School Policy Environments & the Quality of Teaching
Principal Investigators
Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University
Jon Snyder, Bank Street College of Education
Overview
This investigation, subsumed within the Core Study, generated case-based analyses comparing the implementation of teaching-related policies and the development of high-quality teaching in traditionally organized schools and schools that have restructured to create more opportunities for teachers to learn with and from each other and for teachers and students to do the same. Following on-site study of local school contexts in four districts, the study focused on elementary schools (in one district), middle schools (in two districts), and high schools (in the fourth district) that differed in the way they allocated resources to support teacher and student learning. By examining the case study schools within their local and state contexts, the impact of external policy environments on schools and classrooms can be documented and interpreted, particularly as they influence opportunities for teacher and student learning. The study also analyzed how schools that are differently organized construct opportunities for teaching and teacher learning. Within each school, case studies of particular teachers were constructed to better understand the nature of teachers' responses to their school environments and the surrounding policy environments.
Main Research Questions
- How do school-level choices regarding allocation of resources influence the capacity of teachers to teach and students to learn? These choices include the following:
- Allocation of professional expertise (e.g., number of teachers vs. non-teachers and aides; allocation of teacher time and expertise; organization of staff including extent of teaming/shared responsibility for students, extent of specialization and departmentalization, and the extent of cross-role work of staff).
- Allocation of time (e.g., amount of extended time for teachers and students per day, week, year, and years; extent of fragmentation across subjects, teachers,
and other staff; amount of non-student contact time for teachers for preparation, regular collaborative planning and learning by field, by function, by shared students).
- Allocation of access to content (e.g., curriculum conceptions and resources; assessment conceptions, uses, and implications; materials for teaching and learning; professional development time, money, and opportunities).
- How do school-level choices regarding the allocation of resources influence the enactment of district and state policy strategies?
- How do district and state policy strategies support and/or constrain schools' (re)allocation of resources to support teacher and student learning?
Method
Case study research, document analysis
Status
Research Completed
Publications
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Building Instructional Quality and Coherence in San Diego City Schools: System Struggle, Professional Change
Policy Brief 9, September 2003.
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Building Instructional Quality: "Inside-Out" and "Outside-In" Perspectives on San Diego's School Reform
A Research Report by Linda Darling-Hammond, Amy M. Hightower, Jennifer L. Husbands, Jeannette R. LaFors, Viki M. Young, and Carl Christopher, September 2003.Description:This research report looks at the aggressive set of policies San Diego City School District used to improve instruction. It reveals how San Diego consolidated and redirected resources, redesigned the district office as well as work in schools, and mediated and leveraged state policy to further its reform agenda. The report also documents the difficulties of managing the politics and implementation of a coherent approach to change in a large district with an established culture of decentralization located in a state with a piecemeal, sometimes conflicting, menu of reforms.
Abstract:During the 1990s, a new policy hypothesis—that focusing on the quality of teaching would provide a high-leverage means for improving student achievement—began to gain currency. This study of San Diego, California's highly focused reform initiative to improve the quality of teaching examines an effort to act on this hypothesis. Based on interview, observation, survey, and record data collected at the state, district, and school levels over a five-year time period, the study offers a look at how one large, urban district developed an aggressive set of policies to improve instruction. The research examines how the district consolidated and redirected resources, redesigned the district office as well as work in schools, and mediated and leveraged state policy to further its reform agenda. Among key reform strategies were:
- An overhaul of recruitment, hiring, placement, and evaluation to recruit and retain high-quality teachers and principals in the district, while weeding out weak staff members;
- A massive investment in intensive professional development, including institutes, workshops and on-site coaching in every school, focused initially on developing teachers' and principals' expertise in literacy instruction, and later branching out into mathematics, science, and other subjects;
- A redesign of administration, replacing area superintendents with Instructional Leaders working closely with principals on improving the quality of teaching in each building and charging principals with focused evaluation and support of instruction;
- A major reallocation of resources to downsize the central office, consolidate fragmented programs and pots of money, and focus resources on classroom work;
- A much more centralized approach to providing curriculum and teaching guidance based on research on learning and teaching, including the development of special courses and district-wide strategies for literacy development as well as aspects of mathematics and science instruction;
- An effort to develop a culture and shared expertise to enable professional accountability and to redefine the state's accountability processes to support instruction without punishing students.
The study documents substantial gains in student achievement and transformations of teaching practices, especially in San Diego's elementary and middle schools, over a five year period, in association with these policies. Schools and students that benefited most from the changes were often those that were previously lowest-achieving. However, schools that were most bureaucratically organized with the fewest opportunities for collaboration among faculty had more difficulty using new resources to transform instruction. The study also documents the difficulties of managing the politics and implementation of a coherent approach to change in a large district with an established culture of decentralization located in a state with a piecemeal, sometimes conflicting, menu of reforms. Looking at the process of school change from both the 'outside in' and the 'inside out,' the study details how the district and individual schools initiated, coped with, and transformed the many competing policies in the school environment. Finally, we document the district's more difficult process of seeking to improve high schools and its new round of reforms, just launched as the research was ending, to rethink the organization and design of the urban high school as a means of transforming the quality of teaching and learning within.
The research ends with evidence of substantial transformation in the culture, organization, instruction, and outcomes of San Diego's schools but also with the changing of many members of the leadership team. The future will reveal whether the reforms with be sustained in the long run and whether San Diego's bet on professional learning—enforced from the top down as a key lever for change—will ultimately strengthen the teaching and learning capacities of local schools from the inside out.
PDFAbstractOriginal StudyOriginal StudyOriginal Study
- Related Article: Darling-Hammond, Linda; Sunder, J. (2003). Organizing schools for student and teacher learning: An examination of resource allocation choices in reforming schools In Plecki, M.L. & Monk, D.H. (Eds.) School Finance and Teacher Quality: Exploring the Connections. The 2003 Yearbook of the American Education Finance Association. Larchmont, NJ: Eye on Education
