The Missing Focus of High School Restructuring

School Administrator, Dec, 1995 by Gordon Cawelti

Among the state mandates studied were exit tests for graduation, increased academic course requirements, more stringent attendance rules, athletic eligibility requirements, and remedial classes. In most cases, these mandates did not produce more favorable results for disadvantaged students.

Similar studies on the efficacy of state mandates in the '80s were reported by Denis Doyle and others showing that more testing, greater financial incentives, and decentralized governance produced limited or no improvements.

Many districts have attempted to decentralize by adopting site-based management, and several analyses of research results on the topic have been reported, including one by Anita Summers and Amy Johnson in 1995 that concluded: "The results of SBM studies, then, appear to be some increased sense of empowerment and involvement of the stakeholders (though not uniformly so) and virtually no evidence that SBM translates into improved student performance."

Other studies of well-known decentralization plans in Edmonton, Prince William County, Va., and Dade County, Fla., have come to similar conclusions. Such studies report that instructional improvement is indeed usually not the focus of school-based teams as might be expected. In many instances, improving achievement was not even mentioned as the primary goal of the decentralization.

Mike Strembitsky, who spent 22 years as superintendent in Edmonton, Alberta, trying to perfect site-based management, says, "The biggest problem facing leaders seeking improved achievement through decentralization is defining clearly what students are expected to achieve and then developing assessment tools showing results in which the staff and public can have confidence."

He believes much of the standardized test results used today fail to reflect newer curriculum trends and that assessment techniques being developed by the National Center on Education and the Economy's New Standards Project will prove valuable for this.

An old management axiom contends that just as soon as any organization fully decentralizes, it will begin to centralize. Change theorist Michael Fullan has wisely pointed out, "Neither top-down nor bottom-up strategies for reform work. Both levels of the system have contributions to make in accomplishing changes.

The limited success of decentralization can be seen in other single organizational changes that rarely produce the anticipated results.

* Even when research on restructuring results in statistically significant improvement in achievement, results are typically modest.

The limited number of positive effects reported in the research on restructuring is typical of the small gains observed in much experimental research in education. An example is available in the 1993 evaluation of the Jefferson County, Ky., high schools, reported by Regina Kyle in a 1993 study for the district's Gheens Professional Academy. She found the rate of growth in achievement was 6.8 percent for the restructure high schools compared to 4.6 percent for the more traditional schools.