“Boots on the ground”: The authority-power dynamic of regional service centers in standards-based reform


 

Journal website: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/   Manuscript received: 2/3/2020 
Facebook: /EPAAA  Revisions received: 12/15/2020 
Twitter: @epaa_aape  Accepted: 12/15/2020 

 

 

education policy analysis 

archives 
A peer-reviewed, independent,  
open access, multilingual journal  
 
  

 Arizona State University 

 
Volume 29 Number 31  March 15, 2021 ISSN 1068-2341 

 

“Boots on the Ground”: The Authority-Power Dynamic of 

Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 

Katie Pak 
University of Pennsylvania  

 

Jillian McLaughlin 
 School District of Philadelphia 

 

Erica Saldívar García 
New York University 

& 
Laura M. Desimone 

University of Delaware 
United States 

 
Citation: Pak, K., McLaughlin, J., Saldívar García, E., & Desimone, L. (2021). “Boots on the 
ground”: The authority-power dynamic of regional service centers in standards-based reform. 
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29(31). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.29.5289   
 
Abstract: The current context of standards-based reform has positioned regional service 
centers (RSCs), intermediary governmental agencies that support state policy 
implementation in local districts, as a critical source of professional development (PD). In 
this article, we ask how a governing body that districts often interact with during 
challenging reform processes manages maintain strong relationships with district and 
school staff, and thus maintain their image as trustworthy experts on standards 
implementation. We explore these questions using data from 108 interviews of state, 
district, and regional administrators in education agencies in Ohio, Texas, and California 

http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/
https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.29.5289


Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

2 

over a three-year period. We illustrate that by providing districts with (a) differentiated 
support specific to their unique needs, (b) materials and tools consistent with state content 
standards, and (c) expertise in supporting students with disabilities and English learners in 
standards-based environments, RSC staff become, in the words of one state leader, the 
state’s trusted “boots on the ground.” 
Keywords: Standards-based reform; intermediary agencies; regional service centers; 
education policy implementation 
 
“Botas sobre el terreno”: La dinámica de autoridad-poder de los centros de servicios 
regionales en la era de estándares 
Resumen: El contexto actual de reforma basada en estándares ha posicionado a los centros de 
servicios regionales, agencias gubernamentales intermedias que apoyan la implementación de la 
política estatal en los distritos locales, como una fuente esencial de desarrollo profesional. En este 
artículo, preguntamos cómo agencias del gobierno con las que los distritos interactúan a menudo 
durante los desafiantes procesos de reforma educacional logra mantener relaciones fuertes con el 
personal de distritos y escuelas y, por lo tanto, mantienen su imagen como expertos confiables en la 
implementación de estándares. Exploramos estas preguntas utilizando el análisis de 108 entrevistas 
de administradores educativos a niveles del estado, distrito y agencias regionales en los estados de 
Ohio, Texas y California durante un periodo de tres años. Ilustramos que al proporcionar a los 
distritos con (a) apoyo diferenciado específicamente para sus necesidades, (b) materiales y 
herramientas consistentes con los estándares de contenido del estado, y (c) pericia en el apoyo a 
estudiantes con discapacidades y estudiantes de inglés en entornos basados en estándares, el personal 
de los centros regionales se convierte, en palabras de un líder estatal, en las “botas sobre el terreno” 
de confianza del estado.  
Palabras-clave: reforma basada en estándares; desarrollo profesional; agencias intermediarías; 
centros de servicio regionales 
 
“Botas no terreno”: A dinâmica autoridade-poder dos centros de serviços regionais 
na era dos padrões 
Resumo: O contexto atual de reforma baseada em padrões posicionou os centros de 
serviços regionais, agências governamentais intermediárias que apóiam a implementação de 
políticas estaduais em distritos locais, como uma fonte essencial de desenvolvimento 
profissional. Neste artigo, perguntamos como as agências governamentais com as quais os 
distritos costumam interagir durante os desafiadores processos de reforma educacional 
conseguem manter relacionamentos sólidos com os funcionários distritais e escolares e, 
portanto, sua imagem como especialistas confiáveis na implementação de políticas. 
Exploramos essas questões usando uma análise de 108 acompanhantes de administradores 
de educação nos níveis estadual, distrital e de agência regional nos estados de Ohio, Texas 
e Califórnia durante um período de três anos. Nós ilustramos isso fornecendo aos distritos 
(a) suporte diferenciado especificamente para suas necessidades, (b) materiais e 
ferramentas consistentes com os padrões de conteúdo estaduais e (c) experiência no 
suporte a alunos com deficiência e alunos de inglês em ambientes baseados em padrões, ou 
pessoas de centros regionais tornam-se, nas palavras de um líder de estado, as “botas no 
terreno” da confiança do estado. 
Palavras-chave: reforma baseada em padrões; desenvolvimento profissional; agências 
intermediárias; centros de serviço regionais 
  



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 3 

 
 

Boots on the Ground”: The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service 
Centers in the Standards Era 

 
Standards-based reform was born out of a need to more rigorously prepare students for an 

increasingly competitive and globalized world. Early standards efforts in the United States (US) 
began in several states in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with states developing content standards in 
math and English language arts (Hamilton et al., 2008; O’Day & Smith, 1993). As a result of the 
passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, by the early 2000s all states had 
developed statewide content standards, aligned assessments, and accountability policies that 
provided supports, established benchmarks, and specified consequences based on student test 
performance (Linn et al., 2002).1 

Over these past two decades, standards-based reform “became the dominant frame for 
thought and action” in the US (Cohen & Mehta, 2017, p. 668). Dissatisfied with the differing levels 
of quality found across each state’s set of standards, in the mid-2000s, state leaders advocated for a 
cross-state collaboration to identify core academic content that should be taught to all students as 
well as a push toward increasing the rigor of all state content standards (Porter et al., 2011; U.S. 
Department of Education, 2010). As a result of this movement, between 2007 and 2015, all 50 states 
and the District of Columbia (D.C.) adopted college- and career-ready (CCR) standards in 
mathematics and English language arts (ELA), which call for the mastery of ambitious content and 
high expectations for success in college and post-high school careers. By far the most prominent set 
of CCR standards is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which have been adopted by over 
40 states and DC. Other states are implementing their own versions of K–12 standards that meet 
CCR expectations. 

Despite the institutionalization of standards-based reform, researchers have produced little 
evidence of systemwide successes in improving teaching and learning (Dee & Jacob, 2009; Edgerton 
& Desimone, 2019). While state education officials have opted to offer general rather than 
prescriptive guidance to districts and schools regarding the implementation of CCR standards, 
district officials report needing this specificity given their teachers’ wide-ranging interpretations of 
how they should cover the content of the standards (Edgerton & Desimone, 2018), especially for 
their most marginalized students (Edgerton & Desimone, 2019). Additionally, the political 
environment surrounding standards-based reform has disrupted systemwide efforts to implement 
standards-based reform in a stable manner. Those who questioned federal overreach into issues of 
state and local control viewed the CCSS as an infringement on states’ rights, resulting in a turbulent 
political environment of legislators adopting, then rescinding or revising, CCSS and aligned 
assessment systems, particularly in Republican-dominated states (Kornhaber et al., 2017). Some state 
agencies also lacked the institutional capacity to facilitate the implementation of their educational 
policies, and both institutional capacity and political will are necessary for supporting systemic 
changes (Dahill-Brown & Lavery, 2012). State educational systems needed to have the leaders, 
structures, resources, and support for facilitating the fundamental changes to teaching and learning 
demanded by the CCSS, which emphasize “depth over breadth… requir[ing] an extensive 
infrastructure of coordinated materials, curriculum, teacher training, and professional 
development…in a society that has very little experience with such an enterprise” (Cohen & Mehta, 

                                                
1 The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or 
publication of this article: This research was supported in part by Grant R305C150007 from the Institute of 
Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education to the University of Pennsylvania. The content is 
solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Institute of 
Education Sciences or the U.S. Department of Education.  



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

4 

2017, pp. 680-1). This lack of experience is due to a U.S. system that is so “incremental, patchy, 
decentralized, and highly variable” (Cohen & Mehta, 2017, p. 682) that ambitious standards-based 
reforms will only start to improve teaching and learning if the broader capacity of policy systems 
changes to support and manage deep shifts in the way we conceptualize, then deliver, classroom 
instruction.  

A key actor in the decentralized state system is the regional service center (RSC), which is 
intended to broaden state capacity to spread and scale policy change. State agencies’ need for 
assistance is captured in the title of the Center on Education Policy (2011) report, More to Do, but 
Less Capacity to Do It, which revealed that state education agencies are attempting to roll out key 
educational reform strategies (e.g., high quality assessment systems aligned to the standards, teacher 
evaluation systems aligned to the standards) with fewer and fewer resources to do so. Additionally, 
state agencies are often maligned for their inefficient or insufficient support to districts in 
educational reforms (e.g., Brown et al., 2010). It is within this context that RSCs have emerged as a 
critical support system to state agencies. RSCs exist in at least 45 states and they help carry out the 
mission of state departments of education (Stephens & Keane, 2005). Though their titles and 
responsibilities are broad and varied, they have been generally defined as governmental agents 
operating between state-level policymakers and local policy implementers to provide training and 
resources specific to district needs (Woulfin et al., 2018).  

