In Competition: Balancing Market Pressure and School Identity

• In Event: Equity, Race, and Access Within the School Choice Landscape: The Next Wave of Research

Abstract

Objectives
Through five case study sites in the highly unregulated and competitive environment in Michigan, this study examines how school leaders in dramatically differing contexts—geographic, demographic, financial, school type—respond to competition. Further, we explore how those competition driven strategic decisions influence internal organizational legitimacy, culture, and identity.

Theoretical Framework
We draw on institutional and organizational theory to examine how and why schools make strategic decisions in response to their place and role in the education marketplace. Each school/district in our study is in the midst of organizational change as a result of competitive pressures, assessing past policies and strategically planning for the future. In particular, we focus on how teachers, principals, and superintendents craft narratives about their work, school, and district in an attempt to make sense of and justify competition-driven organizational change. To do so we, we rely on Landau, Drori, and Terjesen’s (2014) work on internal legitimacy as a “cultural practice and interpretive process that takes the form of organizational narratives” (p. 1321). Through this lens we can better understand the connection between how schools “retell” their experiences with competition, how that shapes school culture and identity, and how, in turn, that informs strategic responses for the future.

Methods and Data Sources
Data from this study comes from a multi-state comparative study of choice options and policies. This analysis draws specifically on qualitative case studies of five Michigan schools/districts that were purposively sampled based on 1) variation in the type of choice school (e.g. traditional public, virtual district-run, network-affiliated charter, standalone charter), 2) their relative advantage or disadvantage in the educational “marketplace,” and 3) their proximity to one another. In each of the five case study schools/districts, we interviewed administrators, the superintendent or a charter network leader, and between 5-9 teachers (a total of 38 interviews) aiming to understand their perspective on school choice policies (such as open enrollment), the effects of these policies on their practices, and any changes or strategic decision making resulting from their place and role in the education marketplace.

Findings
Our findings show that schools have an uneasy relationship with the market environment and craft different narratives to help rationalize past policies and chart new paths forward. Despite this similar outlook, the stories told about policy responses to competition and the vision for moving forward varied deeply across our sites, indicating that leaders’ and teachers’ understanding of their school’s relationship to geography, local history, community, demographics, academic performance, and resource needs mediated the types of responses employed and shaped each school’s self-image.

Significance
This study adds nuance to the existing body of literature on school choice and competition by examining choice in both urban and non-urban areas, focusing on both charter school and open enrollment competition, and examining regional competition. Further, this study contributes to the lesser studied area of how market driven school policies shape schools as organizations, i.e. influence identity, culture, and internal legitimacy. Our findings have implications for school district and building leaders as well as policymakers.

Authors

• Emily Germain, Michigan State University

• Chris Torres, Michigan State University