I.
Introduction
The standards
movement
was one of the key reform strategies developed in the
1990's as states and districts sought ways to raise
student
achievement. The essential elements of reforms in this
paradigm
are threefold. First, a set of clearly defined student
performance goals for schools to strive towards (usually
content
standards). Second, an accountability system comprising a
set of
incentives for schools or districts to achieve the standards
and
accompanying penalties for failing to move towards them
(rewards
and sanctions). And third, greater autonomy for districts
and
schools make decisions that will enable them to improve
instruction and achieve the standards (Fuhrman, 1999; CPRE,
1996;
Fuhrman & O'Day, 1996).
While earlier
reforms
were characterized by either a "top-down" (i.e.
mandates) or "bottom-up" (i.e. local control)
approach, standards-based reform combines both approaches to
enable states and districts to define the focus and
expectations
for educational outcomes and to hold educators accountable
for
meeting these aims (Fullan, 1994). At the same time, policy
makers recognise that instructional improvement needs to be
motivated and developed at the school and classroom level
and
they are developing ways to give schools and teachers
increased
autonomy to make decisions that affect student
learning.
In this article we
ask the
question: What are the effects of increasing school-level
autonomy and accountability in the context of standards-
based
reform? We investigate this question by exploring the
experience
of the school district of Cincinnati, Ohio's efforts to
expand
the autonomy of schools and teachers and construct a
framework of
accountability within the context of a broader standards-
based
reform initiative. The district's efforts to increase
autonomy at the school and classroom-levels is focused
around a
reform called team-based schooling in which teachers are
organized into teams of three to five teachers who take
responsibility for a group of students over multiple years.
The
expectation is that teachers know best how to serve the
needs of
their students and should therefore be given greater
flexibility
and authority to make decisions that affect their
students'
learning. Teaming is part of a broader standards-based
reform
movement in the district featuring an explicit set of
achievement
targets for schools and rewards and sanctions tied to a
school's success or failure in achieving their goals.
In
this article we describe some of the consequences, both
intended
and unintended, which arise as the theory of increased
authority
and accountability plays out in the classrooms of
Cincinnati's
public schools.
In section II, we set the context for our analysis by briefly
describing
the track record of site-based management in general and
team-based schooling in particular. In section III we
describe
the design of Students First, the Cincinnati Public
Schools' ambitious standards-based reform initiative
designed to
increase local autonomy within a framework of
accountability. In
section IV we analyze the consequences, both intended and
unintended, of increasing local autonomy. Section V explores
the
effects of expanded accountability, both internal and
external.
We conclude by summarizing the findings of our
research
and discussing the implications in relation to the trade-off
between increased accountability and increased autonomy on
which
standards-based reforms like teaming are based.
Method
The source of the
data
for this article come from an evaluation of team-based
schooling in
Cincinnati, Ohio being conducted for the Cincinnati Public
Schools by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education
(CPRE)
at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1997, CPRE has been
documenting the evolution and effects of team-based
schooling in
Cincinnati. This article draws primarily from the first two
years
of our evaluation and is based on five data sources. First,
the
CPRE research team conducted extensive fieldwork in the
district.
During the first year of the evaluation we visited all of
the
eight team-based schools and interviewed administrators,
members
of the Instructional Leadership Team, and the full
membership of
a sample of 16 teams. In 1998-99, the second year of
teaming, the
research team spent four to five days in each of the 20
team-based schools and interviewed the full membership of a
sample of 41 teams.
The second data
source
for this article is the survey we conducted each year with
all
faculty in both team-based and non-team-based schools. The
response rate varied from 81 to 87 percent each year
respectively
out of a total of approximately 2,500 faculty. Survey
results
enabled us to compare team-based with non-team-based schools
and
has allowed us to examine the longitudinal effects of
teaming.
Third, we conducted
interviews with the leaders of the Cincinnati education
community
including leaders of the Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS),
the
Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, CPS school board, and the
Mayerson Academy which is the key provider of professional
development to support the implementation of team-based
schooling. Interviews focused on leader's perceptions
of
what team-based schooling would accomplish, the factors that
influenced its implementation and impact, and the progress
of the
reform.
The fourth data
source
was student achievement, attendance, and discipline
information
provided by the district's Office of Research. Data
were
analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to examine
the
relationship between teaming and student achievement at the
school and team level. Finally, we observed Interschool
Council
Meetings, attended team-based schooling workshops run by the
Mayerson Academy and related initiatives produced by the
district
and union.
Our purpose
is not to report in detail the findings of
CPRE's
three year evaluation of the team-based schooling initiative
in
Cincinnati. Those interested in further details can read the
evaluation reports (Supovitz & Watson, 2000; Supovitz
&
Watson, 1999; Supovitz, 1998). Rather, r we
focus here on
the implications of the Cincinnati experience with respect
to the
trade-offs and tensions inherent in expanding autonomy in a
tighter accountability framework within the context of
standards-based reform.
II. The
Trend
Toward School-Based Management
Many districts have
attempted to increase local autonomy based on the theory
that
school personnel are most intimately knowledgeable about the
best
way to educate their students. Mohrman and Wohlstetter
(1994)
described various types of devolved management structures
that
have been adopted in the past under the general rubric of
school-based management (SBM). SBM requires new forms of
governance and management structures within districts and
schools, structures that are designed to change the
decision-making processes and relations of power. This
reform
movement operates under the belief in the ineffectiveness of
locating power at the top of a school system, where it is
furthest from school faculty who are closest to, and
therefore
most able to influence students. SBM is intended to create
structures that support site-based decision-making so that
school-based administrators and teachers have greater
control
over the decisions that affect student learning. SBM is not
a new
idea, having been implemented in various guises throughout
the
1980s and 1990s (Weiss, 1992). But what is different in this
latest incarnation is the melding of local autonomy with a
system
of accountability (Fullan, 1994).