The current context of standards-based reform has positioned RSCs as a critical source of 
regional-level professional development (PD) for districts seeking to build their instructional 
capacity for this movement. In our comprehensive analysis of every state department of education’s 
website as a separate, multi-year study of [research center name blinded for review], we found that 
several states view RSCs as directly responsible for supporting state capacity to implement these 
standards and for deepening districts’ engagement with the standards, two mechanisms for scaling 
reform (Coburn, 2003). These RSCs explicitly support the standards implementation process by 
offering workshops that unpack the standards, which show teachers how to utilize curricular 
resources that align to the standards, or they focus on key instructional shifts demanded by the new 
standards (blinded for review).  

Despite their prominence and resources, a growing body of literature on intergovernmental 
networks has excluded RSCs from conceptual frameworks that seek to understand policy 
implementation across state systems (Parsons, 2018; Russell et al., 2015). Scholarship on 
intergovernmental relations has typically emphasized states as the intermediary between federal and 
local governments (McDermott, 2009), or local actors as strategic intermediaries between the state 
and their schools (Marsh & Wohlstetter, 2013). While these frameworks highlight the influence of 
state and local agencies, they omit the influence of RSCs. This omission leaves state policymakers 
unable to learn from the ways in which others have leveraged RSCs as an intermediary agent in 
intergovernmental relations to implement policies on a systemic level. Additionally, the role of RSCs 
as policy actors positioned to work with both states and districts to assist with the implementation 
of challenging CCR standards remains unexplored, despite their operationalization in this critical 
capacity across the country.  

 In this study, we explore the ways in which state and regional leaders leverage their RSCs as 
institutions that may support statewide implementation of CCR standards, and how district leaders 
perceive the effectiveness of their RSCs’ supports. Included in this investigation is a look at how 
RSCs assist districts with the implementation of CCR standards for their special populations--
students with disabilities (SWDs) and English learners (ELs) educated in the general education 
setting, as these are two marginalized populations that state leaders have historically struggled to 
support (Desimone et al., 2019). We argue that the district leaders who view their RSCs as 
authoritatively promoting the state’s work around standards-based reform are also less averse to the 



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 5 

 
 

accountability function that some RSCs exercise, which may positively influence the political will to 
continue with standards-based reform.  We demonstrate how RSC staff become, in the words of 
one state leader, the state’s “boots on the ground.”  

RSC Context 

Regional service centers were created by the federal government in the 1930s to serve small 
and/or rural districts in tasks they did not have the capacity to perform on their own and to provide 
resources they did not have. RSCs have since evolved to support districts of all sizes and capacity-
levels, albeit often in different ways (Stephens & Keane, 2005). By the early 2000s, 45 of the 50 
states had some version of RSCs that focused on supporting districts in meeting emerging 
accountability mandates and school improvement in general through PD opportunities and 
provision of resources (Stephens & Keane, 2005). 

Like most educational organizations today, the role of RSCs is tightly wound with 
accountability. Accordingly, the limited literature available on the role and perceptions of RSCs was 
primarily written in the early 2000s during the rise of high stakes accountability policies in the United 
States. While one might expect that districts and schools would, during periods of heightened 
accountability, view regional educational organizations with suspicion as outsiders working to do the 
bidding of the federal government, the literature overwhelmingly portrays RSCs as a helpful and 
trusted source of support for schools. In fact, Arsen, Bell, and Plank (2004) identify RSCs as the 
organization best suited to turn around "failing schools,” as opposed to universities, local 
governments, and other organizations, precisely because of educators' and district leaders' trust in 
them.  

Broadly, RSCs help districts avoid sanctions by offering curriculum and PD support that 
districts can utilize when they cannot handle accountability mandates on their own (Ausburn, 2010; 
Geary & Kettlehut, 2004; Peters & Svedkauskaite, 2008). RSCs’ support in the form of PD is their 
most broadly covered function in the literature. For instance, Arfstrom (2004) found that in addition 
to helping districts avoid duplication, RSCs also improve equality of opportunity by providing small 
or poor districts the same access to PD as large or wealthy districts. RSCs further promote equality 
of opportunity by allowing smaller and underfunded districts to improve their quality of programs 
by pooling resources and hiring reputable organizations to run workshops and programs. Many 
qualitative analyses portray RSC PD offerings positively, and Maze (2011) adds support for this 
perception in Texas by surveying superintendents about their attitudes toward RSC PD and finding 
a “high level of perceived effectiveness” (p. 99).  

Further, RSCs and their multifaceted relationships with districts are notably absent from 
contemporary frameworks conceptualizing education reform implementation and the actors 
involved. For example, in analyzing state success in federal Race to the Top applications, Russell et 
al. (2015) posit that the larger and more diverse a network a state builds, in this case in applying for 
Race to the Top funds, the more access it has to a wide variety of resources and the more it can 
accomplish as the network offsets its capacity limitations. However, RSCs are not one of the actors 
described as working within these networks. The authors consider foundations, higher education 
institutions, unions, and several other organizations, but RSCs, which, given their involvement in 
supporting districts in meeting federal mandates would be assumed to be involved, are absent from 
the discussion. A similar analysis by Parsons (2018) sought to determine what organizations in 
Virginia local autism policy networks were key actors in distributing information to help districts 
meet federal special education mandates. The author surveyed both governmental and 
nongovernmental actors in this research, and surveys were distributed to federal agencies, state 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

6 

education agencies, and local education agencies. Regional agencies were not mentioned or surveyed, 
indicating a missed opportunity to determine their role and more fully understand the networks.  

RSCs walk a fine line between offering support and accountability oversight, and are 
sometimes pushed into a monitoring compliance role, something that RSC leaders dislike because of 
its impact on the trust between districts and regional agencies (Stephens & Keane, 2005). In Virginia, 
for example, RSCs, called Education Service Agencies (ESAs) in the state, were required to “warn” 
schools that were failing to meet benchmarks for 20% or more of their students (Stephens & Keane, 
2005, p. 112). This creates a dilemma for RSCs, because  

... [Service agency leaders] feel that they are best positioned to help their local school districts 
when district staff perceive the service agency as a nonregulatory body. Districts fearful that 
the ESA may punish them in one sphere may well be disinclined to admit to service agency 
personnel the full scope and depth of problems they may be having even in areas not subject 
to monitoring, thus limiting the potential value of services to the district (Stephens & Keane, 
2005, pp. 111-112). 
 
This balancing act between cultivating trusting relationships of support and compromising 

that trust through evaluative or potentially punitive pressures is a persistent challenge in educational 
reform efforts, not just in efforts that involve RSCs. For example, such issues emerge in literature on 
teacher coaching efforts, where perceptions of coaching feedback as evaluative compromise the 
quality of those relationships (Mangin & Dunsmore, 2014; Wiener & Pimentel, 2017), and in 
literature on top-down (i.e. pressure-based) versus bottom-up (i.e. support-based) stimuli for reform 
(Cohen et al., 2013; Honig, 2006; Stosich, 2016). Yet as Guskey (2002) reminds us, “support coupled 
with pressure is essential for continuing educational improvement” (p. 388), meaning that support 
allows “those engaged in the difficult process of implementation to tolerate the anxiety of occasional 
failure,” whereas pressure helps trigger “encouragement, motivation, and occasional nudging that 
many practitioners require to persist in the challenging tasks that are intrinsic to all change efforts.”  
The dual nature of support and pressure, or authority and power according to the policy attribute 
theory (see Porter, 1994), is highlighted in our theoretical framework below.  

Authority and Power in Educational Policy Implementation 

 We use policy attributes theory (Porter, 1994) as an analytic tool for analyzing the roles and 
perceptions of RSCs as implementers of state policy. While state implementation research is typically 
examined through the lenses of governance structures, funding, intergovernmental relations, and 
accountability (McDermott, 2009), these frameworks do not directly address the characteristics of 
implementation as a variable process. Implementation scholars argue that effective policies and 
programs are those that are deemed to be acceptable, appropriate, necessary, feasible, sustainable, 
and enacted with fidelity based on how well the implementers adhere to the proposed theory of 
action over time (Dane & Schneider, 1989; Desimone, 2002; Dusenbury et al., 2003; Proctor et al., 
2011). Policy attributes theory simplifies these implementation characteristics into five attributes that 
predict successful integration of policy initiatives into schools’ lived realities. Furthermore, each of 
our states are unique entities with their own historical contexts, governance structures, partisan 
behaviors, and the like (Dahill-Brown, 2019; Manna, 2012; Meier & O’Toole, 2006), and policy 
attributes theory allows us to apply a conceptual framework across these diverse contexts to look for 
trends and variations in state approaches to standards implementation.  

