Managing
from the Inside Out: Debating Site-based Management in Public Schools
David S. Brown, Ph.D.
The
Historically, public schools
have been run by an administration that made all the decisions about how
education should occur. Increasingly, however, teachers are taking more active
roles in decision-making at their public schools. This is often under the aegis
of ‘site-based management.’ One important factor in site-based management is
that teachers’ and administrators’ thoughts and beliefs related to public
school management often differ significantly. This difference can cause
internal power struggles between teachers and administrators. The purpose of
this study was two-fold. First, this study investigated the hypothesis that
attitudes towards site-based management are consistent with teacher or
administrator status in public schools. And secondly, the local data was
compared to national data to determine if similar discrepancies occur
throughout the country. The results confirmed the hypotheses that teachers and
administrators hold different opinions towards their site-based management and
that this difference in opinion is influenced by the public context in which
schooling occurs.
Site-based
reform has been popularized by community members, teachers, counselors, and
parents since the early 1980s (Leithwood & Minzes, 1998). Creating
site-based management programs within public schools can range from a total
restructuring of a public school’s administration to a slight shift in shared
decision-making practices. A shared decision-making program can encourage
greater communication among administrators, teachers, and support staff. A
site-based approach is dependent upon these groups sharing common beliefs about
leadership and decision-making styles.
Site-based
management, which is often referred to as public school-based management, is a
widespread restructuring of the organizational level of the public school that
involves decentralizing decision making to individual public schools and
sharing decision making with a variety of groups (teachers, administrators,
counselors, parents, etc.) within each public school structure (Kemper &
Teddlies, 2002). Active restructuring can include participation in reform
activities, involving teachers in decision-making, obtaining parental
involvement, creating a flexible public school schedule, changing the role of
principals from dictators to authority figures who act as facilitators, investing in professional development for all
parties, and acknowledging the efforts of all participating parties. This restructuring, as argued by those
supporting the reform, cannot effectively improve the students’ academic
performance unless those directly involved with the students’ outcomes (the
teachers) have decision making authority (Leithwood, & Menzies, 1998). For
the past two decades, advocates of site-based management hold firm to the ideas
that the teachers can best identify and meet the students’ needs, not
necessarily the administration or the public school boards, yet decision making
must be granted by these other entities.
In summary, there must be broad-based participation by all people
involved with the operation of the public school if the public school is to
operate successfully under a site-based premise.
The
purpose of this study is to determine if there is a difference in opinion among
teachers, administration, and counselors and their attitudes towards site-based
management. West (1994) identified six characteristics that must be present for
a site-based management program to occur within a public school. These characteristics are: 1) staff development, 2) involving staff,
students, and the community in public school policies and decisions, 3)
transformational leadership approaches, 4) coordination of strategies, 5)
inquiry and reflection, and 6) collaborative planning. And although the main emphasis of this
research is to look at the collaboration between teachers and administrators,
or perception of such, an understanding that public penetration directly and
indirectly influences the management dynamics of a public school is of
interest. Public schools have unique
management characteristics, one being the role any community member can play
which can greatly affect the decisions and teaching strategies of each
educator.
In
our nation’s public schools, there is an increase of stress due to the complex
system of many needs, wants, and expectations.
Both educators and administrators not only have to maintain their
already demanding workload, but are also expected to take on extra tasks and
issues that were not demanded of these types of professionals in years
past. These added responsibilities
create an increase of stress in an already chaotic and stressful environment
(Peterson, 1996). Research has shown
that administrators, teachers, and community members could share leadership
responsibility within the public school so that these added stresses could be
relieved (Wohlstetter and Odden, 1995).
Most public schools have a unified vision of how to educate the
students, yet all adults in the educational setting need to use one another’s
knowledge of education, of child psychology, of learning theory and of pedagogy
to create a program to best teach each and every student. Legislation recently created to serve as a
precursor to this premise is the “No Child Left Behind” Act (Hardy, 2002).
Site-based management goes hand in hand with program built on this legislation
due to the community involvement and the active role teachers play in
developing a complete public school for the children.
Public
penetration of values, expectations and agendas continues to complicate
decisions made on a daily basis by educators.
Parents today have a greater variety of public schools to choose from
(Well, Slayton and Scott, 2002), and the more students in public schools, the
more money the public schools receive from the government. Also, public educational institutions are
based on the premise that any member of the community (parents specifically)
can participate in discussions about the education of the students. Parents can provide input on policy, vote for
public school board members, and even sway public school-level curriculum
decisions. This community input can lead
teachers to feel the parents have more input in public schools than the
teachers who have been hired to educate the child. Principals know the public can impact local public
schools’ functioning, so they tend to cater to the public, giving more to the
attention to those with greater social and political resources (Lubienski,
2001). Although teachers have contact
with the students every day, they may not be the ones who are asked before important
decisions are made. Site based
management operates on the premise that the teachers are given a say in the decision
making process, yet teachers may not feel they are a part.
