From "School System" to a "System of Schools": A Comparative Case Study of District Governance

• In Event: What Makes School Districts Effective?

Abstract

Many urban school districts are defined by their diversity of people and ideas, as well as struggles to confront race and class inequality with shrinking state and federal funds for public services. Since the 1980s, districts have adopted market-based strategies centered on curricular, instructional, and financial reforms in response to state and local demands to improve the achievement of low-income students and students of color. More recently, many large districts negotiate the financial and political pressures through a policy approach called the portfolio strategy, which aims to expand school options for students and families, and give school leaders more autonomy over some areas, like hiring and curriculum, while the district coordinates enrollment and other shared systems. Previous studies have traced the political evolution from traditional district governance to portfolio governance, but have not considered why some education leaders, rather than going the portfolio route, have chosen to maintain their improvement efforts by working within the district’s traditional public governance structures.

This paper analyzes the distinct approaches to governance reform in two urban school districts in the California Bay Area, with a focus on the role of the private sector in each district’s school choice policies. Drawing on interviews, participant observations, and documents, this comparative case study of Oakland’s portfolio model and Berkeley’s public governance model explores how local civic capacity and politics has led to building equity-oriented strategies within one school district while a neighboring district has turned to the private sector. Whereas public discourse and academic research on the portfolio strategy have centered on district-charter relations, this paper seeks to build a more comprehensive analysis of portfolio districts, and district governance more broadly, by incorporating the following points of comparison: school choice (“controlled” vs. “market-based”), school closures, the role of partnerships and privatization of district services, city-district collaboration, community engagement, race and class demographics, and district leaders’ aims. This typology considers how the political economic conditions of the district alongside stakeholders' understandings around the purpose of schooling – and by extension the role of districts – shape divergent strategies for improving educational equity, achievement, and funding in distinct local political contexts.

Preliminary findings indicate that distinct visions and strategies are reflected in each district’s governance structure: Berkeley Unified leaders worked to implement a desegregation strategy through district-managed student attendance zones, while Oakland Unified leaders decentralized pedagogical and organizational reform at the school level through public-private partnerships. In contrast to other scholars who have interpreted the portfolio strategy as a type of compromise that blends market strategies with public oversight under new city leadership, I show that this form of governance redesign is an extension of previous market-based school reform efforts where many of the same community stakeholders of color continue be excluded from decisions around school closures. In illustrating the changes, or lack thereof, in each district’s central office through a comparison of specific initiatives, this paper seeks to build a more comprehensive conceptualization of urban governance as ideology and negotiation through diverse perspectives beyond central office.

Author

• René Espinoza Kissell, University of Colorado - Boulder