 Policy attributes theory identifies five policy attributes that facilitate policy implementation 
and can be used to evaluate RSCs’ contributions to their state’s standards-based reform 
environment: (1) the specificity of policies or how detailed policies are; (2) the consistency of policies 



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 7 

 
 

with each other; (3) the authority given to policies by key stakeholders based on longevity, charismatic 
leaders, or rule of law; (4) the power associated with rewards and sanctions found in policies; and (5) 
the stability or extent to which policies remain constant over time (Porter, 1994). While we separate 
the policy attributes for illustrative purposes, scholars who utilize policy attribute theory have drawn 
attention to the complex relationships between various attributes. For instance, one way of 
promoting stability has been to balance power with authority, which has led to more stable policies 
(Desimone, 2002).  

Given our previous discussion of the support (i.e. authority) versus pressure (i.e. power) 
functions of RSCs, we highlight those two attributes in our analyses to present the two dichotomous 
functions. We then use the specificity and consistency attributes to understand how the authority 
and power attributes play out in the different forms of services provided by the RSCs. These 
attributes emerge against the backdrop of instability in the national policy environment, given the 
constantly evolving nature of state standards, assessments, and accountability polices in the U.S. 
political system.  Thus, the attribute of stability is woven throughout the context of our analyses in 
this study.  
 Policies have authority when they are legitimized through legislation, when they reinforce 
existing social norms, when they are seen as credible and supported by experts, or when they 
provide specific guidelines that are believed to be appropriate and feasibly implemented (Desimone, 
2002). Institutions (e.g., district offices, community organizations) that provide direction and 
resources in support of a policy can also stoke buy-in and engender authority (Desimone, 2002). 
RSCs are one example of these institutions that can help enhance the authority of the state standards 
if they are seen as legitimate experts providing guidance and resources that are believed to facilitate 
the implementation of these standards.  

Yet in the accountability context of standards-based reform, standards implementation is 
more often associated with the attribute of power rather than the attribute of authority. Power, 
which relies on mandates, rewards, and sanctions, manifests most strongly through accountability 
systems that identify, then reward or punish, high and low performing districts, schools, and 
teachers. Policies that reward high performing actors and sanction low performing actors are 
criticized for leading to unintended consequences such as: test-based instruction, the 
disproportionate punishing of under-resourced schools and communities of color, and the creation 
of cultures of compliance rather than cultures of improvement (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Finnigan 
& Gross, 2007; Mintrop, 2003; Trujillo & Renee, 2012). Because of these associations, practitioners 
typically regard “power” with a wary eye, and those that are asked to enforce accountability policies 
are often viewed as unfairly wielding power. As we present in this study, RSCs in two of our three 
case study states are asked to intervene in districts identified as low-performing through the 
accountability system, and we analyze how perceptions of power play out in these contexts.  

We argue that power can serve a productive purpose if utilized in a way that also draws from 
the authority of the policy in question and if the policy is accompanied by specific guidelines. For 
example, leaders who—or policies that require employees to—leverage authority and specificity by 
considering unique local needs, asking for input on decisions among stakeholders, remaining 
accessible, and building trust prior to utilizing power are more likely to utilize power effectively, 
whether that power be reward- or sanction-oriented (Fuqua et al., 2000). The complex nature of 
power is reinforced in much of the literature of the impact of accountability sanctions. Researchers 
have found that rewards and sanctions can boost teacher performance and students’ achievement 
levels if they are tied to specific performance rubrics and if the consequences are deemed to be fair, 
or authoritative (Dee & Wyckoff, 2015; Pope, 2019; Rockoff & Turner, 2010).  

We use this policy attribute lens to analyze how RSCs are called upon to both support and 
pressure districts in their implementation of the state standards, and whether these patterns reveal 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

8 

important lessons for government agencies seeking to productively establish both authority and 
power as they work towards enacting standards-based reform.  

Methods 

 The data presented below was collected as part of a broader study conducted by the Center 
on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL), which examined how college- and 
career-readiness standards were implemented, their effects on improved student learning, and what 
instructional tools supported their implementation. C-SAIL was established in 2015 and has 
partnered with California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas to explore their experiences 
with college and career readiness standards implementation, particularly with regards to students 
with disabilities (SWDs) and English learners (ELs). Each of these states was selected as a partner 
based on their diverse geography and differing standards implementation timelines. In this article, 
we draw on data from the implementation study, one of the four major studies undertaken by C-
SAIL The purpose of the implementation study was to better understand the challenges and 
opportunities created through the implementation of college- and career-readiness standards across 
our partner states. 

As part of this study, our research team interviewed state and district officials in each of our 
partner states on an annual basis, from 2016 to 2018, to discern the processes by which state 
implementation policies filtered down to districts and schools. For this article, we focus on three 
states for our analysis: Ohio, California, and Texas. We focus on these states based on the 
availability of three years of data and for their contrasting approaches to standards reform, which 
allows us to explore the role of RSCs in various standards implementation contexts. The first state, 
Ohio, incorporated the Common Core State Standards into their standards in 2010. They replaced 
these with revised Ohio Learning Standards in 2017 due to political backlash in their state against 
standards that were perceived as federally designed. For this same reason, Ohio replaced their 
assessment with a state-specific assessment aligned to their Ohio Learning Standards in 2015. 
California also adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2010, but they did not experience 
changes to their standards and assessments as Ohio did. Instead, California has retained the 
Common Core State Standards and the assessment aligned to these standards, the Smarter Balanced 
Assessment, which is part of the national Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). Texas, 
on the other hand, did not participate in these nationally adopted standards and assessments, and 
instead developed their own, state-specific standards in 2008 for ELA and 2012 for math. Their 
most recently revised assessment system, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness 
(STAAR), was first administered in 2013.  

The implementation study team collected three years of state and district interview data in 
each of these three states. Across these three years, we conducted 47 interviews with state officials 
with knowledge of the state’s major initiatives related to the implementation of their ELA and math 
standards, with three to nine state education agency interviews per state per year. The majority of 
these interviews were with repeating state officials each year, given the limited pool of officials to 
choose from and the limited turnover each year. State leaders were invited to interviews based on 
their expertise with their state’s approach to standards implementation through their leadership 
associated with curriculum, PD, assessment, and accountability. These 45-minute semi-structured 
interviews took place on an annual basis to track patterns or variations in approaches to standards 
implementation over time, given that the national policy context resulted in some states overhauling 
their accountability systems. The 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) required 
each state to submit an updated plan by 2017 that outlined their approach to supporting and 
measuring district and school performance with respect to the state’s content standards and 



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 9 

 
 

expectations for students’ college- and career-readiness. Because our state interviews spanned from 
2016 to 2018, our data captured both state strategies prior to and after the submission of the ESSA 
plan.  

During this three-year period, we also interviewed three to five district leaders in six different 
districts in each state to obtain their perspectives on the state system for implementing standards-
based policies and practices. None of these interviews were with repeating participants. The six 
districts were chosen on the basis of their urbanicity—two urban, two suburban, and two rural—and 
whether each district had a sufficient population of SWDs and ELs. Between 2016 and 2018, we 
conducted a total of 54 district interviews.  

In 2018, we added RSC leader interviews to the study. Preliminary analyses of the first two 
years of data revealed that both state and district officials identified their RSCs as critical sources of 
support and guidance for standards implementation (see Pak & Desimone, 2018). As a result, in the 
third year of the study, we also identified two to three different regional leaders per state who could 
describe how the state’s RSCs operated in the context of the statewide strategy for standards 
implementation. We asked our state partners for recommendations for regional contacts with 
knowledge of the regional centers’ relationship with the state and district offices, and with 
knowledge of the types of curricular, PD, assessment, and accountability assistance provided at this 
intermediary level. Due to the differing organizational structure of RSCs in each state, the number of 
interviews we conducted in each state varied. For instance, in Texas some RSCs have a greater focus 
on developing resources for specific student populations and others provide general support; we 
interviewed three RSC representatives in two different RSCs. In contrast, in California, county 
offices execute the work typical of RSCs in other states; we interviewed two county office leaders in 
different offices. The volume of our interviews reflect these organizational structures. Table 1 
illustrates the number of state, regional, and district leaders interviewed for our focus states during 
each of the three years of this study.  

 
Table 1  

California, Ohio, and Texas Interviews Years 1 - 3 

 California Ohio Texas 

State Interviews Year 1: N = 4 
Year 2: N = 3 
Year 3: N = 4 

Year 1: N = 6 
Year 2: N = 9 
Year 3: N = 6 

Year 1: N = 6 
Year 2: N = 4 
Year 3: N = 5 

District Interviews Year 1: N = 0 
Year 2: N = 9 
Year 3: N = 5 

Year 1: N = 12 
Year 2: N = 8 
Year 3: N = 0  

Year 1: N = 7 
Year 2: N = 9 
Year 3: N = 0  

RSC Interviews Year 3: N = 2 Year 3: N = 1 Year 3: N = 3 

Note: Data was collected between June 2015 and December 2018. Where N = 1 for RSC interviews, the 
interview combined questions from all of the interview protocols found in Appendices A - C.  

