Introduction
Widespread press coverage of the march for civil rights in
the 1960's opened the public's eyes to center city poverty
and rural regions with third world living conditions.
These images made believers in the American tenets of
justice and equality attack the status quo (Sergiovanni,
Burlingame, Coombs, & Thurston, 1999). Social activism
compelled idealistic reformers to the optimistic
assumption that public policy could dictate a more just
society (Kantor & Lowe, 1995; Spring, 1998, 1997, 1976).
Public schools became the laboratory to experiment in the
social reconstruction of society (Corbleth & Waugh, 1995;
Levine, Lowe, Peterson, & Tenorio, 1995; Fullan, 1993;
Steele, 1992, 1990).
During the intervening years many educational reformers
have attempted to translate their social justice assumption
into policies that impact practice. Unfortunately, at the
same time, the urban community reality frustrated reform
progress. The failure of numerous reforms left dismal
images of urban life that continued to march across the
television screen or create a mental picture with grim
statistical data (Sarason, 1997, 1995, 1990). As recently
as the 1998-99 school year, well-intentioned policy
mandates continued to fall short of a real solution to the
social construction of failure that plagues too many
students in urban public schools (Clark, 1999; Comer,
1998). These same schools house the majority of America's
poor and minority students.
Kentucky Educational Reform Act and
Site-Based Decision-Making Councils
On June 8, 1989, the concluding opinion of the Supreme
Court of Kentucky ordered the state's school system
dismantled. Justices expanded the case from an examination
of the state's school-finance distribution to the public
school system's limits. At a recent celebration, Former
Chief Justice Robert Stephens recalled, "I realized as
I was writing that we weren't talking about a few things
that needed to be fixed; we were talking about the whole
thing." The shock wave that followed the court's
ruling inspired the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.
The impact of KERA continues to shape policy for public
schooling and education in Kentucky into the next
decade.
Too often the very policies created to improve urban
schools and their educational possibilities prevent school
improvement. Site-Based Decision-Making councils are such
a policy example (David, 1995-1996). An SBDM council
consists of teachers, administrators, parents and community
members. The limitations of Site-Based Decision-Making
councils and their contribution to the unrelenting failure
of some urban schools, ties directly to policy mandates
created by state policy makers with little understanding
of the urban school reality (Fraser, 1997).
The argument that parent involvement is a necessary
component for school improvement has been generally
accepted since Coleman's report introduced the concept of
social capital. Many others have expanded this concept to
confirm their position that parent involvement is the key
to school improvement. Those policy makers who included the
SBDM council requirement in KERA believed in the engagement
of parents and community members in school improvement.
Students in high achieving schools seem to affirm their
belief and proponents enumerate the parents' contributions
to the schools. However, fairness also requires
proponents to delineate the characteristics those parents
bring with them to the school: moderate to affluent
income, advanced education, productive community ties, and
an understanding of the political elements of the
district's school system.
The opposing argument builds a case proposing that a
difference exists between a general plea for parent
involvement and the benefits implied in particular parent-
school-community relationships. Including positions for
parents and community members on a Site-Based Decision-
Making council does not insure school improvement. The
urban school reality is more complex than that approach
considers. Comer and Haynes (1991) suggest that schools
alienate low income parents from school involvement by
ignoring their pressing basic needs. When parents feel
ill-equipped for informal volunteerism it is not likely
these same parents are candidates for high-stakes
governance positions (Cavaretta, 1998; Gismondi, 1999).
Guskey and Peterson (1995-1996) enumerate the weaknesses
inherent in the site-based decision-making model to
include:
- the power problem,
- the implementation problem,
- the ambiguous mission problem,
- the time problem,
- the expertise problem,
- the cultural constraints problem,
- the avoidance problem, and
- the motivation problem.
Each of these problems contributes to the external pressures
principals experience as they initiate change within their
building by developing a capable parent and community
constituency. Unfortunately, these caveats received little
consideration within the Kentucky model for Site-Based
Decision-Making councils.
