Independence: Strategy or Reward?

So much of education policy is wrapped up in control issues. The New York Times coverage of the Mayor’s announcement that 331 schools, nearly a quarter of all of those in the New York City system, would be given more control over critical decisions like hiring, teacher training, curriculum and budgets if they agreed to meet performance standards raised some interesting questions for me.

Principals and Superintendents across the nation have told us consistently that they could do so much more if they didn’t have to deal with so much local, state and federal regulations. Principals and superintendents, it seems, are of the mind that limitations to their freedom hinder performance improvements. In interviews, superintendents and principals often described the complex layers of federal, state, and local regulations they had to meet. Many said that giving school leaders more freedom to remove poor teachers and reward good ones would be one of the best ways to improve schools.

The article noted that absent from the list, by and large, were the city’s worst high schools. Included in the list that had applied for and would be receiving greater freedom were many of the highest performing schools.

So, I’m trying to figure this out – is the motivating idea that the schools that are doing exceptionally well in the current system of rules and regulation get to “graduate out” of them and those that haven’t performed still need to be punished with regulations? It seems that if the rules and regulations themselves produced results, you wouldn’t want to risk decreased performance among those that had been successful with them.

If the rules and regulations of the current system aren’t making a difference for low-performing schools, how is this change in policy going to make a difference?

When you think about the schools that will be rewarded with greater independence – including 100 new small schools, the prestigious Public School 321 in Park Slope and Brooklyn Technical High School and a number of charter schools – it seems that these are the schools that had a great deal of independence to begin with.

You have to wonder, is central control over schools’ hiring, teacher training, curriculum and budgets likely to produce improvements in the remaining low-performing schools? And if they did, would freedom from those regulations provided as a reward then produce even higher performance. I think I just don’t get the logic.

I suppose the New York City mayor is sort of like a parent with many children of vastly different capabilities who rewards the kids with good behavior with a great deal of latitude and employs a heavy hand with the kids who misbehave. But a heavy hand with such problem children often does not produce better behavior. Rather, what is required is a great deal more attention, guidance and love (in schools’ case, love = resources).

So, what role does independence and control play in better schools? I’m curious to know what the RealityCheckED readers think.

Comments

[anonymous]

While I understand the question raised -- how does rewarding high-performing schools with fewer regulations do anything to improve the achievement of the lower-performing schools -- we don't know that fewer regulations actually does improve schools' performance. Administrators say that it would, but I don't know of any research that shows that to be true. Many school systems in other countries employ more centralized planning to great success, but naturally, that is not always the case. I think the most important issue raised here is that we need to improve our understanding of how regulations actually affect schools.

[thebizofknowledge]

This honestly isn't an issue I've given a lot of thought to so I don't feel I can respond to your last question, but, as an educator, I feel that this post really gave me some food for thought about these issues, particularly that of control.