 
 The semi-structured confidential interviews with participants were scheduled with 
participants individually and recorded and transcribed for analysis. The interview protocols used to 
interview RSC representatives can be found in Appendix A. Appendix B and C reflect the modified 
protocols we used to interview RSC representatives specializing in EL and SWD supports, 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

10 

respectively. The interviews were deductively coded using the five attributes of the policy attribute 
theory as codes: specificity, authority, consistency, power, and stability. The data were also 
inductively coded using the emergent themes related to state and district officials’ articulations of the 
mediators of their policy implementation efforts: ESSA regulations, partnerships with external 
organizations, curriculum, PD, supports for SWDs, supports for ELs, state governance mechanisms, 
geography, outreach and communication strategies, and technology. Using these data, we created 
case study documents for each state included in the study—Ohio, Texas, and California—that 
provided an overview of the ways in which regional centers were utilized to support standards 
implementation. For each state, we described the state-regional-center-district infrastructure, as 
elucidated by interview participants; the various PD services they provided to general educators, 
special educators, and EL educators; and the services they provided as state accountability partners. 
We drew comparisons across the case study documents, looking for similar and dissimilar patterns in 
the ways in which regional centers were relied upon as specific, consistent, authoritative, powerful, 
and stable sources of support. We participated in multiple rounds of dialogic engagement (see 
Ravitch & Carl, 2016), where we examined these comparisons and refined cross-state themes that 
spoke to the functions and forms of the regional centers as integral players in the standards 
implementation process.  

Shifting from Authority to Productive Power  

 Though it is commonly known that state and district officials depend on RSCs as critical 
implementation agents that facilitate the spread of statewide reform initiatives, there is not yet 
documentation of how these regional centers are relied upon to help execute the goals of the CCR 
standards movement. Our study suggests that regional centers that first build their authority as 
supportive governmental bodies may be better equipped to productively leverage their power as 
accountability agents of the state. We first demonstrate how the RSCs enhance their authority by 
offering specific, standards-aligned resources to states that are deemed to be credible, and by filling 
the void of standards-based guidance and interventions for special populations. We argue that this 
authority is critical if states decide to utilize regional centers as interventionists for districts identified 
as low-performing, according to state accountability metrics. Our data illustrate the promising 
potential for regional centers to exercise productive power as part of the state accountability system 
if they first establish their authority as supportive experts in the field of standards implementation.  

RSC Mechanisms for Establishing Authority  

 Regional centers in the three states of our study are configured in slightly different ways, 
though they all serve the broader purpose of aiding districts with their implementation of their 
state’s standards. In each of the three states, districts can choose to leverage their regional centers if 
they identify a local PD need that can be addressed by content experts and education specialists at 
their RSCs. In California, the regional centers are referred to as “county offices,” and offer districts 
and schools differentiated support within a broader tiered system of state support. In Texas, regional 
centers are called Education Service Centers (ESCs) and they offer help within their geographical 
designation. While ESCs in Texas are mandated to operate in each region of the state, their services, 
which include PD and differentiated strategies for working with SWDs and ELs, are completely 
optional, meaning that districts, schools, and teachers can request their services based on need. In 
Ohio, the regional centers are also called Education Service Centers, and they operate much like the 
ESCs in Texas. An additional layer of regional assistance in Ohio is offered through the State 
Support Teams (SSTs), which are in charge of implementing the Ohio Improvement Process (OIP), 



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 11 

 
 

the state’s mandated improvement process for struggling schools. SST members are state-level 
employees, but work out of the ESCs, and are closely associated with them. 
 The county offices, ESCs, and SSTs function as regional bodies that reinforce statewide 
initiatives to implement their state’s content standards with authority. They do so by specifying the 
state vision for standards implementation, which adds legitimacy both to the standards movement 
and to their regional centers as helpful resources, as well as ensuring any interventions are specific to 
local contexts. They also present themselves as authoritative experts in their general education 
content, in EL instruction, and in SWD supports, all the while showing educators how to align their 
instruction to the standards. Finally, in their role as an intermediary source of support, they develop 
relationships with both district and state officials and serve as a bridge for timely communication, 
which may offset some of the instability that is a commonplace feature of today’s education policy 
arena.  

Enhancing Specificity to Build Authority  

One way of cultivating perceptions of authority is to show districts how to specifically enact 
certain aspects of the standards. While RSCs must be cautious of providing specificity that does not 
overbear on the expertise of teachers and districts (Desimone, 2002), Flores, Saldívar García, and 
Edgerton (2020) found that when specificity characterized state resources and systems of support—
because they were tailored to meet the needs of local contexts or took the form of procedures that 
guided research-informed decision-making—district officials reported stronger belief in the purpose 
of the standards, their credibility, and attainability. RSCs embrace specificity as a central feature of 
their work by tailoring interventions to district needs, displaying their willingness to work alongside 
the district in improving schools in ways that work for the local context.  

In Ohio, state leaders in the accountability division describe the OIP as beginning with an 
intentionally thorough listening process, in which members of the SST spend several days in districts 
speaking with personnel of varying levels and expertise “just to talk through their data and to 
understand what the district believes are their strengths and weaknesses.” This process builds 
authority for the members of the SST prior to their implementation of more power-oriented 
interventions. This commitment to districts’ specific needs is recognized by employees on the 
ground; one suburban district that opted into the OIP noted the flexibility of the SST in making the 
process fit the district’s needs as making the undertaking particularly valuable. Specifically, the SST 
and school administrators allowed teams of teachers to make adjustments to forms schools are 
required to fill out as part of the OIP that they felt did not fit their context and to stray from the 
designated topics of conversation if they were not applicable to their needs. The ability to “make it 
our own” made teachers much more receptive to the process, despite its potential to be viewed as an 
overstep of power.  

County offices in California also illustrate how they offer specific supports to districts that 
help deepen their understanding of the standards, which in turn enhances the county offices’ 
authority as the intermediary governmental body supporting the operationalization of the state’s 
standards movement. Administrators in several county offices describe how intensively they work to 
understand districts’ specific needs before offering drilled down PD into narrow areas of support. 
Rather than picking one PD topic and disseminating information on that topic for two hours, 
county offices “try to really look comprehensively” at district needs by entering classrooms as 
coaches, walking alongside principals to “help [them] see what we see so [they’re] getting 
professional learning as principals,” and having “really deep conversation about what do they want 
and why they think they want that.” An administrator in a different county office referenced an 
ongoing, integrated series of PD supports that surface specific aspects of the standards, such as “two 
hours on close reading and the next time we might do two hours on text and questioning… and 



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12 

then we might do two hours on how do you develop text dependent questions.” These intensive and 
specific sources of support lend credence to the county offices’ authority as the state arm for 
standards implementation.   

ESCs in Texas build organizational authority by working closely with districts and the state 
agency to support standards revisions and implementation; efforts that have positioned them as 
essential to the state-ESC-district standards implementation process, described as a “filtering 
process” by one district official. Most of the districts we interviewed referenced ESCs as their 
primary point of contact when it came to standards-based supports from the state. One district 
administrator described the supports their district receives as having “specific content pieces, like 
how to align your standards to writing” and explained that these resources can be further tailored in 
“specificity to different things depending on whatever information the districts give them.” ESCs are 
known to have a close relationship with the state when it comes to standards revisions. A different 
district administrator described ESCs as helping them “stay ahead of the curve” by supporting their 
development of an “intentional plan” through which they could prepare for the rollout of revisions 
to the math standards. This process of state-ESC-district standards-based support coordination, 
according to district and state officials, has been in place through various standards revisions and has 
positioned ESCs as critical sources of information for districts. This state-ESC-district coordination 
was described by a third district administrator as providing a consistent understanding of standards 
by ensuring “people don’t just assume their own inferences, what the TEKS means and just go from 
there.” The intentionality and degree of specificity with which ESCs provide content and standards-
based support contributes to the overall authority with which they were perceived by districts.  
 Specificity in the form of differentiated supports was a characteristic of RSCs that was 
alluded to in our interviews with state and district officials in California, Ohio, and Texas. In Ohio, 
this specificity helped offset potential negative responses to OIP and helped to build trust in the 
process and RSCs amongst districts. In California, RSCs have developed procedures that ensure that 
their support is contextually relevant. Similarly, RSCs in Texas have put in place systems of support 
for standards implementation that districts seek out due to their relevance and specificity. In all of 
the states, specificity contributed to the authority, credibility, and overall sense of reliability and 
relevance with which district officials described RSCs. This authority was also evident in content-
based conversations.  