By the beginning of the 1998-99 school year sufficient
evidence had accrued to demonstrate that the KERA reforms
were not taking hold at the anticipated pace. Kentucky had
already committed ten years to implementation. Although
the results were unimpressive, reformers continued to
believe that modifications of the plan and more time
invested would lead to the intended improvements. By
postponing deadlines for the schools' assessment until
2014, a new cycle begins in 2002.
Research Framework
Five community capitals: Miller's argument.
In his text, An American Imperative, Miller (1995)
builds a theoretical argument for the social construction
of minority student failure. According to Miller, the lack
of specific parent and community resources, which he
defines as human capital, social capital, health capital,
financial capital, and polity capital aggravates the urban
school reality. Human capital is the knowledge and skills
required to function in a technologically complex society
like the United States in the twenty-first century. Social
capital is "the norms, the social networks, the
relationships between adults and children that are of value
for the children's growing up"(Coleman, 1990, p. 36).
Health capital is the ability to sustain good health
through nutrition and preventative care. Financial capital
is the income and savings that provide the ability to
purchase other resources and advantages. And polity
capital refers to the benefits that the community at large
provides for all its members. Polity capital acknowledges
the interdependent nature of society today. Grounding his
theoretical rationale in the non-school urban reality,
Miller intends to impact school practice.
Miller argues that due to weak economic expansion and
multiple social hardships, the urban school community
requires the school to be a conduit of the five capitals
for its children and their families. Miller emphasizes the
school's role in developing parent-school-community
relationships within the urban school community that are
"capital-adding" for students. His capital resources,
existing as they do outside the student, demonstrate benefits beyond
the student's control that further motivate students to
achieve. The practical implication of Miller's theory is
that individual student effort, while necessary and
important, is not a sufficient contribution to dramatically
raise en masse student underachievement. Capitals that rest
outside the student are also integral for student success.
Clearly, distressed urban schools suffer from their lack of
success and spiraling failure. Disappointing student
performance results fuel the metaphorical autopsy of the
urban school (Shirley 1997, p.4). The public's perception
of the urban school portrays a place to be fixed,
restructured, or perhaps even abandoned. This negative
perception of the urban school reality has changed little
in thirty years with urban schools lagging behind in nearly
all quantitative assessments of educational reform
progress.
Dissatisfaction theory: The Ianneconne and Lutz
argument
Like many state reform policies, the central character in
charge of KERA's school reform is the building principal.
Principals are often credited with the successful reform of
their school
(Blase et al., 1995; Goldring & Rallis, 1993; Murphy
& Louis, 1994; Peterson & Valli, 1994; Speck, 1999). From
this leadership assumption the individual school site has
emerged as the crucible of educational reform. This
scenario places the building principal in a position of
dwindling legal authority, diminishing traditional power,
and increasing academic and social responsibility for
students. Principals who have successfully improved
their school may provide a model, but improvement models do
not easily transfer within a locally driven educational
system. Reforms that might prove successful in one school
or district may confront multiple restrictions within
another school, such as an incompatible school culture, a
reluctant parent community, or minimal teacher support.
Within these inconsistent settings, it seems that each
principal builds school reform with little anticipation of
success until it transpires within that very building.
In the current school reform environment, crediting
successful change to the action of a building principal may
be as misleading as the assignment of failure solely to the
same principal. Ianneconne and Lutz (1970) pointed to the
profound effects external forces exerted upon school change
in their dissatisfaction theory. Their dissatisfaction
theory states that members of a school community initiate
change based on their dissatisfaction with the school's
performance. The dissatisfaction theory implies a level
of political sophistication on the part of the school
community. Informed parents and community members must know
what school services are potentially available to them.
Too often a parent's tacit beliefs and personal experiences
with schooling and learning drive their expectations.
Weakening the dissatisfaction theory for urban schools,
those parents whose negative experiences as students color
their school activism as adults. Evaluation of curriculum,
extra-curriculum, and leadership qualities are typically
outside the experiences of most urban school constituents.
Parents who are aware of possibilities for school
improvement may not know how to manipulate the system to
make their expectations for the school a reality. Further,
those parents who are more politically proficient routinely
withdraw to another school.
