District Leader Decision Making: Local Knowledge to Create Access and Opportunity for High School English Language Learners

• In Event: 56.032 - Research to Action: Equity and Opportunity for Immigrant English Learners in High Schools

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, researchers have identified a number of ways in which traditional secondary schools poorly serve adolescent newcomer English learners (ELs), such as fragmented schedules, tracking, and teaching English skills isolated from grade-level academic content (Walqui, 2000). Yet, schools in many areas of the US continue to struggle to design effective programs for the growing population of adolescent ELs. In some cases, administrators are constrained by educational policies around such areas as funding, neighborhood school assignment or school choice, and graduation requirements. They may also face teachers who are unprepared or resistant to incorporating EL scaffolds or dramatic population shifts that upend prior decision-making. This study explores the ways that school and district leaders make meaning from often-conflicting policy demands, local circumstances, and practitioner understandings in order to design instructional programs to serve adolescent newcomer ELs.

In their study of district administrator decision-making, Honig and Coburn (2008) emphasize the complex nature of evidence use. Whereas policymakers assume that social science research and school performance data are relatively objective means to direct decision-making, Honig and Coburn’s study found that a number of factors mediate the use of such evidence, such as practitioners’ local knowledge, political dynamics, and high-stakes accountability policies. Using their framework, this study explores how administrators use a variety of types of evidence to make decisions around program design and what factors influence how they evaluate that information. Specifically, it investigates what types of local knowledge are taken into consideration as part of decision-making around EL program design; for example, how leaders determine that solutions established in the research are ill-suited or politically or logistically infeasible or in what circumstances it is necessary to press forward on difficult-to-implement program elements they see as non-negotiable.

This study taps into the national Learning Network on Newcomer Youth Success (facilitated by the author) which draws together practitioners in education and other sectors to share promising practices on serving immigrant and refugee youth ages 12 to 21. Participants in the Learning Network include practitioner-leaders from several dozen diverse U.S. school districts. By “listening in” to practitioner conversations in Learning Network communications (e.g., webinar, online chat, special interest group briefing calls), the author captures school-based examples of how leaders think through program design problems. Structured follow up interviews serve to capture in detail the context and factors that influence decision-making. The study has implications for understanding EL program design at the secondary level and will illuminate how local opportunities and constraints shape the choices that administrators make. It also has broad-reaching implications for understanding the impact of policy and the influence of research findings on local choices about the design of programs for ELs.

References
Walqui, A. (2000). Access and engagement: Program design and instructional approaches for immigrant students in secondary school. McHenry, IL: Delta Systems.
Honig, M. I., & Coburn, C. (2008). Evidence-based decision making in school district central offices: Toward a policy and research agenda.Educational Policy, 22(4), 578-608.

Author

• Julie Sugarman, Migration Policy Institute