Abstract
This case was written for school leaders, specifically building-level principals and central office administrators attempting to implement school turnaround reform efforts. Often, leaders who embark on this type of organizational change work in intense environments that produce high levels of pressure to demonstrate improvement in student achievement. Educators studying this case should examine the impact on ethical leadership when implementing rapid reform efforts, particularly the pressure on school leaders at the district and building levels to employ a transactional rather than transformational approach to leadership as they respond to the pressures of turnaround school policy.
Keywords
Case Narrative
Walnut Lane Elementary is a public school that supports 500 students in a midwestern state. The building is part of the K-12 Watertown School District, which has 19 elementary schools, 5 middle schools, and 2 large high schools. The public school system of Watertown serves just over 13,000 students and supports high numbers of impoverished and minority status children. Located in what has become an increasingly urbanized area, the school community has evolved over time, growing from a bedroom community for the large neighboring city in the 1940s and 1950s to becoming an extension of the city’s downtown area. Over the past 70 years, Watertown’s demographics have changed dramatically. Prior to World War II, Watertown was almost 95% White, but with the building and rapid expansion of highways during the 1950s, the community began to experience “White flight,” urban decay due to a lack of business investment, and the continual rise of crime within the area.
Throughout the remainder of the 20th century, White Watertown residents increasingly migrated to newer, more secluded communities. Simultaneously, many Black residents from the inner-city moved away from the ever increasing violence that plagued many American cities, and thus saw relocation to Watertown as an opportunity to provide their families with a safer, more stable lifestyle. In 1980, the school demographics were roughly 50% Black and 50% White; however, by the mid-1990s, almost three out of four children in Watertown School District were Black. Today, the district serves students who self-identify as 82% Black, 12% White, 4% Hispanic, and 2% Other.
Watertown is part of a sprawling metro area that has a long history of racial and economic segregation dating prior to the American Civil War. Many residents of the area take pride in identifying their socioeconomic class based on from which high school, and from what part of the city, a resident graduated. An example of continued efforts to self-segregate was highlighted when city planners proposed to expand the light rail system. While the elected officials of Watertown gladly passed the mass transit initiative to help their citizens have access to inexpensive and reliable transportation, Hillside, one of the more affluent communities in the metro area (in between the center of the city and the Watertown area), prevented the mass transit expansion into their municipality, thus blocking the light rail expansion into Watertown. As documented by the local media, Hillside, a mostly White, upper-middle class neighborhood that went through gentrification several decades ago, openly debated how the mass transit system expansion into their community would provide “open access” to “those who might not have the best intentions.” This type of communication among neighboring towns only served to divide communities and solidify racial stereotypes. Interestingly, Watertown has several roads and rail lines that run through the municipality and serve as literal dividing lines between more affluent adjacent towns with distinctly different racial compositions.
A History of Conflict
In addition to the history of racial tension and conflict in the surrounding area, the Watertown School District has a history of internal conflict as well. In the mid-1990s, many of the Watertown teaching workforce, who at the time were predominantly White, were unprepared to deal with the cultural differences of the students they supported within the Watertown community. Several lawsuits ensued, and both minority staff members and parents of minority students successfully, and publicly, won discrimination torts against the school district. Rather than capitalizing on the opportunity to improve the culture and ethics of leadership within the district, the lawsuits of the 1990s magnified the dysfunction of the district and school leadership. Media interactions were poorly handled, as those school employees who were interviewed about the impact of the lawsuits often came across as gruff, unapproachable, and unconnected to the needs of the changing population of students being served. Moreover, administration during the 1990s typically employed a transactional style of leadership that focused on controlling, influencing, and managing the tumultuous work environment.
