Improving School Improvement: Examining Coordination, Collaboration, and Learning During State Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act
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Authors
Green, Jordyn E.
Issue Date
2024
Type
Dissertation
Language
Keywords
Collective Policy Learning , Every Student Succeeds Act , Interorganizational Collaboration , Multilevel Governance , Policy Coordination , School Improvement
Alternative Title
Abstract
The implementation of public policy increasingly occurs within complex, multilevel governance systems that are constrained by limited administrative capacity and resources. Consequently, it is essential to optimize the design of multilevel governance arrangements to ensure that policy implementation outcomes are aligned with established policy goals. This dissertation investigates whether and how multilevel governance arrangements can be designed to accommodate contextual characteristics and encourage critical governance process outcomes (i.e., coordination, collaboration, and collective learning) during the state implementation of school improvement processes. School improvement processes are required under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which is the primary federal law that governs K-12 education in the United States. Under ESSA, the lowest performing schools in each state are identified using data from accountability systems to participate in improvement processes. During these processes, state education agencies (SEA), school districts, schools, and other local stakeholders are tasked with collaboratively developing and implementing school improvement plans using research-based evidence and data from the accountability system. While implementing ESSA, SEAs vary in how they structure the implementation process, specifically regarding the degree to which the process is centralized at the state-level, which may have important implications for policy outcomes. Using a mixed-method, comparative case study of school improvement processes in two U.S. states, this dissertation investigates how variation in state implementation approach fosters or inhibits policy implementation. The results indicate that a state's implementation approach impacts coordination by structuring how different levels of government interact, share information, and influence policy, and suggest how multilevel governance arrangements can be designed to balance trade-offs in centralization and the delegation of authority across governance systems during policy implementation (Chapter 2). The results also demonstrate that during policy implementation, formal administrative mechanisms can be intentionally designed to foster and reinforce critical social dynamics that serve as the foundation for ongoing interorganizational collaboration (Chapter 3). Lastly, findings suggest that the substantive activities of policies drive the emergence of information and technological resources and tools that increase information access and facilitate the use of information to promote collective learning, and can be modified to accommodate local contextual characteristics and embody local values (Chapter 4). The findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of policy implementation in complex multilevel governance systems and provide practical recommendations for improvements in education governance.