I was at one time a central office administrator in a school system committed to site-based management. Of course, we didn't call it that, because the term had not yet come into use.
I take no personal credit for having been a participant in site-based decision making years before it became fashionable. I simply accepted, and helped put into practice, the ideas of John Prasch, an extraordinarily insightful administrator. Appointed superintendent of schools in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the late 1960s, he began by inviting his 45 principals to help set policies that, when adopted by the board of education, would provide general direction for the district. As issues arose in subsequent years, he involved the principals in shaping other policies, always keeping them very general so that specifics could be determined at the school level.
Unlike some school systems that have experimented with site-based management in the '90s, Lincoln did not start with a few adventurous schools straining for greater autonomy. Instead, the district delegated responsibility for selected decisions to all schools—but gradually, over a period of years. Principals took charge of supplies and instructional materials one year, equipment the next, then staffing, staff development, and so on. After several years schools were setting their own hours—within district policies, of course—and bus schedules were determined according to schools' opening and closing times, rather than the other way around.
I was involved in the process for eight years, but it continued to evolve after I left the district in 1978 to join the ASCD staff. Some might wonder whether site-based management raised student achievement. No, probably not; at least, we didn't observe any such result. But then, we didn't expect it. John Prasch, who died several years ago, wanted site-based decision making not because local decisions would always be better but because people would be more satisfied and more committed to decisions they had helped make. He gave teachers and principals the opportunity to make choices, some of which we hope increased student learning—although we could not always be sure of that.
Another reasonable question: was what we were doing really site-based management? Jane David, who has studied the matter extensively, writes that site-based decision making comes in so many forms that no single definition captures them all. From that standpoint, it makes little sense to ask whether a precise model is the correct one. The Lincoln system did not have all the elements of some of today's official models, such as site councils with particular requirements for membership. To us it would have violated the very idea of site-based decision making to specify particular arrangements from on high. As in Edmonton, Canada—another district that pioneered the idea (see “On Tapping the Power of School-Based Management: A Conversation with Michael Strembitsky,”)—principals were expected to make provisions for teacher and parent participation, but not given a specific model for doing so.
John Prasch worked very hard refining structures and processes, but he knew that the key to participative management is not a set of procedures but a set of beliefs. Administrators and board of education members who want to make site-based management work must be willing to live with decisions they disagree with and with complaints from parents and citizens unhappy about confusion and variety. Even more crucial, they have to believe that, given support, sound information, and encouragement, people really can make decisions for themselves.
