How Two School Systems Manage Knowledge to Improve School for Underserved Students

• In Event: "Moving Knowledge Around" Within and Between Schools: The Role of National Contexts and Institutional Environments

Abstract

Objective
This paper compares how Montessori-AMI and a “no excuses” charter use knowledge sharing to improve quality. The systems use analytically similar strategies that have very different educational content. The similarities suggest a novel version of system organization in which knowledge sharing is central (Spillane, et. al., 2019, in press).

Theory
One familiar approach to school improvement is to hire teachers, evaluate students’ performance, retain teachers whose students perform well and retrain or dismiss the rest. This was tested (Gates Foundation support); RAND reported that it did not succeed (Stecher, et. al., 2018). In contrast, Hassrick, Raudenbush and Rosen (2017) found that dramatic change in schools’ organization, teachers’ work, professional norms, leadership and use of time explained improvement for low-income students in two Chicago elementary schools. Johnson (2019) reported similar explanations in Massachusetts’ schools that served low-income students.

These and other studies argue that schools’ success depended on “moving knowledge around” within them by de-privatising teaching and using knowledge from practice to drive program improvement. Other studies explored moving knowledge around in systems (Peurach 2011; Rowan and Correnti, 2013), Author et.al. (2014), and Peurach, et. al (2019) studied knowledge sharing in six systems (discussed below). These systems used knowledge to build coherent education among schools.

Methods and data
This paper draws on a comparative study of six U.S. school systems (Montessori/AMI, no excuses charter, urban public, suburban, International Baccalaureate and urban Catholic). We explored relationships among system organization, environments and instruction, interviewing 71 system leaders, 35 school leaders, 49 teachers, and observing 50 classrooms and 7 system-wide events. This enables us to explore efforts to move knowledge around in schools and systems.

Findings
The two systems have different conceptions of knowledge and its role in supporting practice. Montessori-AMI teacher education is a specified and little-changed system, whereas the charter organization built its own infrastructure and revised practice. Yet their strategies shared several elements: both treat knowledge for practice as a crucial constitutive element of the systems, and both manage knowledge at the system level. Similarities include: selecting staff for values; highly focused methods and content training; and creating school and system norms, and systemic quality control. Montessori-AMI built shared knowledge chiefly with rigorous pre-service teacher education and less oversight and knowledge exchange. The charter system had less early training, more knowledge sharing in schools and several mechanisms for knowledge sharing among schools.

Significance
Both systems are “educational” in that they build and coordinate educational infrastructure to improve instruction – unlike systems that organize attendance and supply resources without coordination (Peurach, et. al. (2019). That requires system level knowledge for practice, de-privatization of practice, and leadership. In this way knowledge becomes a key agent for unifying school systems and improving their effectiveness.

Authors

• David K. Cohen, University of Michigan

• Christine M. Neumerski, University of Maryland - College Park