Five years ago, the idea of school-based management (SBM) was riding a wave of popularity. Endorsed by leading educators and by groups such as the National Governors' Association and the Business Roundtable, the notion of decentralizing school systems and giving more decision-making power to the school site was described as an essential step toward improving schools.
Most experts still consider SBM to be a rational and vital component of an improved education system. And some educators working in site-managed schools say it has "democratized" school governance, giving teachers and parents a voice in making decisions about school policy. But supporters had hoped that SBM would help to bring about substantial changes in teaching and learning, and these have been slow in coming, experts say. In many of the locations where SBM has been tried, key ingredients—such as training for site-based leadership teams or access to knowledge and information to guide decisions—have been absent. Priscilla Wohlstetter, director of the school-based management research project at the University of Southern California, has conducted a review of the literature on the effects of SBM. Among the studies she examined, "there were no findings of change because there was, at best, partial implementation" of the practices needed to make SBM effective, she says.
Push to Decentralize
The purpose of SBM is to vest more authority in those at the school site to plan and carry out decisions to maximize the school's effectiveness. SBM plans differ on key features, however. Some give the authority to school principals; others to school councils, which may include teachers, parents, or community members. Plans also vary considerably in the degree of autonomy that schools actually exercise on issues such as the budget, personnel decisions, and curriculum.
The rationale for trying SBM comes from several sources.
Just as in business, where leading-edge companies are vesting more authority in line workers, SBM proponents believe that decisions should be made by those closest to the point of impact. "School-based management is just a good way to do business—it's a good way to manage schools," says Wohlstetter. Since schools are designed to help students achieve, those in the classroom need to be heavily involved in making decisions that could help or hinder this goal. "You have to look to people at the classroom level, because that's where change is going to occur," says Dave Arnett of the Dade County, Fla., public schools, which launched a highly publicized effort in SBM and shared decision making in the late 1980s.
Others see the benefits of this democratic approach more broadly. Not just teachers, but parents and other community members should have a greater say in how their local school is run, some SBM advocates believe. Some districts experimenting with SBM have "seats" on decision-making councils for parents or other community members. Nowhere has this desire for public involvement been more apparent than in Chicago. A 1988 law established local school councils at each school—and stipulated that parents and community members hold the majority of seats on the council. In passing the law, legislators were signalling that "they thought democracy works," says John Easton, interim director of research, evaluation, and planning for the Chicago public schools. In the eyes of Illinois lawmakers, these nonprofessionals "have the most at stake, [because] it's their children," he says.
SBM also draws support from a new view of accountability. Increasingly, experts say, policymakers are pushing an approach that specifies the outcomes of education—in terms of student achievement—and gives educators at the local school more autonomy and flexibility to organize their programs to achieve those outcomes. Kentucky is a case in point. As part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, all schools in the state must engage in SBM by 1996. Policymakers felt that "you can't hold people accountable if you don't give them authority," says Charles Edwards, director of school-based decision making for the Kentucky Department of Education.
Chicago Councils
The vision of empowered local schools casting off the yoke of top-down control and making substantive improvements is an appealing one. But SBM in practice has been far more complex. Many of the sites that have tried SBM have struggled with the new way of governing schools. And few are able to point to major changes in teaching or higher levels of student achievement. More common are assertions that SBM has resulted in broader participation in decisions, or that schools have been able to craft decisions based on their particular needs, not on the needs of a bureaucracy.
Now in its fifth year of SBM, Chicago has experienced all of the growing pains of an urban system attempting to decentralize. Under the Chicago School Reform Act, principals were given more autonomy over their budget and personnel decisions—but they lost tenure rights and were placed on four-year "performance" contracts. In addition, the act established local school councils at every school. The councils, composed of a majority of parents and community members, were given the duties of hiring and firing the school principal and helping to develop budgets and school improvement plans.
Initial news reports on the plan's implementation focused on the often-contentious atmosphere that accompanied the new governance arrangement in some city schools. Friction between principals and the new councils was common. Indeed, about five percent of the councils are "involved in sustained conflict" that hampers their ability to act, says Easton.
Many of the councils "are extremely frustrating to the people on them," says Herb Walberg, research professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "They feel alienated; some feel that principals still dictate things. And some principals feel that they have another school board" to labor under. Although Chicago's experiment has resulted in more democracy, it's not clear that decisions made by the councils are any better. "They have the autonomy, but whether they have the competence is another issue," Walberg asserts. The number of candidates for election to local school councils has dropped precipitously, he adds. And the goals spelled out in the reform act—such as reducing the dropout rate and improving student achievement—are far from being met.
But others point to signs that the act has brought about some positive changes. Initially, many school councils focused on "environmental" issues designed to address school security or building repairs, according to a report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research. These changes may not directly improve teaching and learning, but instructional improvement is unlikely to occur if students and staff feel unsafe or the school building is a shambles. Since then, many schools have undertaken academic improvements—some isolated and unfocused, and others more systemic in nature. About one-third of the lowest-performing elementary schools have undertaken systematic academic improvement efforts, the Consortium estimated.
Some schools best characterized as "disasters" before the act have begun to turn around, adopting Paideia programs or implementing Afrocentric curriculums to provide focus for their programs, says Diana Nelson, senior policy advisor for Designs for Change, an advocacy group that lobbied for the law's passage. The number of central office and subdistrict office staff assigned to individual schools has climbed by 10 percent, moreover, while the number assigned to the headquarters building declined by 33 percent. And even if the number of candidates for local school councils is down, the last election still attracted more than 9,000 people "who said they wanted to help the schools," Nelson points out.