Ianneconne and Lutz's proposal that superintendents can
only function as change agents within a cast of supportive
external players points to the ineffectiveness of school
reform that fails to acknowledge the school's external
environment (Peshkin, 1978; Smith et al. 1971, 1986,
1987, 1988). With site-based management, the urban
principal's role is a political role, more similar to that
of a superintendent under the traditional local school
board.
Summary
Miller argues that the sources of support students
require for achievement are fundamentally lacking with the
urban school community. He proposes that the urban school
will continue to fail to raise student achievement unless
an expansive support system prevails within the school
community. Successful inner city Catholic schools provide
evidence that supports Miller's theory (Bryk, Lee, &
Holland, 1993).
Iannaconne and Lutz's dissatisfaction theory rests on the
premise that community members are capable of becoming
change agents within the school. Dissatisfaction with the
school requires knowledge of a school's potential and the
skills to initiate the needed change. As Miller suggests
too often parents in disadvantaged communities do not have
the five capitals within their adults so that parents are
not capable of providing these capitals for their children.
Detailed descriptions of a distressed urban school help to
illustrate the difficulties with school reform, within a
single district under state mandated reforms, that ignore
the arguments of Miller, Iannaconne, and Lutz. The
following case study provides a window to view assumptions
made about school leadership and policy implementation in
an urban school (Ashbaugh, 1991; Hamel et al., 1993;
Kowalski, 1991; Salter & Tapper, 1985).
Johnny Flynn (pseudonym), principal of a Kentucky public
middle school, plays the central character in this case
study that portrays the urban school reality. His school,
John Adams Middle School (pseudonym), represents distressed
urban schools operating under reform guidelines. Through
his willingness to share the details of his school's
context and his personal dilemmas with school improvement,
Flynn hopes to influence the public's perception of the
urban school reality. He further believes that by shaping
public perceptions, he ultimately helps his students to
receive the capitals they require to improve their academic
performance. As Flynn's case unfolds, the significant
connection between the public's perceptions of the urban
school reality and the impact of these perceptions on his
school's reform efforts becomes clearer.
The Case of Johnny Flynn and John Adams Middle
School
The current reality.
Like many southern cities in the 1970s, the urban site of
John Adams Middle School desegregated by a court ordered
ruling. Socially painful and financially costly, busing
students still balances the African-American and
"other" racial categories within the district's
schools. Today these two categories simplistically betray
the many enrolled minority groups. Principals acknowledge
that some past district programs were instituted to slow
earlier "white flight" trends. In the current
reality, poverty and class issues often displace previous
racial barriers, but John Adams Middle School still
reflects the public's perception that a low performing
school links poverty and race.
Johnny Flynn has been principal of John Adams Middle School
throughout the decade of state reform implementation. He
questions numerous policies designed to reform schooling.
Flynn admits that his school has been unable to meet
performance goals, in part, due to policies that allow
schools and classrooms to re-segregate by race and class
(Orfield & Yun, 1999).
Accountability and school choice are features of Kentucky's
state reform. These two very public items interact to
complicate life for Johnny Flynn. Test scores at John
Adams flutter below their goal just as the recruiting
environment within the district reaches a competitive
frenzy. The district's modified choice plan allows parents
to seek out the most appropriate school program for their
students. The result is that individual schools use a
variety of marketing strategies to attract students. Flynn
readily admits that recruitment time amplifies his
awareness of the school's problem with public perceptions.
Publicized information about John Adams's test results
certainly constrains recruitment of high achieving
students. Some parents openly discuss their reluctance to
enroll their students in John Adams due to low test score
results and the school's negative reputation for
performance.
Public perceptions and recruitment.
The district's arrangement of specialty programs, magnet
schools, and traditional schools, places a neighborhood
school, such as John Adams Middle School, at a distinct
recruitment disadvantage. Specialty programs and magnet
programs (e.g. Science, Math & Technology) are open to
neighborhood minority children, but are routinely filled
with white middle and upper class students who have parents
with the knowledge to maneuver their way through the
district's application process. Typically, any parent who
takes advantage of the choice options enrolls a student who
meets grade level achievement expectations, and the parent
is actively involved with the student's education. Losing
these students is a particularly excruciating drain on John
Adams Middle School. The enrollment situation wreaks
double jeopardy as the top students are lost as
contributors to the school's overall assessment scores and
as positive role models to the rest of the student body.
