ALTERING AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Altering the Structure and Culture of American Public Schools

Altering the Structure and Culture of American Public Schools

According to this article schools are divided into levels according to the age of students. Elementary teachers generally teach all subjects to one group of students in the same classroom year-round. They usually are assisted by resource teachers for disabled and language minority children, and, where resources allow, by special teachers for instruction in physical education, art, music, and computers (Wilms 2003). Middle schools and junior high schools are departmentalized or specialized-teachers teach only in their areas of specialization, and students move periodically from room to room for each content area.

Believing that "bigger is better," Americans consolidated their school districts, reducing the total number of school districts by more than 80 percent from 1930 to the 1970s. Consolidation created larger funding bases and greater variety in course and curriculum offerings, but it also required districts to provide transportation for students who could no longer walk to nearby schools, weakened immediate neighborhood and community control of schools, and increased bureaucratization of educational administration. (Wilms 2003)

Dispersion of physical units within school districts, as well as the discreteness of individual classrooms, also fragments control because it creates, loose coupling, or difficulty in assuring that directives from supervisors are carried out by subordinates. Neither school boards, nor superintendents, nor principals can assume that orders given will always be carried out as desired. This article argues that inner-city schools actually are "uncoupled"-following no upper-level directives at all. This poses dilemmas for educators. Fairness and the need for teachers to build on what children have learned previously requires that all children at each grade level be provided the same quality, type, and quantity of instruction. However, despite the responsibility of principals and central office staff for enforcing some degree of uniformity in instructional practice and policy, individual neighborhoods can exercise considerable leverage to distinguish the instruction their children receive from that in other neighborhoods. Further, individual districts can resist policies mandated by states or the federal government. Some mandates, such as desegregation of schools and services to students with disabilities and language minority students, have been ignored by states and districts for decades. (Wilms 2003)

Even when districts try to implement specific policies regarding instruction, individual teachers can avoid compliance by simply neglecting to follow guidelines unless they are observed by supervisors. Further, in transferring some aspects of decisionmaking authority to school principals, some popular organizational reforms, such as shared decisionmaking and site-based management, can complicate district attempts to institute overall reform, since principals in site-based districts argue that they alone have responsibility in their buildings. Nevertheless, current reforms, which include statemandated accountability systems, require schools to meet uniform academic standards for test performance or face consequences such as loss of funds and accreditation, or wholesale firing of administrators and staff. (Wilms 2003)

However, by the 1970s, public disaffection with district size; excessive diversion of revenue to administration at the expense of instruction; lack of responsiveness to the needs ...