A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO SCHOOL REFORM
Is significant school reform possible? The answer is clearly
yes, Mr. McAdams says, but successful reform requires an understanding of
the interplay of five factors and the ability to integrate this knowledge
into a systemic reform effort.
IS LARGE-SCALE school reform possible? The accumulated evidence of the past
40 years of reform efforts is not encouraging. While hundreds of individual
schools and a few school districts have created and sustained successful
reforms, the vast majority of America's school districts have remained impervious
to substantive reform. Why is this so and what can be done about it? Repeated
failed attempts at reform suggest that our standard approach to reform is
fundamentally flawed.
Substantive reform in a complex social system such as a school district requires
a level of intellectual sophistication and unity of purpose that is seldom
attainable under our prevailing model of school governance. Moreover, leading
educational researchers and theorists typically focus on narrow slices of
the reality of school systems and ignore the relationships between their
area of expertise and other relevant phenomena in school system operations.
Below I summarize the findings of leading scholars in the fields of leadership
theory, local politics and governance, state and national school politics,
organizational theory, and change theory. For the purpose of my summary,
I will consider each of these areas as an independent phenomenon, though
it is the interactions of these factors within a school system that are seldom
analyzed and often doom our efforts at reform. I con-clude by discussing
what can be done in light of these interrelationships and by outlining the
characteristics of a school system that would be more amenable to reform.
Leadership Theory
How do leaders put themselves in a position to make significant changes in
an organization? Peter Senge develops the concepts of personal mastery, shared
vision, mental models, and team learning as necessary precursors for mastering
what he calls the "fifth discipline" or "systems thinking."[1]
A careful reading of Senge's work portrays a leader of an organization involved
in systemic change as both a reflective and highly moral individual. He describes
such a leader as having been in a position of leadership for a sufficient
time to inspire trust and respect from the staff and to build a culture of
teamwork.
Stephen Covey's views parallel Senge's insights concerning the need for a
leader to reflect on his or her own personal core beliefs and to develop
the trust and skills necessary to work for change collaboratively. Covey's
notion of a "character ethic" rather than a "personality ethic" is akin to
Senge's notion of personal mastery.[2]
Howard Gardner distinguishes between indirect and direct leadership. Indirect
leadership is exercised by a person within his or her sphere of specialized
knowledge. Gardner is referring mainly to academics and other recognized
experts. Direct leadership, on the other hand, is exercised in a general
political sense and is not restricted to a given area of knowledge. By virtue
of position, a school superintendent must be able to exercise indirect (specialized)
leadership as the instructional leader of the district. But a superintendent
must also exercise direct, more generalized leadership with the school board
and community. The ability to do both effectively is an uncommon gift that
is nonetheless critical in leading a significant reform effort in a school
district.
Local Politics and Governance
The politics of local school districts and the tendency toward micromanagement
by many boards can seriously inhibit a board's policy-making function and
weaken a superintendent's ability to sustain reform. Indeed, American school
boards spend 24% of their time dealing with the problems of their own children
or the problems of the children of relatives and close friends.[3]
The political imperatives of local school board governance militate against
the development and implementation of long-range plans. The tenure of a typical
school board member in the U.S. is about four years.[4] Coupled with the
adversarial nature of many board elections, this short tenure both erases
institutional memory and undermines the consistency of mission needed to
achieve substantive reform. Successful school reform requires that board
members "recognize that continuity of purpose, vision, and structure depends
on the board's ability to maintain a steady course despite change in superintendencies
and even changes in the membership of the board."[5]
Visionary leadership on the part of a superintendent and a board, which is
required to produce systemic change, presupposes sufficient time to develop
a shared vision. To develop a cohesive team with a commitment to a common
mission requires a level of trust and mutual respect that is one of the fruits
of longer-term professional relationships. The time required to form such
trusting relationships is simply not available to many school superintendents
and boards. Indeed, the average tenure of superintendents in a recent national
sample was only about five years.[6]
The relatively short tenure of board members and superintendents is to some
extent a function of political controversies within a school community. A
20-year review of property tax changes in 55 Pennsylvania school districts
indicated that districts with the highest rates of tax increases had a significantly
higher rate of turnover among school board members than did districts with
the lowest rates of tax increases. This same study revealed a statistically
significant correlation between the turnover rates for school board members
and the turnover rates for superintendents in the same districts.[7]
For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that the average tenure for both
superintendents and school board members is five years. Assume further that
these school officials are serving in a state, such as Pennsylvania, in which
there are nine board members. A typical superintendent who began his or her
five years on 1 July 1997 will find that the entire nine-member board will
have turned over by the end of his or her tenure in 2002. During this five-year
period, the superintendent will have dealt with 18 different individuals.