The parent is also lost as a contributor and a positive
role model within the school community (Cavaretta, 1998).
These enrollment incidents multiply, making recruitment
extremely frustrating for Flynn and his staff. There
exists a certain cynicism at an urban school like John
Adams that their enrollees are "what's left
over." This situation creates low morale that ripples
through the school's faculty, staff, and students.
When Principal Flynn responds to questions about his
"choice or specialty" program at John Adams, he
jokes that he is the "special education magnet."
Flynn does not intend his comment to be disrespectful to
these students, he simply acknowledges that John Adams has
a high proportion of special education students. John
Adams enrolls the second highest percentage of special
education students in the district (2nd out of 24 middle
schools). The school with the highest percentage of
special education students is an equally distressed
school.
The school categories in Table 1 include an urban school
(John Adams), a neighborhood/home school and a traditional
school. A neighborhood or "home" school is the
school where the district assigns a student by home
address. A magnet school attracts students district-wide
with a special program. Traditional schools offer a
program espousing enhanced home-school partnerships,
regular homework, appropriate behavior, and high academic
performance. The popularity of the traditional programs
caused the district to increase the number of these schools
in recent years. Option or specialty programs,
traditional, and magnet programs are open to all students
within geographical attendance zones.
The data in Table 1 indicate the discrepancies in special
education enrollment between the various categories of
schools. John Adams represents the distressed urban school
as the data in Table 2 will help verify. The percentages
of students assigned to the"resource" or
"self-contained" category significantly impact
the disbursal of resources. Special education students who
are in the "resource" category are able to attend
regular classes but receive supplemental special education
services.
Table 1
Placement Rates for Special Education (Resource)
and Regular (Self-Contained) Classrooms
| |
Total % |
%Black Resource |
%Other Resource |
Total % Resource |
%Black Self- Contained |
% Other Self- Contained |
% Total Self- Contained |
| John Adams |
17.3% |
3.3% |
6.3% |
9.6% |
3.7% |
4.0% |
7.7% |
| Neighborhood |
11.4% |
2.0% |
7.2% |
9.2% |
1.2% |
1.0% |
2.2% |
| Traditional |
1.5% |
0.5% |
1.1% |
1.5% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
By comparison, those students who are assigned
to self-contained special education classrooms require more
intense services. A self-contained special education
classroom has a limited number of students per teacher and
requires a teacher licensed in special education. There is
no clear explanation why John Adams has a higher percentage
of these self-contained classrooms, but one possible reason
is the available space. Often district decisions about a
program's location reflect the availability of space rather
than consideration of other factors. The numbers
dramatically illustrate the difference in student
population between the selective traditional program, the
home-neighborhood school, and the distressed urban
school.
Principals readily admit that special education programs
are high maintenance, demanding attention to the legal
requirements, teacher and aide licenses, and parent
communication/meetings. A public perception in the
district that the students at John Adams were unusually
"bad" aggravates a difficult recruitment
situation that includes all personnel: teachers, aides,
cafeteria, and custodial staff. Flynn admits his
frustration with having too many substitute teachers or
aides in the special education classrooms or, even worse,
long term substitute teachers who might lack the
appropriate training.
Flynn's situation is not unique and unfortunately reflects
national trends. On June 24, 1999, the Education
Commission of States, a non-profit group that helps policy
makers work to improve student learning, announced the
group's upcoming focus on the need to attract competently
qualified teachers for special education classrooms in
"hard-to-staff" schools. The organization
received a grant from the DeWitt-Wallace Reader's Digest
fund to finance the initiative, Focusing State Policy on
High-Quality Teachers for Hard-to-Staff Schools.
Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer, the 1999-2000 ECE chairman,
states," Common sense tells us, and research confirms
that the number one factor in determining how well students
do in school is the teacher" (McElhinney 1999, p.1).
Time that Flynn invests wrestling with special education
issues is time taken away from other dimensions of school
reform. His colleagues at the traditional or even the
neighborhood schools designate that time to building the
curriculum, supervising teachers, working with community
leaders, or developing parent leadership. Flynn's daily
reality is not the same.
