Most conventional school practices were developed to educate the typical American student of the past: white, middle-class, and living with both parents. Such practices poorly serve today's urban students, many of whom are racial or ethnic minorities, living in poverty in single-parent homes, and alienated from the dominant culture.
To become more responsive to students and their families, many urban districts have turned to Site-Based Management (SBM). SBM is especially relevant for large city districts, with their complex bureaucratic structures, heterogeneous nature, and resistance to change.
For the past two years, we've studied site-based management as it has played out at six schools in three Midwest urban districts: four elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. Four of the schools are located in large urban districts, and two are in smaller ones. We've observed their site council meetings; interviewed parents, teachers, and principals; and examined various school documents on site-based management. Here are some lessons we've learned from our research in these schools.
Lesson 1: Make Parent Involvement Real
Site-based management provides a context for substantive parent involvement that goes beyond traditional bake sales and fund-raising. In the schools we observed, parents and community members regularly attend site council meetings and value being involved. “To educate a mother is to educate the child,” said one parent at a council meeting.
In turn, school staff also value parents as participants. As one principal stated, The proudest thing for me so far is that we have parents on our hiring committees.... One parent was stunned that we were asking her to help us pick a teacher. She did an excellent job too ... and went away with some sense of “my kid is going to be in that teacher's room next year, and I helped hire her.”
Only one time did we see parents subtly reminded that educators hold particular knowledge and experience that give them a different perspective. For example, as one site council deliberated over how many teachers versus parents should sit on the council, some parents asserted that the ratio should be equal. Conversely, other parents claimed that teachers “should represent the majority because of their training.” The principal noted that “the people making the biggest investment are the ones who are putting their kids in front of a teacher and saying, 'I trust you do to your job.'”
After more discussion, the council decided that each group should have equal representation. Even so, the principal felt that parents didn't really grasp the extent of their power to influence how things are done in the school. “I have to find some subtle way to tell them that and to support them,” he added.
Over time, parents challenged the opinions of school personnel more frequently. Several times last year, we saw parents redirect discussions to focus on the needs of the children rather than on the vested interests of particular individuals or groups. As one parent noted, “We must make sure that our children receive a quality education.... that what we say is being done in school is really being done.” Only a few times did parents frame their discussion primarily around their own children rather than on the good of all children served by the school.
Lesson 2: Challenge Current Relationships
Throughout our study, we saw SBM change many relationships within the schools. For example, commenting on the principal/teacher relationship, a teacher said, I don't think anyone has a more important role than anyone else ... even the principal. He's not a boss as much as he is someone who knows how to get things done.
One of this teacher's colleagues said she had often heard the principal describe his “job as how I can help you to do your job better.”
In another school, a teacher said that the principal “gives his opinion, and you can take it for whatever it's worth.” When asked whether she believed the principal's opinion carried more weight than others on the site council, she replied, “I don't really think that. Not here.”
Site-based management also influences teachers' relationships with children. Commenting on shared decision making, a teacher said, I don't think I make the sole decisions. I try to include my kids in classroom decisions. At the beginning of the year, we set down what the rules are and what we as a class expect of one another.
Sometimes, the ideal of the school mission and site council deliberations come into conflict. For example, a teacher assistant on one council argued that to be congruent with the school's mission, budgetary decisions should consider getting more help with the children.... maybe redefining some positions so that people who aren't with children all the time could spend more time with them.... we need everyone we can possibly get to help with kids. That's the bottom line.
Another teacher observed that all teachers, not just the principal, are keepers of the school mission. If the principal left the school, she added, “The school would still be OK” because everyone had participated in developing the mission and was committed to it.
Even when people share a common mission, they must address how that ideal fits with curriculum and instruction in the school. Who is responsible, a teacher assistant asked, for ensuring that teaching is compatible with the mission? She added: I don't think the principal feels that he's in a position to tell people how to teach ... but at the same time, you need someone who can set guidelines and make sure that they're followed through...These are just a few examples of how staff in SBM schools need to constantly rethink and analyze relationships.
Lesson 3: Let Go of Destructive Relationships
For site-based management to succeed, school staff must develop strong bonds, a process that holding onto traditional relationships can hinder. Many site council members and school staff thought that top-down decision making was perpetuated by practices, or perceived practices, that supported “old boys' or girls' networks,” principal informants, key players, cronies, and sounding boards. If these systems were still operational, teachers believed the site council was not a legitimate body, but only a front for site-based management.
Some staff viewed the locus of power as still centralized in the principal and selected others in the school. For example, during an interview one teacher expressed her doubts, “I'm seeing people who used to be called the administration team making decisions again without input from others.”
Another teacher in the school shared these concerns: There's always the group that might be what we might call “The Principal's Group”.... They tend to know what's happening, while the rest of us don't until we go to the meeting.
