a school board in an excellent district

This is amazing.

I stumbled across this passage in Herbert Kliebard's Changing Course: American Curricular Reform in the 20th Century by Herber Kliebard. We're on the even of our school board election; went to the candidates' forum last night.

The candidates' statements are here (you should be able to open the emails containing candidate statements, but not download documents) --- if you're interested in "micro" politics, i.e. school politics, these are pretty amazing, I think. I was thrilled to see them.

Irvington is in a bit of a revolutionary moment.... which is pretentious language, but not exactly wrong. I think you can see it in these statements. All three candidates talk about loss of confidence, lack of trust, lack of communication, and so on. I can't imagine that these statements are typical of candidate statements in most board contests.

Anyway, it was pure serendipity to find this study of a high-end school and its school board on the eve of the election:


from the introduction to the chapter:

...La Salle High School (a fictional name but not a fictional school) was chosen for study because the graduates of that high school well exceeded expectations as to academic success in their freshman year of college. Considering the relatively high socioeconomic status of La Salle’s population, its graduates were predicted to do well in college, but they did even better than graduates of other schools similarly situated....

...advocates of educational reform agree that a rigorous curriculum accompanied by high standards should be part of what we mean by an excellent school..... Simply asserting [high standards] or even requiring them by imposing dire penalties does not in itself ensure success. La Salle High School did not simply stipulate academic excellence as a standard; it instituted procedures and structures that were aimed at providing the support that such high expectations required. No school is a perfect school, but the way in which La Salle High School was organized provides one way to approach the problem of providing academic excellence for all.

source:
Changing Course: American Curriculum Reform in the 20th Century
by Herbert M. Kliebard
(Teachers College: 2002)
Chapter 8: One Kind of Excellence: Ensuring Academic Achievement at La Salle High School
Co-authored with Calvin R. Stone
p. 113-116

more:

Public Accountability versus Professional Autonomy

As already indicated, the geographic communities served by La Salle High School are inhabited by middle-and upper-middle class families. Educators in the La Salle district who were interviewed, without exception, perceived the community as a whole and the parents of La Salle students in particular as having extremely high expectations of the school. These community expectations are perceived to be focused directly on the academic program of the high school and on the development of students’ potential for success in future university work. This perception of a “push” by the community for academic excellence was made all the more stark when seen against the educators’ perceptions that the community has only a passing interest in the success of the school’s athletic program or social activities.

This community press for academic excellence is felt by educators through direct contact with parents, who are perceived to be extremely involved and quite demanding. It also is reflected in the actions of the school board, which is perceived by the school staff as being dominated by individuals who are highly intelligent, businesslike, self-confident, aggressive in their desire to involve themselves with educational issues, and firm and decisive in setting a course for the school. The activities of the school board are not limited to concern for the development of the successful student at La Salle. Indeed, in the year prior to this study, the school board requested that administrators produce documentation for each student who had dropped out, including a description of the problems that the student encountered and the actions taken by the school to resolve them. Needless to say, this request in itself caused school personnel to reconsider problems faced by marginal students and ways that the school might respond.

Although some complaints are voiced, the staff of the school actually appears to take some pride in the fact that the school board is as powerful and decisive as it is, because this enhances La Salle’s reputation for excellence. There are, however, reservations expressed about the role that the school board plays. One teacher remarked that she wished that the board would leave more educational decisions in the hands of professional educators. A second teacher, who represents a more critical extreme, stated, “The [school] board is made up of captains of industry, and they seem to think they can treat us [teachers] like the clerks in their stores or the laborers on their assembly lines.” This critical perception by teachers of the school board’s power is voiced by other educators as well, but most often is focused on one particular issue that stands as a source of friction between the school board and the teachers: that teachers in the district may be laid off using criteria other than seniority. In a period of declining enrollments, several teachers each year, regardless of their time in service to the district, were being laid off. The district’s legal authority to use criteria other than seniority, such as teaching competence, places the district in a commanding position to demand excellence from its teaching staff, but that obviously has its costs.

Leaving aside the implications of the relationship between the school board and the teachers, we at least can conclude that there is a strong consensus among La Salle educators that the community places an extremely high value on education and that parents support the school by demanding excellence, not only of their sons and daughters, but also of educators. In addition, these values and expectations are reflected in the community’s electing school board officials who are vocal and aggressive in their demand for academic excellence. As already indicated, however, academic excellence is a frequently expressed goal of American high schools. As already indicated, however, academic excellence is a frequently expressed goal of American high schools. As such, it has become a kind of slogan that is in such general use that it has little power to explain a school’s success unless it is defined further by attention to the concrete school practices that are derived from the meaning that “academic excellence” has for educators. One of the obvious costs of this kind of excellence, which may b particular to this case, is the strong tilt at La Salle High School away from professional autonomy and toward public accountability. Teacher morale, for example, became a particular factor when nine teachers and one guidance counselor were laid off (a couple were later rehired) during the year of this study. In the absence of firm job security, it was natural for teachers to ask themselves who would be cast adrift the following year. In an attempt to mitigate the problem of laid-off teachers, Dr., Hallquist secured the school board’s permission to hire, at a cost to the board of $500 per teacher, an occupational counseling firm to assist the laid-off teachers in making career changes. Overall, however, La Salle High School generally was regarded by its professional staff as a good place to be, even though many teachers and counselors remained understandably anxious about job security.