Principals of a distressed school, like John Adams Middle
School, deal with a student population that arrives at
school with life experiences from a reality far distant
from preschool and elementary school experiences that
assist in academic preparation. Flynn describes his
students and his school with care.
I think the most challenging thing would be the things that
our kids----what they come with, baggage that they bring with them
primarily. They come from single parent homes, coming from
homes where the parents are not involved that much with the
schools, coming from homes, there's not a whole lot of
money in homes, and also I would say their academic
achievement is low at the time in which they come to you
and you have to turn all those around.
Table 2
Percent of Students on Free & Reduced Lunch
| |
1996-97 |
1997-98 |
1998-99 |
| John Adams |
80.35 % |
79.28 % |
80.36 % |
| Neighborhood |
56.67 % |
57.91 % |
57.96 % |
| Traditional |
15.42 % |
15.62 % |
21.30 % |
Data on Free and Reduced Lunches serves as a standard
indicator of poverty within a given school population. The
data could be even more accurate if "Free" and
"Reduced" were disaggregated. This would enable
a clearer distinction between the John Adams public housing
population and that of the predominately working class
neighborhood school.
Public perceptions and accountability.
Forty-five years after the Brown v. Board of
Education ruling, the 1999 Civil Rights Project report
for Harvard University, "Resegregation in American
Schools," points to accountability measures, such as
high stakes testing, that "punish students in inferior
segregated schools, or even sending more children to such
schools while simultaneously raising sanctions for those
who do not achieve at a sufficiently high level"
(Orfield and Yun, 1999). John Adams Middle School reflects
this trend with its loss of performing students to other
schools while the student body assigned to John Adams sinks
into deeper poverty and social disarray.
Measurable disparities in income do not completely capture
the disadvantages of the urban school. Miller's
description of the non-school-based disadvantages of urban
minority students that resonate with the John Adams'
student population. These disadvantages profoundly affect
student potential before students enter school. These
disadvantages are almost impossible for the school to
remedy alone. To further illustrate Flynn's point about
the students that John Adams enrolls, Flynn shares the
results of the sixth grade reading placement test.
"We only had 14 out of 300 some odd 6th graders that
were reading on level.
Urban principals recognize that reading is the
fundamental skill that must be improved. Reaching grade
level performance appears to be an overwhelming task
considering the number of students that require assistance.
These students' success on the state's assessment test
looms near impossibility.
Table 3
KRIS Assessment Scores
| |
Baseline |
Goal |
Index |
| John Adams |
27.2 |
34.5 |
27.6 |
| Neighborhood |
30.2 |
37.2 |
33.8 |
| Traditional |
53.6 |
58.2 |
56.3 |
KIRIS has been Kentucky's version of a high stakes
assessment test. The test results over the years of KERA
reform have been disappointing. During this anniversary,
the assessment tools and processes underwent examination
for revisions, including the subsequent evaluative
rankings. The data in Table 3 reflect a system used prior
to the revisions. A school's testing performance is public
news, but often remains a source of confusion to the
public. Parents question how a school ranks "in
decline" while their academic teams hold high honors
in state competitions. Principals are weary of explaining
that ranks were determined solely by the KIRIS assessment.
The school's scores must be moving toward the goal score to
be considered improved.
Intertwined with the testing debate are special education
issues. Marking the current anniversary, some Kentucky
legislators promote the increase in fourth grade reading
scores as a sign of KERA's impact. Critics counter that in
1998 fewer special-education students were tested than in
1994, making the gains an illusion if the testing
population has changed. Mark Musick, the chairman of the
National Assessment governing board, believes Kentucky
students performed better this year even with the testing
population adjustments. Others have remained critical
stating that there will never be any way to know the real
results. Musick reminds state officials that no test is
incontrovertible, in spite of careful monitoring. During
the decade of KERA, Congress changed federal law to mandate
the testing of students with disabilities as a condition
for federal aid for special education. Under these
conditions district pressure for improved testing
performance increases for Flynn and his teachers. Again,
the high numbers of special education students at John
Adams weigh heavily on Flynn's efforts for school
improvement.