The principal's relationship with the central office is another traditional tie with the potential to hinder new relationships from developing. On one level, the principal remains gatekeeper of what the site council knows and is made available to them as they conduct their work.
On another level, central offices have difficulty turning some decisions over to schools. “The central office doesn't want to give up control,” one teacher observed, “They don't want to let us try.” Unfortunately, a comment from the school's principal confirmed this teacher's perceptions: Last week I called the people in human resources and said “Now that we have our budget ... it appears that we're going to be able to hire two more teachers.” And the guy said, “You can't do that.” I said, “No, actually I can do that. I have the money. And I have a local governing body that wants us to work on class size.”
In another school, council members spent considerable time researching and designing new report cards only to be told by the central office that they had no control over report cards.
Some schools' council members had disparate access to information and perceived that councils and central offices had unequal roles. These circumstances also proved harmful to the cultivation of new relationships.
Lesson 4: Build a Climate of Trust
Trust and respect, our study data revealed, do not automatically accompany a staff's gaining a representational voice or a vote on decision-making bodies. Beyond having a voice and a vote, school staff need a milieu of trust and respect in which to work. Trust building is an active process that does not occur without effort. As one teacher noted, “You have to have time to talk if a lot of people are to have their say.”
Although time is a well-known logistical barrier to site-based management, most education professionals view the benefits of council participation as outweighing their concerns about time demands and increased expectations. For example, in a school where the principal and the curriculum coordinator offered to draft a plan for the site council's policies and procedures, teachers and parents rejected this offer because it limited their input and opportunity to obtain responses from peers. “We want to be involved when questions come up,” one teacher said, “rather than at the end when we read it on a piece of paper.” Thus, having a voice in developing policies and procedures, rather than merely serving as a stamp of approval, also contributes to a climate of trust.
One teacher's comment illustrates another element of trust-building: “If my voice is heard, then I have to listen to everyone else's voice too.” Her principal added: We've built a great deal of trust here because of all we've gone through.... We make lots of mistakes... and we hold one another accountable, but we don't hold one another's feet to the fire.
Trust and respect, then, are the foundation for democratic decision making. The one-person/one-vote approach must give way to collaborative discussion and inquiry.
Lesson 5: Create Meaningful Staff Involvement
Having a team that makes decisions for a school is not synonymous with engaging the entire staff in meaningful ways. Involvement in decision making must be meaningful, many teachers told us.
In some instances, however, site councils appeared to develop into yet another form of centralized authority. As a result, staff members not on the council sometimes perceived themselves as outsiders to the work of their schools. In describing what participation should look like, an elementary school teacher hopes that everyone who decides to stay at this school will be part of these committees that are working out the details.... We've got to have everybody involved in decision making on some level.
Site councils struggled with how to engage the entire staff in decision making. In some schools, teachers served on committees that fed into the SBM council. In others, teachers were encouraged to submit agenda items for future site council meetings to council members. Still other schools invited teachers to attend council meetings when they had ideas to present.
Such efforts to solicit participation, however, didn't always achieve their objective. Teachers not on the council considered opportunities such as these to be passive, indirect forms of involvement. Beyond simply having an SBM council or a single avenue for suggesting ideas, teachers need to feel that their perspectives are actively being sought. In schools with multiple avenues for input, teachers perceived that their voices would be heard if they took advantage of available opportunities.
Lesson 6: Allow Enough Time
It takes time for a school staff to believe that decisions are truly being made differently. Teachers need time to observe the range of decisions considered, the decision-making process, whose voices are heard, and who makes the final decision.
As participation becomes equitable, inclusionary, and significant, skepticism that SBM is a fog for the traditional system diminishes. At one school, the principal was often the first to respond to questions at meetings. Soon realizing his pattern, however, he made amends by saying, “I'm sorry, I forgot this is a democracy.”
Teachers also need time to move beyond what one principal called “classroom myopia” to see the bigger picture of school and community decisions. During site council deliberations, for example, we observed that teachers began discussing broader issues such as improving education for all children in their schools, not just for their own students.
It also takes time for the nature of the decisions that site councils address to evolve from trivial to significant. For example, an elementary teacher described how, over four years, her school's council had moved from making decisions that were “really not very complicated, like playground decisions,” to focused work on planning for the future of the school.
Other educators noted their site council's passage from reactive to proactive decision making, from logistical decisions during the first year to more substantive decisions (about resource allocation and instructional coordination, for example) during the subsequent three years. “It's not something that will work right off the bat,” one teacher told us, “It takes time and opportunities to make mistakes. But when we finally come together, we'll have a much better organization.”
Who Will Own City Schools?
Although site-based management will, of course, vary from school to school, the lessons presented here have implications for all schools, as they negotiate the often amorphous and arduous tasks of self-management. As one principal aptly said, “Ultimately, the only way that city schools are going to stay alive is if somebody owns them.” Who better to own city schools than those who have the greatest stake in the education of their students?