Consistent Content-Based Expertise 

As many administrators have acknowledged, when the standards were first introduced to 
educators, the nation had not yet developed a deep reservoir of resources that were proven to be 
aligned to the demands of the standards (Polly, 2017). This created an acute challenge in 
implementing the standards, as educators were left with the same curricular materials they had 
always had and lacked the standards-aligned curricular materials necessary to teach them. The RSCs 
were therefore tasked with scanning the environment for these resources or with creating their own 
aligned resources and disseminating this information out to districts that sought such information. 
These actions reflect the attribute of consistency.  

In Ohio, districts have complete control over the curriculum they use. However, Ohio’s 
Office of Curriculum and Assessment leverages the authority of ESCs by asking them to develop 
resources about the scope and content of the standards and tools for assessing the alignment of 
district-created materials, and then “ask[ing] them to go out in their sphere of influence” to 
disseminate the information. The state also uses ESCs as a feedback mechanism, asking them to 
identify on-the-ground opinions of state-generated materials, such as a quality review rubric that 
teachers and school leaders can use to determine whether a particular lesson or unit is “high quality” 
in relationship to the standards, and bring this feedback back to the state. In addition, some ESCs 



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 13 

 
 

offer districts hands-on support in determining whether their curriculum is aligned to the state 
standards or in creating curriculum from scratch, but this varies by region.  

Like Ohio, districts in Texas also have complete autonomy in determining the curriculum 
they use. Thus, providing curricular materials that are aligned to the standards falls outside of the 
work of the state agency. However, like Ohio, Texas leverages the authority and expertise of ESCs 
in order to develop and disseminate resources that promote standards-based instruction. ESC’s role 
in the development of content and delivery of PD for teachers in math academies is an example of 
this work that was mentioned by both state and district officials. In a competitive process to develop 
the content for math and ELA academies, an ESC won the contract for Math. This ESC has been 
responsible for developing math content for teachers enrolled in academies and has also been 
involved in the delivery of the content for both ELA and math, a broader ESC task, using a train-
the-trainer model. Additionally, ESC staff is tasked with “promoting to districts” additional 
instructional resources the state provides and develops in collaboration with ESCs through their 
online resource center, the Texas Gateway. One district administrator indicated that their ESC is “a 
great resource” that provides rich resources across content areas, though what those resources look 
like varies “depending on the content and how they attack it.”  

California also relies on its county offices to connect their districts to aligned resources; this 
was especially true when the standards were first rolled out. As one county administrator shared, 
“We were the hub of all things standards from 2010 and then for several years after that. Pretty 
much all of our PD at that time was about the standards.” The county offices additionally made sure 
to spread their standards-aligned resources throughout the state by inviting different regions to 
come together, “identify where their gaps are in their resources and who can help fill in those gaps 
so that we no longer have, you know, sparsity of resources in one area versus another.” In other 
words, if one county office excelled in the area of providing resources aligned to early childhood 
learning standards, then others throughout the state knew to leverage that county’s offerings. Several 
county administrators described how this alignment of expertise reinforced their own credibility, or 
authority, as content experts, as the people who are typically hired to work at county offices are 
those with specialized knowledge of their content areas.  

Across all three states, RSCs were described as providing valuable content-based expertise 
that promoted the authority with which they were perceived. While this was true for general content 
expertise, our interviews also suggest that this expertise was especially relevant to districts when it 
came to ELs and SWDs.  

Special Populations Expertise Aligned to State Standards 

Our interviews suggest that the authority with which RSCs are perceived is also connected to 
their expertise regarding SWDs and ELs in the context of standards-based instruction, as both state 
and district leaders describe relying on these regional centers to provide meaningful supports that 
align with the state’s vision for standards-based reform. In addition to authority, this trend reflects 
the attribute of consistency given the RSCs’ work in aligning the goals of standards-based reform 
with the goals of educating SWDs and ELs.  

Considering the large EL demographic that Texas serves, it is not surprising that each ESC 
has a specific English as a second language (ESL) or bilingual department that supports districts with 
meeting the needs of ELs. One of the major tasks of this department is providing strategies, such as 
PD and curricular supports, that assist in the implementation of the state’s English Language 
Proficiency Standards (ELPS) across all content areas, reinforcing the idea that teaching the ELPS is 
the responsibility of all teachers. These EL supports have been especially helpful to small rural 
districts relative to larger districts with the capacity to develop the bulk of their standards supports 
“in house.”  



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14 

Texas ESCs also provide a range of compliance- and instruction-based supports pertaining 
to SWDs for teachers and districts. These supports include standards-based IEP training and the 
popular “Teaching, Engaging, Academics, and Motivating for Success” (TEAMS) training where 
teachers receive instructional support and feedback based on field observations by ESC staff. While 
compliance-based supports are amongst the most requested ESC services for SWDs, one 
interviewee spoke to the ESC-wide commitment to include instructional implications in all SWD 
trainings to message the idea that “compliance is not enough,” further building authority for the 
state standards and their attainability.  

In Ohio, districts sometimes contract extra EL support staff through their local ESC on a 
part-time basis. District employees described ESCs as offering universal for-a-fee PD on providing 
additional support that pushes ELs to meet rigorous standards, thus communicating to teachers that 
the standards are appropriate for all students and that meeting them is not an infeasible goal. In 
addition, when SSTs enter schools participating in OIP, they tend to focus on what barriers are 
preventing the school’s SWDs and ELs from meeting the standards, thus reinforcing the notion that 
all students should be meeting them. They offer coaching as a method to build capacity for 
differentiating instruction for these populations even after the school has exited OIP. All of this 
support, in many cases tailored to individual schools or even teachers, bolsters both the authority of 
learning standards as appropriate tools for driving the learning of all students and the authority of 
SSTs—and, by association, ESCs—as reliable sources of personalized intervention.   

Like in Texas and Ohio, county offices in California provide a continuum of SWD and EL 
services that district officials describe as much-needed services, especially for small and rural 
districts. Districts in California have the option of operating their own SWD programs or of pooling 
together their SWD funding to run regionalized programs. For example, districts can pool together 
their resources for county-level speech and language services or autism support services, which is 
particularly beneficial for those districts with a “two room schoolhouse and a one room 
schoolhouse… that absolutely need a continuum of services that like this… because smaller school 
districts may only get one student a year with severe autism.” In terms of EL support, the state 
invited the county offices to roll out their integrated ELA and English Language Development 
(ELD) framework, which they did by simultaneously developing “belief modules” in the form of 
online webinars that help teachers see how they can implement the ELD framework in their 
classrooms. At least two California districts in the study viewed their county offices as vital sources 
of EL support, as “they are the ones that really have guided us with protocol and curriculum” and 
“their English learner team does a good job of guiding us in terms of how exactly to implement 
[new EL policies].”  

Thus, RSCs fulfill a vital function that supports the work of district leaders—they offer 
guidance, resources (both human and material), and insights into state policies that are intended to 
advance the work of SWD and EL instruction in the context of standards-based reform. These 
offerings deepen the authority of the RSCs, which becomes useful capital when RSCs are called 
upon to assert their power as state interventionists in districts identified as low-performing, as 
explained below.  

Leveraging Authority for Productive Use of Power  

 Accountability conversations have shifted nationwide in recent years, as the 2015 passage of 
ESSA provided states with increased flexibility to determine their state-specific interventions for 
their lowest performing districts and schools. In the language of the policy attributes theory, 
accountability reflects “power,” or the enforcement of expectations through the allocation of 
performance-based rewards and sanctions. In many cases, state education agencies rely on their 
RSCs to step into the role of interventionists for districts and schools that are identified as low 



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 15 

 
 

performing and in need of additional assistance. The effectiveness with which RSCs execute this role 
is, at least partly, premised on the authority they have cultivated with state and district actors.  

Due to lessons learned from previous waves of standards-based reform, where perceptions 
of punitive state action negatively impacted receptiveness towards state interventions (Rice & Malen, 
2003; Trujillo & Renee, 2012), California and Ohio state and regional leaders are now working to 
position the county offices and SSTs as authoritative entities that are implicitly functioning as power 
enforcers. In other words, while state officials are mandating that certain districts work with regional 
centers as the result of their underperformance, they and their regional counterparts have 
reconfigured this process to make interventions seem more like differentiated sources of support 
than impositional, top-down sanctions, which is only possible if the RSCs possess a certain level of 
authority beforehand.  

In California, the state described intentionally trying to shift perceptions of their county 
offices by shifting their roles from compliance to support under the new accountability system, and 
thus from a focus on power to one of authority. As one state leader described, “the state’s 
accountability system requires that if you are a school district that is not meeting the needs of two to 
three of your subgroups of students, then you're going to need some extra help, and you're going to 
need individualized assistance.” County offices work with the 200 or so districts that are identified as 
needing individualized assistance to provide “coaching on helping districts plan how to get rid of 
those barriers, basically, and plan for what they need to do to provide the quality instruction for 
those students” without being militant or prescriptive in their approach. The county office was 
previously known to “police” districts, but the hope is that now districts will see that the county is 
there to offer support.  

