Using Funding to Tackle Inequities: A Comparative Study

Christine Forde

University of Glasgow SCEL

Christine Forde is Emeritus Professor at Glasgow University where she held a personal chair in Leadership and Professional Learning in the School of Education. Her research interests include leadership, headship preparation, professional learning and accomplished teaching. Current research projects include working with an international network on social justice leadership, teacher expertise and on leadership, governance and small systems and publishes regularly in academic journals in these areas. An important part of Professor Forde’s work has been working with policy communities to develop policy, strategies and programmes. Most recently she was involved in a range development for the Scottish Government, A Framework for Educational Leadership in Scotland, the General Teaching Council Scotland, Professional Standards; and for the Scottish Educational Leadership College on headship preparation programmes. She is currently working with the Scottish College for Educational Leadership and the Centre for School Leadership in Ireland. Professor Forde is a Fellow of the International Professional Development Association and a Honorary member of the Scottish Educational Research Association.

Lisa Driscoll

University of Tennessee

Lisa G. Driscoll is an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department at the University of Tennessee. Her professional career spans over three decades. She has held positions as a pk-12 science/mathematics/technology education teacher and science curriculum specialist in the public schools of Virginia. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Tennessee, she held university faculty positions in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. She served in an administrative capacity at Virginia Tech as a financial planning manager. Lisa teaches graduate courses in educational law, educational finance, school budgeting, the history of education, and human resources and supervision. Lisa Driscoll possesses an established research agenda in the field of education law and finance. Her research focuses on the changes over time of the legal, financial and policy implications in providing equitable and adequate, free, universal systems of public education in the fifty states. Her research concerning educational finance, law and policy has been published in many journals. In collaboration with others, she has prepared expert studies in public education finance for plaintiffs in Alaska and Missouri equity and adequacy litigation. She is currently the National (US) Education Finance Academy President-Elect and will assume the Presidency in April 2018. She serves as an editorial board member and reviewer for the Journal of Education Finance, NCPEA Policy Briefs, Education Leadership Review, and the International Journal of Leadership Preparation. In 2011, she was named a Distinguished Research and Practice Fellow in Education Finance by the National Education Finance Conference.

Deirdre Torrance

University of Edinburgh

Dr Deirdre Torrance is Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh where she was Director of Teacher Education Partnerships, as well as Director of the Masters in Educational Leadership and Management, including the national headteacher preparatory programme Into Headship, and also programmes to develop teacher leadership and middle leadership. Previously, Deirdre worked across different school sectors and then held the post of 3-14 Educational Adviser and subsequently the post of Quality Improvement Officer with the City of Edinburgh Council before taking up a career in higher education. Her PhD, completed in 2012, investigated ‘Distributed Leadership In Scottish Primary Schools: Myth or Actualities?’ Deirdre has published widely on issues related to distributed leadership, teacher leadership, social justice leadership and professional learning. She is currently part of the ISLDN international research project on social justice leadership. In addition, Deirdre is currently contributing to the BELMAS review of leadership and management in the UK, in particular relation to the Scottish review.

Abstract

Many educational systems are facing complex challenges in tackling what seems to be an ostensively enduring gap between the achievement of young people from economically advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. One common strategy to induce and sustain change is the use of targeted funding by state and/or national level governments, often directly to the schools to resolve what are wider societal issues of poverty and marginalisation. This strategy makes significant demands on school leadership. This paper compares the policy interventions based on targeted funding in two educational systems: in Scotland and in the state of Tennessee (US).

In Scotland, there have been two recent policy initiatives where previously established patterns of central funding filtered through local government have been altered significantly, with central government now directly funding schools: The Attainment Challenge and the Pupil Equity Fund (ScotGov, 2016; 2017). In Tennessee (US) the federal and state governments fund districts (often composed of multiple schools) in accordance with formulas that change annually (Tennessee Department of Education, 2016). These various funding arrangements have significant implications for school leaders.

The paper presents analysis of policies on funding and issues of equity from each system. Using a content analysis, the approach was a twofold examination of dominant patterns that explored (1) the manifest content identifying stated intentions and expectations and (2) the ‘latent’ content of underpinning discourses (Graneheim and Lundman, 2004). Four research questions were identified to frame the analysis:

what are the stated policy intentions?
in what ways is the funding targeted to disadvantaged students?
what are the stated expectations for the role of school leaders?
what are the constructions of fiscal and social inequity in education underpinning these policy intentions?

From the analysis and findings, consideration is given to the implications for the role of school leaders in tackling issues of poverty and inequity.

References

Graneheim, UH. & Lundman, B. (2004). Qualitative content analysis in nursing research: concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness, Nurse Education Today, 24:105-112.

Scottish Government (2016c) The Attainment Challenge. Edinburgh: ScotGov.

Scottish Government (2017) Pupil Equity Fund, Edinburgh ScotGov.

Taylor, S. (1997) Critical policy analysis: Exploring contexts, texts and consequences, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 18(1):23–35.

Tennessee Department of Education. (2016). Tennessee Basic Education Program Handbook for Computation. Retrieved from https://www.tn.gov/assets/entities/sbe/attachments/BEPHandbook_revised_July_2016.pdf

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.) (2009) Methods for critical discourse analysis. London: Sage.

Authors

Christine Forde (University of Glasgow SCEL)
Lisa Driscoll (University of Tennessee)
Deirdre Torrance (University of Edinburgh)

Topic Area

Completed Research

Session

S2H » Theatre Presentation (17:15 - Friday, 6th July, Lancaster 2)

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