Newmann and Wehlage
(1995), in a large study of 1,500 schools, noted that
successful
schools tended to create a professional community with
shared
purpose and high levels of collaboration. They noted that
successful schools required the authority to act, and had
high
levels of autonomy over curriculum, school policies, hiring,
and,
in some cases, their budget as well. Surrounding this cocoon
of
autonomy, they also cited the importance of external support
in
the form of high standards for student learning.
Chub and Moe (1990)
argue that private school teachers experience higher levels
of
autonomy than their public school peers and that this is a
key
reason why private schools are able to more successfully
promote
student achievement. In a comparative study of teachers and
principals in both private and public schools that set out
to
test Chubb and Moe's thesis, Glass (1997) found that
both
participants said they experienced high levels of autonomy.
However, they also found that teachers in private and public
schools were also subject to a number of factors that
mitigated
and shaped their autonomy in important ways. Thus, the
autonomy
experienced by teachers was more complex than typically
assumed
and "challenges the myth that teachers and principals
in
private schools enjoy autonomy and freedom from democratic
bureaucracy that their public school counterparts do
not"
(p.1).
Other studies also
question whether SBM actually increases school and teacher
autonomy. Hannaway (1993) presents a critique of the
existing
assumptions on which decentralization is based, assumptions
that
are derived from private sector modes of production.
Hannaway
argues that decentralization is based on the assumption that
teachers' work is traditionally subject to a high
level of
control and that the limited autonomy of teachers serves to
limit
their ability to instigate the kinds of change and
innovation
necessary to promote student achievement. Decentralization
and
(so-called) greater teacher autonomy aims to give teachers
greater control over how they teach. In contrast, Hannaway
concludes that, "teachers in successful decentralized
districts work under conditions where organizational
controls
over their behaviour are in fact high relative to what we
would
expect in traditionally organized schools. Indeed, the
discretion
of school-level actors in many decentralized systems may be
far
more restricted than the discretion of school-level actors
in
traditionally organized systems" (1993, p. 139). In
other
words, she contends that decentralization decreases
the
amount of autonomy that teachers have to decide what and how
to
teach and that this occurs through the increased
surveillance of
their work at two levels: by their peers and by the district
through tighter accountability measures. Merely providing
increased opportunities for interaction between teacher
professionals will not necessarily result in productive work
and
change.
The literature that
examines the development and implementation of various forms
of
SBM also points out that the key aim of such designs should
be to
improve the quality of teaching and learning within schools.
In
other words, for SBM to be successful, it must not be merely
a
structural reform, but one that results in instructional
change
at the classroom level. Darling-Hammond (1996) described in
some
detail four New York schools that have successfully
introduced
decentralized, site-based management reforms as a means of
creating more consensual decision-making and greater
autonomy for
schools and teachers with the purpose of approaching
teaching and
learning in distinctive ways. The success of these schools,
argues Darling-Hammond, is that the primary focus of their
changes is to create the opportunities for improved teaching
and
learning.
Team-Based
Schooling
One of the
particular
school-based management strategies that have been developed
in an
attempt to provide an instructional focus is the use of
teacher
teams. Teacher teams are designed to enable teachers to have
greater involvement in the management and governance of
their
school and are also intended to facilitate instructional
change
and innovation as teachers work more closely together to
learn
from each other. Educators have been experimenting with the
"bold new venture" of team teaching since the
1960"s (Thomas, 1992; Beggs, 1964), but with little
success
(Thomas, 1992). The early failures of teaming were
attributed to
a lack of organizational support, planning time, and role
conflict (Hargreaves, 1980; Cohen, 1976).
The last decade has
seen
a resurgence of interest in teaming largely as a result of
the
apparent success of production teams in private enterprise
and
the attempts by some administrators to apply teaming to
schools
(Mohrman & Wohlstetter, 1994). Darling-Hammond (1994)
gives
an account of a number of schools who have used teaming
successfully in order to create more consensual decision-
making
and greater autonomy for schools and teachers. More
importantly,
however, they have used teaming to enable more inter-disciplinary
learning for students and to also promote teacher learning
which
is essential for instructional change.
Friedman (1997)
offers a
detailed account of one teacher team that developed an
innovative
vocational design within an urban high school. Friedman
argues
that teaming requires changes to traditional teaching roles
and
school structures and that these changes are more complex
than
those typically envisioned by the proponents of teaming. The
success of teaming therefore appears to depend on it not
being
merely an organizational or structural reform, but one that
promotes and supports changes in how teachers teach.
Friedman's research alerts us to the need to consider
not
only the assumptions and intent behind team-based schooling
initiatives, but also the existing structures and cultures
of
schooling that they are enacted upon. Teachers are not
passive
recipients of reform, but they actively negotiate and
mediate
policy in a range of ways. It is not so much that policy is
enforced from above, but rather that teachers enact policy
in a
range of ways that result in unintended and intended
consequences. As Friedman observed:
... few
advocates
have inquired seriously into the team concept and exactly
how it
fits with school practice. This lack of conceptualization is
particularly serious in light of the failure of the initial
team-teaching movement of the 1960s, which has been
attributed to
a lack of fit between the team concept and the role of the
teacher, the organizational structure, and the cultural
norms of
contemporary schooling (1997, p. 335).
This report enables
us to
undertake the kind of enquiry that Friedman argues is
necessary
if we are to further our understanding of the effects of the
implementation of team-based schooling. If teaming is to be
effective, it must result in instructional innovation and
improvement. For this to occur, such a reform needs to
attend to
the relations of power that operate within
schools.
III. Autonomy
and
Accountability in The Cincinnati Public
Schools
Cincinnati, Ohio is
an
urban school district with about 50,000 students in 79
schools.