This process in Ohio happened more naturally as a result of ESSA’s tendency to push state 
employees to realize that “continuous improvement is everybody’s business,” according to a state 
administrator. State leaders familiar with both state and regional contexts believe that this change, 
coupled with new state leadership who emphasize sustainable coordination among offices, has 
fostered an atmosphere of collaboration in Ohio at every level of the system, removing people from 
their silos and allowing the OIP to be seen in a more positive light where the focus is 
implementation and support rather than compliance and paperwork. By formalizing connections 
with departments ranging from Educator Effectiveness to Early Learning, the SSTs have more 
firmly grounded their work in evidence and thus shifted from tracking attendance at meetings to 
ensuring the right content is covered in those meetings to move schools toward success.  

Further reinforcing this atmosphere of collaboration is the two-way communication 
orchestrated by the ESCs, as the state capitalizes on the regional centers’ proximity to the ground to 
obtain feedback from districts on PD offerings and how to best support struggling districts. In 
describing the SSTs, one state leader referred to them as “the ones most connected to the field” who 
directly support buildings and districts. The 300+ SST staff members across the state are able to 
connect with these local educators, collect their feedback about state efforts to support districts, and 
channel that feedback to the state officials, who then make adjustments. By posing ESCs as a 
feedback mechanism for districts, the state is able to obtain the feedback they are looking for while 
simultaneously helping create an environment of trust between ESCs and districts.  

This trust further builds ESCs’ ability to effectively utilize power. While most state-level 
employees are generally faceless names if known at all by district and school staff, Ohio ESC staff’s 
proximity to the regions they are responsible for, and the smaller number of districts for which they 
are responsible, means they are a friendly face in the building, even while conducting a power-
oriented intervention. According to a leader in state accountability,  

 



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16 

We’re sitting here in Columbus and [a district] is three hours away... We’ve gotta 
have boots on the ground, somebody in those buildings every single week and 
understanding and working with the community, because obviously, you’ve gotta 
have buy-in from your business, you gotta have buy-in from parents and other 
community members if there really is gonna be change in that school district. So, we 
put people in place though that are up in those communities and are charged with 
turning it around. 

 
These “boots on the ground” manage to maintain their authority even when acting from a position 
of power. 

Fortunately, most district officials in this study interpret their RSCs’ accountability-related 
actions in a productive light, with a few isolated instances of individuals disparaging this particular 
function of the regional centers. One district leader in California confirmed their state’s new 
approach: in the past “people from the county office [came] in and kind of just [told] us what 
needed to be done versus working with us,” whereas they now emphasize more of a district-
customized, improvement-based philosophy. In Ohio, a leader in a rural district that was mandated 
to participate in OIP described the individuals of the SST as huge sources of support for getting 
questions answered, and lamented losing proximity to them after exiting the process. Districts can 
opt into participation in OIP, even if they are not struggling, because of a desire to continually 
improve; these districts tend to view the process as, while cumbersome initially, largely helpful and 
support-oriented.  

Despite this, the perception of compliance with the SST acting as a source of punishment 
for struggling districts does sometimes muddy the waters for a trusting relationship between ESCs 
and districts that are undergoing mandated intervention. One such district described the SST as “the 
compliance people” and said while discussing the process, “I mean, we’ve been through so many 
consequences over the years.” One administrator in the voluntarily participating suburban district 
made explicit this contrast in perspective when she said, “So you know, the Ohio Improvement 
Process, which the district opts into, which other districts we've talked to were much crabbier about, 
because they didn't opt into it, involves these different teams.” These statements suggest that 
leveraging authority for productive power is not a straightforward process and that states should 
continue to invest in authority-building efforts between RSCs and districts.  
 The leveraging of authority for more effective power in Ohio and California contrasts with 
the continued authority-based approach of ESCs in Texas. ESCs in Texas are by state law non-
regulatory and as such have continued to support districts and schools in implementing state 
initiatives, including those related to school turnaround. For instance, when districts are identified in 
need of improvement they must submit a root cause analysis to the Texas Education Agency 
detailing the steps the district will take to improve student outcomes. ESCs offer districts assistance 
in developing these plans and read the plans of any district that falls within their geographic area to 
inform the services they offer. Some of this work might be led by an ESC turnaround team that 
supports districts in working with the state’s Accountability Intervention System and implementing 
the Critical Success Factors. Even though ESCs support turnaround efforts, all accountability 
measures default to the state agency. The non-regulatory role of ESCs in Texas is based on the idea 
that authority is necessary to school improvement, and allows ESCs to continue to “develop a level 
of trust and assurance with both TEA and local schools” (Texas Education Agency, 2019) to ensure 
all parties involved in educating children are working cooperatively. As Ohio and California continue 
to leverage the authority of RSCs to operationalize power, ESCs in Texas offer an important 
counterexample of a powerless but authoritative intermediate unit system that, as our interviews 
suggest, has been successful in building institutional authority.  



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 17 

 
 

Limitations 
  
 The U.S. decentralized system is such that each state is able to conduct its own approach to 
supporting their districts and schools in the implementation of standards-based reform. States enact 
diverse implementation strategies based on the institutional and governance arrangements in their 
state, the number of districts they have, the extent to which educational issues are coupled with 
other political issues in the state, and the extent to which there is local control in the state (Dahill-
Brown, 2019; Manna, 2012; Meier & O’Toole, 2006). The uniqueness of each of the three state 
systems in this study—California, Ohio, and Texas—are not to be discounted, and our findings are 
not meant to be generalized across all states. Where there are major differences, such as in Texas 
where their RSCs are not part of the state accountability strategy, we have illuminated these 
contextual factors. We also know that the structures in these three states are not representative of 
the diversity of state structures across the nation.  By utilizing policy attributes theory, we hope to 
show how a theoretical framework can be applied across these diverse contexts to identify patterns, 
trends, and variations in how states leverage their RSCs along the universally applicable lines of 
specificity, consistency, authority, power, and stability.  

Discussion and Implications  

 Education policy implementation is a process that involves a variety of moving pieces and a 
distribution of leadership to multiple actors throughout a state system (Pak & Desimone, 2018). This 
study highlights the contributions of one of these actors—regional service centers (RSCs)—in 
response to our observation that these critical players receive extremely limited attention in 
scholarship on standards-based reform. And yet, these RSCs are often the main sources of support 
that state agencies rely on to spread the implementation of their rigorous content standards and 
other initiatives, and act as the main sources of support for districts that require external assistance, 
especially for small or rural districts.   
 We draw from case studies of standards implementation in three of our partner states—
Ohio, Texas, and California—to better understand the role and perceptions of RSCs as intermediary 
agents in the statewide system of reform and to learn from their successes in navigating this unique 
position. Our analyses revealed a portrait of authoritative governmental agencies rarely found in the 
literature. Even though it was widely acknowledged by state and district officials that RSCs operated 
as arms of the state, this positioning did not undermine most districts’ perceptions of their credibility 
or legitimacy. Instead, district leaders confirmed state leaders’ perceptions that the RSCs existed to 
provide specific and consistent sources of standards-based, content-focused support, especially 
support that targets historically underserved student populations.  

These perceptions contrast the typical trend of local practitioners distrusting or disregarding 
the authority of public agencies (Farkas & Duffett, 2014; Schultz, 2019). Distrust is a phenomenon 
that is contingent on the negative reputation of other parties (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Yet in this 
case, the reputation of the RSCs seem to be generally healthy and associated with trust, according to 
most of the participants in this study. Having built up this reputation of authority, RSCs may be able 
to more productively leverage their power as interventionists sent to districts on account of their 
status as low performing districts. Further reinforcing this productive use of power may be state and 
regional leaders learning to frame their RSCs’ work as relational and focused on districts’ unique 
needs, rather than work that is impositional and compliance-based.  

Given the mixed and complicated perspectives on the use of power as a lever of educational 
policy implementation (see Dee and Wyckoff, 2015; Hemelt, 2011), we offer our argument that 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

18 

government agencies that draw from the attribute of power are more productive when they have 
already established their authority. Findings from this study suggest that authority can be cultivated 
through the other two attributes of specificity and consistency. State, regional, and district leaders 
described how the RSCs worked to enhance the specificity of the state standards by providing 
resources and PD that specifically addressed narrow areas of district improvement. These actions 
also enhance buy-in, or authority, when the RSC’s identification of specific needs match the needs 
identified by local practitioners (Cohen & Mehta, 2017). Additionally, RSCs enhanced their authority 
by providing content-based expertise that exposed districts to useful resources and PD that aligned 
to the standards (i.e. consistency), and when they provided expertise that showed how to align work 
with SWDs and ELs to the expectations of the standards movement. Again, these alignment actions 
fulfilled the needs of local practitioners, which reinforced RSCs’ authority. And while we did not ask 
this question specifically, it is also possible that the authority of RSCs is tied to the perception that 
those hired to work in these entities are seasoned and knowledgeable professionals, which 
potentially adds legitimacy to the institution (and should be considered in future studies).  

