For more than 25 years, Yale University child psychiatrist James P. Comer and his staff have been working with public schools, employing a collaborative process that brings together teachers, principals, parents, and community members to create programs that foster the education and development of children (Comer 1980).
Comer's program and site-based management have elements in common. They share the idea that “people who must implement the decision must make the decision” (Hoyle 1992); that those closest to the problems should generate and carry out the solutions.
Opting for Success
Among the many sites that have successfully implemented Comer's approach, known as the School Development Program, are Washington, D.C.; Prince George's County, Maryland; Camden, New Jersey; School District 13 in Brooklyn, New York; Dade County, Florida; Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina; Dallas; Chicago; Detroit; San Diego; and New Orleans. Many school districts have chosen this program's structure and processes to realize the promises of site-based management. What are these promises?
Malen and colleagues (1989) list six purported benefits of site-based management: (1) stakeholders, particularly parents and teachers, will be able to influence school policy decisions; (2) employee morale and motivation will be boosted; (3) school-wide planning processes will be strengthened; (4) instruction will improve; (5) effective schools' characteristics will develop; and (6) students' academic achievement will improve.
After an extensive review of the literature, Malen and colleagues (1989) found little evidence to substantiate these benefits of site-based management. More recent reviews corroborate Malen's findings (Ogawa and White 1994; Sidener 1994).
In contrast, the Comer School Development Program is successful. Many observers (see, for example, Anson et al. 1991, Becker and Hedges 1992, Haynes et al. 1992, Joyner 1990, and Comer 1988) have found that students improve in a whole range of areas—self-efficacy, relationships with peers and adults, general mental health, achievement on standardized tests, and classroom grades. They also have fewer suspensions, less deviant behavior, and better attendance. In addition, the researchers found that teachers, too, have better attendance, that both students and parents rate the school climate more highly, and that parents participate more frequently in school activities.
Given the similarities between the Comer School Development Program and site-based management, the different results are striking. What accounts for them? One explanation is that, whereas site-based management appears to be an easily implemented structural modification, in reality it requires deep cultural changes in the school and district (Kranyik and Squires 1995). Simply designing and placing a shared decision-making structure in a school setting is unlikely to be effective unless there are supportive components. These include clear delegation of authority to site participants to carry out school improvement plans, provision of adequate resources, and the development of belief systems and organizational norms to promote inclusiveness and collaboration.
Site-based management designs generally fail to establish structures and processes that help school communities work through cultural change. Shared decision making is difficult when the staff continues to be isolated. The professionalization of teaching grates against the belief that everyone—parents, community members, cafeteria workers—should have a say about what is important. The principal, too, may feel threatened as a school council's decisions undermine his or her traditional authority.
Focusing on Kids and School Culture
We believe Comer's program succeeds for two major reasons: it supports a change in the school culture, and it focuses on children's development—their total development, not just their speech, language, and intellectual capabilities. Because children attend school for significant portions of their early lives, their social, moral, physical, and psychological development must be central to the school's mission.
To address the coordination of school activities, parent involvement, and students' mental health, the School Development Program has three mechanisms, or teams, that bring together key stakeholders to coordinate school activities. These are the parents' program, the mental health team, and the school planning and management team.
- The parents' program seeks to make the school inviting and welcoming for parents in order to increase their communication with both teachers and students and to involve them in school planning. Parents are, after all, the child's first teachers. They need to be involved with the staff in helping their children develop. Schools need help in breaking down the professional insularity that separates the functions of home and school in children's development.
- The mental health team encourages broad-based preventive measures directed at the school as a whole, a departure from the cultural norm of case-by-case management. Team members are involved in case management of individual students, and they coordinate their efforts with outside agencies or professionals as necessary. Also, as teams do at many schools, they help to determine the appropriate placement and classification of students. In addition, however, the mental health team is charged with examining root causes of schoolwide mental health problems, designing ways to improve the school climate, and building positive relationships among the school's adults and children.
- The school planning and management team coordinates the work of the other two teams, establishes policy guidelines around curriculum and instruction, and helps to plan and coordinate school operations. Always, the criterion for decisions is what's best for children?Planning team members collect data on the school's programs, discern patterns, and generate goals for academic achievement, the social climate, and public relations. They then spell out these goals in a comprehensive school plan. The plan includes a calendar of school events for the coming year, and a development plan to give staff members and parents the skills and knowledge they need for their personal and professional growth and the growth of the organization. Team members then periodically assess conditions to identify new problems or modify the school program. All these activities help break the norm of program isolation and seat-of-the-pants planning.