In
order to improve site-based management within public schools, this research
study identifies differences in beliefs about site-based management between
teachers and administration at nine public schools. Two hypotheses were considered. The first was that the individual’s position
(administrator or teacher) will significantly affect their attitude towards
site-based management. The second was
that the data to be collected on a local level would resemble that collected on
a national level.
Research
completed through the Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS) and Who Runs the Public
schools?: The Teacher’s View (
Turning
to administration and basing our findings on the same data retrieved from the
United States Department of Education in 1993 in surveys administered to
principals, we find that this group believes they still hold the majority of
the power in the areas of establishing curriculum, hiring new full-time
teachers, and setting discipline policy and procedures. Regarding curriculum,
the Department of Education survey found thirty-three percent of administrators
believe that the public school district (central office administration) is responsible
for establishing the curriculum. This is in contrast to approximately nineteen
percent of the administrators who believe that teachers and principals are
equally responsible for curriculum decisions and fifteen percent who state that
all parties (district administration, principals, and teachers) are responsible
for the curriculum.
Principals
believe in some areas the teachers have very little input. Forty-nine percent of principals feel that
principals are primarily responsible for hiring yet only five percent feel
teachers have any input at all for hiring new teachers. Twenty-three percent of the principals feel
they, themselves, are responsible for setting policies concerning discipline
and only one percent feel teachers have any say at all in this area. Kemper and
Teddlies (2002) report that several of the principals in their study commented
that, “Site based management allows teachers to feel as if they have a stake in
decision making, but the committee itself has little impact on the decision
making process.”
Site-based
management success is based upon total cooperation and input from every sector
that makes up the public school system.
If attitudes and beliefs differ from group to group as to what
individuals’ real part is in the make-up of site-based management, then goals
may never be met. In an analysis of data collected in 1987-88, 1990-91, and
1993-94, Mohr (1998) reports views that the administration and the faculty have
on their given positions. Principals feel
that certain responsibilities have remained in the hands of principals, not
simply because they choose to maintain control, but because state laws dictate
it. They state that teachers need to
accept that not all decisions can be made by consensus and by letting each
teacher have a say. Teachers, however,
expect the shared leadership and decision-making powers that have been granted
to them to provide them with greater say in public school affairs, yet these
teachers feel their influence has remained the same over the past years, and is
primarily confined to the classroom.
Teachers see little or no change, and administrators disagree.
Teachers
feel the need to share more in the decision-making process at the local level,
and administrators refuse to release decision-making power, saying that laws
and mandates have their hands tied. Mohr
(1998) identifies factors that can create barriers to compromise. These barriers include: 1) a gap between the
senior management team and the public school; 2) a mismatch between public
school goals/priorities and the role of senior management; 3) confusion about
management and leadership; 4) the relationship between delegation and
empowerment; 5) time-management; and 6) the gap between policy and
practice. Regardless of the reasons
behind the lack of cohesiveness between members of the educational community, a
goal of most K-12 institutions is to provide the best education for all
students. Providing this type of
education means administrators and teachers working together to make decisions,
solve problems, and unite the public school community, reducing the gap between
what the administrator feels teachers’ should be and are doing,
administratively, and what administrative role the teachers feel they
possess. This study looks at this
administrative “gap”, between teachers’ role as viewed by teacher and
administrator.
Two
hundred and forty administrators, teachers, and support staff from nine Midwestern
suburban public schools were used in this study. Five elementary, two middle, and two high public
schools comprised the total number of participating public schools. Of the
participants, 41 were administrators and one 199 were teachers (Refer to Table
1).
Table
1. The number of participants in each specific
category.
|
PUBLIC SCHOOL |
ADMINISTRATION |
TEACHERS |
TOTAL |
|
1 |
6 |
21 |
27 |
|
2 |
7 |
27 |
34 |
|
3 |
4 |
32 |
37 |
|
4 |
4 |
13 |
17 |
|
5 |
7 |
36 |
43 |
|
6 |
3 |
17 |
20 |
|
7 |
4 |
14 |
18 |
|
8 |
3 |
18 |
21 |
|
9 |
3 |
21 |
24 |
|
Public
School Total |
41 |
199 |
240 |
The
design of this study was quasi-experimental with the independent variable being
the position/title of each of the participants and the dependent variables
being the answers on the survey. A t-test was used to show the difference of
the mean scores on the survey between administrator and teacher. The survey consisted of twenty-five questions
and had four major topics: knowledge of site-based management, roles,
satisfaction with the program, and demographics.
The
twenty-five-question survey was developed through research and review of
selected abstracts from given authors on the subject of site-based management.
The survey consisted of fourteen yes and no questions, seven questions that had
to be answered using a Likert-type scale and four questions dealing with
demographics.
After
gaining approval to administer the survey by each of the principals from the
nine participating public schools, it was distributed at respective public
school faculty meetings by the researcher and then collected as soon as
attendees completed the survey. Every
participant completed the waiver form notifying subjects of his/her rights and
these documents were also collected. All
teachers and administrators handed their forms directly to the researchers who
placed them in designated envelopes and left the faculty meetings
immediately. The entire process took
less than ten minutes at each public school.
