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This week, we want you to explore your theory of change from discussion post #2 in the context of the real world implications of politics, governance, and management.

In particular, we would like you to focus on the following questions:

1) How do real world constraints (like politics, funding, and organizational culture) impact your theory of change?

2) How do public perceptions impact your ability to execute on your ToC?

Choose a quote from the readings on this week or last weeks study guide that supports your thinking. (Please take note that Dr. Alonso is co-author of two readings you will want to check out in this weeks study guide). 

My original theory of change was rooted in recruiting and retaining experienced teachers.  With more knowledge from this course, I would expand that goal to building the capacity (Elmore-style) for high-quality instruction in the classroom In addition to a focus on teacher support and development, my deeper understanding of culture and governance has also led me to add principals to that group. However, pursuing this path will require wrestling with the constraints of funding, politics, governance, and culture – which is why the goals must be shared and pursued by the city, school board, central office, and teachers’ union.  

Like in the Philadelphia case, the district can work a community committee on a project to transform the popular view of the district into that of a desirable place to work. As the Connecticut judge highlighted in his recent decision, it would also mean working with the union to separate salary from only educational attainment and years taught.  Some states (like Massachusetts)  have evened out funding between wealthier and poorer districts, allowing the latter to offer higher salaries for teachers in subject shortage areas (like Special Ed) or who choose to teach in low-income schools. With the input and support of teacher leaders, the district must prioritize developing a meaningful coaching and evaluation system that helps teachers feel supported and encouraged.  If we are not able to invest in more counselors in schools, then we need professional development that prepares teachers to guide socioemotional learning in addition to academic.  In addition, teachers need to have demanding and inspiring principals that they trust as instructional leaders and who stay long-term to lead schools. These principals need more freedom to make hires – with support from the central office – and let go teachers as necessary, without the union’s seniority transfer rules that push hiring into such a late timeline and create frantic starts to the year.  And of course, we must tackle organizational culture so that the team can work top-down OR bottom-up on shared priorities.

As Dr. Alonso writes in the first “Creating Public Value in Public Schools, “The simple fact is that every school Superintendent inherits a faculty that he or she depends on to produce the desired results. That staff usually represents more than 75% of the costs of the operation, and its performance is absolutely essential to the success of the school system. If the inherited stock of human capital is highly skilled in teaching, powerfully motivated to get the most from each child, resourceful and energetic in innovating and adapting their methods of instruction to meet new demands, the faculty can be an enormous asset – leveraging the use of money and authority into valuable educational outcomes. If, however, the staff is unqualified, or burnt out, or set in their ways, then the existing staff can become a drag on future performance.”

For our discussion for week 4, please consider the schools and districts you have worked in OR the districts profiled in this week’s readings, and explore their governance models. What were their opportunities and challenges? How did culture and power influence the governance, management structures and processes at work in these contexts? Which elements might argue for specific governance models or against them? Note that some of our readings pose the dichotomy of centralized versus decentralized district offices as a significant question of the governance of schools.  Are you satisfied with this framing or might there be a different way to think about this opposition?

I have taught for the past five years in an in-district turnaround school in Boston Public Schools (BPS).  My school was the first in a network of six in-district turnaround schools managed by an outside non-profit organization (like a CMO) but still budgeted by and accountable to BPS.  This means that I have had the hybrid experience of both a school-district relationship as well as the school-network relationship.  With the lens of this week's readings on governance models, it has been fascinating to think about how both relationships have mimicked and diverged from each other, especially since the school-network relationship was ostensibly established to improve on the failings of the school-district relationship.  As Honing points out, principals can have the same or worse experience with their CMOs as their counterparts in the district have with their central office.

When mayoral control became the new mode of school governance in Boston in 1991, it set the stage for a decade of centralized leadership by Mayor Menino and Superintendent Payzant.  It was Payzant who championed pilot schools and in-district charter schools as options for BPS students that would be funded by the city but governed by individual boards (this is the "portfolio management" strategy described by Honing).  The turnaround model also became more attractive after it was offered as a strategy for cities to receive grants and other funding from Race to the Top in 2009.

Elmore laments that NCLB established federal performance standards and sanctions without expanding the capacity of states, districts, and schools to meet them.  Our network strives to meet the same performance standards of the other district schools, but has invested in intensive teacher coaching and development to build capacity in reaching those standards (staying true to Elmore's "principle of reciprocity").  Because our network has more independence from the district, leaders are less likely resort to "the devil made me do it" arguments that pass the buck on to the state or federal regulators.  Unlikely the central office situation described by Honing, many of our network administrators are former teachers and have a deep curricular knowledge of what comprises quality teaching and learning.  Our network is also committed to the tasks that Honing identifies as ones most neglected by district central offices, such as generating useful data for schools and teachers to use, developing principals as instructional leaders, and recruiting for a teacher/leader pipeline.

At the same time, Elmore's observations about the "regulatory mindset" (and the varied implementation and results that he observed between 145 BPS schools under Superintendent Payzant) rang true to my experience as our network has expanded to six schools in six years.  Instead of managing the diversity of different schools with different needs, the network office tends to create uniformity that is easier to regulate.  As Honing notes, principals in our network have less autonomy - if more support - than they would have from the district central office.  The increased external pressure has the same result as Elmore predicted: coherent schools with a strong organizational culture pull together to meet higher expectations, and already atomized schools become more dysfunctional.  In addition, the network staff (like the district's central office staff describe by Honing) spend less time in classrooms than they used to, and teachers are less certain about the role and effects of the network in their daily life (other than implementing testing).  While the network may be attuned to principal needs (or imposing its own expectations on the principal through a top-down culture that mimics that of the district), it may be deaf to teacher needs, particularly if there is a disconnect between principal and teachers; for example, our staff attrition rate remains very high but has not been publicly identified by the network as a priority and it is unlikely that the network has successfully supported principals in tackling this issue.

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