Miami's Approach
About 150 schools participate in an SBM arrangement in Miami, another closely watched experiment in decentralization launched in the late 1980s. Unlike the brand of SBM practiced in some other areas, the SBM plan in Dade County gives school principals the responsibility for making key decisions. "Ultimately, there's only one person who may be fired, and it's not a parent or council member," says Superintendent Octavio Visiedo, explaining why principals remain in charge. But the district also has experienced a major turnover in principals, and the new breed of leaders "don't walk into the building thinking they are dictators," says Visiedo. Administrators under SBM have to involve stakeholders in making decisions, he says, even if one person—the principal—ultimately is held accountable.
One measure of the flexibility enjoyed by SBM schools is that they can request waivers from school board rules, state laws, or language in the labor contract, says Arnett. For example, schools have received waivers to schedule time more flexibly in middle schools and to allow experienced teachers, rather than administrators, to conduct observations of teaching lessons.
The impact of SBM won't be found in test scores or other statistics, Visiedo asserts. He cites the prime benefit of SBM in Dade County as "allowing us to operate through two dismal fiscal crises." Instead of the district mandating across-the-board cuts, schools decided where to cut costs to meet new financial constraints. That was in keeping with the district's new approach to budgeting, under which principals "can pretty much spend their money any way they want," says Visiedo. "They have an immense amount of authority in how they use their dollars."
Arnett says Dade County's experience with SBM has contributed to "a sea change in attitude" among state policymakers in the last decade. When Dade County began investigating using SBM in the mid-'80s, it was controversial, he says. Florida legislators "were literally terrified of teachers taking over the schools." But Florida lawmakers now think so highly of the logic of SBM that they have incorporated it into the Florida 2000 education program. Under the law, all sites must complete school improvement plans that are developed jointly by school faculties and parents, Arnett says.
Kentucky's Mandate
More than half of Kentucky's approximately 1300 schools are using SBM, even though state law will not require it for another two years, according to Edwards of the state education department. Until then, schools are encouraged to use SBM if at least two-thirds of the school faculty votes for it, he says. Most school councils have at least six members; a typical council might have three teachers, two parents, and the principal as chair of the group.
Steve Frommeyer, principal of Eminence Middle School in Eminence, Ky., says two recent initiatives illustrate the advantages of SBM, which his school has used for several years. The school adopted a new no-fail policy under which students receive an "incomplete" instead of an "F." Pupils now have to work harder to bring their grades up, rather than "slough off and know they'll be moved on" to the next level, says Frommeyer. The council also developed a new plan to raise attendance. Students were given rewards for good attendance, and parents were contacted when pupils missed school too often. Not only has the school improved its attendance rate to 97 percent, the increased contact with parents has been beneficial, Frommeyer says.
Because Kentucky's new accountability plan demands that schools produce higher student achievement, schools using SBM are realizing the importance of taking responsibility for improving their programs, adds George Thompson, principal of Bell County High School in Pineville, Ky. "It's a lot easier to point your finger at City Hall and blame them when things don't go well," he says. But SBM at the high school has encouraged staff to be more proactive about making changes—even when it means going against what the district wants. For example, the site-based council there voted to move to a block schedule. "Our board of education was opposed to that," but after careful study "we decided to do it anyway."
Both Frommeyer and Thompson say that their councils have been able to work through and resolve even the most contentious issues. In three years of SBM at Bell County High School, "we have never voted on a single issue; we've done it by consensus," says Thompson. It may take longer to reach a decision, but both say that the decisions are better and have a more sustained impact. "In the short run, it's less efficient," says Frommeyer, "but in the long run, it's more efficient," because people involved in making decisions tend to be more committed to seeing them carried out. "When a decision has been made, it's been better supported because every stakeholder was represented."
Clear Focus
Although SBM's impact remains unclear, experts have learned some things about how it can be more effective. Wohlstetter says that schools that are effective with SBM are able to move beyond start-up issues of power and control and focus on issues that really affect teaching and learning. In a recent study, Wohlstetter found key differences between schools struggling with SBM and those engaged in restructuring. Schools in the first category were characterized by "lots of talk about who was in power. They were talking about the policy manual, who got to vote, and who got to use the copier," she says. The restructuring schools "were able to focus on school-based management as a way to improve school performance."
SBM schools improve the effectiveness of leadership teams by giving them substantive training and making wise use of committees and work teams, says Wohlstetter. Those in leadership groups need to be trained in such skills as consensus building or developing a budget. Effective SBM sites—regardless of whether a principal or a team is "in charge"—tend to make wide use of committees and work groups, she adds. This ensures that many faculty members have a voice, and their expertise makes the decisions more informed ones. Effective use of committees also ensures that the school council doesn't get bogged down with every time-consuming issue, she adds.
Access to information—such as student assessment data or budget figures—is another critical need of SBM sites, says Wohlstetter. "The district has to be willing to give information to schools that will empower them to make good decisions." The Chicago public schools are restructuring their research and evaluation branch to try to better serve individual schools, says Easton, who is directing the effort.
One thing about SBM seems assured: changes will be slower to reach the classroom than some anticipated at first. "We've got to admit that school improvement takes a long time," says Easton, citing the example of James Comer's sustained work with the New Haven, Conn., schools. But Easton and others say that the rationale for SBM is a strong one, and that the current trend toward giving local schools more autonomy should continue. Trying to make decisions as a group "can be exasperating, but I don't see any council member saying we should go back to what we had before," says Edwards of Kentucky's plan.
