A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Systemic Reform: Perspectives on Personalizing Education - September 1994

Results and Discussion

Knowledge

In traditional school districts, professional development activities focus on training related to curriculum and instruction, and compared to the private sector, the investment is generally fairly skimpy. Consider, for example, that businesses in the private sector on average devote about 1.4 percent of payroll costs to training, while schools commonly expend as little as 0.5 percent of the budget on training (Bradley, 1993). As schools under SBM take over management responsibilities from the district, the need for technical know-how expands beyond content and pedagogy to include functional skills (e.g., budgeting) and skills related to SBM, such as group problem-solving, conflict resolution and time management.

Across the four districts, the teachers' contract dictated the number of staff development days that each campus was responsible for delivering. Two of the districts we studied created new organizational arrangements to supply support services to schools. Jefferson County had extensive staff development opportunities available to schools through the Gheens Academy, the staff development office of the district, with an annual budget of more than one million dollars. The district s priority on professional development was also evidenced by the status accorded the director of Gheens -- a position that was at the associate superintendent level and in the superintendent s cabinet. Furthermore, when schools in Jefferson County voted to adopt SBM, the district provided extra money for professional development. Edmonton, Canada also offered extensive staff development through its Staff Development Office, directed by the Associate Superintendent for Consulting Services. Consultants were available for customized campus training and teachers frequently traveled to the district office for development activities, which were offered after school hours and on weekends to encourage teacher participation. Edmonton also supported a large professional library for teachers and administrators, as did the Gheens Academy in Jefferson County. Such initiatives contrast sharply with recent findings suggesting that staff development funds typically are among the first to be cut in tight budget times "because its importance hasn't been recognized and because political realities make it an easy mark" (Bradley, 1993, p. 17). On the other hand, the picture was not entirely rosy in the four SBM districts. San Diego was in the middle of significant budget problems and viewed their inability to support extensive staff development as a barrier to effective SBM implementation. Prince William County invested heavily in staff development for principals, and then they relied on principals to develop their staffs, an approach that achieved unequal success. District administrators in both these districts felt they had underestimated the extent of staff development required to support SBM.

In the area of knowledge and skill development, there were identifiable differences between actively restructuring and struggling schools. In actively restructuring schools, there was intense interest in professional development, and professional development was viewed as an ongoing process for every teacher in the school and the principal. In ratings of professional culture, for instance, respondents typically felt teachers were extremely oriented toward continuous improvement. Such schools worked to build the capacity of the entire staff to help manage the school. School-wide staff development also helped to promote a professional community among faculty and to develop a common knowledge base among all members. The content of the training, likewise, tended to cover a wide range of areas from budgeting and scheduling to curriculum and instruction areas (i.e., team teaching, writing across the curriculum). Staff at actively restructuring schools also took advantage of opportunities to receive management training focused on shared decision-making skills like how to run effective meetings or how to build consensus. This difference was apparent even in the districts that were short on training and development resources. Actively restructuring schools in these districts were more likely to take advantage of limited district offerings and support, and to write supplemental grant proposals to get targeted training dollars from outside the district. They also solicited training support from businesses in areas such as total quality management, planning, and group process.

Struggling schools, on the other hand, had more sporadic training for staff and, beyond required development days, offered few opportunities for whole school development. Whereas actively restructuring schools often had an emphasis on bringing whole faculties together sometimes for an extended period of time, like at a retreat for a few days, schools that were struggling tended to continue to view staff development more as an individual activity. The Gheens Academy in Jefferson County publicly encouraged schools to send cross-role teams and had a general preference for training people from the same school in groups, rather than individuals from many different schools. Professional development opportunities at schools that were struggling were more in line with findings from earlier research on SBM -- namely that training typically was too general/standardized or so narrow that it didn t speak to the day-to-day realities of the school (Johnson & Boles, in press). In sum, professional development activities in actively restructuring schools were broadened to include a larger proportion of the staff and to include a wider range of knowledge and skills than are found in traditional districts and in the struggling schools we studied. These findings complement those from a recent study of Chicago school reform where researchers concluded that successful schools had moved toward "more sustained, school-wide staff development" (Consortium on Chicago School Research, 1993, p. 26).

Traditionally, in-service training and other staff development workshops are conducted by administrators from the district office who not only deliver the training but also decide its content and timing. By contrast, in SBM schools professional development typically is a bottom-up activity where school-level actors define their own needs and how services will be delivered (Wohlstetter & Buffett, 1992). In actively restructuring schools, sources of training outside of district offerings and even outside of traditional education circles often were tapped. For example in Jefferson County, representatives from Rohm and Haas, a chemical company, trained school staff in group problem solving, participation, management and leadership skills, and many of the principals in the district went through South Central Bell s management training program. Two actively restructuring schools in Prince William County sent administrators and several teachers to Xerox workshops on Total Quality Management. The teachers later conducted in-services at the school sites to train colleagues. In addition, many of the actively restructuring schools applied for available grants that provided staff development funds to stimulate school reform. There was a notable absence of such activities in the struggling schools.