Table
2 shows the mean scores between the answers of the teachers and the answers of
the administrators when asked two questions.
The first question asked, “In your opinion, does the site-based
management team really make decisions at your public school?” Teachers responded with a mean of 4.43
(SD=2.89) and administrators with a mean response score 6.95 (SD=3.08). The scale was in a Likert format, ranging
from “1” (no real decision making power or no influence) to a “10” (complete
decision making power). The second question asked which group made “decisions
about the curriculum”, and the mean scores between teacher and administrator on
the survey results were also different (Teachers : M=2.53, SD=0.70;
Administrators: M=1.81, SD=0.97). The
differences in opinions between teachers and administrators, as seen in Table
2, were found to be statistically significant for both questions, “Decision
making power” and “Curricular influence” as shown in Table 3 from the t-test
with p<.001.
Table
2. Mean results of teachers and
administrators when asked questions on curriculum influence and site-based
council decision-making power.
Question Position N Mean Std. Dev. Std. Error
Teacher 198 4.43 2.89 0.21
Decision-making
Administrator 42 6.95 3.08
0.48
Teacher 198 2.53 0.70
0.05
Curricular
influence
Administrator 42 1.81 0.97
0.15
Table 3. Inferential statistics
of “Curriculum influence” and “Decision-making power” question responses in
relationship to position at public school.
Question t Mean
Diff
Decisions
making -5.065* -2.5180
Curricular
influence 4.546* 0.7157
*p<.001
Table
4 shows the differences between the teachers’ responses and the administrators’
responses to similar questions on a national level. The data used for comparison comes from the
TIMSS-R databank and includes survey results from 410 teachers and 178
administrators. The teachers were asked
how much influence they had on curricular decisions, with “1” representing none
and “4” representing “a lot”, and the mean response was 3.08 (SD=0.950). Administrators were also asked how much
influence teachers had on curricular decisions and their mean response was 3.29
(SD=0.762). The t-test showed the difference between teacher and administrator
responses to be statistically significant at the p<.001 level.
Table
4. Descriptive statistics on teacher and
administrator responses concerning teacher influence on decision-making from
TIMSS-R national questionnaire.
Question Position N Mean Std. Dev. Std. Error
Teacher 410 3.08 0.950
0.05
Curriculum
Administrator 178 3.29
0.762
0.06
The
results of this study suggest that there is a significant difference between
teachers’ and administrators’ views on who is in charge of curricular decisions. This difference was found to be significant
with a sample size of 240 teachers and administrators. Similar results were found when using 588
teachers and administrators from across the
In
order for site-base management to function at the public school level, both
teachers and administrators need to have adequate influence on certain
decisions. Perception is very important
to each individual and group. If the
teacher perceives they have a say in a decision, they will take greater
ownership and feel more of a part of the outcome than if they perceive they
have no impact. This study shows what
teachers have felt for years about site-based teams. Teachers have been told by the administration
that they have influence on decisions, yet they do not necessarily believe
it. Teachers who are told they have an
influential vote or voice expect that once a decision has been made, they would
be able to feel they had an influential part in the decision. The administrators at the surveyed public
schools voiced their opinions that the teachers had this voice, yet the
teachers did not agree. In these public
schools, it appears site-based management is not working. This supports the work done by Kemper and
Teddlies (2002) and Mohr (1998) showing differences in beliefs of what is
“really” happening at the public school in regards to decision making.
The
finding that the national results are very similar to the local results
supports Hypothesis #2 in that data collected at the local level supports that
collected at the national level. Random public
schools were asked similar questions (TIMSS-R), and the results showed
differences in teacher beliefs as compared to those of the administrators. It appears that in the
Public
institutions, such as our nation’s public school system, function on the
premise that all students have the opportunity to receive an education provided
by professional (or at least highly trained) educators. These educators not only make their living by
teaching, but have been taught, trained and mentored to make daily decisions to
best educate their students.
Administrators, on the other hand, have been trained in a similar
educational realm yet spend most of their working hours dealing with parents,
the community, and disruptive students, while planning long term goals for the public
school and leading their teachers towards these goals. In most cases, public administrators have
served several years in the classroom and are aware of the daily decisions
teachers must make for the individualized education of each student. In this scenario, it would seem likely that
principals would recognize the importance of teachers making curricular
decisions, for example, allowing teachers to have a larger part in the decision-making
power at the public schools.
Morale
and loyalty at public schools and at public institutions have been shown to be
related to job satisfaction and performance.
Teachers whose views are considered in decisions should be made aware
that their opinions are important.
Although major decisions at public schools must ultimately be made by
the principal, teachers giving input as to what is best for the students could
be useful. Even more advantageous for
moral would be to let the teachers know their opinions played an important role
in the decision making process. The
results from this study showed that at the public schools surveyed, this does
not occur very well. Teachers feel they
have little voice yet the principals feel they do. Possibly, better communication between the
two groups is all that is needed. The
results of this research should be shared with public school personnel to
increase the lines of communication.
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