Following Guiding Principles
The teams operate with three guiding principles: no-fault problem solving, consensus decision making, and collaboration among all stakeholders. This approach helps mediate differences and the inevitable tensions that arise when organizations change their norms and values.
No-fault problem solving is oriented to the future—instead of dredging up past failures, we ask, “What can we do to prevent the problems from being repeated?” If we are to help children develop, we must accept them as they come to us. Instead of assigning blame, we must seek the causes of problems. This same principle asks us to practice acceptance and suspend judgment in our relations with adults and the school community.
This approach promotes group collaboration, because the group as a whole is responsible for the solution. Team members are forced to move beyond their individual orientations to consider a broader view of the problem; they can't settle an issue simply by assigning blame. When the adults of a school consciously practice this approach—with both students and one another—the school's culture is transformed.
Consensus decision making eliminates voting, decisions made exclusively by the principal, and a general win-lose syndrome. All participants are invited to contribute so that a full range of opinions are heard. Consensus relies on an honest discussion of significant options, where individual objections are respected. The idea is that we are smarter than any one of us. If there are reasonable doubts about any decision, that decision is not carried out. Decisions are carried out only when everyone agrees not to block or sabotage implementation, as sometimes occurs when a vote is taken.
This blend of individual responsibility and consensus decision making changes schools that are caught up in power and authority issues. The power and authority now rest with inclusive groups, rather than with the principal or other authority figures. Under these circumstances, decisions are far less likely to be blocked or sabotaged by disgruntled staff or parents.
Collaborative decision making ensures that all stakeholders, including parents, teachers, other school staff, students (if appropriate), and community members will be heard. The group, however, has a responsibility to neither paralyze the leader nor rubber-stamp the leader's wishes.
Admittedly, such sharing of power is a tremendous challenge, even more so in a culture that values both individualism and authority vested in an organizational position. We recognize, too, that bringing together a diverse group will initially heighten tensions. But if we, the school community, are to develop children's full potential, we must value the strength inherent in our diverse perspectives. This is quite a different mind-set from thinking that if the parents did their job, and community organizations and schools did theirs, children and schools would turn out just fine. Collaboration changes school culture from an assembly line model to one founded on the conviction that “it takes a whole village to raise a child.”
Developing a Model in Dallas
How does a school implement the Comer program? The Dallas Independent School District offers an example. The district began reorienting itself in 1989, when the state passed legislation requiring all schools to implement site-based management components. Then General Superintendent Marvin E. Edwards scanned the literature for site-based management programs that had positive results, and district staff members visited school districts to view outstanding examples for themselves. They decided on the Comer program for several reasons, according to current superintendent Chad Woolery (1995): Site-based management implies that all the management takes place at the site, and fails to recognize that these decisions ... are part of a broader environment. More important, the concept ignores the belief that schools should be both objectives of and the arenas for educational improvement and change.... Believing the latter, Dallas decided to tap the reservoir of knowledge and talent that exists in each school and its community.
In 1991, the Dallas school district selected 10 schools to pilot its model. The central office then sent three of its officials to Yale's national staff development sessions to study the program in-depth and hone their skills. A year later, Dallas central office staff developed inservice programs for other district schools, and by the end of the 1994–95 school year, staff members from all 204 schools had completed the training.
We see full-time facilitators for schools as essential to the Comer program's success. Current staff development for facilitators includes a weeklong session in May followed by another week in February, as well as a weeklong summer institute for principals.
- Start small and build on successes.
- Use peers—principals, teachers, and parents—to help prepare and train others.
- Redirect resources to local schools.
- Restructure central office staff to a school service orientation.
- Make sure each school has a measurable plan, developed through collaboration and based on real needs as determined by student data.
- Insist on a continuous growth model.
- Stay focused on real needs and avoid things that get in the way of learning.
- Structure around the learning climate.
- Value the child support model.
- Provide early and continuous training.
- Collaborate with other entities that can help support children and families.
- Be willing to allocate resources necessary to get the job done.
Dallas calls its own model School-Centered Education. “The terms site-based management and shared decision making,” Woolery explains, “did not seem appropriate for the new Dallas mind-set.”
