The theory of bifurcated educational system and its implications for school improvement

Abstract

Educational reforms fail again and again. One reason for the failure is that educational reform stops just outside the classroom door. During the last 25 years, the dominant educational reform initiatives in the US have operated under the misguided conventional wisdom that the educational system is loosely coupled. With this model in mind, decades of educational reform efforts have focused on tightening the system. Based on empirical results we argue that the educational system is neither loosely or tightly coupled, but bifurcated in that (to borrow a metaphor from geoscience) it is comprised of two tectonic plates. The first plate consists of the state, district and school levels, and the second is the classroom, with a fault line between them. The theory of bifurcated system not only explains why past educational changes have stopped at the classroom door, but also raises the key question of how to bridge the fault line. We propose two principles for school improvement in the bifurcated context. The first principle is to integrate principal and teacher leadership, effectively bridging the fault line in both directions. The second principle is the school renewal process, helping transform the classroom practice by emphasizing implementation integrity rather than fidelity.

A Meta-Analysis of the Predictors of On-time High School Graduation in the United States

“…Among the strategies, the professional learning community appears to have the largest positive effect on high school graduation. Although a limited number of school improvement strategies were included in this study because of the limited availability in the original studies, the findings seem to support the overall idea of school renewal as advocated by Shen and his colleagues (Shen, 2020; Shen & Burt, 2015). Furthermore, vocational education programs have a positive effect on high school graduation.…”

The relationship between reciprocal school-to-school collaboration and student academic achievement

“…Finally, from an overall policy perspective, building a networked improvement community in which schools share resources, exchange ideas, and challenge each other for renewal is a powerful tool for school improvement (Proger et al, 2017). There have been two schools of thought on the driving force for school improvement, focusing either on the external pressure or the internal professionalism and initiatives (Shen, 2020). The findings of this study suggest that the combination of the external influence and internal initiatives on a voluntary basis-as reflected in the various reciprocal relationship indices of the study-is associated with better school outcomes.…”

“…The positive links between the extent of reciprocal school network and school performance indicate that schools need to, not only build more reciprocal relationships with other schools, but also enhance the quality of the relationships from (a) no relationship or a one-way resource dependence relationship to a (b) two-way resources exchange relation, and better yet, a simultaneous renewal relationship (Shen et al, 2004). Therefore, rather than being passive receivers, schools need to work as active developers and implementers, challenging each other to implement the key shared ideas with contextual responsiveness (Shen, 2020;Bryk, 2015).…”

Neurodiversity is Human Diversity, an Equity Imperative for Education

“…For many students the results are catastrophic as they disengagement from their education, which affirms that schools work against inclusion through a process of bifurcation (Shen, 2020). Bifurcation is where empowerment of the masses generally takes the form of an authoritarian ruling class (Shen, 2020) produced by data production, tracking, assessment, and evaluation it cannot be changed within the system itself. In other words, one of the major issues in educational policy today is that policy initiatives at the federal and state levels are not consistent with the nature of the educational system (Shen, 2020).…”

“…Bifurcation is where empowerment of the masses generally takes the form of an authoritarian ruling class (Shen, 2020) produced by data production, tracking, assessment, and evaluation it cannot be changed within the system itself. In other words, one of the major issues in educational policy today is that policy initiatives at the federal and state levels are not consistent with the nature of the educational system (Shen, 2020). Instead, the power centers must rely on external means to create "order" to extract profit from it.…”