Crystallizing Coaching: An Examination of the Institutionalization of Instructional Coaching in Three Educational Systems

Background Instructional coaching has gained popularity as a reform instrument, yet it varies widely across contexts. This variability plays a role in weak implementation or even rejection of coaching within schools. Further, there are gaps in our understanding of how coaching is adopted and accepted in different educational systems. Purpose: This article uses concepts from organizational institutionalism to gauge the legitimacy and taken-for-grantedness of coaching in two charter-management organizations and one public school district. It surfaces the processes as well as the outcomes of the institutionalization of coaching. Research design I collected qualitative data for this study in three systems to draw out comparisons in the structures, practices, and norms regarding coaching: This included 38 interviews, over 20 observations, and over 30 documents. I coded and analyzed the interview, observation, and document data to answer questions about how and why coaching was institutionalized in each system. Findings My findings reveal that coaching was more highly institutionalized in the two charter-management organizations than in the public school district. In particular, coaching was deemed appropriate and desirable by most educators in the charter systems. Additionally, coaching was embedded in system-level policies and school-level routines in the charter systems. My findings also indicate that organizational structures, actors’ role definitions, and artifacts were associated with the institutionalization of coaching. Conclusions This study sheds light on how and why coaching, as a counternormative lever for instructional reform, is institutionalized in various educational systems. It points to the importance of system and school leaders’ routines for increasing the legitimacy and taken-for-grantedness of coaching.

Following the Leader: The Evolving Network of Charter School Giving

Background/Context Research on the patterns of philanthropic funding of charter schools has largely focused on the behavior of major foundations. This work has documented how the once diffuse giving by these major foundations has become increasingly concentrated on a small number of jurisdictional challengers in the form of charter schools, charter management organizations, and intermediary organizations. Purpose The current study examines whether this convergence in giving has spread to the entire network of foundations giving to charter-school-related organizations. We do so by extending current work and focus on the broader institutional field that includes the interactions between major foundations, smaller foundations, and grantees over time. Moreover, we look to see, if such a field-wide convergence is present, whether there is evidence consistent with the institutional process of isomorphism in which low-status foundations match the giving strategy of higher status ones. Research Design We test for these dynamics using exponential random graph models (ERGMs), a hypothesis-testing framework for network analysis. More specifically, we analyze the funding ties among 809 foundations that gave grants to California charter schools and charter-school-related organizations between 2003 and 2014, as available through the Foundation Directory Online. We constructed multiyear windows to examine funding ties between foundations and recipients, using organizational characteristics, such as foundation type, foundation year, professionalization, foundation size, organizational type, and location, and endogenous features of the network as independent variables. Findings Results indicate centralization of giving over time, as larger and newer foundations began practicing more targeted giving and the most connected recipients were involved in a disproportionate number of funding ties. We also found evidence consistent with institutionalization, as foundations with professional staffs played a larger role in giving, and smaller foundations increasingly engaged in behavior similar to their larger peers over time. Finally, we found evidence for the consistent effect of propinquity: We observe co-funding and co-receiving ties between foundations and grantees in geographical proximity to each other. Conclusions This work examines the network dynamics of charter school philanthropic giving and provides evidence for the centralization and institutionalization of the field. In turn, this may create inequity in funding for charter schools because it may be more difficult for smaller or less ideologically popular organizations to penetrate the field. Policy makers should be aware of these forces and should take them into account when making budgetary and funding decisions.

Opportunities and challenges for NGOs amid competing institutional logics

Purpose This paper considers the implications of reform efforts that rely on charter management organizations to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which changes to the education sector place enormous pressure on these organizations to both manage instruction and their social environments. Design/methodology/approach The research presents the results from a longitudinal case study of two organizations operating within the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD). Interviews, observations and document analysis provided insight into the perspectives of school operators, state officials and community leaders. The study design allowed researchers to observe the influence of the environment on school operators over a four-year period. Findings Results show that the environment that included a muscular state, market pressures, NGOs and local communities placed an extreme and contradictory set of demands on organizations operating schools, pressing them to develop robust systems of instruction, leadership and teacher development while actively working to ensure social legitimacy in the community. Neither a national network nor a small local startup began with a strategy aligned to these environmental demands, and both needed to make substantial revisions. Research limitations/implications Research into contemporary educational reform should account for rapidly evolving environments that feature a complex mix of resources and incentives. Careful examination of the consequences of these environments for educational organizations will further our understanding of how markets, communities and governments are shaping the education sector. Practical implications The extraordinary challenges that confront organizations that operate in crowded and contested environments preclude fast or dramatic results. Policymakers and the public should assume an incremental process of organizational learning and improvement. Setting unrealistic expectations and focusing exclusively on impact risks delegitimizing organizations and policy initiatives before they have time to adapt. Originality/value This research reported here is among the few studies that have explored the experiences and implications of NGOs that have attempted to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The popularity of this approach among a growing number of states highlights the importance of this topic.

Shaming school children: A violation of fundamental rights?

