Responsibility and School Governance

Abstract

The concept of responsibility is highly relevant to the organization of public schooling. Through public schools, adult citizens allow for the formal nurture and training of children to become full citizens, able to participate in our shared social, economic, and political life. With growing awareness of the importance of effective schooling to individual and collective well-being, wide-scale attempts have recently been made to reform school governance in the United States and internationally. The authors show how use of a responsibility framework can generate important insights into such reform efforts and their effects. Scholars and practitioners have done well incorporating accountability into the language of policy and practice. Little has been said about responsibility. The authors address this omission and apply their framework to interpret two distinctive reform strategies: (a) efforts to strengthen mayoral control over urban schools and (b) the creation of charter schools.

When the “Dream” Turns Into a Nightmare

“…The teachers and the former principal believed the school district had purposely allowed the school to fail by not investigating the charter school once Voyager insiders launched complaints. Furthermore, they viewed the authorizer as ultimately responsible for holding the school accountable, which is consistent with the theory of governance responsibility (Allen & Mintrom, 2010) and the literature on authorizers as governance bodies charged with keeping the charter school movement intact Vergari, 2007). A responsible authorizer concerned for the well-being of a charter school would have been more proactive and investigated allegations of theft.…”

“…This new and innovative system of governance establishes three new sets of actors (Allen & Mintrom, 2010;. Authorizers of charter schools represent the first actors as they assume responsibility for seeing that charter schools under their authority serve in ways that are consistent with the charter school governing legislation.…”

A case study of student achievement in a secondary charter school

“…According to one of the administrators, "The instructional approaches that are utilized vary from direct teacher led to computer based instructions due to the fact that the mission of the school is to serve students who have dropped out of school, at risk of dropping out and those seeking non-traditional approach of learning." This result is evident in the reports from Allen & Mintrom, 2010;Lubienski, 2003;Rowan and Miller, 2007;Schmakel, 2008. Another finding identified the importance of student teacher relationship; students admired and respected their teachers for giving them hope, providing assistance, and inspiration they need to persevere, graduate high school, and achieve success. According to one student, "My teachers always have something good to say; sometimes when I doubt myself they encourage me and tell me positive things."…”

Governance and school boards in non-state schools in Australia

“…The democratic model where an elected board is committed to citizen voice and representing the interests of their constituents (Allen & Mintrom, 2010), is relevant to School 2. The trustee model in which competence and effectiveness in managing resources are significant (Allen & Mintrom, 2010), describes School 1, and to a lesser extent Schools 2 and 4. Since School 2 also resembled the democratic model a hybrid of the trustee plus democracy model seems appropriate.…”

“…Another model sees decision-making decentralised to schools and families (Allen & Mintrom, 2010). This was not observed in the schools (with the limited exception of School 3, where members of the whole school community were involved in annual planning).…”