In spite of state and district efforts to funnel
supplemental programs and extra funds into distressed
schools, assessment tests still fail to demonstrate
adequate progress. John Dornan, executive director of the
Public School Forum of North Carolina, a Raleigh-based
group for school reform, states that, "It's possible
very accurately to predict the schools most likely not to
succeed in high-stakes tests." Dornan explains further
that in significant school reform the school provides a
value-added environment. In other words, the school does
bring an effect to achievement. The challenge for urban
schools is that considerable value must be added, or
considerable disadvantage alleviated, for students to
experience a substantive benefit from their educational
experiences.
One area that highlights the disconnection between reform
expectations at John Adams Middle School and life in the
urban community is the suspension rate. The suspension-
rate and distribution display the contradiction between the
context of schooling and the reality of the urban student's
life. Principal Flynn believes that one of the chief
barriers to successful student achievement that he
regularly encounters is the lack of student self-discipline:
The kids seem to not show a lot of self-discipline
so I think that is one of the major issues that
we deal with.
Flynn implies that self-discipline impacts student
performance in a variety of ways including their ability to
learn to read. Self-discipline is an example of a
skill that students must have to be successful in school
behavior and academic performance. Unfortunately, the
urban community environment does not assist students to
appropriate structure and discipline into their lives.
This lack of self-discipline then handicaps the student at
school.
The suspension rate of John Adams in 1996-97 was nearly
the equivalent to the suspension of every student in the
school (student enrollment = 921). The 1997-98 figures
show a drop of about 30 % at John Adams and the
neighborhood school (Table 4).
Table 4
Suspensions
| |
White Male |
White Female |
Black Male |
Black Female |
Total |
| John Adams |
187 |
70 |
202 |
118 |
577 |
| Neighborhood |
97 |
18 |
73 |
9 |
197 |
| Traditional |
8 |
3 |
7 |
1 |
19 |
Suspensions add to the inconsistent academic preparation
some students receive. And in turn, these students are
unable to reach an appropriate score on the state's
assessment. Behavior that requires a suspension adds to a
chaotic classroom environment that does not support
learning for classmates either. Too often young African-
American male students consider a suspension a sign of
defiance to a white establishment. Too often school
personnel fear a suspension serves as preparation for more
extreme forms of antisocial behavior including crime. The
alternative, the in-house suspension, also accounts for
time lost from the classroom, but an in-house suspension is
the school's attempt to keep students within the building
where there might be some positive influence.
Site-Based Decision-Making as Tool to Assist Reform
Efforts
Within the urban school reality, how does the Site-Based
Decision-Making model assist the principal to improve the
school's accountability results? The descriptions of John
Adams Middle School and the principal's daily life
attempt to connect the urban school reality with
theoretical rationales for the policy on Site-Based
Decision-Making (SBDM). Flynn speaks about his difficultly
in facilitating a SBDM council to meet its intended purpose
within his school community.
Also, we don't get the community leaders involved with the
schools, I'd say in school which they have in the suburbs,
and then the attitude of some of the parents. Maybe they
weren't that successful in school. School left a bad taste
in their mouth so they tend to think the same way and that
attitude is displayed in their kids when they come to the
urban school.
Flynn's word ring similar to Burns' position that some
parent's previous negative experiences in school impacts
their interactions with the school and contaminates their
child's viewpoint of school and learning. Just as the John
Adams' students suffer from their school's negative public
image, the parents also bear the burden of the public's
negative perception of adults who wallow in poverty, single
parents who receive welfare checks, reside in public
housing projects, and are unemployable. Many of John
Adams' parents feel intimidated by school personnel with
their "school speak" and some parents are openly
hostile, shaped by their own negative experiences with
teachers and schooling.
Flynn must organize the SBDM council, fill the positions,
train the members, and then administer the policies created
by his local Site-Based Decision-Making council. Urban
principals struggle to develop more sophisticated
interactions within the school's Site-Based Decision-Making
council members but they are often thwarted by the sheer
lack of resources. Johnny Flynn's daily tasks at John Adams
Middle School demonstrate the gap between good intentions
as policy and the reality of the urban school. Site-based
decision-making councils are the practical venue for
parents to become involved with the policy decisions for
John Adams Middle School.