Power struggles between the board and the superintendent, rather than mutual
trust, often emerge from this swirling mix of personalities. In a national
sample of school board members and superintendents in the mid-1980s, Donald
Alvey found significant differences in the perceptions of both groups regarding
their appropriate roles in addressing 27 issues common to school district
governance.[8] A similar study of Pennsylvania school officials a decade
later yielded similar results.[9] The political infighting that such conflicts
often engender can be fatal to the spirit of collaboration and common purpose
that is required to sustain school reform.
Superintendents are clearly vulnerable to the political shifts on their school
boards and can become the victims of the often whimsical priorities and enthusiasms
of ever-changing boards. Superintendents must be nimble enough to change
with the turnover in board priorities -- or comfortable with frequent relocations.
In either event, bold leadership by a superintendent over the long term is
the exception rather than the rule.
State and National Politics
So far I have dealt with local politics. But the vagaries of the local political
winds could be somewhat lessened if cohesive education policy initiatives
existed at the state and national levels. However, the interplay of governmental
bodies, of special interest groups, and of the knowledge industry has repeatedly
stymied efforts at systemic education reform.[10]
Conflicts among competing interests are exacerbated in large urban districts,
where there is great diversity among constituencies. Even the traditional
homogeneity and stability of most suburban and rural communities are rapidly
giving way to the increasing diversity and mobility of the American citizenry.
John Chubb and Terry Moe have argued that the political nature of American
public schools is a fatal impediment to significant school reform.[11] The
heart of their argument is that conflict, rapidly changing priorities, a
tendency toward micromanagement, and cumbersome controls are essential characteristics
of the political process. Chubb and Moe found that the most effective schools
were characterized by a high level of professional autonomy at the individual
building level, a condition that seldom exists in a highly politicized environment.
Their conclusion is that privatization represents the only way to achieve
substantive school reform.
A similarly somber prognosis for public schools is offered by Seymour Sarason.
After decades of studying school reform, he has concluded that there is virtually
no chance that it will come from within the system. He believes that the
stakeholders simply have too much to lose and warns that, if the governance
issue is not faced, schools will get worse, and public schools will ultimately
be abandoned.[12]
At the state level, the normal machinations of the political process have
a major impact on education policy and practice. The terms of governors essentially
bracket the time frame for change on educational issues. The dynamics of
the political process dictate that each new governor will develop a plan
for improving, if not radically reforming, public education. The initiatives
of the previous administration are always downplayed, and in many cases they
are flatly repudiated. Meanwhile, battle-weary local school officials frequently
adopt a "this too shall pass" attitude. We have already seen that a four-
to five-year period is not long enough to make systemic change at the local
level. How much more constraining is the arbitrary time limitation that terms
of office impose on statewide change initiatives?
The experience with school reform in Texas in the 1980s is instructive. At
the beginning of the decade, Texas enacted its "no pass/no play" rule for
school athletes. Dramatic changes in the areas of curriculum and assessment
were undertaken as well. The legislature adopted statewide goals and standards.
Initiatives to improve teacher quality and develop more equitable school
funding were launched.
After a decade of effort, the results were minimal. The assessment program
changed four or five times during the 10-year period. Few teachers elected
to participate in the career-ladder program. Staff development was mandated
-- but never funded. Little progress was made on funding equity, despite
the involvement of the courts. Only 45% of students taking the statewide
assessments in 1991 passed all three sections of the test. By 1992 half of
Texas school districts still failed to meet state educational standards.[13]
A study of six southeastern states reveals the same dynamics at work in Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina.[14] Only
two of the top 36 education policy makers in these six states were still
in office after 10 years. The normal turnover in seats in the six state legislatures
and in the governors' mansions during this 10-year period ensured that there
would be little institutional memory regarding the successes and failures
of education policy.
This same study reported that on-again, off-again reform initiatives were
a direct result of political instability and budget shortfalls. The authors
concluded that the time necessary to initiate positive change in schools
is longer than the tenure of political officials. Teachers in the trenches,
they said, had grown "improvement weary."
Organizational Theory
Leadership and political issues aside, significant organizational characteristics
of schools also impede reform efforts. Because of the major influence of
the external environment on the operation of school districts, the schools
are an excellent example of an "open system." The community powerfully influences
education policy and practice, because it provides the students and because
parents and the general public are strongly interested in taxes and property
values -- if not in high-quality education directly. Indeed, many staff members
play dual roles as employees and parents or community members.