About two-thirds of the students in the district, of which
70
percent are African-American and 28 percent are White, are
on
lunch assistance. Cincinnati is the forty fifth largest city
in
the United States. In the 1996-97 school year the Cincinnati
Public Schools (CPS) adopted an ambitious and broad-based
reform
plan called Students First. The stated goals of
Students First were for all students to meet or
exceed
high academic standards, to have safe and orderly school
learning
environments, and to satisfy the needs of their
"customers" - students, parents, and taxpayers.
As a
central part of its strategic plan, the CPS designed a form
of
school organization known as team-based schooling. In
essence,
the idea behind team-based schooling is that higher student
achievement will result from decentralizing decision-making
about
instruction and resource authority to teams of academic
teachers.
The teams are to focus on the district's academic and
behavioural standards, to collaborate amongst themselves as
well
as with parents and community members, and to be held
collectively accountable for their students'
achievement
over time. As stated in the district's strategic plan, the
organization's reform goal was to become a, "high quality
education system that is decentralized and held accountable
for
results."
The "heart of
the
system" according to the former superintendent, is
team-based schooling. Team-based schooling is written into
the
contract between the CPS and the Cincinnati Federation of
Teachers, ratified in March 1997. The contact sets out the
requirements for the composition and function of teams, as
summarized below:
- Teams
will be
comprised of 3-5 core subject academic teachers who will
stay
with a group of students for at least two years. The teams
will
be organized by the gateway grades K-3, 4-6, 7-8 and
9-10.
- Teams
will
develop a curriculum and instructional methods and materials
consistent with a school's program focus. They will
also
decide how to schedule and group their students.
- Teams
will
take responsibility for all students they serve and will
work to
ensure that they meet the district and school learning
objectives.
- Teams
will
control funding for instructional supplies, materials, and
personnel.
- Teams
will
stay together for several years in order to ensure maximum
benefits from collaboration and longer term relations with
students.
- Team-based
schools will be governed by Instructional Leadership Teams
(ILT),
comprised of team leaders, the principal, two parents, and
two
non-teaching school staff. The ILT will attend to academic
decisions and control most non-personnel budget
areas.
The district
planned to
"roll out" the team-based school concept across
the
district, beginning with the eight schools that were
selected
from a pool of those that applied in 1997-98. Twelve
additional
schools became team-based in the second year (1998-99), and
twenty schools in the third year (1999-2000). At the time of
writing, in the third year of the reform, the implementation
has
proceeded as planned and approximately half of the
district's schools are team-based.
It must also be
noted
that teaming is not a new phenomena in the Cincinnati Public
Schools. Our 1999 teacher survey data show that in
Cincinnati 79
percent of elementary teachers, 73 percent of middle school
teachers, and 45 percent of high school teachers who were
not in
formal team-based schools reported that they informally
teamed
with at least one other teacher. What is different is that
team-based schooling creates a formal structure in schools
that
explicitly vests power in teams of teachers to make
instructional
decisions for students.
At the same time,
the
state and district had accountability systems in place that
ranked the performance of schools and attached consequences
to
their performance. In Ohio, districts are rated annually on
a set
of 27 indicators, of which 25 are student achievement tests
as
well as student attendance and graduation rates. Based upon
these
ratings, districts are put into four categories: effective,
continuous improvement, academic watch, and academic
emergency.
These categories are highly correlated with the socio-
economic
status of districts. Districts in academic emergency have
five
years to move out of the category or are threatened with
state
takeover. CPS is in the academic emergency category, but
despite
one of the highest levels of poverty of any district in the
state, it is not the lowest performing district.
The district's
accountability system is called the School Accountability
Plan.
In it, targets are set for each school in six areas, which
are
very similar to the state indicator areas. Unlike the state
system, targets differ by school, which are set based upon
the
results of the previous year. Targets are set so that if all
schools meet their targets, than the district will meet its
target. Based on their performance, schools are rated as
either a
school incentive award winner, an achieving school, an
improving
school, a school in intervention, or a school under
redesign.
Redesigned schools can, and have been, reconstituted.
Principals' pay raises depend partially on the
performance
of their school.
The theory of
how
teaming works
In interviews
conducted
in the fall and early winter of 1997 with 14 leaders of the
Cincinnati education community, the leaders described how
they
expected teaming to work. The district leaders emphasized
improving student achievement and the quality of the
educational
experience as the overall expectation of team-based
schooling.
Leaders hypothesized that team-based schooling would impact
the
district in a variety of ways. The influences that were
mentioned
can be loosely organized around four inter-related themes:
decentralized control, more focused curriculum and
instruction, a
more student-focused school culture, and increased
accountability.
District leaders
described how they expected teaming to shift decision-making
about curriculum and instruction from the district to
schools to
teams of teachers, giving school staff a greater role in
critical
decision-making about their work and greater control of
their
budgets. They saw this devolution of authority driving
related
changes in the central office while giving schools greater
autonomy from the central office.
Many leaders
therefore
stressed that team-based schooling would increase
teachers'
focus on curricular and instructional issues. They felt
that
attention to the curriculum standards would increase,
improving
curricular planning and alignment. They expected that
teachers
would make more fine-grained decisions about grouping of
students, resulting in more individualized instruction.
They
also expected that looping (teachers staying with the same
group
of students over multiple years) would push teachers to
expand
their curriculum knowledge. In these ways decentralization,
along with increased accountability, would lead schools and
teams
to allocate their resources more productively.
Leaders also
envisioned
a series of influences that can loosely be called a more
student-focused school culture. Under this element of their
vision, a series of new relationships and norms would
develop in
team-based schools. Teachers would get to know students
better,
would analyze student achievement data and would be better
informed as they designed instruction to more effectively
meet
students' needs. One leader stressed that the teams
would
form communities, providing a greater reflection of the
democracy
we live within.