Closing Reflections
Supporters and critics of Site-Based Decision-Making muster
convincing arguments. On one side, the concept of Site-
Based Decision-Making councils remains a worthy element of
school reform. Community leader and parent participation
in policy decisions for their local school seems
reasonable.
On the other side are urban schools like John Adams, with
principals like Johnny Flynn, who add his Site-Based
Decision-Making council to a long list of activities that
take his time and energy and are not easily implemented
within the urban school community.
Side-Based Decision-Making councils are predicated on the
assumption that the parent and community membership will
provide the means to acquire non-school resources that
advance student performance. The urban school, due to its
inherent characteristics including poverty, minority
membership, and lack of political acumen diminishes the
power of the SBDM council to assist the urban school
improve achievement. This flaw in the Site-Based
Decision-Making model remains over-looked due to the apparent
success of the model within other socioeconomic strata.
The naive assumption remains that by manipulating (because
they are not necessarily increased) resources at the
school level, the urban school will catapult to a
competitive level.
An understanding of the urban school reality makes it clear
that non-school capitals also require enhancement. In order
for the SBDM's contribution to reach the maximum, the
public's perception of the urban school must be expanded
to include its capital deficient community. These augmented
capitals will develop the requisite conditions to
dramatically improve student academic performance.
The Site-Based Decision-Making model generates its power
and strength from the various capital-resources parents,
community members, and school personnel bring to the
school(Cavaretta, 1998; Gismondi, 1999; Comer & Haynes,
1991). The flaw in the Site-Based Decision-Making model
for the urban school is the very lack of these capital-resources
within the community's membership.
Related considerations.
Several side issues emerge from an observation of the
effects of the Site-Based Decision-Making model on a
distressed urban middle school. First, there is the issue
of school leadership. A local Site-Based Decision-Making
council lacks the broad view of the district. Local SBDM
council members seldom consider the advantages of changing
the school's principal since they are so closely bound to
the current leadership themselves. This is particularly
true in distressed urban schools where parent, and perhaps
novice teacher participants, often lack experience in
assessing leadership quality. Members are often suspicious
of a new individual from outside their community.
In turn, under the current SBDM model, a principal is
unlikely to attempt to force a change in leadership by
applying to another school. A principal bears the same
image difficulties that students carry. Consequently, a
principal is reluctant to risk credibility with their
current school by applying for another position. Should
a principal make application to another school, and if the
principal was unsuccessful during the hiring process and
had to return to the current school, the faculty, staff
and parents might interpret those actions as disloyal,
contaminating future interactions. Under the SBDM model,
seeking a new principal position is a very difficult
situation for any principal to politically finesse.
Typically, the urban principal is left to await some other
cue, perhaps from the central district office, for any
possibility of changing schools. Ultimately, the
instigator of principal change is the superintendent.
Oftentimes a building level leadership change is a
necessary requirement for school change.
Second, within the SBDM council, energy and interest
focuses on the members' local school. This myopic approach
handicaps distressed schools that require input in
resources and expertise from other schools or the broader
district community. Challenging a local SBDM to feel
social responsibility for other children in the district,
not enrolled in their local school, is a difficult
endeavor. But, if students in distressed communities must
rely on local resources, their plight seems an inevitable
social construction of school failure.
Third, other policies such as the modified in-district
choice plan further disadvantage distressed urban schools
by allowing positive contributors to the school to move on
to healthier settings. The distressed school loses not
only a positive role model in the student, but typically a
parent who is a capable partner with the school. This
"capital drain" creates problems similar to
"white flight" in its effect on the urban school.
Parents who are aggressive about their children's welfare
should not be penalized for wanting to improve their
situation, but the message is clear that a schools must be
made effective or closed.
Policy implications
Returning to the arguments of Miller, Iannaconne, and
Lutz, an analysis of John Adams Middle School reveals that
the defect in the dissatisfaction theory for the urban
school rests with the community's deficiency in Miller's
five capitals. The assumption that the constituents of a
distressed urban school will conclude that their SBDM
council's membership is ineffective, or their principal is
incompetent, or the district inadequately represents their
interests, is improbable. It is unlikely that this
dissatisfying situation will motivate community members to
become politically active or initiate a change in
leadership.
