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Purpose: A common strategy used in school improvement efforts is a mandated process of formal planning, yet little is known about the quality of plans or the relationship between plan quality and implementation. This mixed-methods article investigates plan quality, factors associated with plan quality, and the relationship between plan quality and implementation, drawing on the first 3 years of a Los Angeles Unified School District school improvement initiative that relied on formal school planning. Research Design: Our research team rated all 206 school plans submitted to the district in the first 3 years of the initiative and drew on surveys of applicant teams and principals implementing the plans. We use these data in descriptive analyses to explore relationships between plan quality and various inputs and outcomes. We also utilized school- and system-level qualitative data to contextualize and explain our findings. Findings: We find that, although average plan quality was relatively low throughout the reform, quality increased during the first phase of the initiative but decreased in the second phase. The two critical elements of the reform intended to drive plan quality, competition and technical support, were negatively or not associated with higher quality plans. However, we find positive relationships between plan quality and reported implementation outcomes in the first phase of the reform, but not in the second. Conclusions: We explore possible explanations for these patterns using qualitative case study and interview data. In the conclusion of the article, we discuss the implications for future school improvement initiatives and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Suburban school districts have undergone significant demographic shifts over the past several decades. The research literature to date, however, has yet to explore how suburban district leaders are responding to such changes, or examine the factors that shape response. In this article, we apply a “zone of mediation” framework to examine how the leaders of one large and rapidly changing suburban school district in Texas responded to its changing student population. In our analysis, we consider the technical, normative, and political dimensions of this district’s response to demographic shifts. Research Methods/Approach: We conducted an in-depth qualitative case study of a large and rapidly changing district in the San Antonio Metropolitan area, which we named “Southern Independent School District.” Our data included interviews with 28 district-level and community actors and interviews with 26 educators across three “focus” schools that were undergoing particularly rapid demographic shifts. Findings and Implications: We found that Southern Independent School District’s response to demographic change focused intensely on technical changes in curriculum and instruction. Such technical changes we found were explicitly adopted to address the needs of the increasing proportion of low-income students and students of color within the district. At the same time, we illustrate how the district failed to address the more challenging normative and political dynamics within the district. This failure, we show, placed significant limits upon the technical reforms that were adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: This article presents findings from a study of six schools in the Together Initiative (TI), which facilitates increased school autonomy from districts and expands teacher decision-making authority. This study aims to understand how TI's theory of action changed structures, cultures, and agency as the concepts of site-based management and expanded teacher decision making were interpreted and implemented by district and school leaders and teachers. Research Design: Data were collected over the first 2 years of the initiative using a concurrent mixed-methods design. Field notes from more than 200 hours of observations and transcripts of 231 semistructured interviews with stakeholders were coded using the constant-comparative method. Findings from qualitative data were triangulated with annual teacher survey findings. Findings: Implementation of TI varied across the six schools and depended greatly on school staffs' existing relationships the district, principal support for decision-making structures, and the extent to which school cultures reflected trust and teachers were able to enact greater agency. Only two schools experienced moderate increases in site-based management and expanded teacher decision making; those that did not were missing at least one of these structural or cultural supports. Conclusions: At a time when charter schools are touted as an effective reform model, this article informs policy and practice on the original charter concept--autonomous, innovative district schools. Our findings suggest that creating contexts where site-based management can flourish is far more complicated than changing structures or establishing supportive school cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Coburn’s (2003) multidimensional conception of scale includes four interrelated dimensions—depth, sustainability, spread, and ownership—that provide a framework to understand scale at both the school and district levels. This study was conducted to understand how reform leaders in four districts implementing the National Network of Partnership Schools’ (NNPS) framework for school, family, and community partnerships influenced progress along these four dimensions of scale. Research Methods: The study used a longitudinal qualitative case study approach. Four districts that had been members of NNPS for 5 years or longer and reported high levels of leadership for family and community engagement were selected for the study. Each district was studied for a period of 3 years. Interview, observation, and survey data were collected and analyzed. Findings: The study found that NNPS reform leaders influenced the case districts’ progress on Coburn’s dimensions of scale through a variety of facilitating practices and activities. In addition, the study found that positive relationships that the reform leaders developed with key actors within the districts and NNPS helped to explain variations in their effectiveness as facilitators of scale. Three factors—intent, knowledge and skills, and access—were found to affect the relationships forged by the focal leaders. Conclusions: The study’s findings highlight the need for more targeted studies on relationship development and maintenance at different stages of reform implementation. They also underscore the need for greater focus on district leaders’ deep understanding of reform principles and the scaling up process in order to promote more lasting school change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: This study investigates how linkages between a central office and its schools served as administrative controls while fostering professional accountability and organizational learning. Method: Using qualitative data sources (interviews, focus groups, observations, field notes, and document reviews), the study examines how resource, structural, communication, relational, and ideological linkages interacted in response to three reform efforts as perceived by 45 school leadership team members, 5 principals, and 10 central office leaders. Findings: Attending to relational linkages was central to initiating reform. Introducing external resources served to link central office leaders and schools enhancing relational and communication linkages but also increased controls. Initially, teachers viewed many of the structural linkages as constraining their ability to provide good instruction, and there was a lack of ideological agreement on instructional approaches. Central office leaders, principals, and school leadership teams recognized the important role that teams, with professional development, could play in supporting the district’s efforts to improve teaching and learning. Conclusions: A major contribution of this research is that it begins to clarify how linkages need to be coordinated and which ones may need to be in place for reform success. Relational and ideological linkages are essential for enhancing commitment and professional accountability and for ensuring a coherent instructional focus and organizational learning. In contrast, the structural linkage was the primary vehicle used by the district to exert control, complete organizational tasks, and enforce desired changes. The communication and resource linkages can be seen as boundary spanners between these two theories of organizational change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, policy makers and researchers once again have embraced the traditional idea that quasi-experimental research designs (or reasonable facsimiles) can provide the sort of valid and generalizable knowledge about "what works" that educational researchers had promised—but never really produced—during the previous century. Although critics have challenged this thinking, to date most critiques have been more epistemological than methodological. The purpose of this article is to critique neo-scientific thinking about case study methods. In the process of doing this, the article also provides a more general, methodologically oriented critique of neo-scientific thought. The authors use a mixed-method, multiyear study of a reform initiative to keep their discussion tethered to relatively concrete methodological concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous qualitative studies show that when the formal organization of a school and patterns of informal interaction are aligned, faculty and leaders in a school are better able to coordinate instructional change. This article combines social network analysis with interview data to analyze how well the formal and informal aspects of a school's social context are aligned. The focus is on two elementary schools engaged in initiatives aimed to use data to inform instructional decision making. The multimethod case study integrated findings from questionnaire and interview data. Data were collected over two years from case study schools. By fitting multilevel social selection models to longitudinal social network data collected from surveys, the authors estimated the relative influence of formal and informal processes on patterns of advice giving in each school. They used interview data to contextualize and corroborate findings. The social selection models they fit revealed distinct patterns in each school that helped explain why one school had been successful in developing a shared vision for change and a second school had been unsuccessful. The authors' research shows that efforts to promote formal collaboration can and do vary in their success in ways that are evident from social network analyses. These case studies imply directions for future analyses of the social context of teaching and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study investigates how various accountability contexts—including states, local boards, districts, school site councils, parent associations, and teachers—affect the ability of principals to influence instructional and supervisory decisions in their schools. Data: Data for the analysis come from 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey responses of 8,524 elementary, middle, and high school principals in low-, moderate-, and high-control states. Principals responded to queries regarding their personal influence and the influence of various other policy actors on decisions in the instructional and supervisory domains in the principals' schools. Analysis: To examine Variation in principal influence within and between states, the study uses hierarchical linear modeling as its primary analytic technique. Findings: Results indicate that the various accountability contexts differentially affect principals' influence, which also vary by domain, extent of state control, and region. Implications for Practice: Principals' influence in both the supervisory and instructional domains is strongly related to that of teachers' active participation in decision making, suggesting the benefits of mutuality in school leadership. Implications for Research: How do state accountability systems differ in relation to improving student achievement? How has an accountability-influenced learning process led to the reculturing of a school district and its schools? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 3 years of qualitative data, this article broadens the concept of distributed leadership to include "student voice" in school decision making. Specifically, the article focuses on how adults can foster youth participation and leadership in school reform efforts. in this research, adults needed to work in partnership with youth conscientiously and continuously to develop patterns of interaction that aligned with the values of equitable relations. When adults did not strike a balance between support and letting go, the youth and adults often fell back into traditional teacher-student roles. The article identifies ways in which adults helped youth to move from the periphery to the core of group interactions, especially through a collective focus on developing shared norms, language, and skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]