With this posting, this writer wants to pick up on a theme he
visits from time to time: how do you initiate change in one’s local
school? He has indicated that if the
change is at all profound, one that calls on teachers and other personnel to
change attitudes or even values, the task is quite complicated and
difficult. But he has also indicated
that it is such a change that is needed to address the deficiencies in civics
instruction which this blog has described and explained in the past.
To date, he
has outlined some of the issue areas that are involved. For example, he described curricular
philosophies and approaches which different educators might harbor that frame
how any individual educator might view a proposed change. In doing so, he hopes he indicated some of
the complexities involved. In this posting,
he wants to draw the reader’s attention to the more practical concern of
structure. How is a school and, in turn,
a particular class situated within a school district?
While school
districts around the country might vary a bit, they do follow a general
model. They can be summarily described
by an organizational flowchart. One can
get a view of such a flowchart on the website http://www.rff.com/school_orgchart.htm
.[1] And for the purposes here, this account will describe
this model by starting with a class and from there progressively point out how
each level of such an organization is situated.
Say a social
studies class is housed within a department of the school, the social studies
department. That class is, of course, taught
by a teacher who belongs to that department.
The department has a department head who usually does not have authority
over the class or teacher, but serves more in a bureaucratic function to convey
information from the administration to the teachers of the department and, at
times, from those teachers to the administration depending on the issue
involved.
In terms of
teachers, authority flows from the principal to the teacher. In this, the principal is assisted by a small
number of assistant principals (A Ps).
Each A P has an area of administration that he or she supervises. These can include maintenance, discipline,
counseling, etc. Again, the level of
authority can be highly limited and one who works at a school finds out that
the person in charge is the principal.
Of course, some principals delegate authority to trusted A Ps, but in
this writer’s experience, most principals are not so disposed when it comes to
an issue of any consequence.
Of course,
principals answer to district administrators, but this can also be
curtailed. Most district wide policies
can be and are shaped to adapt to the perceived needs of an individual school. Again, based on this writer’s experience, a principal’s
tenure at a school is approximately five years.
One reason a principal might not delegate much power to A Ps is that
assistant principal assignments are not the province of principals, but the
decision of district officials. This prevents
the principal, to any meaningful degree, from promoting a unified philosophy or
approach in is his/her school.
Principals
mostly communicate with the office of an area superintendent. This official usually supervises the workings
of a number of schools in a sub- geographic area of the district. This, of course, depends on the size of the
district; some are quite small consisting of just one such area or maybe
two. Larger districts, for example
Miami-Dade (a countywide district), might have three, four, or five sub-districts
or regions. There are also assistant or associate
superintendents who supervise district wide functions such as maintenance or
personnel.
Of course, on
top of the chart in terms of hired help is the superintendent. He/she can be either appointed or
elected. This official does have the
ability to steer the district in certain directions, but he or she, in
districts of any size, is far removed from the realities of the classroom. In all this writer’s years of teaching, he
met only one superintendent and the meeting meant little to his doing his job.
But there is
still one more level of organization:
the school board. This is a committee
of elected officials who determine legal policy for the district and in many cases,
hires the superintendent. In large
districts, these positions are highly susceptible to political forces. Districts buy a lot of things and services
from black (white) boards to internet services.
They probably maintain immense control over construction decisions. As such, they are heavily lobbied by private
vendors over the course of such decisions.
In other words, school districts are
well established bureaucracies. In
large, urban areas, they match good sized corporations as to their structure,
processes, functions, and the like. How
does change or policy change occur in such structures? Michael A. Roberto provides a list of
fundamental processes that he recommends should be followed to initiate what he
calls transformative change. They entail
the following:
·
Establishing
a compelling direction, a vision for the future, and the strategies for how to
get there.
·
Aligning
people, communicating the direction, building shared understanding, getting
people to believe in the vision, and then persuading and influencing people to
follow that vision.
·
Motivating
and inspiring people to enact the kinds of changes and vision that you have
articulated.[2]
In upcoming postings, this writer
will further apply these processes to education and its bureaucratic realities. I have left the relation of the school
district to the state government for some future effort. In terms of change though, the above
description will suffice to account for the type of factors that change efforts
need to address.
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