Site-Based Decision-Making councils as the centerpiece of
community participation in urban school improvement
legislation like KERA require modification. Two issues
impact the effectiveness of the Site-Based Decision-Making
model on reform efforts at urban schools.
First, the dissatisfaction theory implies a level of
political sophistication on the part of the school
community. Parents and community members must recognize the
lack of quality in their school's performance. Then,
parents and community members must know how to manipulate
the school system to provide services to increase the
quality. Too often the urban school community lacks
business and industry leaders capable of exerting power and
political influence that produces positive results for
their local school. Those parents who are aware of
possibilities for school improvement, but do not know how
to manipulate the system to make their expectations a
reality, routinely withdraw.
A second impediment to school reform at an urban school
comes from the larger district community's lack of polity
capital. Outsiders are reluctant to initiate the
substantive reforms necessary to dramatically improve urban
schools. The perception that improvement at urban schools
like John Adams will require a sacrifice from their school
community is not attractive to those outside the urban
school community. Most outsiders lament the state of
affairs at urban schools, but this lamentation accompanies
stated relief that their children do not attend such a
distressed school. Too many district constituents do not
consider distressed urban schools their school community's
responsibility. This lack of commitment to the common good
seriously handicaps urban school improvement. The more
politically savvy constituents of Flynn's colleague
principals have left John Adams Middle School alone to
maneuver out of its situation.
At the core, the lack of political acumen by the insiders
at John Adams Middle School, and the fundamental lack of
polity capital contributed by the outsiders in the district
community, perpetuates the current situation. The lack of
polity capital, an acknowledgment of the interdependent
nature of the community, diminishes the urban principal's
ability to accelerate urban school improvement. Autonomous
Site-Based Decision-Making councils aggravate the
development of the requisite polity capital by sustaining
an "us/them" mentality.
School autonomy, which was propagated as a virtue by KERA's
school reform movement, has become a destructive vice.
School reform has become so idiosyncratic that an
individual principal must compete for students, generate
supplemental funding, develop community relationships,
preferably with generous businesses, and provide leadership
for the school in the political arena of district politics.
Principals from even modestly affluent school communities
have multiple means to attack this situation. The
reservoir of parent resources (i.e. volunteer time, fund
raising, political connections) make their Site-Based
Decision-Making council appear successful. The public
perception of a school like John Adams includes an
implicit assumption that its deficient performance rests
within the people living in the school community rather
than within the negative capitals present in the school
community. The incriminating evidence might extend to
beliefs in racial inferiority, "their" lack of
effort and willingness to improve, or simply the obvious
characteristics of the community (i.e. minorities, single
parents, low SES). The SBDM model requires the distressed
urban school community to generate resources it does not
have, and holds no one outside the school community
responsible for the social construction of failure for
urban students.
Kentucky's Site-Based Decision-Making council attempts to
assemble parents and community members together for the
improvement of public schooling. The concept of school-
parent-community involvement intends to generate the
positive attributes of Miller's capitals and bring them to
the schoolhouse. Unfortunately, the flaw in applying the
Site-Based Decision-Making council model to the distressed
urban school is less with the concept than with a deceptive
perception of the urban school reality.
KERA's tenth anniversary and the on-going national
attention to its reform initiatives provide an opportunity
to modify or supplement the SBDM model for the distressed
school context. The benefits of parent and community
involvement should not be abandoned, but capital
development requires a broader community responsibility for
distressed schools. A comprehensive community focus that
develops the capitals within the entire district, or
perhaps even statewide, increases student improvement in
all schools.
School reform legislation that fails to take into
consideration the distressed urban school reality creates a
paradoxical environment for school change.
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Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation.
About the Author
Merylann J. Schuttloffel
Dr. Merylann J. "Mimi" Schuttloffel is Assistant
Professor of Educational Administration and Policy Studies
at the Catholic University of America. She has her Ph. D.
from the University of Tulsa in Educational Administration
and Research. Her research interests include reflective
practice in leadership, innovation and school change, and
the transformation of educational beliefs and practice.
Comments may be sent to:
Email: schuttloffel@cua.edu
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