The local leaders
also
felt that team-based schooling would increase the
accountability
of teachers. They described how the new teams would give
teachers a greater sense of students' accomplishments
and
encourage them to take more responsibility for the progress
and
success of individual students. Since each of the teams
would be
responsible for preparing students for one of the gateway
grades
at which promotion benchmarks must be met, all teachers
would
share the responsibility that had previously rested more
heavily
on those teachers assigned to the gateway grades. Further,
it
was envisioned that a culture of competition would emerge in
the
effective team-based schools, propelling teachers to higher
quality instructional levels. Teaming therefore has the
potential
to meet the demands of increased autonomy and accountability
at
the school level through decentralization, rather than
through
increased centralization as has been a feature of earlier
reforms.
Reforms are seldom
implemented in isolation and other initiatives and events
often
have unintended effects. The implementation of team-based
schooling in Cincinnati was no exception. Three events
occurred
in Cincinnati which both directly altered the implementation
of
Students First, and more subtly influenced the
environment
within which the reform was unfolding. First, one of the
major
architects of Students First, J. Michael Brandt,
retired
as Superintendent after the first year of team-based
schooling
and was replaced by Dr. Steven Adamowski, although the Board
restated its commitment to Students First. Second,
the
district experienced severe budget cuts and schools were
forced
to reduce staff and resources. Third, in the 1999-2000
school
year, the district and union went through a prolonged
contract
renegotiation. Additionally, during the time of the
initiative,
the district announced major organizational changes,
including a
reorganization to K-8 schools, a plan to shift to open
enrollment
for high schools, the adoption of a new facilities plan
which
targeted which targeted some schools for eventual closure,
the
expansion of charter schools. This confluence of events and
developments generated considerable anxiety and undermined
morale
among teachers. The overall climate of rapid change and
uncertainty disturbed some teachers' confidence in the
stability of their teams and in the future of the team-based
reform.
IV.
Expanding the
autonomy of teachers in schools
As we have
discussed,
the team-based schooling reform envisages that schools,
teams and
individual teachers will have greater control over how they
teach
while also being held increasingly accountable for the
achievement of their students. This notion of increased
autonomy
raises a series of important issues that concern the
definition
and limits of autonomy and the authority that resides at
different levels within schools - including teachers, team
leaders, and the principal. These issues also played out
between
schools and the district. That is, the increased autonomy of
teaming created a whole new set of relationships within
schools
that implicitly modified the existing traditional
hierarchy.
The traditional
hierarchy of schools has a principal (and vice-principal in
larger schools) sitting on top of a traditionally flat
organizational structure. Schools often have a large number
of
committees to make instructional decisions, but formal
authority
is vested in the principal. Team-based schooling changed the
arrangement such that teams of teachers are formally made
responsible for instructional decisions about their
students.
Teams are led by team leaders while the school is led by the
Instructional Leadership Team (ILT), comprised of team
leaders
and led by the principal. The ILT is officially responsible
for
making school-wide instructionally related decisions. This
new,
more multi-faceted organizational structure created
uncertainty
as the members sought to clarify the extent and limits of
their
autonomy and authority. In the course of our fieldwork these
concerns were at the forefront for school faculty as they
struggled to implement team-based schooling. In this next
section, we explore in some detail the issues around
autonomy
and authority that arose in schools as their faculty
implemented
the reform.
The role of the
team
leader
The key purpose of
teams
is to establish a structure that provides teachers with
increased
opportunities to work together to improve instruction. The
collective bargaining agreement between the teacher union
and the
district states that each team shall have a paid team leader
and
describes the procedures for their selection. However, there
is
little specification about the team leader's role or
the
authority they have to make decisions that affect the
members of
their team. In some teams, members naturally deferred to
their
team leader to organize the time and resources of the group
while
in others this process was collaborative. There were a
small
number of teams in which the team leader's efforts to
exercise
authority created friction amongst the team
members.
In our interviews
with a
sample of members of 41 teams in the second year of teaming
(1998-99), a number of team members and leaders discussed
the
problems caused by the unclear responsibilities of team
leaders.
For example, in a team in a K-8 school, some team members
did not
accept the team leader's authority, especially the
teachers
who knew they would not be returning to the school the
following
year. Two of the four teachers had requested and received a
transfer to another school and a third did not have his
contract
renewed. As a result, the team leader said the team was
dysfunctional. "The only part where there is really
teaming
academically is with [the special education teacher]. We
share
responsibility for his developmentally handicapped kids and
my
grade 7 to 8 kids. That works great, but it isn't any
different from what I was doing before
teaming."
In another
elementary
school, there was a serious conflict between the team leader
and
one of the team members. The team leader said the conflict
was
caused by a personality issue, but the teacher said it was
due to
their different teaching styles. The teacher did not want to
follow the team leader's advice on instruction and she
said, "The team leader always wants things her
way."
The team leader commented, "Lots of teachers have
different
visions but teams need to have a united vision. We
don't
talk about a philosophy or teaching styles as a team."
These examples raise important questions about team
leaders' capacity and authority to propel their teams
to
higher functioning levels.
This lack of
definition
of the team leader's authority was of concern because
in
some cases it prevented teams from engaging in instructional
change, a central aim of team-based schooling. An elementary
school team leader described how the team members found it
hard
to share student work samples and resisted doing this even
though
they agreed, in theory, that it was an important practice.
One
team leader had asked to observe another teacher's
class,
but it did not happen. "I could have insisted on
certain
things, like sharing examples of students' work, but I
don't see that as my role. I don't feel I have
the
right to challenge teachers about their practice. My role is
to
set a tone, an expectation of being
professional."
