Assessing School Council Contribution to the Enabling Conditions for Instructional Capacity Building

Abstract

This study identified the enabling conditions related to building instructional capacity created by the councils in three high-performance schools in an urban district. The authors collected the data through observation, interview, and document mining. School-level data were sorted inductively into themes through constant comparative analysis. These school-level data then were analyzed cross-case. Four enabling conditions generalized across the three councils: (a) principal facilitation of decision making through sharing power with council members, (b) schoolwide networking facilitating "bottom-up" problem solving with staff and parents, (c) a focus on student achievement through use of assessment data, and (d) promotion of staff collective accountability for student achievement. The authors extended these findings to those of other studies and discussed why other enabling conditions identified in the literature were not found in this study: financial resources, systematic professional development, program coherence, and "constructive" conflict.

Planning for Extracurricular Activities

“…The efforts that can be done by coaches together with schools in dealing with this problem are to develop cooperation between schools, committees, and parents thus the source of the budget is not only limited from the school funds. Collaboration between schools and parents to fulfill the budget can be done by involving parents' representatives/committee leaders in planning extracurricular activities for schools (Talley & Keedy, 2006). Hence, parents understand the importance of extracurricular activities to be implemented.…”

A Study of Validity and Reliability on the Instructional Capacity Scale

“…In this respect, "The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS)" [16,17], "Instructional Leadership Scale (ILS)" [43] and the scales used in the PISA and TIMMS surveys were utilized. On the other hand, measurement tools used in research to determine the instructional capacity of various schools have also been evaluated in the study [6,21,25,33,46,47]. On the basis of these studies, behaviors to determine the instructional capacity of schools are discussed in terms of the process.…”

“…Although there have been numerous reform initiatives towards public high schools in Turkey over the last sixty years, these high schools continue to remain a permanent concern in educational research and practice [15]. When the studies on the determination of the instructional capacity which is seen as an important factor in the achievement of the reforms are examined; although the importance of formation of the instructional capacity [21,46,47], on which the qualitative studies are predominant, on educational reforms and the decision-making processes required to be achieved is intensely emphasized in the literature [6,25,46] it seems that empirical studies on the present situation of the instructional capacity at the schools, and in determining the relationship between instructional capacity and student achievement are limited. However, there is no national or international scale to measure instructional capacity in schools.…”

Examining teacher perceptions of leadership and student achievement in Kentucky schools.

“…Talley and Keedy (2006) examined the impact of SBDM council contributions to instructional capacity in Kentucky. The researchers used comparative case study design and selected three high schools through purposive sampling using four selection criteria.…”

“…The researchers found four conditions that existed across the three schools that enabled instructional capacity: (a) council collaboration with committees throughout the school resulted in many teachers throughout the building becoming involved in decision making, not just the selected council members; (b) principals modeled collegial interactions with their staff that promoted shared decisionmaking; (c) councils used assessment data to focus on student achievement; and (d) councils promoted staff accountability and ownership for student achievement (Talley & Keedy, 2006). Other studies supported their findings of council collaboration through committees of staff members (Heck & Brandon, 1995) and facilitative leadership with a culture of shared decision-making (Somech, 2005).…”