THE ACHIEVEMENT GAPS AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE U.S. POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN LIGHT OF FOUCAULT'S GOVERNMENTALITY A Dissertation by SALVATORE ENRICO PAOLO INDIOGINE Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Gerald Kulm Committee Members, Lynn Burlbaw Yeping Li Kathryn McKenzie Head of Department, Yeping Li August 2013 Major Subject: Curriculum and Instruction Copyright 2013 Salvatore Enrico Paolo Indiogine ABSTRACT The research question that I posed for this investigation is how the principles of Foucault's governmentality can shed light on the political discourse on the achieve- ment gaps (AGs) at the federal level. The AGs have been for some years now an actively researched phenomenon in education in the U.S. as well as in the rest of the world. Many in the education profession community, politicians, social activists, researchers and others have con- sidered the differences in educational outcomes an indication of a grave deficiency of the educational process and even of the society at large. I began this work with a review of the educational research relevant to the above mentioned research question. Then I presented my research methodology and de- scribed how obtained my data and analyzed them both qualitatively and quantita- tively. The results of the analysis were discussed in the light of federal legislation, the work of Foucault on governmentality, and the relevant literature and woven into a series of narratives. Finally, I abstracted these narratives into a model for under- standing the federal policy discourse. This model consists of an intersection of eight antitheses: (1) the rgime of discipline versus the apparatuses of security, (2) the ap- peal to danger versus assurances of progress or even success, (3) the acknowledgement of the association between the AGs and the \disadvantage" of the students and the disregard and even prohibition of the equalization of school funding, (4) the desire for all students to be \equal," but they have to be dis-aggregated, the (5) injunction of research based instruction practices imposed by an ideology-driven reform policy, (6) we expect equal outcomes by using market forces, which are known to produce a diversity of results, (7) the teacher is a \highly qualified” professional, but also a ii functionary of the government, and finally (8) the claim to honor local control and school flexibility versus the unprecedented federalization and bureaucratization of the schools, which is a mirror of the contrast between the desire to establish appa- ratuses of security in schools and the means to establishing them through rgimes of discipline. iii DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to all those who lack their sacred and inalienable human rights in the world today and would like to honor the memory of those who have given their lives for the cause of the freedom of expression. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research has utilized hardware, software, and information resources provided by several organizations and companies and the author gratefully acknowledges them. Hardware resource: • Texas A&M University Brazos HPC cluster (http://brazos.tamu.edu) Information resources: • The library of Texas A&M University (http://library.tamu.edu) • The library of the University of Victoria (http://library.uvic.ca) • The U.S. Government Printing Office (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys) • Education Resource Information Center (http://www.eric.ed.gov) • Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) • Google Books (http://books.google.com) Software resources: • R-project (http://www.r-project.org) • RQDA (http://rqda.r-forge.r-project.org) • tm (http://tm.r-forge.r-project.org/) • LATEX(http://www.latex-project.org) • Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs) For details please refer to Section 3. v NOMENCLATURE AG(s) achievement gap(s) AYP Adequate Yearly Progress CCT conditional cash transfer ESEA Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 HBCU Historically Black Colleges and Universities IAG international achievement gap NAEP National Assessment of Educational Progress NAG national/racial/ethnic achievement gap NCLB No Child Left Behind (Act) of 2001 NDEA National Defense Education Act of 1958 NGO Non-governmental organization PISA Programme for International Student Assessment RTTT Race to the Top, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 SES socio-economic status SQL Structured Query Language TIMSS Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study USDE United States Department of Education vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT . ii DEDICATION . iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v NOMENCLATURE . vi TABLE OF CONTENTS . vii LIST OF FIGURES . x LIST OF TABLES . xviii 1. INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Statement of the Study . 1 1.2 Background of the Study . 1 1.3 Purpose of the Study . 5 1.4 Relevance of the Study . 7 1.5 Research Position and Strategy . 18 1.6 Organization of the Study . 19 2. LITERATURE REVIEW . 22 2.1 Introduction . 22 2.2 The Achievement Gaps . 23 2.3 Discourse Analysis of the Achievement Gaps . 35 2.4 Policy Analysis of the Achievement Gaps . 44 2.5 Governmentality . 51 3. METHODOLOGY . 58 3.1 Introduction . 58 3.2 Software and Hardware Resources . 65 3.3 The Research Process . 67 3.4 Data Retrieval and Processing . 69 3.5 Qualitative Data Analysis . 73 3.6 Quantitative Data Analysis . 90 3.7 Construction of the Narratives . 94 3.7.1 The First Dimension - The Ensemble . 96 vii 3.7.2 The Second Dimension - The Tendency . 100 3.7.3 The Third Dimension - The Process . 101 4. FINDINGS . 106 4.1 Introduction . 106 4.2 The Searched Document Collections and Their Documents . 107 4.2.1 The Presidential Documents . 107 4.2.2 The Congressional Hearings . 115 4.3 The Coded Statements . 121 4.3.1 Introduction . 121 4.3.2 Presidential Documents . 121 4.3.3 Congressional Hearings . 122 4.4 The Coded Paragraphs . 145 4.4.1 Introduction . 145 4.4.2 Presidential Documents . 147 4.4.3 Congressional Hearings . 149 4.5 The High Content Words . 159 5. DISCUSSION . 172 5.1 Introduction . 172 5.2 The Ensemble . 173 5.2.1 Introduction . 173 5.2.2 Procedures . 174 5.2.3 Analyses and Reflections . 190 5.2.4 Calculations and Tactics . 211 5.2.5 Population . 222 5.2.6 Form of Knowledge . 233 5.2.7 Apparatuses of Security . 247 5.2.8 Subsection Summary . 287 5.3 The Tendency . 296 5.4 The Process . 307 5.4.1 Introduction . 307 5.4.2 Federal versus Local Control . 310 5.4.3 Control and the Economy . 325 5.4.4 Control and Funding . 329 5.4.5 Control and Testing . 336 5.4.6 Control and Accountability . 344 5.4.7 Control and School Interventions . 350 5.4.8 Section Summary . 354 6. CONCLUSIONS . 363 6.1 The Crystallization of the Narratives . 363 6.1.1 The Ensemble . 363 6.1.2 The Tendency . 378 viii 6.1.3 The Process . 381 6.1.4 Section Summary . 386 6.2 Some Concluding Thoughts as an Educational Researcher . 387 6.3 Suggestions for Future Research . 392 NOTES . 397 REFERENCES . 401 APPENDIX A. STATEMENT MESSAGES . 426 A.1 Presidential Documents . 426 A.2 Congressional Hearings . 432 APPENDIX B. THE QDA CODES . 502 APPENDIX C. QDA CODING PLOTS . 506 C.1 Introduction . 506 C.2 Presidential Documents . 507 C.3 Congressional Hearings . 524 APPENDIX D. TEXT MINING . 560 D.1 Introduction . 560 D.2 Presidential Documents . 562 D.3 Congressional Hearings . 580 ix LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE Page 1.1 Frequency of \Math Education" and \Achievement Gap" . 8 1.2 Frequency of \Global Competition" . 9 2.1 The Literature Review - Relationships between Searches and Review 24 2.2 The Culture/Structure Continuum, In-school and Out-of-school Factors 38 2.3 The Culture/Structure and Economy/Justice Continua . 49 2.4 The Three Continua . 50 2.5 Three Dimensions of Governmentality . 52 3.1 Workflow of the Research Process - Overview . 59 3.2 Workflow of the Research Process . 64 3.3 Data Search . 71 3.4 Data Retrieval . 72 3.5 Data Processing . 74 3.6 Data Import . ..