Our findings in this area support the importance of capacity building for redesigning organizations. Actively restructuring schools generally sought out resources for and implemented higher levels of professional development and involved more of the school community in training. These patterns suggest important connections between professional development and SBM: 1) it is difficult for schools to accept responsibility for management (and for organizational outcomes) without technical know-how; and 2) school staffs who direct local governance activities actively seek out staff development to build new capabilities. The importance of these findings are underscored by previous research in SBM schools that found both limited attention to professional development and a preoccupation among participants with process over outcomes (Ogawa & White, in press; Johnson & Boles, in press).

Power

By definition, SBM schools have power structures that are different from most public schools in America. In traditional schools, initiatives tend to emanate from the top of the organizational hierarchy with the superintendent and school board. By contrast, SBM schools are places where significant authority has been devolved from the district office to the school campus and initiatives come more often from the schools themselves. Policy decisions related to how power should be decentralized to schools focus on two major issues -- who should be empowered at the school site and how much power should they have. In the four districts we studied, there was some variation in terms of where such policies were set. In Jefferson County and Prince William County, SBM plans largely were designed by schools that were allowed to set their own parameters, including the composition of the council and the choice of who could chair. In San Diego, the district and union issued broad guidelines, including specification of teacher membership ratios for the councils. The change agendas of the councils were left to the school to decide, although school plans and goals were required in several districts. In Edmonton, school plans were expected to incorporate outcomes, expectations and indicators set by the district.

This section examines three issues related to devolving power and its influence on the capacity of the school to restructure itself: 1) participative structures; 2) the role of the principal; and 3) the amount of authority devolved.

Participative Structures. Councils at SBM schools typically consisted of elected representatives of various stakeholders in the school (e.g., teachers, parents, classified employees and campus administrators). Interestingly, councils under specific mandates did not look all that different from councils designed under loose guidelines in terms of membership, leadership and areas of jurisdiction. Edmonton was the only district of the four where no council was created at the school site; all teachers were considered part of the governing body and principals devised their own methods (usually informal) for obtaining teacher input. For the parents' perspective, Edmonton schools consulted their specially- created parent advisory councils. The role of this body was not to design policy, but to provide input on parents views and desires that the school then could incorporate into its decisions.

Once site councils were created, schools, particularly the actively restructuring ones, tended to further disperse power at the site by creating subcommittees. A common conclusion in research on SBM is that teachers become frustrated and burned-out from the enormous workload of teaching and managing. Subcommittees allowed greater numbers of teachers to participate in the formal decision-making process and also seemed to help reduce the burden on any one teacher.

The subcommittees, which were structured around issues related to schooling such as curriculum, assessment and professional development, also seemed to focus teacher energy and interactions on specific work tasks, not abstractions like "culture" or empowerment. Hannaway (1993) found similar benefits to subcommittees in her study of two school districts that had decentralized effectively. Subcommittees in some actively restructuring schools tended to serve as work groups for the site council, alternatively receiving ideas from the council to develop and submitting ideas/recommendations to the council for approval. In other schools, subcommittees initiated activity, receiving input and ultimately approval from the council.

Membership of the subcommittees typically was some combination of teachers who served on the council and those who did not. In some actively restructuring schools, non-council teachers chaired the subcommittees. These schools tended to view subcommittees as a further dispersion of power on campus; the subcommittee structure allowed greater numbers of teachers to hold leadership positions. Other schools had council members chair the subcommittees. Respondents from these schools tended to view the subcommittee chairs as liaisons to the council and during interviews, focused on the need for a tight link between the school site council and its subcommittees.

The profile of a fairly representative actively restructuring school included an eleven-member governance council composed of the principal and seven teachers elected by each of the teaching teams. Parents and classified employees also served on the council. Although members were elected to serve, council meetings were open and in this school any faculty member attending the meeting enjoyed full privileges, including being able to vote. The school had six standing committees: 1) instructional materials, 2) students services, 3) staffing and budget, 4) planning, 5) curriculum and 6) professional development. The chair and vice-chair of each subcommittee were non-council teachers, although each committee had council teachers, too. Ad hoc committees were created as needed; scheduling, for example, was handled through an ad hoc committee.