By the time a dynamic new superintendent, Dr. Rachel Taylor, came into the district in 1999, the relationship with the press was so damaged by previous administration that it took several years of repairing media relations for the local newspaper to share her message of improving student achievement via instruction with cultural relevancy. In addition, the new superintendent attempted to empower educators in the district by utilizing a transformational style of leadership that valued the work, opinions, and visions of teachers to address issues of social equity and justice. The teachers union bought into the vision, and many schools saw immediate improvement in school culture and student achievement. After 3 years in the district, Dr. Taylor won the state administrator of the year award for her work to promote cultural awareness in the classroom. Then, in 2003, she left for a large metropolis area in Texas, the high-stakes accountability measures of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) consequences went into effect, and the Watertown District slowly regressed into a culture that focused on responding to the demands of reform initiatives rather than meeting the needs of their students. In other words, the lack of ethical leadership by district and building administrators created a culture of compliance under a transactional leadership approach that focused on controlling the students, teachers, and overall school environment.
In 2006, a surrounding school district was stripped of its accreditation by the State Department of Education (SDOE), and many school officials feared the Watertown School District would soon be next. In early 2009, the SDOE announced the launch of a new reform effort that invited the lowest performing schools in the state to take part in a turnaround school initiative, called the State Turnaround Schools Project. With the assistance of a turnaround consulting firm, the goal of the program was to create a targeted, specific, highly prescriptive support program that provided executive leadership training for principals. By focusing on using data to drive instruction for students and to make personnel decisions, as well as using predictive assessments written by the same corporation that wrote a large portion of the state assessment, the hope of participating was to improve student achievement within 2 years. The SDOE contacted the superintendents of school districts directly to suggest participation, rather than including principals of the building in the conversation, mainly because participation in the turnaround program required the removal of ineffective principals. As a result, many of the school districts who were invited, including Watertown, felt coerced by the state to accept the State Turnaround Schools Project invitation. This was primarily because the SDOE had already stripped the accreditation of two of the largest school districts in the state, and many districts felt they might be next if they did not comply.
Compounding the issue was pressure from the Watertown central office for Walnut Lane to participate in an effort to show the SDOE that the district was doing everything in its power to address low student achievement. However, behind closed doors, many central office administrators only seemed concerned with maintaining district accreditation. Further complicating the matter was the recent election of a new school board president and three new board members, all of whom were White and whose families had lived in Watertown since the late 19th century, long before the municipality was racially transformed. These newly elected members created a foursome majority, of the seven total board members, which seemed determined, with the help of the local newspaper, to remove the Watertown superintendent, Dr. James Winslow. Winslow, a Black man in his mid-50s, was depicted in recent newspaper articles as an ineffective leader incapable of standing up to the demands of the local teachers union. As one new board member told the newspaper, Winslow was not capable of forcing the strong teachers union to “get down to work and make these students learn.” As a result of the onslaught from both the newspaper and the school board foursome, Winslow felt further compelled to demonstrate that district leadership was doing everything in its power to improve student achievement, even if it meant trying new programs such as the State Turnaround Schools Project that were considered suspect by many practitioners and researchers throughout the state. Walnut Lane would participate, and Winslow believed he had just the right principal for the job.
Walnut Lane Elementary
Dr. Rhonda Brown, principal of Walnut Lane, has served as principal in the Watertown School District for the past 10 years and had built a reputation as being a no-nonsense administrator who successfully implemented multiple reform efforts to improve student achievement in response to NCLB requirements. Rhonda, a well-educated Black woman with an EdD from a highly reputable university in the metro area, had risen through the Watertown ranks quickly. At the age of 27, she was one of the youngest principals in her district. Now in her late 30s, she was a seasoned administrator who was regarded as a change agent. After the Watertown School District agreed to participate in the State Turnaround Schools Project in the spring of 2009, Dr. Winslow removed the previous Walnut Lane principal, and Rhonda was promoted from a smaller elementary school building. Told by Winslow that she was to help implement the State Turnaround Schools Project initiative starting in the fall of 2009, Rhonda knew the improvement effort would be difficult. However, she had taken on many challenges in the past and saw this as an opportunity to continue to improve her status in the district.
Although Rhonda was not known as having a warm personality, she was seen as an achiever. She built solid relationships with teachers at her previous two school buildings through hard work, trust, and the willingness to “work in the trenches” to collaborate and improve instructional practices. Moreover, she improved community engagement at each of her two previous schools, helping parents see teachers as people who could help their children succeed, not people who forced unnecessary lessons. As a result, culture improved in both of Rhonda’s previous schools. Rhonda was driven, motivated, and passionate about helping students earn a quality education, but she also possessed what many administrative peers described as a laser-like focus on proving her leadership experience could be an asset to the Watertown central office.
Yet the road to improvement for Rhonda and Walnut Lane would not be easy. As Rhonda would soon discover, Walnut Lane was not like other schools participating in the State Turnaround School Project. One thing setting Walnut Lane apart was the fact that the building had received a major overhaul in physical appearance 2 years ago when the district applied for and received grant funding from the federal government to update buildings in danger of being closed due to structural concerns. As such, the building had new flooring, new windows, a new gymnasium and cafeteria, and a much-needed centralized air unit. Thus, the school had already undergone a major physical transformation, eliminating the ability to capitalize on a “quick win” to show the community that the school was serious about improvement. If Rhonda were to turnaround Walnut Lane, she would have to show more than just physical improvements.
Another aspect that differentiated Walnut Lane from other turnaround schools participating in the State Turnaround Schools Project was the strong presence of union representation among the faculty. Further complicating the issue of Walnut Lane’s prior physical transformation (in contrast to other schools that were just starting) was the fact that the local union president was a fourth-grade teacher in the school building. The local union strongly opposed many of the would-be reform efforts suggested by the State Turnaround School Project, which included a longer school day, increased evaluation and greater scrutiny of teacher performance, Saturday school, and removing tenure. The union president also had the ear of the local newspaper editor, who seemed to be more interested in printing stories about conflict between teachers and administrators than celebrating the successes that existed in pockets throughout the district. Moreover, Walnut Lane had its fair share of mediocre teachers, some of whom Rhonda suspected would have to be put on professional improvement plans (PIPs) to target specific improvement efforts. However, Rhonda believed in the importance of supporting teachers through continued supervision and professional development and that it was her job to build her staff by meeting them where they were individually in their careers. Rhonda knew the turnaround reform effort would be difficult at Walnut Lane, but by participating in the program, she felt she surely would be able to implement change and impact the lives of students she served on a daily basis. Of course, there also was the potential victory of turning around the lowest performing school in the district, which Rhonda thought would surely propel her to the central office.
An Ethical Dilemma
After participating in initial training with turnaround consultants during the summer of 2009, Rhonda came back energized with new information and felt ready to make changes at Walnut Lane. Realizing the lack of time to properly plan for an improvement effort of this size, Rhonda understood she could not undertake this mammoth reform effort on her own and would have to rely on the support of the turnaround consultants to ensure success. Interestingly enough, however, was the disconnect Rhonda noticed between what the turnaround specialists spoke about and what Rhonda, herself, knew about educational leadership. Many of the suggestions to “turn around” low-performing schools ignored relationship building with teachers in exchange for achievement on assessments, demanded unnaturally rapid improvement, and appeared to use data to remove teachers, not to build educators with individualized professional development. When Rhonda brought her concerns to the attention of Dr. Winslow in a 2009 September meeting, he responded by stating, “It sounds like you’re just not up for the job. We can always find someone else who is willing to make the change that is necessary at Walnut Lane.” Not wanting to miss a leadership opportunity, Rhonda assured Winslow she could lead Walnut Lane through the turnaround process.
With the help of local turnaround consultants provided by the State Turnaround Schools Project and confirmation from Dr. Winslow that Walnut Lane was to proceed as directed, Rhonda’s newly formed leadership team examined individual student data to identify the school’s strengths and weaknesses in student achievement. In addition, the leadership team was also able to assess the instructional deficiencies of teachers. In particular, the turnaround consultants trained the leadership team and led teachers on instructional assessment practices such as classroom data analysis and developing student lessons that were highly aligned to state objectives. The turnaround consultants even suggested purchasing and using predictive assessments written by the same corporation that wrote a large portion of the state assessment. Thus, by working closely with the turnaround consultants and accepting their role as advisors in the improvement effort, Rhonda could individualize goals for both students and teachers, increase achievement on assessments, and establish procedures for overall turnaround school improvement. Data, as Rhonda was learning, must be at the center of a turnaround effort.
In addition to working closely with the turnaround consultants, Rhonda also benefited from the network of other turnaround principals and consultants who helped focus on specific areas of evaluation improvement. During one session that she attended during October of 2009 with her Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources (HR), the turnaround consultants brought in several HR specialists who had successfully removed tenured teachers from other school districts who were unwilling to partake in the turnaround process. Thus, the State Turnaround School Project supported the notion that if teachers refused to take part in their individualized areas of improvement, principals and HR directors should follow this recently provided training and initiate the necessary documentation to remove teachers who refused to take part in the improvement effort process.
Overwhelmed by the perceived pressure to promote rapid and dramatic improvement, between October and December of 2009, and with the help of the turnaround consultants, Rhonda put 7 teachers on PIPs, one of whom shortly resigned. Drawing the ire and attention of the local teachers union, a public maelstrom soon ensued on the front pages of the local newspaper. By the end of the first year in the State Turnaround Schools Project, Rhonda successfully dismissed 11 ineffective teachers out of 32 total from her building by providing consistent documentation of poor teacher performance. Of those 11 who were to be removed from Walnut Lane, 6 of them had tenure status. The teachers union continually weighed in on Rhonda’s leadership, as well as their dissatisfaction with the participation of Walnut Lane in the State Turnaround Schools Project. However, the superintendent viewed it as a short-term loss in exchange for long-term success. Even though culture at Walnut Lane was suffering, Dr. Winslow thought it was positive in the long-term if it meant removing ineffective teachers. Moreover, the school board seemed appeased by the efforts of the superintendent to finally put pressure on resistant teachers to change. After all, Walnut Lane was identified by the SDOE as one of the lowest performing schools in the state, and Watertown had to prove it was doing everything it could to keep its accreditation.
With the difficult first year behind her, Rhonda felt good going into August of 2010, as she believed she was well on her way to making change in her building. Yet she began to reflect and wonder at what cost. After a year of taking part in the State Turnaround Schools Project and a flurry of very public activity as the teachers union responded to Rhonda’s removal of ineffective teachers, Walnut Lane saw a slight bump in state standardized test scores. While Dr. Winslow openly claimed this as the beginning of a successful turnaround, Rhonda was more conflicted than she had ever been about what it would take to truly turnaround Walnut Lane. While she had followed the advice of the turnaround consultants and superintendent to remove ineffective teachers, much irreparable damage had been done to Walnut Lane’s school culture. In addition, Rhonda was concerned with the managerial-based, transactional style of leadership she was using to promote change, as this went against most of her training and experience in school leadership. While the district continued to strongly encourage Walnut Lane’s continued participation in the State Turnaround Schools Project, leaders in the central office were met with staunch opposition by the local teachers union to implement any further changes within the school building. Thus, in a board meeting in November of 2010, more radical changes such as extended school days, Saturday school, or any other reform effort that would draw the close scrutiny of the teachers union were determined to be off-limits.
Rhonda felt confused, frustrated, and even betrayed. She knew that there were more ethical considerations to take into account than just removing ineffective and resistant teachers, such as building relationships, focusing on effective and engaging instructional practices, and improving teachers based on individualized professional development needs. Her shift from a transformational style of leadership where she had inspired teachers to perform at high levels, to a transactional approach where she controlled behavior and actions with sanctions and rewards, also was a professional concern for herself as she reflected on her participation in the State Turnaround Schools Project. In addition, she felt real, constant pressure from Dr. Winslow, who was similarly pressured by the school board, to make immediate changes at Walnut Lane.
While Rhonda was doing all of the technical things necessary to promote change, the building culture had rapidly deteriorated to the point of clear dysfunction. By attempting to rapidly improve student achievement through the prescribed turnaround efforts, teachers were scared that if they did not follow Rhonda’s lead, then they, too, would be removed from Walnut Lane. Instead of focusing on improving their instruction based on walk-through data, teachers began isolating themselves, locking their doors and covering their door windows with paper. Perhaps most importantly, there had been a noticeable drop in shared leadership and shared accountability. Teachers blamed each other for not providing proper instruction in earlier grades as a reason why students were struggling to improve academically; as a result, little collaboration occurred between teachers and enrichment efforts faltered.
By the end of the second year of participation, in May of 2011, Walnut Lane saw another slight increase in scores on the state exam. However, teachers privately shared among each other that students were complaining about taking too many tests and that learning was no longer fun. Dr. Winslow claimed victory in the turnaround program but, feeling continued pressure from the school board, left Watertown in July 2011 to work as a turnaround consultant expert. Rhonda, a reflective administrator, knew the culture of her school was greatly damaged. Before the start of the 2011-2012 school year, she was moved back to another small elementary school by the replacement superintendent. She had such high aspirations for school turnaround—what had gone wrong?
Teaching Notes: The History of Turnaround School Policy, the Impact on Ethical Leadership, and the Transformation Into Transactional Leadership
In 2001, the U.S. Department of Education published the School Improvement Report: Executive Orders on Actions for Turning Around Low-Performing Schools. Written as a result of executive orders from President Bill Clinton in 2000, the report focused on the need to support traditionally failing schools to develop challenging academic standards, construct high-quality assessments to track and monitor progress, hire well-trained educators, and employ strong leadership to guide the vision and mission of the school community (U.S. Department of Education [U.S. DOE], 2001). Ultimately, the School Improvement Report (U.S. DOE, 2001) held that improving low-performing schools is hampered by a lack of ability at the building, district, and state levels to provide interventions that build capacity to improve student achievement. As seen in the Watertown case, both district and building leadership provided too much emphasis on the technical improvements of turnaround policy while seemingly ignoring cultural aspects, lacking ethical leadership to meet the needs of the individual school building, and relying heavily on a form of transactional leadership by targeting areas of weakness and rewarding compliance to produce increased test scores.
As interest in school turnaround policy increased, the Center on Innovation and Improvement (funded by the U.S. DOE) published School Turnarounds: A Review of the Cross-Sector Evidence on Dramatic Organizational Improvement (Rhim, Kowal, Hassel, & Hassel, 2007). The authors posit two findings, (a) environmental context and (b) leadership; allow turnaround leaders to implement a clear timetable, target specific measures of improvement using data; not be constricted by pre-existing regulations; align systems of support; increase community engagement; and motivate all staff to change and/or replace those who are not willing to change (Rhim et al., 2007). Again, as seen in the Walnut Lane turnaround efforts, the principal is able to use data to inform practice and remove teachers who are not willing to change, but she is not able to motivate her teachers. Rather, they are coerced into participation as the principal attempts to manage their behaviors. Moreover, she is not able to influence the environmental context of turnaround, namely, the need to increase community engagement and to communicate clear expectations of what turnaround efforts entail.
Borrowed from the organizational sciences and business management world of the 1980s, turnaround school policy is heavily influenced by the organizational turnaround successes and failures of the private, for-profit business sector (Murphy, 2008). Although conceptually broad, most of the literature on organizational turnaround details common themes of declining performance, implementing a response plan to improve output, and creating new organizational processes that increase efficiency (Murphy & Meyers, 2008). Interestingly enough, there is a substantial amount of organizational science research indicating that turnaround efforts more often end in failure than in success (Pearce & Robbins, 1993; Shuchman & White, 1995; Slatter, Lovett, & Barlow, 2006). This suggests that the implementation of selective research and ignoring evidence that turnaround policy might not be as successful as advertised may not be wise (Mathis & Welner, 2010). Thus, although programs such as the School Improvement Grant (SIG) initiative and the Race to the Top (RTTT) have funded more than US$4.35 billion in school improvement efforts to date (U.S. DOE, 2010, 2011), there is a body of research that highlights the notion that the flexible funding mechanisms, supported by neoliberal ideology, treat improvement efforts as a commodity that can be bought and sold in a transactional manner (Mette, 2013). Moreover, these efforts contain an over-reliance on standardized assessments, as well as methodological errors, to prove these school reform efforts are actually effective (Trujillo & Renée, 2012).
Ethical Leadership
Almost a decade of turnaround policy literature supports the notion that there are two main components to school turnaround: (a) technical improvements and (b) cultural improvements. In this case study, the over-reliance on technical improvements was influenced by a culture of leadership that lacked an ethical component when attempting to address school improvement efforts for both teachers and students, and thus potential for increased student achievement was negatively impacted. Ethical leadership acknowledges that the concept of accountability is more than simply raising standardized test scores; equally important is taking into account professional standards, encouraging engagement from the local community, and valuing the opinions of stakeholders throughout the community (Stone-Johnson, 2014; Strike, 2007). Thus, accountability can be a positive or negative force in school improvement efforts, particularly in the area of teacher buy-in to help drive increased student achievement.
A central tenet to ethical educational leadership is to empower and value educators as individuals within the school organization to allow them to meet their professional responsibilities (Rebore, 2014). When reflecting on ethical leadership, pedagogical considerations should be taken into account, specifically through instruction that questions and critiques issues of justice and human rights (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2011). Thus, there are major implications for educational leadership programs regarding their preparation for aspiring leaders (Furman, 2012), not just in providing a solid theoretical coursework that addresses issues of educational ethics, but also in how educational leaders might apply these concepts in problems of practice. Theoretically, ethical school leadership requires administrators to apply a democratic decision-making process that considers issues of social justice (Gerstl-Pepin & Aiken, 2009; Stone-Johnson, 2014). However, in practice, educational leaders often are required to make decisions that balance notions of transformational leadership with practical operational choices in light of accountability requirements (Maxcy, 2002). As noted by Stefkovich and Begley (2007), ethical leadership is often influenced by the notion of what is considered “best interests of students”; however, they astutely point out that this very notion can be influenced by policy-driven expectations for student achievement as a result of accountability standards. Consequently, leaders may make decisions that are not in the best interests of students. Rather, they may make decisions that are in the best interest of school leaders, district leaders, or the school organization as a whole, as seen in the actions of the leaders in Watertown.
Transformation Into Transactional Leadership
One way to examine the relationship between ideology and implementation regarding turnaround schools is to employ the transformation of intentions framework. The transformation of intentions framework provides valuable critical insights to the creation of policy. As Hall and McGinty (1997) posit, “policies are vehicles for the realization of intentions” (p. 441), whereby policy makers enact policy to solve problems. Thus, intentions are inherent in the visions, goals, and interests that influence policy makers’ political agendas that then transform into specific actions. However, as policy is implemented, often the original intent of the policy becomes transformed to ensure the goals are met. As a result, the actions of those implementing the policy may or may not align with the original intent.
Placier (1996) discusses the cycle of labels in education, stating the creation of policy is a four-stage cycle that includes creation of a new label, diffusion to a wide audience, semantic variance in the meaning of the label, and critique of the label (see Figure 1). When President Obama proposed reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (2010) and introduced the label “turnaround school” in Blueprint for Reform, the American public witnessed the latest attempt of the federal government to enact policy with the purpose of reforming our country’s public education system to better compete with other countries. With regard to “turnaround schools” as a label, it seems the neoliberal policy was created to recapture the public’s attention about America’s low-performing schools and to change the political context regarding governmental intervention. Specifically, the creation of the label “turnaround school” attempts to reduce a stigma that is highly politicized, mainly that schools with high levels of minority and low-socioeconomic status (SES) students correlate with producing academically low-achieving students. As depicted in the Watertown case, the intent to improve student achievement and ensure reform efforts are met became transformed by the political agendas of school leaders and the economic interests of turnaround consultants.
Cycles of labels in education.
Different from the concept of transformation of intentions, transformational leadership is a popular theoretical style of leadership that first became popular in the 1980s and continues to influence practitioners and scholars in both theory and application. Transformational leadership focuses on leading by motivating teachers to invest in the improvement process by grounding efforts in values, goals, and beliefs (Leithwood & Sun, 2012) to improve student achievement. In contrast, transactional leadership implements a managerial approach that monitors the environment for weaknesses and offers rewards for compliance (Barnett & McCormick, 2004). As displayed in the Watertown case, school leadership shifted from inspiring followers to reach higher levels of performance to focusing on creating incentives to follow directives and managing through expressing expectations (Bass, 1985), as well as finding weaknesses of teachers that require intervention (Bogler, 2001). As posited by Hsiao, Lee, and Tu (2012), transactional leadership is an attempt to manage a school building via an exchange process between leaders and teachers that creates a subordination culture. It is an attempt to control a situation and manage outcomes in exchange for resources, which is exactly what occurred between the State Turnaround Schools Project, the hired turnaround consultants, the superintendent, the principal, and the teachers of Watertown. What this type of leadership and reform effort does not address, however, is the need to speak to the deep-rooted issues of race, SES, and segregation. This is of particular importance in Watertown and similar communities faced with implementing turnaround policy. As Burns (1978) emphasizes, transformational leadership drives real change in the sense that it must address cultural components of leadership that question democracy, social justice, and equity promoted by our public education system. Thus, as a result of the focus on the technical aspects of turnaround school leadership in Watertown and the inability to impart change regarding cultural components, lasting school reform is unlikely to occur by implementing turnaround efforts.
Discussion Questions and Teaching Activities
Using this case study and associated theoretical frameworks as a platform for learning, the following discussion questions and teaching activities are intended to engage students of educational leadership and policy in critical conversations about leading school reform in politically charged policy environments. Aspiring school leaders and current teachers, principals, central office administrators, and community members can use this case to take an in-depth look at the political, racial, and economic factors that often lead to imposed sanctions and improvement efforts on traditionally failing schools. Suggested readings are provided as well to further detail turnaround school policy and provide a broader theoretical framework to deconstruct the intent of these reform efforts.
Discussion Questions
How might the use of transactional styles of leadership in the Watertown case overemphasize the technical aspects of school turnaround and prove ineffective in promoting school improvement in the Watertown community as well as Walnut Lane? Is there a time that transactional leadership could help a turnaround school leader address necessary cultural aspects of school turnaround improvement efforts?
Analyze the leadership provided by the Watertown superintendent and think about how he might better support the turnaround effort for the Watertown community. What real political pressures does Dr. Winslow face from his Board of Education as well as from the SDOE, and how does this impact his district leadership? What aspects of ethical leadership is he currently ignoring, and whose interests are being served?
Analyze the leadership provided by the Walnut Lane principal and think about how she might better support the turnaround effort in her school building. What real political pressures does Dr. Brown face from the superintendent and the school board? What aspects of ethical leadership is she currently ignoring regarding leadership and instructional practices, and what leadership strategies might she have used to work more closely with her teachers to promote change? How might she determine when to employ a transformational style of leadership as opposed to strictly using a transactional approach? What attributes should “turnaround principals” possess? Overall, what has gone wrong for Rhonda?
How might Watertown school and district leaders promote buy-in among the community to highlight the importance of school improvement efforts? What type of activities might leaders implement to address issues of social justice, democracy for all, and equity among all community members? What racial, social, and economic considerations should school leaders take into account when attempting to implement school turnaround policy?
Teaching Activities
The role of a turnaround principal
In groups of three to four students, instructors should ask students to discuss how Dr. Rhonda Brown approached the implementation of turnaround policy at Walnut Lane Elementary. The instructor should provide students with the Teaching Notes from this article, but also provide electronic copies of School Improvement Report: Executive Orders on Actions for Turning Around Low-Performing Schools (U.S. DOE, 2001), School Turnarounds: A Review of the Cross-Sector Evidence on Dramatic Organizational Improvement (Rhim et al., 2007), and Turning Around Failing Schools: Policy Insights From the Corporate, Government, and Nonprofit Sectors (Murphy, 2008). Using these documents, students should create a PowerPoint or Prezi that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of Dr. Brown’s turnaround leadership, taking into account technical and cultural improvement efforts. Groups should present their information to other groups in the class, and the instructor should then conduct a class-wide discussion focusing on suggestions to improve the turnaround leadership in the Walnut Lane scenario. Specifically, the conversation should include the importance of providing transformational leadership rather than transactional leadership, as well as how to involve various members of the community in the turnaround process, including parents, civic services, faith-based centers, business members, and other community groups.
Exploring the notion of ethical turnaround leadership
Students should explore the ethics of turnaround leadership by conducting a debate in class regarding the research supporting turnaround school policy and how turnaround policy might be supported with ethical leadership at the district and building level. Instructors should ask the class to split into two groups, with one side debating in favor of turnaround school implementation methods and the other side arguing against the policy. Within the debate, students should consider whether improving achievement in a rapid manner by implementing turnaround policy is a sustainable leadership practice. Specifically, the instructor should not only provide students with the Teaching Notes from this article but also give students an electronic copy of Keys to Sustaining Successful School Turnarounds (Duke, 2008) that describes a turnaround school as having improved low student achievement on standardized tests for at least 2 consecutive years. In addition, students should be given Democratic School Turnarounds: Pursuing Equity and Learning From Evidence (Trujillo & Renée, 2012) to help reflect on how well turnaround school policy addresses the deeper societal issues of low student achievement, such as socioeconomic factors, poverty, and race (Trujillo & Renée, 2012), and whether turnaround school policy focuses too much on improving standardized test scores. For a more critical conversation about policy analysis, instructors could also have students debate the validity of a variety of opinion literature from private consulting firms, such as The Turnaround Challenge (Calkins, Guenther, Belfiore, & Lash, 2007), School Turnaround of the Rensselaerville Institute (Rensselaerville Institute, 2011), and The Turnaround Challenge and Reaching New Heights: Turning Around Low-Performing Schools (Mazzeo & Berman, 2003).
Technical and cultural improvement: Conducting interviews with those in the trenches
In either groups or done individually, students should conduct several interviews with principals within their school district by asking questions regarding the implementation of school improvement efforts to improve achievement. Students should ask questions about the implications of school improvement efforts, the pressures that can be created to improve student achievement through transactional approaches to leadership, the work that is being done to improve the culture of the interviewees’ buildings through transformational approaches to leadership, and how communities respond and/or are involved in school improvement efforts. Students should then analyze their findings from the interview activity, discuss any themes of ethical leadership that emerge from the brief study, and share out their data in a brief presentation the following class. Instructors should lead the discussion by reflecting on the lessons learned from turnaround school improvement efforts detailed in the case study, as well as from the interviews conducted by students. Specifically, instructors should focus on facilitating discussion among students by addressing the balance between technical and cultural improvement.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.