching policy environment affect the conditions under which teachers work or their response to these conditions? What implications are there for students' opportunities to learn and for their achievement?

Method:

Case study research, document analysis

Status:

Research Completed

Publications:

None to date.