District leaders in smaller and more rural districts were particularly vocal about the authority 
of their respective RSCs, as long as these centers are not too far from their districts. The utility of 
these RSCs for those districts with smaller central offices resonates with prior documentation of the 
critical services provided by RSCs in areas with limited capacity (Arfstrom, 2004). As district leaders 
informed us, when the superintendent is also the bus driver and principal of a school, or when there 
is one student with severe autism in the entire district, it helps to have an RSC with the capacity to 
provide standards-based resources and services on behalf of these central offices. One high school 
interventionist in a rural Ohio district said that while participating in OIP, the SST members were 
the first people she would seek out for any support she needed in her role, prior to even anyone at 
the district. RSCs were referenced as the most consistent source of support in all of our Texas 
district interviews.   

The productive use of power by RSCs in California and Ohio offers valuable lessons for 
both RSCs in other states and for policymakers struggling to enforce accountability mandates 
because of the negative connotations power holds. The use of consistency and specificity to build 
authority and thus more positively wield power can be replicated in policies, programs, and the 
structure and roles of governmental bodies. Trusted leaders appear more able to foster buy-in to 
interventions, and trusted interventions are more likely to trickle down to and make an impact on 
the ground.  

This study, however, does not address the evaluative question of whether these relationships 
of productive power and authority effectively contribute to the continuous improvement of 
underperforming districts, whether or not these districts are small or rural. Yet these questions 
remain in the minds of state leaders in charge of designing the state-regional-district infrastructure 
for standards-based reform. Said by one Texas state leader outside of this study but to the 
researchers of this study,  

[There is still work to be done to figure out] does the structure that we have in place 
to provide that continuum of support from the state level to a very large state both 
geographically, as well as population wise in a very diverse state, is this the right 
model? Where are we falling short? And where can we better invest our resources? 
(Personal Communication, April 27, 2018).  
 

In other words, how do we know if the RSC model for providing assistance to districts is working, 
given the geographic reality of the state, and how do we know if the RSC model is providing the 
right resources for districts? These are questions that should motivate future studies of the flow of 
support from the state down to the local level.  



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 19 

 
 

 

References 
 
Arfstrom, K. M. (2004). Are ESAs successful? The research says “yes!” Perspectives, 6.5, 69-76. 
Arsen, D., Bell, C., & Plank, D. N. (2004). Who will turn around failing schools? A framework for 

institutional choice. Perspectives, 10, 1-19. 
Ausburn, J. P. (2010). Professional services provided by Texas education service centers to promote improvement in 

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The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 23 

 
 

Appendix A 
Semi-structured Interview Protocol for Regional Service Center Representatives 

1. How would you describe the RSC’s relationship with the state department of education? 

a. How often do you interact and plan activities together? 

2. How would you describe your relationship with school districts? 

a. Prompts: Who initiates this contact? How often do you communicate with districts? Does 
this vary by district? Do you work more with districts directly, principals, teachers, or 
through the state? 

3. We have found across our interviews that RSCs have become more involved in the 
implementation of standards, especially for PD. Do you think that your role has expanded and, 
if so, why? 

4. What types of information does the state collect about PD that you offer? 

5. What are your most popular professional development (PD) offerings for teachers? Principals? 
District administrators? 

6. How do you monitor and evaluate PD? 

a. What types of feedback do you collect from teachers or principals who participate in your 
PD? 

7. How do you establish alignment of PD with the standards? 

8. How do you decide what PD to offer? 

9. How would you describe your teacher and principal PD model? Do you offer more direct PD to 
teachers, do you train the trainers, or a combination of both? 

10. What resources do you receive to meet the professional development needs of your 
region/state? 

a. How satisfied are you with the resources that you receive? 

11. What do you think are the challenges in implementing teacher, principal and district PD in your 
state? 

12. What types of curricular support do you provide to districts? Do districts seem to want more or 
less support? 

13. To what extent do you feel that district administrators in your region or state understand and 
implement the CCR standards? 

a. Is this different or the same for principals? Teachers? 

b. Have you noticed improvement around knowledge of the standards (and the corresponding 
instructional shifts) among these groups? 

14. What are the types of concerns that teachers, principals and districts raise about the standards? 

a. Do you feel that they are appropriate for all students (i.e. low-achieving, ELLs, SWDs)? 

15. How would you describe the stability of standards policy in your state? 

a. How does this affect your work, if at all? 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

24 

Appendix B 
Semi-structured Interview Protocol for English Learner Regional Service Center 

Representatives 

1. We’re interested in exploring the growing role that regional service centers seem to be playing in 
supporting school leaders and teachers in supporting ELL students. Can you explain the RSC’s 
relationship with the state and individual districts?  

a. Have there been any recent changes in these relationships?  

b. How do these changes impact ELL students? 

2. Can you give me an overview of what support systems for RSC’s provide for school leaders and 
teachers of ELL students? This might include resources, curricular supports, modules, etc.  

a. Which of these do you think teachers find most useful or appear to be using the most? How 
do you monitor this?  

b. Are there supports that teachers seem to want more of? What about districts or 
administrators?  

c. Are there any challenges in providing these supports?  

3. Have the changes introduced by ESSA changed the nature of your work/what the RSC’s 
provide, specifically in regards to ELLs? If so, how?  

4. ESSA requires that states develop statewide identification and exit criteria for ELL students. To 
what extent is the ESC involved in training teachers to work with these new criteria, if at all?  

5. Does the ESC provide professional development specifically for teachers of ELL students?  

a. How are decisions about the content and delivery of ELL student related PD determined?  

b. How frequently is ELL PD offered?  

c. Prompt (professional networks) 

6. We’re interested in exploring differentiation strategies for ELL students in general education 
courses. How does the RSC support teachers or districts in differentiating instruction for ELL 
students? 

7. What resources or training do RSC’s provide to district and school leaders to support their work 
with ELLs? (i.e., compliance with ELL policies, understanding new assessments, entrance and 
exit criteria, etc.) 

a. In what ways do you determine what resources or training is needed?  

8. Are there any other initiatives that the RSCs are involved in that relate to the goal of addressing 
the needs of ELL students?  

9. Do you foresee any changes to the RSCs role, or what the RSC provides in the near future, as 
policies or priorities relating to ELLs shift?  

 

  



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 25 

 
 

Appendix C 
Semi-structured Interview Protocol for Students with Disabilities Regional Service Center 

Representatives 

1. We are really interested in the growing role that regional service centers seem to be playing in 
regards to supporting school administrators and teachers. Can you explain the RSC’s relationship 
with the state, as well as with individual districts? 

a. Have there been any recent changes in these relationships? 

b. How do these changes impact SWDs? 

2. Can you give me a broad overview of what support systems RSCs provide for administrators 
and teachers of SWDs? This might include resources, curricular supports, etc. 

a. Which of these do you think teachers find most helpful, or appear to be utilizing the most? 
How do you monitor this? 

b. Is there anything teachers seem to want more of? What about districts or administrators? 

c. Are there any challenges in providing these supports? 

3. Many states have changed their accountability systems as they submit new state plans under 
ESSA. Have the changes to ESSA changed the nature of your work/what the RSCs provide, 
specifically in regards to SWDs? If so, how? 

4. Can you describe the RSC’s approach to providing SWD-related PD? 

a. How are decisions about the content and delivery of SWD-related PD determined (i.e. do 
the RSCs decide independently, does the state suggest anything, do districts?) 

b. How frequently is SWD PD offered? 

c. How, if at all, is the provision and content of special education PD different for gen ed 
teachers vs. special education teachers? 

d. Do SWD teachers participate in any sort of regularly-meeting professional learning 
communities sponsored by the RSC? 

i. Are these with other special education teachers, or gen ed teachers? 

ii. How often do these meetings occur? 

iii. What tends to be the focus of these meetings? 

5. How is the RSC supporting teachers or districts in differentiating instruction? 

6. We are interested in learning about the balance between offering compliance-oriented PD 
(focused on, for example, IDEA requirements, how to write an IEP) versus instruction-oriented 
PD (focused on, for example, differentiation, pedagogy, content). How does your RSC balance 
those two? 

a. What kinds of topics does instruction-oriented PD tend to cover? 

b. To what extent do you think this PD supports teachers in addressing a wide range of student 
abilities in their classrooms? 

7. What resources or training do RSCs provide to school leaders to support teachers of SWDs? 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

26 

a. In what ways do you determine what resources are needed? 

