Educational System Building in a Changing Educational Sector - Environment, Organization, and the Technical Core

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dabgoudw

The institutional environment of U.S. school systems has changed markedly over the past quarter century as standards and test-based accountability became central in policy texts and educational discourse. The article examines how system leaders make sense of these evolving conditions while building educational systems to improve instruction—the core technology of schooling. It analyzes which policy cues leaders notice, and how they frame, interpret, and use them to construct more coherent instructional infrastructure.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages36

Reading Time1 h 31 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Standards and accountability as environmental transformation

Educational system building and infrastructure

Meaning of educational infrastructure

Educational System Building in a Changing Educational Sector: Environment, Organization, and the Technical Core Educational Policy 2019, Vol. 33(6) 846–881 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/0895904819866269](DOI: 10.1177/0895904819866269)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/0895904819866269)[journals.sagepub.com/home/epx](journals.sagepub.com/home/epx) James P. Spillane 1, Jennifer L. Seelig2, Naomi L. Blaushild 1, David K. Cohen3, and Donald J. Peurach3 Abstract [The institutional environment of U.S. school](The institutional environment of U.S. school) systems has changed considerably over a quarter century as standards and test-based accountability became central ideas in policy texts and discourses about improving education. We explore [how U.S. school](how U.S. school) systems are managing in this changed environment by focusing on system leaders’ sense-making about their environments as they attempt to build educational systems to improve instruction, the core technology of schooling. We identify the policy texts and discourses system leaders notice and their framings, interpretations, and uses of these cues as they build educational infrastructuresto support more coherent instructional visions. We argue that school systems’ educational infrastructure building efforts were intended at coupling their systems’ formal organization with particular environmental cues in an effort to influence classroom instruction. In turn, we argue that these educational infrastructure building efforts can 1 Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA 2University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA 3University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA Corresponding Author: James P. Spillane, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Email: [j-spillane@northwestern.edu](j-spillane@northwestern.edu) simultaneously be motivated by, and in pursuit of, institutional ritual and technical rationality. Keywords educational infrastructure, standards reform, educational policy, organizational theory, accountability Introduction Over three decades, the standards and accountability movement has contributed to something of a transformation of the environment in which [U.S. school](U.S. school) systems operate. Policy-makers, professional associations, school reformers, researchers, popular media, and philanthropists pressed for common learning standards and accountability based on student achievement; these ideas became commonplace in conversations about improving instruction. With its origins partially in systemic reform, the standards and accountability movement sought to do at least two things (Smith & O’Day, 1991): First, to bring more coherence to the policy environment in which U.S. public school systems operate by defining learning and performance standards for all students, creating assessments to measure student mastery of these standards, and holding school systems and schools accountable for student performance on those assessments. Second, to incentivize public school systems to build and leverage more coherent educational infrastructures to support instruction anchored in these learning standards. Most research on the standards and accountability movement has focused on particular policies, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and suggests that these policies influence, among other things, what teachers and school leaders do, including marginalizing low-stakes school subjects, diverting resources to students on the cusp of passing state tests, and spending time teaching test-taking skills (Amrien & Berliner, 2002; Booher-Jennings, 2006; Darling-Hammond, 2004; Firestone, Mayrowetz, & Fairman, 1998; Jacob, 2005; Nichols & Berliner, 2007; Smith, 1998; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2004; Valenzuela, 2005; Wilson & Floden, 2001) . Some evidence suggests that high-stakes testing has increased student

FAQs

What major changes in the U.S. education environment does the article describe?

It describes how standards and test-based accountability became central policy ideas, reshaping the environment in which U.S. school systems operate.

How do the authors characterize educational system building?

Educational system building shifts toward instructionally focused systems by defining instruction and delegating responsibility to system actors for organizing and coordinating instruction.

What is meant by educational infrastructure in this article?

Educational infrastructure refers to the roles, structures, and resources school systems use to coordinate and support instruction, maintain instructional quality, and enable improvement.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dabgoudw