A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

THE SCHOOL DISTRICT MAZE

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.



[1] Accessed on December 13, 2016.

[2] Michael A. Roberto, Transformational Leadership:  How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations, (Chantilly, VA:  The Great Courses/The Teaching Company, 2011), 20.

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