Thus, in theory,
while
the teams were given autonomy to make decisions about
instruction, in practice, the decision-making process
required
someone with institutional authority to facilitate the
process.
This lack of definition of autonomy and authority was also
evident within the Instructional Leadership Teams
(ILT).
The role of the
ILT
and the principal
The role of the
ILT
in each team-based school is to develop, review and evaluate
the
instructional program and to monitor and improve school
operations and procedures that impact on instruction. The
ILT is
also to develop and monitor the school budget and to oversee
the
formation of teams and can decide on the process by which it
makes decisions, for example by vote or consensus, and
faculty
will also be required to approve the ILT recommendations by
majority vote. The ILT therefore, as its nomenclature
implies, is
to provide a forum for decisions to be made about
instruction and
those decisions are then to be disseminated and implemented
at
the team-level. Our observations of ILT meetings and
interviews
with ILT members and principals in the second year of
teaming
highlighted the difficulties in implementing a devolved
leadership structure.
The design
structure
of the ILT represents a significant shift in the way
decision-making power is distributed within a school.
Authority
for the overall direction of the school traditionally
resided
with the principal but the team-based model is intended to
shift
authority for making some decisions down to the team level.
The
introduction of the more democratic decision-making through
the
ILT represents a major change from more hierarchical school
power
structures.
Although the
ILT is
intended to be run in a consensual way so all members are
able to
make an equal contribution to the decision-making process,
the
reality is that the differential power relations among the
various members can undermine the decision making process.
We
found that the principal (or someone else on the ILT) had to
actively push for shared decision-making because the
traditional
hierarchical culture of schooling predisposes teachers to
defer
to the principal.
For some
principals,
moving toward more consensual decision-making processes was
a
difficult transition to make. The principal, in theory, is
an
equal member of the ILT with no more authority than anyone
else,
but the principal's role in monitoring and evaluating
staff
performance may make teachers reluctant to challenge the
principal on an issue. Principals can exercise their power
advantage or may suppress differing views from being
expressed
during ILT discussions. Some principals were described as
effective at encouraging consensual processed while others
were
described as being adept at ensuring their ideas were
prioritized
and implemented.
Principals promoted
their own agendas in direct ways, including actually setting
the
agenda and facilitating the ILT meetings, and in indirect
ways,
which some faculty members described as manipulation behind
the
scenes. In our interviews in the second year of teaming, one
ILT
member stated, "The principal stonewalls and dominates
the
conversation." Furthermore, while most principals paid
lip
service to the notion of consensual decision-making, there
were
some whose leadership styles were in direct and stated
opposition
to this. One principal rarely attended the ILT meetings and
made
some decisions without consulting the ILT at all. As a
result,
several ILT members said they would be stepping down as team
leaders because they no longer wanted to be part of the ILT.
In
several schools, principals made decisions that undercut ILT
consensus.
Faculty and
administrators in the team-based schools were adopting a
range of
relationships as they sought to navigate the transition from
a
traditional hierarchical culture to the more democratic
culture
reflected in teaming. School leaders at one end of the
spectrum
were remaining traditional. As one team leader described,
"A TBS [team-based school] principal needs to
understand,
explain, share. They need to be willing to let go. [Our
principal] doesn't share with us what we need to know
and
it leads to frustration." At the other end of the
spectrum, a principal at another school was adopting
democratic
decision-making to the extent that he was not willing to
make any
decisions himself. A team leader in the school commented,
"The principal is delegating everything and not being
a
leader." Most principals were seeking a middle ground.
As
one principal described, "I try to empower people but
they
have to understand that this is a hierarchy and I am the
principal."
Ideally, the ILT is
designed to ensure that decision-making authority does not
reside
solely with the principal. However, given the complex power
relations that operate within schools and the control that
the
principal has over the retention and promotion of staff, the
reality is that most principals still maintain a high degree
of
control. Some teachers seemed pleased to have a principal
they
perceived as a "strong" leader who could
maintain
control of the school. Other teachers questioned whose
responsibility it was to ensure that principals in team-
based
schools operated in ways consistent with the team-based
philosophy.
Role of the
team
vis-à-vis the ILT
While there were
issues
of authority within the ILT and between the ILT and the
principal, there were also issues of authority raised in
relation
to the decisions being made by the ILTs concerning the
division
of authority between the ILT and the teams. When interviewed
during the second year of teaming, some teachers said they
were
confused about the role of the team compared to the role of
the
ILT. In several cases, team leaders felt that the ILT was
overriding decisions that had been made by teams, decisions
that
they felt the teams should have been able to make. This was
exemplified by an elementary school where there were a range
of
opinions about the benefits of multi-age classes and looping
(the
practice of students remaining with a teacher for more than
one
year). A team leader in the school commented, "We are
still
trying to work out the mechanics as far as what teams can or
cannot do. This year, the ILT decided either looping or
multi-age—one or the other. The majority of the school
doesn't want to do either one." This example
raises
the question of whether there should be some limitations on
what
teams can decide and what the ILT has the authority to
decide.
Differences of
opinion
about the levels of autonomy and authority within a school
need
to be discussed and resolved if team-based schools are to
function effectively. A team leader in another school
commented,
"There are some rumbles that the ILT is trying to run
everything but teams should be represented by team leaders
so
this shouldn't be the case." An ILT member in
the
same school commented, "The ILT makes decisions about
programs, budget items, etc. Teams can make decisions within
their teams. Yet for discipline, the encouraged school wide
policy is what is best for children."
The role of the
district in relation to the school
The lack of
clarity
within team-based schools about the limits of their
authority and
autonomy was also reflected at the district level. It was
apparent from our interviews with leaders in the Cincinnati
education community in 1998-99 that the district had not yet
worked out what decisions the school should have the
authority to
make, and which decisions were the purview of the district.
