ERIC Number: EJ1018575
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Nov
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0195-6744
EISSN: N/A
Place and Purpose in Public Education: School District Mission Statements and Educational (Dis)Embeddedness
Schafft, Kai A.; Biddle, Catharine
American Journal of Education, v120 n1 p55-76 Nov 2013
Local control of schooling has been considered a defining feature of the American school system; however, in the past several decades of public schooling has also increasingly been subject to the influence of extralocal institutional mandates that encourage curricular and organizational standardization. We conducted a content analysis of 480 school district mission statements from Pennsylvania to understand the relationships between school and place and the locally articulated purposes of schooling. Strikingly uniform use of language and themes across multiple district contexts suggests that (a) district mission statements may not be representative of locally articulated visions of schooling and (b) the influences of local context may be superseded by broader institutional discourses regarding the purposes of education and schooling.
Descriptors: School Districts, Public Education, Content Analysis, Position Papers, Correlation, School Community Relationship, Language Usage, Educational Objectives, Local Issues, Achievement Tests, Statistical Analysis, Coding
University of Chicago Press. Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, IL 60637. Tel: 877-705-1878; Tel: 773-753-3347; Fax: 877-705-1879; Fax: 773-753-0811; e-mail: subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu; Web site: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/aje.html
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Information Analyses
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Pennsylvania
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A