Children in schools are often shamed, at times intentionally, sometimes inadvertently. The question we pose is whether this practice violates their fundamental human rights, in particular that of freedom. Arguably, because of their limited capacities and dependent status what children require is protection rather than rights. Yet, children are not just a collection of needs requiring care; they are also apprentices to adulthood holding ‘rights-in-trust’. We confront the conflict through the following: (1) clarify the slippery term shame and its corollaries humiliation, embarrassment, and guilt; (2) illustrate school shaming practices with a focus on No Excuses charter management organizations; (3) review empirical and theoretical appraisals of shaming; (4) suggest that the concept of human dignity, upon which human rights rest, creates a moral barrier limiting the permissibility of shaming; (5) it follows schools should foster children’s dual rights, welfare, and freedom/autonomy, with a consciousness of freedom as the eventual and pre-eminent goal; (6) in conclusion, shame – a disparagement of the other by a person in authority that is both intended and received as such – is almost never justified as a disciplinary technique. It shrinks the self and immobilizes action. Discipline through guilt inducement is far preferable because its target is an act, not the person, and it motivates reparation. Schools are therefore obliged to abolish shaming practices, in so far as they can, and search for disciplinary alternatives; we offer an approach.

The shame of shaming

Historically, public schools have often used shaming techniques to discipline students, even though researchers have found shaming to be not just an ineffective means of curtailing misbehavior, but, more important, psychologically harmful to children. The author reviewed policy documents from nine leading charter management organizations and found that they provide official support for specific disciplinary practices that entail shaming.

Public-private partnerships, accountability, and competition: Theory versus reality in the charter schools of Bogotá, Colombia

While charter schools are among the most prevalent public-private partnerships in the education sector, they are frequently only assessed by measuring outputs such as enrollment and test scores. In contrast, this article assesses the logic model behind charter schools, specifically the mechanisms of accountability and competition, through a study of the Concession Schools in Bogotá, Colombia, using a realist evaluation methodology. Despite the program’s success in increasing access in marginalized areas, findings indicate that accountability and competition were hindered in practice—because of insufficient choice for parents and other unique organizational and political factors. For example, particular issues emerged that influenced the availability of viable charter operators to open and manage schools while political orientations, political shifts, and evaluation design issues affected the charter authorizer’s ability to monitor, assess, and hold charters accountable. Successfully operationalizing public-private partnerships requires that the mechanisms underlying each link in the policy theory are carefully designed and supported, that they directly connect, and that the functioning of one does not adversely impact the others—a difficult task given the dynamic and sensitive nature of such mechanisms and the imperfect world of educational reform. The article concludes by reflecting on a number of issues, including charter school exit from the market, the need for accountability of charter authorizers themselves, the increasing political clout of charter management organizations and their allies, and the ways that these actors circumvent or avoid public accountability.

Central Office Supports for Data-Driven Talent Management Decisions

School districts increasingly push school leaders to utilize multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, such as observation ratings or value-added scores, in making talent management decisions, including teacher hiring, assignment, support, and retention, but we know little about the local conditions that promote or impede these processes. We investigate the barriers to principals’ use of teacher effectiveness measures in eight urban districts and charter management organizations that are investing in new systems for collecting such measures and making them available to school leaders and the supports central offices are building to help principals overcome those barriers. Interviews with more than 175 central and school leaders identify barriers in three main areas related to accessing measures, analyzing them, and taking action based on their analysis. Supports fall into four categories: professional development, connecting principals to sources of expertise, creating new structures or tools, and building a data use culture. Survey analysis suggests that indeed principals in high support systems perceive lower barriers to data use and report greater incorporation of teacher effectiveness measures into their talent management decisions.

Using Teacher Effectiveness Data for Information-Rich Hiring

Purpose: New teacher effectiveness measures have the potential to influence how principals hire teachers as they provide new and richer information about candidates to a traditionally information-poor process. This article examines how the hiring process is changing as a result of teacher evaluation reforms. Research Methods: Data come from interviews with more than 100 central office personnel and 76 principals in six urban school districts and two charter management organizations. These sites were systematically sampled based on the amount of time and resources devoted to creating data systems and implementing processes that allow principals access to teacher effectiveness data. In addition to the fieldwork, we also surveyed all principals in six of the eight systems. A total of 795 principals responded to the survey, with an overall response rate of 85%. Findings: The findings suggest that while teacher effectiveness data can be used to inform hiring decisions there is variation in how and the extent to which principals use these measures in hiring. This variation is explained by central office practices as they mediated how principals approached teacher effectiveness data in the hiring process, as well as individual principal characteristics such as principal knowledge and skills, perceived validity of data, and social capital. Implications for Research and Practice: Our results demonstrate ways in which school systems and principals are incorporating teacher effectiveness data into the hiring process. Both principal preparation programs and school systems should focus on ensuring that principals have the skills and resources to use data for human capital decisions.

Charter School Teacher Job Satisfaction

We examine whether working conditions in charter schools and traditional public schools lead to different levels of job satisfaction among teachers. We distinguish among charter schools managed by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) and non-profit charter management organizations (CMOs) and stand-alone charter schools. We investigate our research question using data from the School and Staffing Survey. We find that teachers in charter schools are less satisfied with their jobs than teachers in traditional public schools. We also find that teachers in EMO-managed schools appear less satisfied than those in stand-alone charter schools. Our analyses suggest that lower salaries and limited union memberships help drive these lower levels of satisfaction, particularly among stand-alone charter schools and charter schools managed by EMOs.