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Running a school or school system has never been simple, but nowadays the job requires a sophisticated understanding of the larger education landscape. Are we centralizing or flattening out? Adopting a free-market approach or swinging back toward a more traditional educator-driven outlook? The answer has been different at different moments, and sometimes it鈥檚 鈥渁ll of the above.鈥�

Priscilla Wohlstetter (911爆料网 file photo)

On the one hand, 鈥渄istricts are run as hierarchical businesses, with the power at the top, and instructions coming from the top down,鈥� says Teachers College鈥檚 Priscilla Wohlstetter, Distinguished Research Professor. Witness the rise of mayoral control in big urban school systems during the past 25 years, as well as stronger federal and state accountability measures, and the introduction of the Common Core State Standards.

Districts are run as hierarchical businesses, with the power at the top, and instructions coming from the top down,鈥� but there's also growing recognition that 鈥渋t鈥檚 critically important for information to come from the bottom up as well, because the people making the decisions on the ground know the most about how implementation is going.鈥�

鈥擯riscilla Wohlstetter

Yet there鈥檚 also been growing recognition that, as Wohlstetter puts it, 鈥渋t鈥檚 critically important for information to come from the bottom up as well, because the people making the decisions on the ground know the most about how implementation is going.鈥� Thus, responsibility for figuring out how to meet standards and ensure learning has increasingly been pushed out to communities and schools. Spurred initially by funding from the philanthropist Walter Annenberg during the early 1990s, and most recently by by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, K-12 public education has seen the rise of 鈥渘etworks for school improvement鈥� (NSI) 鈥� groups of schools that work with partner organizations to improve teaching and learning, typically for underserved minorities. 

Now, a team led by Wohlstetter has published a new guide to help education leaders maximize their success in working with these networks. Among the co-authors are two Teachers College doctoral students, Megan Duff and Clare Buckley Flack. The effort was conducted under the auspices of the Spencer Foundation.

Titled 鈥�,鈥� the guide is the result of a three-year study of a diverse sample of organizations that comprise four different types of networks: groups of schools in a particular geographic area that are supported by local district superintendents; field support centers, which partner with district superintendents and work with schools; affinity organizations, which are independent nonprofits that work under contract from the central district office to support a group of district schools; and charter school management organizations that operate outside the district, supporting their member schools. There are profound differences among these different types of networks, but all, to borrow Wohlstetter鈥檚 image, are like wheels, with the network as the hub and participating schools as the spokes. 

Among the guide鈥檚 recommendations 鈥� aimed, collectively, at district leaders, principals, and network managers, are to:

Develop a clear and coherent instructional vision. 鈥淎lthough NSI varied in their visions of high-quality curriculum, pedagogy and educational outcomes, nearly all NSI articulated core beliefs to guide how network members conceptualized teaching and learning,鈥� the authors write.鈥�

Empower schools to make decisions. Successful networks have typically 鈥渟ought to empower their members schools by deliberately granting them decision rights over matters such as goal-setting, operations, curriculum use, and professional learning,鈥� the guide states. 鈥淣SI also jointly collaborated on data analysis to empower educators to make informed instructional decisions.鈥� And all NSI in studied by the authors 鈥渧alued adaptation and teacher-level instructional decision-making to some degree.鈥�

Facilitate inter-school collaboration. The networks examined by the authors 鈥渄eveloped ways to foster collaboration between member schools to promote knowledge-sharing, accelerate network-wide learning and innovation, and strengthen bonds of network trust.鈥�

Work toward ongoing, continuous improvement. 鈥淭o varying degrees, the NSI in our study viewed their support as works in progress, deploying mechanisms to gather data and other evidence to build and modify them. This was particularly important given adoption of the New York State Common Core Learning Standards, which produced seismic shifts in how NSI hubs judged the quality of their instruction guidance and supports.鈥�

In the ever-evolving world of public education, such shifts seem likely to continue. But as in other walks of life, the ability to get out there and network will likely only increase in importance.