To be successful, a major school reform must enjoy a community consensus
that extends well beyond the requirements for internal team building and
shared vision of private organizations. Action by consensus slows down the
change process and often dilutes the magnitude of the changes attempted.
American schools, by design, feature much more community involvement than
do schools in other industrialized nations.[15]
Even when we restrict our attention to internal organization, schools can
be thought of as "loosely coupled systems."[16] As such, each school can
be considered a semi-autonomous unit. The concept of site-based management
is based on the assumption that decentralizing decision making will lead
to better decisions and more effective schools. Such educational reformers
as Theodore Sizer, Robert Slavin, James Comer, and Henry Levin are attempting
to change education one school at a time. Sizer's concept of a good superintendent
and school board, for example, is that they should be supportive but nonintrusive
where site-based reforms are concerned.
This loosely coupled model may well be best for an educational enterprise.
However, it is a serious obstacle for those who would initiate statewide
or even district-level reforms. The very culture of schooling is highly resistant
to such top-down reforms.
Even if the resistance to top-down reforms could be overcome at the building
level, there would still be major resistance by individual teachers. In an
analysis of organizational structure, Henry Mintzberg identified five basic
types of organizations. His model of the "professional bureaucracy" closely
fits the mode of operation in many school buildings, which features a large
core of classroom teachers who perform the critical activities of the organization.
"Mintzberg's Professional Bureaucracy is characterized by autonomy at the
operational level. The autonomy of the professional makes it very hard to
make systematic change."[17]
Teachers see principals and central office administrators as middle managers
who ideally play a supportive and subordinate role in the actual instructional
process. Teachers jealously guard their professional prerogative to determine
the actual content of instruction. Convincing a critical mass of teachers
to adopt a major reform project, especially one directly affecting instruction,
is a time-consuming process fraught with practical and political difficulties.
The recent concept of the "agile organization" dramatically reveals the impediments
to change that schools face. Agility is seen as a fundamental requirement
for an organization to succeed in a rapidly changing world. There are four
major characteristics of an agile organization: 1) enriching the customer,
2) cooperating to enhance competitiveness, 3) organizing to master change
and uncertainty, and 4) leveraging the impact of people and information.[18]
If such organizational characteristics are necessary for success in the postindustrial
world, American school systems are at a distinct disadvantage. Based on an
industrial and bureaucratic model, school systems are ill-suited to respond
rapidly to a changing environment. Teachers and school officials are inclined
by temperament and experience to adopt an incremental rather than a radical
approach to reform. A commitment to the principles of agility listed above
is quite unusual in the publicly financed and protected world of the public
schools.
Change Theory
Michael Fullan carefully analyzed the major school reform efforts of the
past 30 years and reached some compelling conclusions about the nature of
the change process. Not surprisingly, he found that substantive change is
both a time-consuming and an energy-intensive process. He concluded that
"the total time frame from initiation to institutionalization is lengthy,
[and] even moderately complex changes take from three to five years, while
major restructuring efforts can take five to ten years."[19]
I have already discussed how the short tenure of board members and superintendents
and the influence of politics work against the institutionalization of a
school reform. A third phenomenon, which Fullan calls the "implementation
dip," further undermines the reform of public schools.
The implementation dip is the period of time, early in the implementation
process, during which productivity and morale both decline because of the
tensions and anxieties generated as educators, parents, and students attempt
to deal with unanticipated problems.[20] Political demands for accountability
and expectations for quick results often assert themselves at just this stage
of the change process. Many promising reforms have been discarded during
this period.
Thus far I have discussed change as if it were primarily a rational process.
In reality, organizations change only when the people in them are willing
and able to do so. In addition to strictly structural and political considerations,
the prospective change agent must draw on motivational theories in planning
for meaningful change.[21] Moving from the individual to the organizational
level, we find that the assumptions, values, and norms of the organization
itself are powerful influences on the change process. All these phenomena
can be considered as constituting the culture of an organization.
Just as the character of a person is deep-seated and resistant to change,
so the culture of an organization is difficult to influence. Indeed, many
proposed changes are viewed as threats to the existing culture and may be
resisted for that reason alone.
Phillip Schlechty affirms that "to change an organization's structure . .
. one must attend not only to rules, roles, and relationships, but to systems
of belief, values, and knowledge as well. Structural change requires cultural
change."[22] Thus one can say that an organization needs to be "recultured"
before it can be restructured.
