Foucault's Toolbox
"coerces by means of observation" and was enacted through district/state monitors walking the halls during testing.
What is hierarchical observation?
The acronym the researchers use throughout for "Student Growth and Achievement."
What is SGA?
The total number of daily written reflections analyzed across the TFA dataset.
What is 5,897?
The three interconnected "fronts" the authors use as their central metaphor.
What are political climate change, the testing industrial complex, and the mesoscale evaluation system?
Smagorinsky proposes spacing out high-stakes teacher evaluations to this interval, rather than conducting them annually.
What is 3-5 years?
This mode of disciplinary power punishes by comparing individuals to a norm.
What is normalizing judgment?
Thatcher's acronym for the idea that neoliberal policy is the only viable path
What is TINA (There Is No Alternative)?
The number of TFA Corps Members whose reflections were analyzed.
What is 38?
This governor's A+ Education Reform Act (2000-2002) is framed as "calm seas" — equity-driven reform coupled with funding.
Who is Governor Roy Barnes?
This widely-used evaluation instrument, built around four domains (planning/preparation, classroom environment, instruction, professional responsibilities).
What is the Danielson framework/instrument?
This mode of disciplinary power is described as a "surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish,"
What is examination?
This term, coined by Ball (2003), describes judging individuals by their ability to perform and produce measurable results.
What is performativity?
The number of different schools across Achievement District where these CMs taught.
What is 26?
This federal program, created in 2009, offered NCLB waivers to states willing to adopt charter schools and test-based teacher accountability.
What is Race to the Top (RT3)?
Smagorinsky argues teacher assessment should include this category of "meritorious" conduct — coaching, sponsoring clubs, helping students before/after school — which current systems don't reward.
What is engaging with students outside class?
The 1975 Foucault text the authors use as their primary theoretical lens.
What is Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison?
This Greek myth is the extended metaphor the authors use to describe teachers and students endlessly pushing toward an unattainable, narrowly-defined version of success.
What is the myth of Sisyphus?
This code was the single most frequent in the entire dataset, appearing 669 times.
What is Student Growth/Achievement (SGA)?
This pre-service teacher performance assessment, developed by Stanford's SCALE and administered by a unit of Pearson, costs pre-service teachers roughly $300 per submission.
What is the edTPA?
Smagorinsky uses this vivid metaphor for high-stakes testing under Race to the Top: tests aimed broadly enough to eliminate ineffective teachers but that also cause massive collateral damage.
What are "educational drone strikes"?
This is the term for the process by which normalizing homogenizes while also differentiating, categorizing, and tracking individuals against a norm
What is normalization (as a disciplinary/socializing practice)?
This organization is described as relying on a "white savior" master narrative and positioning CMs as the sole solution to the achievement gap.
What is Teach For America (TFA)?
This code, capturing teachers' and students' affective responses to the testing climate, was coded 567 times.
What is Emotional Language?
The dollar amount stripped from Georgia public education under Governor Perdue's austerity cuts between 2003 and 2010.
What is 4.5 billion dollars?
Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder's (2008) analogy Smagorinsky invokes to critique test-based assessment — searching for something valuable in the easiest place to look rather than the right one.
What is "searching for lost car keys beneath the lamp post"?