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Exploring the Promise of Continuous Improvement Strategies Within the Bureaucratic Structure of American High Schools

Tue, April 17, 8:15 to 9:45am, New York Hilton Midtown, Floor: Third Floor, Grand Ballroom Suite-West Ballroom

Abstract

When school leaders and teachers collaborate on reform designs and use continuous improvement strategies in implementation, they have the opportunity to adapt the reform to their local context, something advocated for in the implementation (Honig, 2003) and scaling research (Clarke & Dede, 2009). Yet the process of adaptation is at the very least, a process of discussion, negotiation and compromise, and at most, has the potential to be contentious and difficult as stakeholders balance reform demands with the different priorities and perceptions of the local context. Hypothetically, implementation using continuous improvement engages stakeholders in the decision making and iteration, thus circumventing pitfalls found in more traditional top-down implementation. Districts and schools, however, are complex organizations characterized by administrative demands and oversight and bureaucratic practices, on the one hand, and collaboration, partnership and learning communities, on the other. Stakeholders involved in a continuous improvement process of reform must negotiate both features of schools.

This paper explores the implementation of school-wide academic and social emotional reforms in two large, urban districts in Florida and Texas. Using a collaborative improvement approach, the National Center on Scaling Effective Schools developed and implemented reforms in three high schools in each district and scaled the reforms to additional high schools in each district. Using the frame of control and commitment strategies (Rowan, 1990), this study explores how continuous improvement leverages both bureaucratic and collaborative approaches to implementation. We use a multi-level comparative case study approach of district and school level participants including annual interviews with district and school administrators and teachers as well as participant-observation data from eight cycles of the plan-do-study-act cycles (PDSA), the continuous improvement strategy employed in both districts.

The study finds that participants embraced the process of improvement. In both districts, administrators and teachers actively participated in PDSA cycles, with the process of collaboration within and across schools playing an important role in commitment to the reforms. School administrators and teachers, however, needed the district bureaucratic signals at specific junctures. District administrators used bureaucratic strategies when they endorsed the reform and helped to populate the teams. Over the years, they also played important roles in sanctioning and reinforcing the work of the teams. Taken together, the continuous improvement practices, with their underlying assumption of collaboration, necessitated the structure and oversight of the district.

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