Unfortunately, many would-be change agents seem unaware of the impact of
school culture on the process of change. The history of education reform
is littered with examples of interventions that failed or had adverse effects
because those involved had only the most superficial and distorted conception
of the culture of the school they sought to change.[23]
Meaningful education reform implies a significant change in the interaction
between teachers and students. To achieve such change requires major changes
in curriculum, instruction, and standards of achievement. All three of these
areas are viewed by classroom teachers as the technical core of their work.
And teachers strongly resist efforts by outside forces -- be they superintendents,
school boards, or state agencies -- to influence their control within the
classroom. Few school districts are willing to devote the time and staff
development resources needed to build trust between leaders and staff members
sufficient to overcome the teachers' fear of losing autonomy.
What Can Be Done
The negative impact of any one of the five factors outlined above would be
a serious handicap to effective school reform. If there are malfunctions
in several of these areas at once -- an all too common occurrence -- then
school reform will almost certainly be blocked. A consideration of the complex
variables that affect school reform offers a new perspective for reformers
to consider. The question changes from why school reform has been so difficult
to achieve to whether significant school reform is even possible.
The answer is clearly yes. But successful school reform requires an understanding
of the interplay of the five factors described above, as well as the ability
to integrate this knowledge into a systemic reform effort. The knowledge
needed can be summarized in the following series of propositions.
1. An effective superintendent must have a sense of personal integrity, an
articulated vision and mission, and the ability to inspire the staff and
school board to share that vision. Such a leader must also have the time
and opportunity to develop mutual trust and respect among members of the
leadership team. The leader must be able to practice the skills of team learning
and systems thinking with the leadership group. Finally, the leader must
be able to assert indirect leadership within the educational community while
exercising direct political leadership in the wider community.
2. Political stability within a school district is an essential condition
for the flourishing of reform. Both school board members and superintendents
must be able to count on being around long enough to shepherd the reforms
through until they become institutionalized. Longer tenure for school board
members and superintendents would allow time for such officials to gain a
more thorough understanding of their particular school district and a more
sophisticated appreciation for the nature of the change process itself. In
addition, stability at the top would raise the comfort level of teachers
and administrators, making them more open to the risk-taking that school
reform requires.
3. The political nature of many superintendencies precludes the type of strong
leadership practiced by effective chief executive officers in the private
sector. The crisis mentality of many boards and communities inclines superintendents
to think tactically rather than strategically and to avoid major change rather
than to embrace it. A superintendent who is secure in his or her position
with the school board and the community and who anticipates a long tenure
will be much more likely to tackle the risks and challenges that significant
school reform requires. Long-term working relationships between a superintendent
and school board also tend to diminish the role conflicts that so often characterize
their relationships.
4. The nature of state-level educational politics offers little hope that
many states will be able to sustain the 10 years or more of consistent effort
required to achieve lasting statewide school reform. The Kentucky school
reforms of recent years offer perhaps the best model of long-term commitment
to statewide change. However, even this initiative might have unraveled quickly
had the opposing political party won the Kentucky gubernatorial race in 1995.
A convincing argument can be made that substantive school reform is easiest
to achieve at the individual school level. While school reform at the district
level is possible, it is difficult to achieve, and lasting school reform
initiated at the state level is highly unlikely to occur under existing political
conditions.
5. The presence of the positive elements in leadership, school governance,
and board/superintendent interactions is necessary but not sufficient for
successful school reform. Board members and superintendents need a sophisticated
understanding of their districts as systems that are open and loosely coupled.
Organizational agility and a subtle understanding of the nature of professional
bureaucracies and the principles of system thinking are also imperative if
an ambitious reform agenda is to be successfully implemented.
6. A deep understanding of change theory is necessary for a superintendent
to guide a proposed school reform from inception to institutionalization.
Everyone involved in the change process, including the school board, should
anticipate an implementation dip early in the process. The superintendent
must also apply knowledge of motivational theory and an understanding of
school culture to the reform initiative.
Insightful school leaders recognize that nothing is as practical as good
theory. And there are superintendents, principals, and school board members
in some districts who possess these understandings. There are communities
in which political stability in school governance is the rule. Such happy
alignments of the right people at the right place and time provide a fertile
soil for creating those examples of positive school reform that do exist.
Peter Senge presents a powerful concept called "creative tension" to describe
the gap between a vision for an organization and the current reality in that
organization. Policy makers, politicians, and educational researchers often
possess a strong vision of reform but are blind to the interconnecting variables
that make up current organizational reality. Frontline educators, on the
other hand, are often so focused on the challenges of dealing with their
current reality that they become wary -- and weary -- of repeated calls for
ambitious reforms from the educational and political elites.
