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GSE Profiles
Staff Contact: Ann Foley, Brian Rugg
Heinrich Mintrop
Associate Professor
Policy, Organization, Measurement, and Evaluation
Office: 3647 Tolman Hall
Phone: (510) 642-5334
Email: mintrop at berkeley.edu
Website:
Office: Policy Organization Measurement Evaluation (POME)
Phone: 642-0709 (AF); 643-4733 (BR)
Email: afoley at berkeley.edu; brianerugg at berkeley.edu
Heinrich Mintrop was a teacher in both the United States and Germany before he entered into his academic career. He received an MA in Political Science and German Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin (1978) and a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University (1996). As a researcher, he explores how educational policies form institutional structures that in turn shape teaching and learning in schools. He is particularly interested in the tension between student achievement and citizenship, accountability and democratization. He examined these relationships, first, in East German schools that underwent fundamental changes after the collapse of socialism. A number of articles and a book Educational Change and Social Transformation (Falmer 1996), published with Hans Weiler and Elisabeth Fuhrmann, resulted from this work. He co-authored (with Bruno Losito, CEDE, Italy) The Teaching of Civic Education, a chapter in the IEA Report on Civic Education that looks at the conditions of Civic Education teaching in 28 countries.In recent years, Dr. Mintrop has turned to the issue of school accountability, particularly in low performing schools. This work has recently resulted in the book Schools on Probation: How Accountability Works (and Doesn't Work) , at Teachers College Press. He has been awarded a Carnegie Corporation scholarship to study school accountability systems comparatively in the United States and Germany. At UC Berkeley, he is, among other things, involved in the Doctoral Program for Policy and Organization and the Principal Leadership Institute that aims to prepare strong leaders for high-need urban schools.
"Educators in schools and administrations who serve students placed in conditions of social inequality and disadvantage do not directly control state or national policies; they cannot, at will, step out of the basic bureaucratic set-up of school systems; nor are they free to ignore powerful traditions held by society. Constrained by these larger forces, they are nevertheless challenged to create decent, fair, and high achieving schools. What relationships do they forge under these circumstances? What learnings do they engage in? How do they make sense of their reality? How is it that some educators insist on expanding humanity's potential in the face of great obstacles while others succumb? And how do political and organizational forces help or hinder? To find answers to these questions, I draw from a variety of disciplines and scholarship on school effectiveness and improvement, organizational learning, policy implementation, and the moral-emotional dynamics of teachers' work. I see school improvement as a force field, at the core of which is the schools' educational ethos, the uniquely educational quest for human beings to develop their humanity beyond expectations.
Crisis makes this ethical and professional core most visible. In crisis, schools are under stress to reassert or redefine what they are all about. I have had the opportunity to explore two such times of crisis: the transformation of the East German educational system from authoritarian socialism to liberal capitalism and the imposition of a new high-stakes accountability regime on American inner-city schools in distress. In each case, external pressures constricted potential, but also opened up new opportunities for development.
Crisis is also often at hand when schools try to turn around, make strenuous efforts to overcome stagnation or decline, and open up new educational potential in the face of societal neglect. Understanding these processes has been my more recent project. While my earlier inquiries were endeavors of the detached observer, I have come to realize that these new understandings require me to make my research count in the trials and tribulations of ongoing improvement efforts and invest in their best possible outcomes. Towards that end, I am seeking connections to prospective doctoral students and school leaders. As the director of the Leadership for Educational Equity Program (LEEP), Berkeley's doctoral program for leadership development above the principal level, I am striving towards an intense connection between research and practice."
1978 MA, Political Science and German Literature, Freie Universität Berlin
1996 Ph.D., Education, Stanford University
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BooksSchools on Probation: How Accountability Works (And Doesn't Work), New York: Teachers College Press (2004).Educational Change and Social Transformation: Teachers, Schools, and Universities in Eastern Germany, London: Falmer (1996).
Articles (Refereed Journals, Proceeding)
The Limits of Sanctions in Low-Performing SchoolsPredictable Failure of Federal Sanctions- Driven Accountability for School Improvement and Why We May Retain It Anyway
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Legislative Testimony
Expert Witness in the Williams vs. California case. Decent Schools for California
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Achievement Issues
Educational Equity
International Education
Leadership
Policy Analysis and Evaluation
Principalship
School Culture
Urban Leadership
Urban Schooling
Last Modified: 10/2/09