For
example, there were a number of examples of the district
encouraging schools to make their own decisions about school
reform models or curriculum resources and then telling the
school
that their decision was not acceptable.
We also noted some
differences emerging in district leaders' views about
how
much autonomy should be given to schools. While they
generally
agreed at a conceptual level that schools and teachers
should be
given increased autonomy to make decisions aimed at
improving
student achievement and should be held more accountable for
the
results obtained, there were important differences of
opinion
about what this meant in practice. Our interviews suggest
that
the views of district policymakers on this issue fall along
a
continuum. At one end of the continuum are those who believe
that
schools should be given as much autonomy as possible to
decide
what and how students should be taught, and which reform
models
to use. In this view, autonomy should be constrained only by
the
standards (promotion standards and proficiency tests) that
are
mandated by the state and the district. How school staffs
reach
these standards is up to them. One leader in the district
summed
up this position, "Let the standards shape what
schools do,
but let them find their own way." Furthermore, some of
these proponents of increased school autonomy would like to
see
schools freed from some of the current contract
requirements,
such as those that limit meeting times and require vacancies
to
be filled from the surplus pool instead of allowing schools
to
recruit their own staff.
At the other end of
the
continuum are those who favor granting less autonomy to
schools
and teachers. For example, they believe that schools should
choose only those whole school reform models previously
approved
by the district and that teachers should not be allowed to
adopt
curricular materials that have been tried and failed in
several
other places in the district. Those in favour of
constraining
autonomy at the school level believe that setting academic
standards for schools is not sufficient, and contend that
schools
should teach a district-approved curriculum and that
students in
all schools should follow a core academic
program.
These differing
views of
autonomy are associated with different views of team-based
schooling. Those favoring maximum autonomy are content to
permit
more variation in how ILTs function, how teams are
structured,
and how resources are allocated by the schools. Those who
favor
some constraints believe that the district should ensure
that
team-based schooling is correctly implemented and that the
structures are faithful to the original design. In practice,
this
has raised a number of questions of how the district should
respond to issues. For example, a middle school team of a
dozen
teachers who want to stay together as a team, regardless of
the
suggested team size of 3-5 teachers; or a principal who
ignores
the unanimous recommendations of the school's
ILT.
As teachers and
school
administrators sought to define the limits of their
authority,
they were doing so in the context of a high-stakes
accountability
framework at both the state and district level. In the next
section we discuss the issues that arose in response to
increased
accountability in the context of team-based
schooling.
V.
Increasing
accountability
As previously
described,
the district's reform initiative, Students First,
contains
a school accountability plan in which targets are set for
each
school based upon indicators of progress, primarily
achievement
scores in the five core subjects, as well as student
attendance,
dropout rates, and graduation rates. Progress is defined
differently for each school, depending on its previous year
performance on these indicators. Rewards and sanctions are
meted
out based upon school performance each year. Thus the
"teeth" of the accountability system are at the
school, rather than the team-level. But this does not mean
that
teams do not feel the bite of accountability.
The pressures of
internal accountability
Abelmann and Elmore
(1998) make the distinction between systems of
accountability
that are external and internal to schools. In their
conceptualization, state and district accountability systems
are
external. But internal accountability systems operate in
equally
powerful ways and are made up of individual responsibility
and
collective expectations that together shape they ways that
people
account for their actions. They found that, "strong
expectations can influence and shape what a
teacher…feels
responsible for in his or her work " (p. 17).
Similarly,
our survey research found that teachers in team-based
schools had
significantly higher levels of collective responsibility and
reported higher levels of involvement in school-related
decision-making (Supovitz & Watson, 1999).
Survey data from
the
second year with all faculty in team-based schools revealed
that
teachers were overwhelmingly positive about working together
on
teams. Over 90 percent of team members reported that they
worked
well together as a team to do what was "best for
kids." A similar percent felt comfortable voicing
concerns
with team members. In interviews, several teachers described
how
they valued the relationships they were able to develop with
other team members. A team member in an elementary school
explained, "I like the concept of team-based. You are
working with the same group of kids. I like the
communication and
feedback you get." In a middle school, a team member
commented that teams enabled improved communication that
helped
them to better address the needs of students. "We have
more
adult communication via teaming. The team spends a lot of
time
brainstorming on how to mix and match
kids."
Teaming also tended
to
increase the pressure that teachers put on each other. In
some
cases this was a constructive force, but in others it served
to
undermine working relationships between teachers. This
resulted
in higher levels of stress and increased tensions between
teachers in team-based schools. Survey results from the
first two
years of CPRE's evaluation indicated that trust levels
between
teachers were significantly lower in team-based schools in
comparison to non-team-based schools, and that trust levels
declined from the year before schools implemented teaming to
the
end of their first full year in the initiative (Supovitz
&
Watson, 1999). These results suggest that the introduction
of the
formal mechanisms of teaming had surfaced issues which were
avoidable when teachers did not have to work so closely
together.
As one team leader commented in the second year of teaming,
"There is a cultural shift going on in the school.
Teams
are more vocal than before and people that used to be
passive are
more assertive."
Another consequence
of
increased interactions between teachers around instructional
issues was higher levels of conflict. For teachers who may
be
used to working with other teachers on discipline or
curriculum
committees, but who are none-the-less used to closing their
classroom doors for instruction, teaming can increase
opportunities for disagreement. On our survey in the second
year
of teaming, over half (53%) of the team members reported
conflict
between members of their team. Personality clashes were the
greatest sources of conflict, accounting for 67 percent of
the
conflicts. Disagreements over the equitable distribution of
work,
student discipline procedures, educational philosophy, and
disagreement over curriculum and assessment issues were also
common.