The confluence of outstanding leadership and fortunate circumstances has
catalyzed substantive systemic reform in a small minority of American school
districts. Unfortunately, neither outstanding leadership nor fortunate organizational
circumstances are the norm in America's schools. The "scaling up" of successful
reforms cannot occur until the prevailing realities of school governance,
superintendent/board relationships, the change process, and the nature of
school system operations are substantially altered.
A systems approach to school reform offers the best hope for implementing
proven reforms on a large scale. Researchers need to take a systemic view
in identifying why reforms are successful in some school districts. I believe
that such investigations will demonstrate that the political, cultural, and
social dynamics in these districts are significantly different from the norm.
Demonstrating that the political, organizational, and cultural characteristics
of most school districts are major impediments to school reform is a necessary
but not sufficient first step. The harder task of convincing Americans to
alter fundamentally some of their cherished traditions for governing and
organizing their schools might require a decade, if not a generation, of
commitment and effort. Let us begin!
1. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning
Organization (New York: Doubleday Currency, 1991).
2. Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1991).
3. Marilyn L. Grady and Miles T. Bryant, "School Board Turmoil and Superintendent
Turnover," School Administrator, February 1991, pp. 68-72.
4. Thomas Glass, The Study of the American School Superintendency (Arlington,
Va.: American Association of School Administrators, 1992).
5. Phillip C. Schlechty, Schools for the 21st Century (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1990), p. 12.
6. Glass, op. cit.
7. Richard P. McAdams, "Interrelationships Among Property Tax Rate Changes,
School Board Member Turnover, and Superintendent Turnover in Selected Pennsylvania
School Districts," Planning and Change, vol. 26, 1996, pp. 57-70.
8. Donald Alvey, "A National Survey of the Separation of Responsibilities
Between School Boards and Superintendents" (Doctoral dissertation, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1985).
9. Brad Cressman, "The Roles of Pennsylvania Superintendents and School Board
Members as Perceived by Superintendents and School Board Members" (Doctoral
dissertation, Lehigh University, 1995).
10. Joel Spring, Conflict of Interests: The Politics of American Education,
2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday Currency, 1993). 11. John Chubb and Terry Moe,
Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
1991).
12. Seymour Sarason, The Predictable Failure of School Reform (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1990); and idem, Parental Involvement and the Political Principle
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995).
13. Texas Center for Educational Research, A Decade of Change: Public Education
in Texas (Austin: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University
of Texas, 1993).
14. Southeast Regional Vision for Education, Overcoming Barriers to School
Reform in the Southeast (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education,
1994).
15. Delbert C. Hausman and William L. Boyd, "School Administration in the
Federal Republic of Germany and Its Implications for the United States,"
paper presented at the annual meeting of the University Council for Educational
Administration, Philadelphia, October 1994; and Richard P. McAdams, Lessons
from Abroad: How Other Countries Educate Their Children (Lancaster, Pa.:
Technomic, 1993).
16. Karl E. Weick, "Administering Education in Loosely Coupled Schools,"
Phi Delta Kappan, June 1982, pp. 673-76.
17. Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations: Artistry,
Choice, and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991), p. 88.
18. Steven L. Goldman, Roger N. Nagel, and Kenneth Preiss, Agile Competitors
and Virtual Organizations: Strategies for Enriching the Customer (New York:
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995).
19. Michael Fullan, The New Meaning of Educational Change (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1991), p. 49.
20. Managing Change: The Dynamics of Change (videotape), Video Journal of
Educational Change, vol. 2.
21. Wayne K. Hoy and Cecil G. Miskel, Educational Administration: Theory,
Research, Practice, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996).
22. Schlechty, p. xvi.
23. Sarason, The Predictable Failure.
ILLUSTRATION
~~~~~~~~
By RICHARD P. MCADAMS
RICHARD P. McADAMS is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational
Leadership at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa.
Title: A systems approach to school reform.
Subject(s): EDUCATIONAL change -- United States
Source: Phi Delta Kappan, Oct97, Vol. 79 Issue 2, p138, 5p, 1bw
Author(s): McAdams, Richard P.
Abstract: Questions whether significant school reform is possible in
the United States. What successful reform requires; The leadership theory;
The role of local politics and governance; The role of state and national
politics; The organizational theory; The change theory; What can be done.
AN: 9710150589
ISSN: 0031-7217
Full Text Word Count: 4462
Database: Academic Search Premier
