School Leadership, Teachers’ Roles in School Decision-making and Student Achievement
Published in Oct 2017 by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, this 17-page report summarizes the results of a recent study of leadership in elementary and secondary schools using large-scale data. The study focused in particular on levels of instructional leadership (the extent to which school leaders focus on the core activities of teaching and learning) and of teacher leadership (the extent to which teachers have input into school decision-making), and whether either have an impact on student achievement.
Leadership Matters: Teachers’ Roles in School Decision Making and School Performance
Published in Spring 2018 in American Educator magazine, this 5-page article summarizes the results of the above study of leadership in elementary and secondary schools using large-scale data.
Accountability and Control in American Schools
Published in 2017 in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, this 20-page article offers a critique of the teacher accountability perspective and movement. It summarizes the results from a number of empirical studies of the levels, distribution and effects of accountability and control in American schools and illustrates the imbalance between the influence over school decisions held by teachers and the increasing accountability required of them. For a copy of the article, send a request to rmi@upenn.edu
Do Accountability Policies Push Teachers Out?
Published in 2016 in Educational Leadership magazine, this 6-page article summarizes the results of a study on whether accountability reforms affect schools' ability to retain their teachers. The study analyzed national data to examine whether each of the typical steps involved in the implementation of public school accountability measures—establishing standards, using standardized assessments to measure whether a school's students meet the standards, and applying rewards or sanctions—is related to the subsequent departure of teachers from schools. The analysis also investigated if and how teachers' working conditions affect the relationship between school accountability and teacher turnover in schools.
Short on Power, Long on Responsibility
Published in the September, 2007 issue of Educational Leadership, this is a four-page summary of the results of several studies of the balance, or imbalance, between the power and control over school decisions held by teachers and the accountability increasing required of teachers.
Who Controls Teachers' Work? Power and Accountability in America's Schools
Published by Harvard University Press. Winner of the 2004 Outstanding Writing Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Few issues in the realm of education have received more attention and are more controversial than the subject of this book – who controls the work of teachers? How much say do teachers have over their work and how much should they have? Are schools decentralized places where teachers work with little supervision or accountability, as some claim? Or are schools overly centralized places with too much top-down bureaucracy restricting teachers, as others argue? And what difference does it make, if any, for how well schools function? Drawing on data from international and national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with teachers and administrators, this book confronts one of the most important and misunderstood issues in education. Most research and policy, this book shows, misunderstands how much and what kinds of control and accountability currently exist in schools, and how much and what kinds should exist. As a result, many educational reforms--charter schools, school choice, educational accountability, school restructuring, teacher professionalization, and school-based management--too often begin with inaccurate premises about how schools work and so are bound, not only to fail, but to exacerbate the problems they propose to solve.
Teachers' Decision-Making Power and School Conflict
Published in the April 1996 issue of Sociology of Education, this research article examines what difference the amount of power exercised by teachers in schools makes for how well schools function. It uses national data to examine the effects of two kinds of teacher power in regards to core educational issues in schools -- collective faculty policy influence and individual teacher classroom autonomy -- on the degree of conflict among teachers, students and administrators. In particular, the results draw attention to the importance of teacher power over activities concerned with the crucial, but oft overlooked, sorting and socialization functions in schools.
Organizational Control in Secondary Schools
Published in the summer 1994 issue of Harvard Educational Review, this research article uses national data to address the debate between two prominent and contradictory views of organizational control in schools. One view holds that schools lack appropriate levels of control over teachers and their work and, hence, are overly decentralized organizations. The other holds that teachers lack appropriate levels of control over key decisions and policies and, hence, schools are overly centralized organizations.
Loosely Coupled Organizations Revisited
Winner of the Harry Braverman Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Published in the 1993 volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations, this is a critique of the view, popular among both researchers and reformers, that elementary and secondary schools are the epitome of loosely coupled systems and lack internal coordination, control and accountability in regard to the work of teachers.
