Running head: 21ST CENTURY ETHICS & GOVERNANCE IN EDUCATION 21st Century Ethics & Governance in Education Eze Cedano Department of Education, St. Thomas University ELI – 802 – AP2 Ethics & Accountability Dr. Heidi A. Schmidt February 4, 2024 1 21ST CENTURY ETHICS & GOVERNANCE IN EDUCATION 2 21st Century Ethics & Governance in Education Educational organization governance and ethics are characterized by an elongated wrangle over schools’ curriculum objectives, local versus extrinsic governance, and how the twosome influences policymaking to affect a certain demographic of education stakeholders. In an ethical encounter with education venture philanthropists, the urgency of funding has opened a fissure where these donors make fund provisions as an attempt to transfigure the traditional structures of schools (Gross and Shapiro, 2014). By way of explanation, philanthropic beneficent acts position a neo-liberalism demand on school curriculum that pressures governance bodies for augmented accountability and use of marketplace strains on the schools’ curriculums. According to Gross and Shapiro, (2014), philanthropist donors expect and command a school’s organization broad curriculum that is duplicate and identical regardless of whether the students attend a deficient-based school or a resourceful school anywhere in the nation. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) policies and common core standards emphasizing accountability mobility, where marketplace potencies subjugate school curriculum objectives to stress the prevailing rigorous and continuous testing cycles while legitimizing inflexibility, gained a favorite position among neo-liberal philanthropist generous donors (Gross and Shapiro, 2014) The NCLB design intentionally acknowledged and sought to moderate academic inequalities of penurious students in urban dwellings. Nonetheless, with restricted and inadequate resources, schools still stumble toward the rear end of the academic achievement spectrum. In these low-achievement and under-resourced communities, philanthropist marketplace neo-liberal orientations argue for school vouchers, school lottery systems, school choice via charter schools, and other education settings with specialized learning (Gross and Shapiro, 2014). For parents who are already under financial calamity and are short of social capital, discerning among these educational mediums can be perplexing and obscure, and 21ST CENTURY ETHICS & GOVERNANCE IN EDUCATION 3 therefore, make choices with minor informed consent (Gross and Shapiro, 2014). The antithetical face-off between public schools and philanthropists incites a winner-takes-all dynamic. In utilizing the Multiple Ethical Paradigms, Gross and Shapiro, (2014) focal points accentuate how the ethics of justice, care, critique, and the justice of the profession scrutinizes the legal framework, freedom, and fairness, reveal that antithetical underpinnings are central to the venture philanthropist proceeds toward education. Encompassing the ethics of critique with inadequate resources, schools might need to catch up for adequately addressing students' learning (Gross and Shapiro, 2014). Because testing is the medium used to measure a school's effectiveness, the test results from these schools are prioritized for politically infused objectives instead of facilitating assistance to the school with limited resources (Gross and Shapiro, 2014). The ethics of care shows how effective test takers might be well-off with NCLB. However, for students whose primary language is not English (ELL), older students, and students engulfed in poverty, not being able to pass state exams may lead to psychosocial detriments and eventually dropping out of school. In the profession's ethics, parents whose children's education is a primary concern may have to decide about school choice while lacking sufficient objective information (Gross and Shapiro, 2014). Gross and Shapiro, (2014), Suksen et al. (2020), Sutherland (2022), and Bleiberg and Schueler (2021) instead argue for the precedence of rudimental democracy principles where community involvement in voicing school policy preferences, community participation in planning, decision, and disclosure, and other community and local governance forms, trumps the centralized rules of conduct put forward by philanthropist and the federal government. In relegating school governance to local control, prearranged democratic consultancy would involve education administrators, parents, concerned citizens, students, and professional educators in a formal dialogue about schools’ decision-making (Sutherland, 2024). For instance, democratic general elections would diminish the impediments of federal policies so that 21ST CENTURY ETHICS & GOVERNANCE IN EDUCATION 4 participatory community members can leverage quotidian mechanical designs of the inner parts of the schools (Gross and Shapiro, 2014; Sutherland, 2022). According to the researchers, there is a shortage of community-representative forms of governance in urban educational settings, countryside, and more modern suburban schools’ settings (Sutherland, 2022). In the largish distinctness encompassing the dilemma of an ethical justice-centered approach and the prevailing neo-liberal, federal, and state approaches to education, Vakil (2018), in conceptualizing ethics and the political agenda, calls attention to the fact that, in practice, competing ideologies can result in reliance of equity approaches that affect curriculum formation and implementation, belligerent exchanges, research out of context, disagreement upon policy pronouncement, funding propensity, and even negatively affect education stakeholders (Sutherland, 2022). Nonetheless, by interpreting perceptible disagreements about imposing priorities by communities and governance policymaking bodies to postulate impartiality fixed in the Multiple Ethical Paradigms, the ethical scheme can serve as groundwork to reflect on current and possible scenarios in school governance. According to Suksen et al. (2020), good governance in schools commissions school administrators, policymaking bodies, and educational leaders to demonstrate a zealous outcome in achieving ethical tenets appealing to school administration. Gross and Shapiro, (2014) encourages education administrators to develop a framework for scrutinizing their professional and personal code of conduct and to consider student-centered pedagogy as a way of ethical decision-making. Critical to the Multiple Ethical Paradigms, the researcher asks policymakers and governance bodies to make allowances for communities' dispositions. Local school control based on neo-liberal principles in education, federal, state, and philanthropic influences reveal a great divide that does not materialize community members' relationship in their efficacy to understanding and stimulating basic democratic foundations of school governance and policies. 21ST CENTURY ETHICS & GOVERNANCE IN EDUCATION References Bleiberg, F. J., & Schueler, E. B. (2021). Evaluating education governance: Does state takeover of schools affect student achievement? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 41 (1), 1 -35. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pam.22338 Shapiro, P. J., & Gross, J. S. (2014). At the crossroad: Venture philanthropy or a democratic ethical vision for educational leadership? Values and Ethics in Educational Administration, 11 (2), 1 – 8. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1186306 Sutherland, H. D. (2022). “Tell them local control is important:” A case study of democratic, community-centered school boards. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 30 (178), 1 – 27. https://epaa.asu.edu/index.php/epaa/article/view/7439 Suwannoi, P., Sanrattana, W., & Suksen, A. (2020). Indicators of good governance for administrators of the primary educational service area office. International Education Studies, 13 (4), 84 -93. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1249526 Vakil, S. (2018). Ethics, identity, and political vision: Toward a justice-centered approach to equity in computer science education. Harvard Educational Review, 88 (1), 26 – 53. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1173240 5