10. To what extent are RSCs involved in the identification process for SWDs? (i.e. training on RTI) 

11. Are there other initiatives that the RSCs are involved in that relate to the goal of addressing 
diverse learners?  

12. Do you foresee any changes to the RSCs’ role, or what the ESC provides, in the near future, as 
policies or priorities around SWDs shift? 

  



The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 27 

 
 

About the Authors 

Katie Pak 
University of Pennsylvania 
kpak@gse.upenn.edu  
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2264-9420 
Katie Pak is an instructor with the University of Pennsylvania and works as a School 
Improvement and Data Specialist in the School District of Philadelphia. Her research includes 
policy implementation, educational leadership, school improvement, and leadership for criti cal 
social change.   
 
Jillian McLaughlin 
School District of Philadelphia 
jmclaughlin@philasd.org 
Jill McLaughlin is a project manager at the School District of Philadelphia, where she manages the 
District's policy revision process and supports the District’s strategic planning process.  Her research 
interests center around K-12 school-based staff's perceptions of District and state policy and their 
impact on implementation.  
 
Erica Saldívar García 
New York University 
saldivar.erica@nyu.edu 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6559-1695 
Erica Saldívar García is a clinical assistant professor of TESOL, Bilingual, and Foreign language 
education in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New 
York University. She studies the bilingualism and biliteracy of multilingual youth and language 
education policy.  
 
Laura M. Desimone 
University of Delaware 
lauramd@udel.edu 
Laura Desimone is director of research in the College of Education and Human Development at the 
University of Delaware and a professor in the School of Education in Educational Statistics and 
Research Methods and in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration. She 
studies how state-, district-, and school-level policy can better promote changes in teaching that lead 
to improved student achievement and to closing the achievement gap between advantaged and 
disadvantaged students. 
 

  

mailto:kpak@gse.upenn.edu


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28 

 

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Melissa Lynn Freeman  
Adams State College 

Amanda U. Potterton 
University of Kentucky 

Kyo Yamashiro  
Claremont Graduate University 

Rachael Gabriel 
University of Connecticut 

Susan L. Robertson 
Bristol University 

Miri Yemini 
Tel Aviv University, Israel 

 
 
 

 



Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 29  No. 31 
 

30 

archivos analíticos de políticas educativas 
consejo editorial 

Editor Consultor: Gustavo E. Fischman (Arizona State University) 
 Coordinador (Español/Latinoamérica): Ignacio Barrenechea (Universidad de San Andrés), Ezequiel Gomez Caride 

(Universidad de San Andres/ Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina) 
Editor Coordinador (Español/Norteamérica): Armando Alcántara Santuario (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) 

Editor Coordinador (Español/España): Antonio Luzon (Universidad de Granada) 
Editores Asociados: Jason Beech (Monash University), Angelica Buendia, (Metropolitan Autonomous University), 

Gabriela de la Cruz Flores (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mëxico), Alejandra Falabella (Universidad Alberto 
Hurtado, Chile), Carmuca Gómez-Bueno (Universidad de Granada), Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela (Universidade de 
Chile), Cesar Lorenzo Rodriguez Uribe (Universidad Marista de Guadalajara), Antonia Lozano-Díaz (University of 
Almería), Sergio Gerardo Málaga Villegas (Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo Educativo, Universidad Autónoma 
de Baja California (IIDE-UABC)), María Teresa Martín Palomo (University of Almería), María Fernández Mellizo-

Soto (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Tiburcio Moreno (Autonomous Metropolitan University-Cuajimalpa 
Unit), José Luis Ramírez, (Universidad de Sonora), Axel Rivas (Universidad de San Andrés), Maria Veronica 

Santelices (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) 
 

Claudio Almonacid 
Universidad Metropolitana de 
Ciencias de la Educación, Chile 

Ana María García de Fanelli  
Centro de Estudios de Estado y 
Sociedad (CEDES) CONICET, 
Argentina 

Miriam Rodríguez Vargas 
Universidad Autónoma de 
Tamaulipas, México 

Miguel Ángel Arias Ortega 
Universidad Autónoma de la 
Ciudad de México 

Juan Carlos González Faraco 
Universidad de Huelva, España 

José Gregorio Rodríguez 
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 
Colombia 

Xavier Besalú Costa  
Universitat de Girona, España 

María Clemente Linuesa 
Universidad de Salamanca, España 

Mario Rueda Beltrán Instituto de 
Investigaciones sobre la Universidad 
y la Educación, UNAM, México 

Xavier Bonal Sarro Universidad 
Autónoma de Barcelona, España   

 

Jaume Martínez Bonafé 
 Universitat de València, España 

José Luis San Fabián Maroto  
Universidad de Oviedo,  
España 
 

Antonio Bolívar Boitia 
Universidad de Granada, España 

Alejandro Márquez Jiménez 
Instituto de Investigaciones sobre la 
Universidad y la Educación, 
UNAM, México 

Jurjo Torres Santomé, Universidad 
de la Coruña, España 

José Joaquín Brunner Universidad 
Diego Portales, Chile  

María Guadalupe Olivier Tellez, 
Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, 
México 

Yengny Marisol Silva Laya 
Universidad Iberoamericana, 
México 

Damián Canales Sánchez 
Instituto Nacional para la 
Evaluación de la Educación, 
México  
 

Miguel Pereyra Universidad de 
Granada, España 

Ernesto Treviño Ronzón 
Universidad Veracruzana, México 

Gabriela de la Cruz Flores 
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de 
México 

Mónica Pini Universidad Nacional 
de San Martín, Argentina 

Ernesto Treviño Villarreal 
Universidad Diego Portales 
Santiago, Chile 

Marco Antonio Delgado Fuentes 
Universidad Iberoamericana, 
México 

Omar Orlando Pulido Chaves 
Instituto para la Investigación 
Educativa y el Desarrollo 
Pedagógico (IDEP) 

Antoni Verger Planells 
Universidad Autónoma de 
Barcelona, España 

Inés Dussel, DIE-CINVESTAV, 
México 
 

José Ignacio Rivas Flores 
Universidad de Málaga, España 

Catalina Wainerman  
Universidad de San Andrés, 
Argentina 

Pedro Flores Crespo Universidad 
Iberoamericana, México 

 Juan Carlos Yáñez Velazco 
Universidad de Colima, México 
 

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The Authority-Power Dynamic of Regional Service Centers in the Standards Era 31 

 
 

 
arquivos analíticos de políticas educativas 

conselho editorial 

Editor Consultor:  Gustavo E. Fischman (Arizona State University) 
Editoras Coordenadores: Marcia Pletsch, Sandra Regina Sales (Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro) 

Editores Associadas: Andréa Barbosa Gouveia (Universidade Federal do Paraná), Kaizo Iwakami Beltrao, 
(EBAPE/FGVl), Sheizi Calheira de Freitas (Federal University of Bahia), Maria Margarida Machado (Federal 

University of Goiás / Universidade Federal de Goiás), Gilberto José Miranda (Universidade Federal de Uberlândia) 
 

Almerindo Afonso 

Universidade do Minho  

Portugal 

 

Alexandre Fernandez Vaz  

Universidade Federal de Santa 

Catarina, Brasil 

José Augusto Pacheco 

Universidade do Minho, Portugal 

Rosanna Maria Barros Sá  

Universidade do Algarve 

Portugal 

 

Regina Célia Linhares Hostins 

Universidade do Vale do Itajaí, 

 Brasil 

Jane Paiva 

Universidade do Estado do Rio de 

Janeiro, Brasil 

Maria Helena Bonilla  

Universidade Federal da Bahia  

Brasil 

 

Alfredo Macedo Gomes  

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco 

Brasil 

Paulo Alberto Santos Vieira  

Universidade do Estado de Mato 

Grosso, Brasil 

Rosa Maria Bueno Fischer  

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande 

do Sul, Brasil 

 

Jefferson Mainardes  

Universidade Estadual de Ponta 

Grossa, Brasil 

Fabiany de Cássia Tavares Silva 

Universidade Federal do Mato 

Grosso do Sul, Brasil 

Alice Casimiro Lopes  

Universidade do Estado do Rio de 

Janeiro, Brasil 

Jader Janer Moreira Lopes  

Universidade Federal Fluminense e 

Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 

Brasil 

António Teodoro  

Universidade Lusófona 

Portugal 

Suzana Feldens Schwertner 

Centro Universitário Univates  

Brasil 

 

 Debora Nunes 

 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande 

do Norte, Brasil 

Lílian do Valle 

Universidade do Estado do Rio de 

Janeiro, Brasil 

Geovana Mendonça Lunardi 

Mendes Universidade do Estado de 

Santa Catarina 

 

Alda Junqueira Marin 

 Pontifícia Universidade Católica de 

São Paulo, Brasil 

Alfredo Veiga-Neto 

 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande 

do Sul, Brasil 

Flávia Miller Naethe Motta 

Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de 

Janeiro, Brasil 

Dalila Andrade Oliveira 

Universidade Federal de Minas 

Gerais, Brasil