The effectiveness of the councils tended to differentiate actively restructuring and struggling schools. Struggling schools got bogged down in establishing power relationships on campus. These schools expended large amounts of energy formalizing who was empowered. The majority of struggling schools had strict guidelines that delineated authority. They tended to empower a subgroup of the faculty and to have only a limited number of mechanisms for involving faculty in decision-making. Furthermore, the guidelines that delineated who had power were very clear leading to feelings of "we" -- the empowered -- and "them". One struggling school in San Diego spent almost a year developing a governance document that strictly delineated power roles. The document established, for example, that only elected teacher representatives, or their alternates in the event of an elected member s absence, could speak at council meetings. Further, only the elected member, not the alternate, was able to vote. The Consortium on Chicago School Research (1993), likewise, found that in schools with "adversarial politics," conflicts about power tended to dominate discussions and the schools' ability to focus on improvement efforts was greatly diminished.

It also was common for principals in struggling schools to be involved in a power struggle with their staff. This frequently was precipitated by the disjuncture between the principal's espoused view of how the school worked --participatory management -- and her/his own management style. It especially became evident when the principal's personal values were in conflict with actions advocated by the council. In one struggling school where the council adopted a zero tolerance for fighting policy -- meaning that any student involved in a physical altercation was subject to immediate suspension -- the principal actively undermined the council s decision by not enforcing it, even though the policy was incorporated into the student handbook. Thus, when teachers sent students to the office for fighting, they were not likely to be suspended, especially if it were their first offense. The non-support of the principal had alienated and divided staff, and the school consequently was spending lots of time on issues of control.

The Role of the Principal. Successful principals were able to motivate staff and create a team feeling on campus, as well as guiding and providing a vision for the school. Notably, there was little difference in leadership style between Edmonton, on the one hand, where the principal was the key decision maker and the other two districts where the site council had more authority. In the private sector, research by Peters and Austin (1985) stresses the importance of MBWA -- "management by wandering around." Principals at actively restructuring schools often employed this technique by routinely engaging faculty in timely and informal conversations in the halls away from their offices. In addition, these principals almost always were characterized as entrepreneurial. They sought out grant opportunities and then encouraged faculty to write proposals for the funding of innovations that addressed school-initiated concerns, like the integration of technology across the curriculum. Successful principals also typically served as a liaison to the outside world with regard to educational research and practice, gathering information to share with teachers at faculty meetings and the like. Research and innovative approaches, such as Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, Caught in the Middle, or Deming's Total Quality Management, were disseminated frequently and often used to improve instruction on campus. Many principals viewed themselves as an information clearinghouse.

Many of our findings regarding principal leadership echo findings from research on effective schools (Purkey & Smith, 1985, 1983; Wilson & Corcoran, 1987; Austin & Holowenzak, 1985) and more recent studies of school decentralization (Bimber, 1993; Consortium on Chicago School Research, 1993). Principals in the actively restructuring schools were highly regarded by the faculty -- "this school runs like a tight machine because of strong leadership." However, contrary to previous research, we found that in several actively restructuring schools the principals moving away from the role of instructional leader toward more of a managerial role. The principals worked to shield teachers from concerns in which the teachers had little vested interest or expertise, so that they -- "the instructional experts" -- could concentrate on teaching. One principal, for example, increased his visibility in the community to encourage people to come directly to him with non-instructional problems, which then could be resolved without infringing on faculty time.

The Amount of Authority Devolved. With regard to the amount of power decentralized, this study did not find a strong, simple relationship between the absolute amount of authority a school has and its capacity to restructure. Findings suggest, however, that a minimum threshold of authority -- focused on factors that affect teaching -- is a necessary condition for active restructuring. The level of authority a campus has is typically dictated by the model employed by the district the school is in. Schools in our sample had significant authority over budget -- most controlled a lump sum budget; personnel -- schools to some extent controlled the mix of staff positions; and curricular decisions --within state and local constraints, schools could make operational decisions about curriculum delivery.

Like previous research (Wohlstetter & Buffett, 1992; Clune & White, 1988), we found that the first area of control that schools attained was usually some degree of budgetary authority. At least part of the budget of the schools in our sample was allocated to the campus as a lump sum. The primary complaint of both actively restructuring and struggling schools was that after paying salaries and other fixed costs, few discretionary dollars remained. Indeed, upwards of 90-95 percent of the school budget was often determined before dollars were allocated to the school site.

The budgeting process was another area that differentiated actively restructuring and struggling schools. Just as actively restructuring schools tended to disperse power throughout the organization, the majority of them also involved multiple stakeholders in the budget process. The schools made an effort to focus attention on the needs of the whole school rather than balkanizing the needs of academic departments or teaching teams. For example, a principal of an actively restructuring school in Prince William County made a special end of the year budget to keep faculty focused on the school as a whole. At the end of the school year, the principal asked department heads to pool any funds remaining in departmental budgets, so funds could be spent to benefit the whole school. Then a faculty meeting was held to decide how to spend the money. To facilitate decision-making, each department drew up a wish list of things they thought were needed to improve instruction in the school. At the meeting, faculty discussed the lists and decided what they believed would have the most significant impact on the school as a whole. Through this process, academic departments were placed in the context of the whole school.

