Sandra Rubin Glass: "Markets & Myths"
Vol. 5 No. 1 Education Policy Analysis Archives
What Has Already Been Written on this Problem
The literature on bureaucracy and autonomy is huge within sociology, and substantial within the specialty of the sociology of education. The works of Powell (1990), Lightfoot (1983), Ball (1987), Sedlak and others (1986), McNeil (1986), and Firestone and Bader (1991) are most influential. This literature, at times tenuously connected to empirical research, holds ideas and conceptions of teacher autonomy that may foreshadow many of the ideas to be encountered in the field in the pursuit of this research. Private schools appear to be subject to fewer apparent constraints than those encountered by public schools. Their governance and financing make them directly responsible to a constituency which they must satisfy to stay solvent (Powell, 1990). They have no direct obligation to the whole of society (Grant, 1988). In contrast, public schools must serve the needs of children as seen by elected or appointed representatives of the public at local, state and federal levels. While such external government mandates, court decisions, and union contracts have, perhaps, a marginal impact on the independent school, certainly these schools are not immune from public regulations concerning health, safety, and civil rights. Nor are they protected from the not-so-subtle intrusions of publishers, external testing, and especially college admissions requirements (Powell, 1990). The subtle curricular power of the Advanced Placement (AP) examinations, for example, exerts a pressure on the curriculum and accountability of private high school teachers similar to that of state mandated testing in the public sector (Powell, 1990). Surely both public and private schools are subject to organizational constraints that stem from "external structures (subjects, periods of time) . . . occupational norms (order in the classroom, class rules and so on) . . . [that ensure] some minimal level of uniformity" (Elmore, 1987, p. 64). Ball (1987) went further and suggested that educators ask, "How autonomous is the organization and its actors from its clients, publics, superiors and audiences or the basic social and economic structures of the society?" He suggested the notion of relative autonomy: " . . . organizations are not independent or self-sufficient phenomena" (p. 247). There is a generally held perception by society that private schools are successful educational businesses. This is not necessarily the case. In preparation for her research on public and private high schools, Lightfoot (1983) participated in a scholars' seminar. Invited scholars included those whose work centered on the history, policies, and practices of schools. The assumption that all private schools are thriving was called into question. But the common assumption that the private schools were thriving and flourishing was unsettling, and was experienced by some members [of the seminar] as a disregard for the great variation in success and resources among them (p.8).Indeed, Chubb and Moe (1985) concluded, "Relative to public schools, private schools appear to delegate significant discretion to their teachers, and to involve them sufficiently in school level policy decisions to make them feel efficacious" (p. 37). This common sense mythology perpetuates the misconception that the private school community shares one view of what constitutes a good school. The reality may be, as Powell (1990) suggested, that private schools often vary sharply in content and process and espouse a wide variety of purposes (single-sex schools, boarding schools, schools that cater to a particular ability level) based on the type of community they serve. While public schools are traditionally depicted as being more diverse, this diversity is more a matter of economic differences. There are schools for the poor, schools for the middle class, and schools for the suburbanites. Within the private school context of general affluence there is more cohesiveness of purpose, and more shared experience. Image and reliance on this mythology of academic excellence may be what allows some private schools to compete in the marketplace along with other private and public schools (Powell, 1990). Autonomy may be experienced by teachers as a school runs smoothly and little administrative attention is apparent. While teachers may enjoy a great deal of autonomy in these circumstances, their autonomy may actually operate within a narrow range of discretion (McNeil, 1984). The degree of discretion may rest with the administrator. In addition, Corbett found that, "Community preferences lurk constantly at the borders of the school organization, and the superintendent and the principal are the entry points" (Corbett, 1991, p. 93). Indeed, Chubb and Moe's (1990) enthusiasm for autonomy results from their discovery of a statistical correlation between "autonomy" and "student achievement test score gains." They assumed that the causal influence ran from the former to the latter. Glass and Matthews (1991) contended that it was even more likely that the causal direction was reversed in that teachers and principals were granted more autonomy when their test scores were in good shape. Hence, they suggested that it may be achievement levels causing autonomy to be granted rather than the other way around. If Glass and Matthews are correct and Chubb and Moe are not, then granting autonomy would not be expected to result in increased achievement, nor would more autonomous private schools enjoy ipso facto greater effectiveness. Indeed, the role played by the administrator is a key element in teacher autonomy or the reform initiative of "empowering" teachers (Powell, 1990; Lightfoot, 1983; McNeil, 1984). Powell pointed out that it is not clear how empowered teachers can coexist with strong site-based managers, a primary requirement of a private school head (p. 130). Apple and Teitelbaum (1986), however, found that within Weick's model of a loosely-coupled organization different types of professional can retain control and authority without changing or being changed by the decisions of other professionals. Teachers in any school organization are free to conduct their individual classrooms as they see fit without reducing the autonomy of the principal. Although private school teachers may be freer of distant bureaucratic rules, regulations and procedures, they are subject to the pervasive authority of a headmaster and school board of directors. Based on the wide discrepancy between the salary of the administrator and teachers in private schools, the power exercised by the headmaster is considerable, perhaps even greater than that held by the public school principal. In some schools, observed Lightfoot (1983), the "unquestionable dominance and benign power" of the head only underscores the faculty's "relative powerlessness and reinforces the childlike impulses" (p. 341). Even in the case of more democratic and benign leaders, private school teachers are well aware that reappointment and references for one's resume depend on satisfying the head (Baird, 1977). Since services must be "sold to potential clients," some teachers may find themselves "caught between incompatible interpretations of their own self-interest" (Ball, 1987, p. 269). It may not be possible to understand teacher autonomy merely from examining the obvious governmental or organizational forms that are set up to direct their actions. The working conditions of both public school and private school teachers may contain any number of what appear to be constraints on their autonomy: federal, state, and district policy; school board and administrator demands; pressures from state mandated or college testing (Noble and Smith, 1994; Smith and Rottenberg, 1991) ; the need to please parents, students, other teachers, and community; standardization practices such as career ladders (Firestone and Bader,1991; Popkewitz and Lind, 1988). But how teachers manage those constraints is crucial in defining their work life. Sedlak and others (1986) pointed out that, historically, teachers acquiesce to centralized authority yet, once they close their classroom door, most teachers are able to exercise enormous discretion. The current spate of reform initiatives produces constraints which treat teachers as passive receivers of external advice and undermine their professional authority. Elmore suggested that rather than reform, the "result is teacher resistance and student disengagement" (1987, p. 60). Faced with challenges to their autonomy, some imaginative teachers "have used their ingenuity and skill in order to arrive at a way out" (Kozol, 1981, p. 51) or participated in the "strategy of 'omissive action' (like non-cooperation . . .)" (Ball, 1987, p. 268). Indeed, Feiman-Nemser and Floden asserted that, based on their review of several studies of teacher culture, current research replaces the image of "a passive teacher molded by bureaucracy and buffeted by external forces" with the image of "an active agent, constructing perspectives and choosing actions," (1986, p. 523).