Of course, conflict
in
itself is not necessarily negative because it may be the
product
of increased communication among teachers and more
engagement in
critical discussion of practice and philosophy. Our
interviews
with team members suggested that conflict was a problem only
when
it remained unresolved and, therefore, undermined the
relationships within teams. Our survey also included a
series of
questions for the team members who reported having conflict
in
their teams about how they attempted to resolve it. Over
half
(57%) of the teams reported that they resolved the conflict
amongst themselves but, of the 53 percent of team members
who
said they experienced conflict, 30 percent said that the
conflict
remained unresolved. Overall, this means that approximately
15
percent of the teachers were experiencing unresolved
conflict on
their teams, a percentage that corresponded closely to our
interview data.
While team
relationships
are something that, with the appropriate support and skills,
can
be improved and strengthened, there are other factors that
affect
the operation of teams and student achievement which teams
have
little or no control over. In the course of our research,
teacher
and student turnover emerged as significant factors
affecting
teams.
External
accountability
In general, there
was a
certain amount of resistance from teachers to being held
accountable for the performance of their students. In our
1998-99
survey of school faculties, over 50 percent of the teachers
in
the team-based schools did not believe it was fair to hold
teams
accountable for the achievement of their students. Our
fieldwork
helped us to understand some of the reasons why teachers
felt
uncomfortable with this responsibility.
One reason that
teachers
resisted accountability was high rates of both student and
teacher mobility. The design of team-based schooling states
that
teams will be composed of groups of teachers who will be
held
jointly accountable for the achievement of a group of
students
for at least two years. This model assumes that the
composition
of the teams, in terms of students and teachers, will remain
stable to ensure maximum benefits from collaboration and
longer-term relationships with students. But teachers were
quick
to point out the high mobility of their student populations
and
that high student mobility rates made it unreasonable for
them to
be held accountable for student achievement. How could they
be
held responsible when many of their students were with them
for
relatively little time?
Second, teachers
felt
that teacher mobility impeded their ability to work together
to
meet the needs of students. Our survey with faculty in team-
based
schools in the second year asked teachers if the membership
of
their team had remained the same over the school year. Less
than
one-third of teams reported stability (in terms of their
teacher
composition) from the first to the second year as team-based
schools. Of the teams that did change, about one-third
changed
significantly and two-thirds experienced minor changes. The
reasons for the turnover among team members varied. In some
cases
they were due to decisions made by team members to leave the
teaching field, take long-term leaves, or transfer to other
schools or positions. But in many cases, team instability
was due
to decisions made at the district and school level that
affected
the school's staffing and resulted in changes to team
composition.
We also found that
while
most teachers felt their autonomy has increased, at the same
time, teachers also reported that they experienced
significant
restraints on their autonomy caused by the introduction of
standards-based accountability. Our work suggests that the
requirements of standards-based accountability, which
brought
with it performance standards, pacing guides, curriculum
materials and "standards into practice"
protocols for
those schools that failed to meet their targets may
counteract
efforts to increase local autonomy.
How were
teachers
using their increased autonomy and
accountability?
The litmus test
for
the effectiveness of the team-based schooling reform is
whether
increased autonomy and greater accountability have resulted
in
the kinds of instructional improvement that leads to
increased
student achievement. The results of our evaluation show that
when
teams are structured in ways envisaged by the reform, and
when
they are engaging in practices that teaming was designed to
enable such as planning lessons together, reviewing student
work
together, co-teaching classes and observing each other
teach,
then there is a positive impact on student achievement (see
Supovitz & Watson 2000 and Supovitz & Watson 1999
for
more detailed discussion of the methodology used). However,
we
also found that implementation varied and there were very
few
teams that were using the kinds of practices that were
positively
associated with student achievement. Even when teams were
functioning well in terms of team meetings and team
relationships, very few teams had begun to engage in
instructional improvement by changing the way
they
were teaching. While our research has shown that there were
a
number of factors such as resource constraints, lack of
definition of authority, and student and teacher mobility
that
undermined the effectiveness of team-based schooling, the
small
number of teams that were responding to increased autonomy
and
greater accountability by attending to instructional
improvement
is a significant concern.
VI.
Discussion
The purpose of this article
has been to explore the "lived reality" of team-based
schooling--a standards-based reform that aims to increase
autonomy and accountability at the school-level. Increased
autonomy is to be provided by giving schools and teams of
teachers increased control over how they teach and over
other
factors that influence student achievement such as
scheduling,
curriculum and grouping of students. Increased external
accountability is enacted in the form of state and district
level
performance targets. Internal accountability is enacted in
the
form of increased peer accountability within teams. This
design
assumes that holding schools and teams more accountable for
student achievement, while at the same time giving them more
autonomy, will enable them to promote student achievement.
Our
research enables us to make the following
observations.
First, implementing
any
reform requires the recognition that it is enacted into an
existing culture. In this case, team-based schooling did not
replace the existing culture and relations of power within
schools. Rather, faculty both accommodated and resisted
various
aspects of the reform so that the "new reality"
in
schools became a hybrid of both of these at times
contradictory
schooling structures. Although unarticulated, the success of
the
teaming design is predicated on a significant shift in
relations
at every level of schooling and this kind of shift, by
necessity,
will involve a change in the traditional relations of power
by
which the daily life of the school is structured. If not
made
explicit and attended to, these forces have the potential to
subvert the kinds of changes on which teaming
depends.
Second, the lack of
definition and clarity in the reform design about the limits
of
authority and autonomy that operate at various levels—from
the
district through to individual teachers—hinders the
ability of teachers, teams and schools to exercise the
increased
autonomy that team-based schooling was intended to provide
them
with. As our research has shown, this lack of clarity has
sometimes resulted in conflict and/or in an inability to
focus on
the challenging work of instructional improvement. We
recognize,
however, that the reform process is a "work in
progress" and through our research and through its own
mechanisms, the district has been closely monitoring the
reform
and attempting to provide the kinds of guidance and
resources
that teachers are saying they need.
