Education Week - November 16, 2016 - 24

COMMENTARY

To Decentralize or Not?
Is That Even the Question?

By Susan Moore Johnson
ducation reformers in the United
States have long
debated whether
school districts
should centralize
decisionmaking
authority in the
district office or decentralize it to
let schools take the reins. At the
start of the 21st century, new state
and federal accountability policies-with their widely publicized
results on standardized tests and
penalties for schools that failed to
meet improvement targets-led
central-office administrators to
closely manage schools. Now, with
the growth of charter schools, the
policy pendulum has started to
swing back toward decentralization
of districts, giving both traditional
public schools as well as public
charters more autonomy.
The large urban school districts of Chicago, New York City,
and Washington now manage
both closely regulated traditional
schools and minimally regulated
charter schools. In other districts,
all school leaders have been given
greater autonomy. In Denver, for
example, the school board granted
every school in the district extensive powers of self-determination
in 2015, a move that The Denver
Post called a "monumental shift."
Yet, district officials continue to
ask whether they should require
schools to comply with their centralized decisions and mandates,
or let an individual school control
its own fate. Is one approach really
better than the other?
Overall authority for managing any district rests in its central
office, and district leaders bear
responsibility for ensuring that
every student in every school is
well-served. But the essential work
of teaching and learning resides in
the schools. Moreover, students' interests and needs can vary widely
from one school community to the
next-what works in one school
may not work across town-and
those who interact daily with students have a firsthand sense of
what needs to improve.
In studying the school management approaches of five large urban
districts recognized nationally for
their performance, my Harvard
University Public Education Leadership Project colleagues-Allen
Grossman, Monica C. Higgins,
Karen L. Mapp, Geoff Marietta-
and I learned that asking whether
centralization or decentralization
is better is not the right question.
Three of the districts we looked at
(Aldine, Texas; Montgomery County,
Md.; and Long Beach, Calif.) had
well-established centralized prac-

tices and two (Baltimore and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.) were in
the process of decentralizing the
district to grant schools greater
autonomy. We found that both approaches can work well, as long as
the central office and the district's
schools establish a coherent working relationship.
So, what can districts do to promote coherence between the central office and the school? Our interviews with district and school
administrators revealed several
important lessons:

schools throughout the district.
Both groups seemed to realize that
the success of their actions was interdependent, and they continued
to suggest solutions and modifications that would work for both the
school and the district.
* Centralized policies and
practices succeed when they
are continuously informed by
those inside the school. When
the districts used a dynamic process of continuous review and advice by all parties of new policies
and programs, principals, teachers,

Getty

The essential work of teaching and
learning resides in the schools."
* Principals are central to
establishing and maintaining
coherence. In each of the five districts we studied, central administrators saw principals as vital
agents in their district's efforts to
implement strategies for improvement, such as fostering better instruction and encouraging parental
support. In turn, most principals
thought that district administrators worked to keep the needs and
interests of their schools in mind.
While principals worked in collaboration with district officials to secure the staff, funding, curriculum,
and materials needed for learning
to thrive in classrooms; district officials paid attention to concerns
and insights about how well policies were being implemented in

24 | EDUCATION WEEK | November 16, 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

and district leaders developed a
personal stake in making sure the
changes would ultimately be effective. In Montgomery County, for
example, teachers were members of
the district's textbook selection committee and advised the central office
on the subsequent development of
curriculum. Central administrators
saw the importance of soliciting the
practice-based wisdom of those who
would implement academic programs and standards districtwide.
In other districts, such as the one
in Long Beach, central administrators regularly organized pilot
projects of proposed initiatives to
gather feedback from educators
about their effectiveness before
implementation. When schools participated in the refining of policies,

principals often became the biggest
proponents of each change.
* Coherence in school management requires the knowledge and expertise of leaders
at all levels of the system. When
Andrés Alonso, the former CEO of
Baltimore city schools, took the position in 2007, his district was failing badly. He radically cut the size
of the central office, believing that
those closest to instruction-teachers, principals, and parents-knew
better than central officials what
improvements were needed.
The district then transferred authority for many important decisions to the schools, including the
recruitment and hiring of teachers,
the selection of curriculum, and the
allocation of funds. As a result, the
district's graduation rates and test
scores improved; however, principals and teachers still needed
guidance as they faced new responsibilities. In response, the district
created a network of support for
each school, including a team of
budgeting, staffing, and academic
specialists, and assigned an executive director to coach and evaluate
each principal. Increasing school
autonomy can be successful when
the district provides the transitional
support that school leaders may
need to make their visions a reality.
* Achieving coherence depends on trust. In each of these
districts, building and maintaining trust between district and
school leaders was essential.
Central-office administrators
willingly ceded authority to
principals and teachers (or vice
versa) when all individuals were
confident that they were being
treated fairly. Without mutual
trust in day-to-day relationships,
policies that are intended to spur
creative response through decentralization may generate instructional inequities, while those
meant to create order through
centralization may unintentionally lead to stagnation of growth.
If districts successfully create
coherence between the central office and schools, they can increase
their capacity to respond to new
opportunities and challenges together. Ultimately, coherent systems and practices ensure that
every school district can provide
students with an excellent and
equitable education. n
SUSAN MOORE JOHNSON is a
professor of education at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education. She
is the co-author with Geoff Marietta,
Monica C. Higgins, Karen L. Mapp, and
Allen Grossman of Achieving Coherence
in District Improvement (Harvard
Education Press, 2014).

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