A Tale of Two Districts: The Role of Social Networks, Learning, and Trust in Urban Education Reform

• In Event: 60.076 - The Social and Political Contexts for Research Utilization in Education Policy Making

Abstract

Turning around low-performing schools and districts has become a primary focus of educational policy across the country as a result of state and federal accountability policies implemented over the last decade. A number of scholars are exploring the district context in which schools are embedded as a way to examine this turnaround. These studies suggest the importance of the district office as a support or constraint to the work of schools and offer strategies for building relations between district and site leaders. While this is an important task, what is frequently overlooked is that organizational improvement efforts are often socially constructed. Therefore, an analysis of the underlying social relationships that exist among educators provide additional insights into supports and constraints related to improvement.

This paper integrates literature on social networks, organizational learning, and trust to examine the underlying relationships of leaders. We examine both school site leaders and central office leaders in two large districts across the country in order to provide a cross case comparison of the quantity and quality of relationships between leaders. The first district is a large East coast county-wide district that serves approximately 140,000 students in 200 schools and 68% of students are students of color. The second is a large West coast urban district that serves 132,000 students in 220 schools and 77% of students are students of color.

We collected social network and perceptual survey data from district leaders and principals through a bounded online survey in each district for each time period resulting in an over 90% response rate. We analyzed the network data from over 500 leaders using UCINET, a social network analysis software, as a way to assess the “quantity” of relations between leaders with a particular focus on both the larger system as well as interactions between district office administrators and site principals. We examined the overall network structure as well as measures that align with our theoretical lenses, such as centrality, reciprocity, and brokerage. Our paper uncovers critical aspects of the context, some of which are directly related to the accountability policies that are meant to bring about improvement, but which seem to limit ‘learning’ in these schools and districtwide. Specific results suggest different network structures across these two districts and subsequent different outcomes in terms of trust and organizational learning. In the district with larger numbers of low-performing schools we found more sparse ties, lower levels of trust, and reduced organizational learning. For the higher performing district our results suggest more dense connections and more diffused exchanges of resources such as expertise and data use. Our study has important implications for both the understanding of learning processes in districtwide improvement, as well as methodological strategies for examining these processes.

Authors

• Alan J. Daly, University of California - San Diego

• Kara S. Finnigan, University of Rochester