Third, internal
accountability is a powerful force. The pressures of
collective
responsibility unleashed by placing the responsibility for
student achievement on teachers works in both constructive
and
destructive ways. On the one hand, teachers are forced out
of
isolation and are held increasingly accountable by their
peers
for their role in contributing to instructional improvement.
On
the other hand, as Cohen (1976) and Hargreaves (1980) have
pointed out, expanding local responsibility is often
accompanied
by increased conflict. Our research indicates that conflict
can
have both productive outcomes, for example when it forces
teachers to confront issues that impede instructional
coherence,
and unproductive outcomes, when conflict is left unresolved
and
corrodes interaction and trust.
Fourth, while
external
accountability mechanisms are premised on the assumption
that
teachers, teams and schools can be held directly accountable
for
student achievement, in reality there are a large number of
factors over which they have very little control but which
impact
negatively on student achievement. These include such
factors as
student and teacher turnover caused by decisions made at the
district-level in response to resource constraints and
school
restructuring. As Elmore (2000) argues, if policy makers and
administrators are going to hold teachers accountable for
certain
outcomes, then they need to ensure that teachers have the
capacity and resources to achieve those outcomes.
Furthermore,
while the design of team-based schooling promotes greater
school
and team-level autonomy, external accountability mechanisms
constrain autonomy in very real ways.
Thus far we
have
focused on highlighting the practical and relational issues
that
have arisen as teaming was implemented. But in the final
part of
this article we want to broaden the discussion to consider the
trade-off between increased accountability and increased
autonomy
on which standards-based reforms such as team-based
schooling are
based. The assumption behind this trade-off are that
teachers,
teams and schools will respond to greater accountability by
using
their increased autonomy to engage in instructional
improvement.
Our research has highlighted some of the very real
constraints
that serve to limit autonomy and that also raise concerns
about
the extent to which teachers can be held directly
accountable for
student achievement in the way that standards-based reforms
are
designed to do. We have shown how these constraints hinder
the
ability of teachers and teams to engage in the challenging
work
of instructional reform. However, the question we want to
raise
here is whether—resource constraints and design problems
aside—increasing the autonomy of teachers within the context of
an
external accountability system is the way to improve
instruction.
Or, to put it another way, do we have evidence that teachers
were
using their increased autonomy to engage in instructional
improvement in order to meet the demands of the external
accountability system? Our research shows that most teachers
and
teams were not. For the majority of teams,
teaming is
a structural, rather an instructional reform. That is,
teaming
can facilitate improved communication between teachers and
allow
them greater decision-making power over certain areas, but
most
teams do not use their increased autonomy and greater
accountability to engage in instructional reform.
Our research
suggests
that modifications need to be made to the ways in which
autonomy
and accountability are used within the context of standards-
based
reforms. Thus, the question is not so much whether
teachers
should be given more or less autonomy, or should be held
more or
less accountable. A more important question is how might
autonomy
and accountability be used to create incentives for teachers
to
engage in instructional improvement? One of the ways that
this
might occur is by modifying the accountability system. At
the
present time, schools and teams are primarily held
accountable
for the achievement of their students on standardized tests.
However, as we have shown, there are some very real concerns
about the fairness of holding teams and schools accountable
on
such a limited measure of school effectiveness. An
alternative
would be to hold schools, teams and teachers accountable for
their instructional practice so that they are rewarded for
those
aspects of their work over which they have direct control.
In
this way, the accountability system would encourage teachers
and
teams to focus on instructional improvement.
A second way that
teachers might be encouraged to engage in instructional
improvement is by constraining teachers' autonomy in
strategic ways. As we cited in the introduction,
Hannaway (1993) pointed out that teachers in successful
decentralized districts actually have less autonomy than
teachers
in traditionally organized schools. That is, while
decentralization is typically seen as a means of increasing
teacher autonomy, in fact, it constrains teacher autonomy by
exposing teachers' practice to increased surveillance
by
their peers and by the district through the increased
accountability measures. Our research shows that this is the
case
in team-based schools, but that increased surveillance leads
to
instructional improvement in very few teams. The challenge
is to
use increased autonomy and surveillance productively—in
ways
that result in instructional improvement. This is an
important
observation because while standards-based reforms are
designed to
trade-off increased autonomy with greater accountability,
our
research suggests that increasing autonomy and
accountability
per se may not result in instructional improvement.
Instead, it may be more constructive to design reforms that
constrain autonomy and accountability in ways that require
and
enable teachers to engage in instructional
improvement.
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About the
Authors
Susan Watson was a
Research Associate at CPRE, University of Pennsylvania while
contributing to the evaluation of team-based schooling. She
has
recently returned to New Zealand where she works an
independent
education consultant and visiting lecturer in the School of
Education at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research
interests include monitoring the effects of market-style
policies
in education, international comparative research and
research on
the social contexts of schooling. Susan can be contacted at
susan.watson@paradise.net.nz.
Jonathan Supovitz
is a
research assistant professor at the University of
Pennsylvania
and a senior researcher at the Consortium for Policy
Research in
Education. At CPRE he is the principal investigator and a
team
member of a number of evaluations, including the evaluation
of
team-based schooling in Cincinnati, the national evaluation
of
the America's Choice comprehensive school reform
design,
and the evaluation of a partnership between the Merck
Institute
for Science Education and school districts in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania. At the Graduate School of Education at the
University of Pennsylvania he teaches about the
instructional and
policy uses of assessment. Jon can be contacted at
jons@gse.upenn.edu.
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