Notwithstanding the real concern that teachers express about job security, it is still safe to say that the ethos of La Salle High School is one of strict professionalism, including a strong sense of duty and accountability both to the students and to the community. While every teachers’ lounge has its share of banter and idle chatter, it is distinctly less pronounced at La Salle than at other high schools that were observed. By and large, teachers prepare for classes, correct papers, and attend to record keeping. In one instance, a foreign language teacher was asked what work she was engaged in so busily in the teachers’ lounge. It turned out that she had received a higher than expected estimate from a travel agency for a forthcoming trip to Europe with her students. She was using her free period to write directly to hostels and bus companies in Europe to see whether she could reduce the cost of the trip by making the travel arrangements herself. This represents a degree of dedication and commitment that is expected of and not uncommon among La Salle teachers.

Given the fact that most La Salle teachers are evaluated between two and five times a year, and that La Salle teachers’ continued employment depends at least to some extent on meeting the standards that are defined by the evaluation process, it is clear that La Salle’s teachers are subject to tremendous “pressure from the top” to excel in the roles defined by and for them. In this regard, it is important to note that the teachers at La Salle are, in a sense, held accountable for the actions of their students. Teachers who were interviewed, for example, were conscious of the fact that their success in the evaluation process depended on the extent to which students appeared to be motivated, asked questions, and assumed responsibility in the classroom setting.

It is inconceivable that a teacher observed at a nearby high school, who failed over 48% of his students could define his role in the same way were he teaching at La Salle. First, he would not be meeting many of the standards and expectations upon which La Salle te4achers are judged. Second, at La Salle High School, there is such a self-conscious regard for community expectations that, in such a case, this teacher’s particular practices and perhaps his overall competence would become immediately suspect. Whether or not it is actually the case, there is a perceived expectation on the part of school personnel that La Salle parents would become aggressively involved in demanding changes in the event of such an occurrence, and there is little doubt as well that their efforts would be reasonably successful. And finally, at La Salle not only are individual teachers rigorously evaluated, but so is the curriculum. If, at La Salle, a course taught by several teachers was discovered to have a high failure rate, the course itself would come under scrutiny as well as the practices of the individual teachers.

While interviews of educators at La Salle indicate that an actual case of this nature (a teacher failing an extremely high proportion of students) has not occurred, one revealing incident may serve to illustrate the institutional ethos at La Salle. Some of the details of the incident probably have been changed or recast in the telling, but, in general, the story is as follows: A La Salle teacher gave a student a B for a semester grade. The student and parents of the student objected, arguing that the student should have received an A. The teacher refused to change the grade, and so, under pressure from the parents, several administrators conducted a hearing. The student’s grade hinged on the fact that the teacher had given the student a B on an important composition, and the student and his parents argued that the student deserved an A for the composition. To resolve the stalemate that ensued, school officials suggested that the composition be sent to a national testing service for evaluation and that both teacher and student agree to abide by the judgment. The composition received an A, and the student’s grade was subsequently changed. Although this incident is an isolated one, it was repeated by several informants and has become part of the folklore of La Salle High School. Teachers and administrators feel themselves to be under the watchful eye of aggressive, articulate parents, and this strongly influences their professional behavior.

The incident also serves to illustrate several important aspects of La Salle’s approach to accountability. First, teachers have relatively limited autonomy and are certainly not “autocrats of the classroom,” a term that was applied to teachers at another high school. At La Salle, teachers are respected for their teaching ability and for their mastery of subject matter, but they must exercise caution in their dealings with students lest they be called to account. Second, the incident illustrates the aggressive role that parents of La Salle students take or at least are believed to take. Their own high level of educational attainment and perhaps their social standing confer on them a certain freedom to challenge teachers’ decisions. In addition, the solution to the problem (using an independent evaluator to grade the student’s composition) indicates how far school authorities will go to accommodate parental concern for high academic standing. Finally, this and similar incidents reflect and illustrate the contours of the relationship that exists between individual educators and the communities La Salle serves

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a school board in an excellent school
"La Salle High School" - tracking, placement, accountability