Improving Instructional Designs: Development in Networks for School Improvement

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

Abstract

Objective
This paper contrasts two different forms of networks for school improvement (NSI) to investigate how sector type and external environments influence NSI’s approach to design improvement.  

Theoretical Perspective 
Scholarship points to ways that networks for school improvement (NSI) can effectively structure systems of guidance and development to improve central designs (Peurach, Glazer & Lenhoff,  2016; Cohen et al., 2013; Bryk, Gomez & Grunow, 2011; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2015). An “ideal type” of development requires (1) codified resources establishing base-level practices, (2) mechanisms supporting local experimentation, and (3) systematic strategies to investigate and improvement upon designs.   But the literature has paid little attention to how different forms of governance and institutional environments influence NSI’s willingness or ability to conform to this ideal.

Methods and Data 
A three-year qualitative study (2016-19) of NSI originating in New York City sampled two Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) and two Affinity Organizations (AOs).  We conducted semi-structured interviews with 61 NSI staff, 100 hours of PD observations, and analyses of NSI artifacts.

Findings
The struggle to meet expectations of aligned Common Core (CC) assessments prompted a normative shift in each NSI’s approach to instructional guidance and theories about building teacher and school capabilities.  Each NSI gravitated towards more highly specified curriculum materials and instructional routines. Despite overarching similarities, NSI designs reflected sector variation in network governance and member affiliation.  While AOs created many of their own schools, the latter are governed by separate public sector institutions and AO membership is based on renewable service contracts. This led AOs to develop an array of more specified but adaptable instructional resources for CC.  AOs encouraged members who opted to use these resources to be consistent with some dimensions (base-level practices), but expected modifications and did not mandate or monitor use.

In short, the AOs created instructional guidance meant to be adapted (Lyle, 2019), and did not create robust systems of inquiry to learn whether base-level practices were used or how experimentation might inform revisions.  Rather, AOs tended to gauge success more on client satisfaction (participation and use, feedback) and product demand.

Unlike AOs, CMOs grow and govern their own schools and the latter lack the power to opt-out of network guidance.  With that authority, the CMOs response to CC was to create resources and base-level expectations that significantly reduced teacher discretion.  They added metrics to gauge the quality of implementation and closely track student achievement, and built a system of inquiry whereby they could independently identify weak implementation.   In short, the affordances of being a CMO held more promise for developmental learning.

Importantly, though, there were also significant differences between same-sector NSI responses that reflected resource dependencies and political leverage.  For instance, the financial resources of one CMO were made more precarious by the mayor’s decision not to prevent charter growth. They decided to expand into geographically disparate locales, and became preoccupied with establishing fidelity and reducing experimentation.

Significance 
Improved understanding of how developmental evaluation plays out in different sectors.

Authors

• Diane Massell, Consortium for Policy Research in Education

• Megan Duff, University of Pittsburgh

• Angela Lyle, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor