The New Enterprise Logic of Schools

MOST initiatives to enhance the quality of education in public in the U.S. have counterparts in many Western nations and in several nations in the Asia Pacific region. I am concerned with four such initiatives: the decentralization of authority and responsibility to the school level, often referred to as school-based management; increasing the amount of choice, including charters and magnets; the involvement of the private sector in the management of schools; and the creation of networks. The intention of these developments in different nations is transformation, defined here as significant, systematic, and sustained change that leads to high levels of achievement for all students in all settings. Examining different countries' approaches to the four issues mentioned above leads to the conclusion that there are fundamental changes under way. These are more than incremental changes to a traditional model of schooling, which are often no more than an effort to put wine in old wineskins. A new enterprise logic of schools is emerging to the extent that the student--not the classroom, not the school, and not the school system--is becoming the most important unit of organization. SCHOOL-BASED MANAGEMENT School-based management refers to the decentralization to the school level of the authority to make decisions on significant matters, within a centrally determined framework of goals, policies, curriculum, standards, and accountabilities. A key indicator of the extent of school-based management is the proportion of a school's total budget that is available for local decision making. In most school districts in the U.S., that proportion is less than 10%. In a very small number, it may be as high as 80% or even 90%. In all in England--more than 25,000--the proportion is 90% or more, as it is in New Zealand and in Victoria, Australia. At a macro level, in international comparisons of student achievement such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), systems that allowed a relatively high degree of autonomy tended to do better, especially those where local decision making extended to personnel decisions. (1) Increasingly, the case for school-based management in the U.S. and elsewhere is cast in terms of learning outcomes and responsiveness to the voices of students and parents. CHOICE Despite the limited scale of implementation and mixed findings about impact, the provision of choice in the U.S. has attracted international interest, especially with respect to charter (of which there are about 3,000), magnet (about 1,500), and the various attempts to introduce vouchers. Observers read the mixed findings on impact and note that the number of affected by these efforts is but a tiny fraction of the total number. Other nations have moved on the same front. In one of the most important initiatives in secondary education in any nation, England transformed its system of general comprehensive to networks of specialist secondary schools. The shift commenced modestly in the late 1980s with fewer than 20 technology schools; now more than 2,000 out of a total of about 3,100 secondary have adopted one of 10 specializations such as technology, languages, music, sports, science, and business. A school must still address a national curriculum but develops its chosen specialization to a high standard with additional public funding and through partnerships with a range of public and private organizations and institutions that have a connection with the chosen field. The number of such is likely to exceed 2,500 by the end of 2005. These specialist consistently outperform nonspecialist on value-added measures of student achievement, with the rate of improvement highest in comparisons of with similarly low socioeconomic profiles. …