Control over personnel meant that the campus was able to hire staff that conformed to the culture of the school and to create a mix of staff positions that supported the teaching and learning strategies of the campus. The majority of schools in our sample had some control over which teachers were hired, although schools typically had to hire teachers from district approved lists. It was common for the central administration to make the first cut and then send schools a slate to select from. However, it was also possible for schools to reject an entire slate and request additional possibilities. One complaint of many actively restructuring schools in our sample concerned the acceptance of teacher transfers. While schools often were given wide latitude in selecting new hires, the same schools were often required to accept transfers from within the district. Frequently these teachers were seen as undesirable, often because they did not fit the emerging approaches to teaching and learning; said one principal, "It's a turkey trot."

Actively restructuring schools tended to utilize authority over the mix of positions in innovative ways to support teaching and learning. For example, itinerant resource teachers frequently were hired in different combinations to cover classrooms, so that groups of teachers could have regularly scheduled common planning periods.

All of the schools in our sample could make some curricular decisions on the campus. They described themselves as having control over the "how's" of the instructional program. Generally, the "what's" of the instructional program were outlined in district or state guidelines. Teachers in actively restructuring schools have achieved greater agreement about instructional direction. In Jefferson County, teachers in three schools were unified by frameworks provided by outside reformers -- the Coalition of Essential Schools and the National Alliance for Restructuring Education. But achieving collective agreement also required discussions, off-site meetings and collective planning. Perhaps the most significant common element across actively restructuring schools was the extent to which organizational mechanisms were in place that generated interactions for school-level actors around issues related to curriculum and instruction. Likewise, in actively restructuring schools in Chicago where researchers found sustained discussions about educational issues, time had been set aside for teachers to meet, and places were made available for teachers to congregate and talk (Consortium on Chicago School Research, 1993).

Many of the elementary schools and some of the middle and high schools that were actively restructuring created teaching teams or houses, where a group of teachers (usually 4-6) were responsible for instructing a cohort of students. Decisions regarding curriculum and instruction usually were decentralized to the teaching teams or to a curriculum subcommittee and through such vehicles, teachers had ongoing task-related contact with one another. For example, one curriculum subcommittee at an elementary school solicited ideas in the areas of science, math, language arts and physical education from teachers school-wide to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum framework on health. The product of this effort, with contributions from nearly all staff members, was a curriculum designed to promote healthy lifestyles among students of all ages and abilities. Lesson plans in the curriculum spanned a variety of health-related topics -- the nutritional value of foods, measurement, physical exercise, communication, creativity and safety -- and tapped a range of skills. In one lesson, for instance, students first read and compared nutrition labels on food containers, and then recorded information about the amount of saturated fat, sodium and sugar in different foods. With this information, the students next used math skills to calculate the recommended daily intake of these "three evil S's of foods." At the end of the lesson, as an assessment mechanism, students used their knowledge to plan a creative meal within specified levels of fats and calories.

Besides teaching teams and curriculum subcommittees, school schedules in actively restructuring schools often were redesigned to encourage teacher interaction. One frequently used method was a common planning period for teachers at the same level or in the same subject area. Teachers used this time to develop curriculum and share lesson plans. In addition, some schools went so far as to add an extra period to the school day to allow for planning; sometimes this required a waiver from local policy or the teaching contract. Struggling schools were unlikely to have redesigned the parameters within which the faculty operated, in part because they had not developed a shared vision of how they wanted to teach.

In addition to the large role of site councils and local school administration, superintendents worked actively to help create the capacity for high involvement. Superintendents were largely aiders and abettors, moving central offices from a directive role toward a service orientation and offering resources (e.g., professional development) to support/encourage school-level change. The district office in Jefferson County offered extra money for professional development to encourage schools to move to SBM. All four superintendents led the charge to develop a service orientation in the district office. All had flattened and downsized the hierarchy in the central office. The Jefferson County superintendent gave each principal the number of a "lightening rod" to call in the district office if they had a problem. If the principal did not get a satisfactory response from the lightening rod, then the superintendent instructed the principals to call him directly. Superintendents in many of the sample districts also worked hard to develop a district-wide culture that encouraged risk- taking by schools. These superintendents reported great variability in the extent to which schools took advantage of changes in the district climate. Some schools had a strong vision, and made modifications and secured deviations from many district-wide practices to help implement their local vision. Other schools laid low, did not challenge past practice, and continued to see themselves as victimized by the district.


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[The Study] [Table of Contents] [Results and Discussion (continued)]