Discover how top-down, policy-into-practice educational mandates have adversely affected Indigenous communities in the United States? midwestern core. The author scrutinizes how leaders and intermediaries in Nebraska, involved at various tiers of policy development and reform, conceptualized and implemented school accountability policy in Indian country. In particular, Phillips explores state-directed reform efforts in a school on the Santee Sioux Reservation consistently labeled as failing and persistently experiencing intervention from outsiders presented as experts. The book interrogates who gets to define educational quality, who counts as an expert on improving schools, and what improvement actually looks like. Additionally, the text highlights the way local educators and members of the community employed everyday tactics and incognito acts of improvement to reshape school turnaround efforts. Readers will see what is possible for education policy done with?rather than to?Native communities and schools, with lessons that have relevance beyond the midwestern states.

Book Features:

Offers an education system reform perspective that has an impact in Indian country. Introduces the concept of culturally responsive and sustaining policymaking. Explores how policy reform efforts are implemented across tiers of the educational system, from the legislative floor to a local classroom. Shows how local actors assert agency to remake policy spaces and improve policy implementation.

Contents

Series Foreword ? James A. Banks ?ix

Foreword: Toward a Praxis of Indigenous Education Sovereignty Teresa L. McCarty ?xiii

Acknowledgments ?xix

Introduction ?1
Democracy and School Reform ?3
Grounding Terminology and Conceptual Framing ?4
School Policy Reform in Indian Country ?8
Policy Culture and Culturally Sustaining Policymaking ?9
Methodology and Positionality ?10
Overview of Chapters ?12

1. ?So What? Lessons Learned and Why They Matter ?15
Accountability: What Came Before ?18
No Child Left Behind ?20
NCLB Limbo ?21
The Role of State Departments of Education ?25
SDEs, Policy, and Power ?27
Spatial Tactics as Resistance ?28

2. ?Welcome to Flyover Country ?29
Accountability and Nebraska?s AQuESTT ?30
The Nebraska Way ?31
A Nebraska Way of Education Governance ?33
The Nation?s Only Unicameral ?33
A Bill?s Journey Through the Unicameral ?34
A Brief History of Schooling and Governance in Nebraska ?35
Policy Landscape and Key Figures ?36
The Shifting Roles of NDE ?40

3. ?A Broader Story Than the Village of Santee ?43
Early Interactions with Colonizers ?44
A Dakota Education ?45
?Big Knives? and the ?Physical and Moral Degradation? of Reservation Life ?47
School as a Policy Tool ?48
Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Self-Education ?50
Agency, Survivance, and Schooling ?52
What?s a ?Good? Education? ?53
Culturally Sustaining and Responsive Pedagogy ?54
Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Education Policymaking ?55

4. ?Policy Crafted on the Legislative Floor ?57
The Introduction of LB438 ?58
Public Hearing: A Better Way to ?Fix? Schools ?59
LB438 and the Second Session of Nebraska?s 103rd Legislature ?61
LB438 Becomes Law ?69

5. ?Nebraska?s AQuESTT: Bolder, Broader, Better ?71
The SBOE Hires a New Commissioner of Education ?72
From Vision to Plans on Paper ?76
Codifying AQuESTT ?79
Sketching out AQuESTT?s Implementation ?80
Bolder, Broader, Better ?81
Inching Closer to Classification/Designation ?83
The First AQuESTT Classification and Designation ?85
A Retrospective View ?88

6. ?Run by Outsiders ?91
Initial Thoughts About Improvement in Santee ?92
A Diagnostic Review ?95
State Plan Development ?98
Priority Schools: Developing Progress Plans ?100
Progress Plan Approval and Initial Implementation ?106

7. ?Compliance, Kind Of ?115
Reporting First-Year Progress ?122
Continued Compliance, Kind of . . . and Incognito Improvement Efforts ?124
Incognito Improvement Acts Endure ?129

8. ?Wait, What Just Happened? ?133
The ?Consultocracy? ?134
Sovereignty and Who Gets to Define Educational Quality ?136
Everyday Tactics and Incognito Acts of Improvement ?138
The Decolonizing Work of Culturally Sustaining Policymaking ?139
Conclusion ?141

Afterword ?143
A Final Trip to Santee ?143
The iSanti Ozuyapi at State ?143

References ?145

Index ?161

About the Author ?171