Who Controls Teachers' Work?

Power and Accountability in America's Schools

Richard M. Ingersoll

• Editore: Harvard University Press
• Anno: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780674264656
• Argomento: Pedagogía
• Categoria: Métodos de enseñanza de la educación

Schools are places of learning but they are also workplaces, and teachers are employees. As such, are teachers more akin to professionals or to factory workers in the amount of control they have over their work? And what difference does it make?Drawing on large national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with high school teachers and administrators, Richard Ingersoll reveals the shortcomings in the two opposing viewpoints that dominate thought on this subject: that schools are too decentralized and lack adequate control and accountability; and that schools are too centralized, giving teachers too little autonomy. Both views, he shows, overlook one of the most important parts of teachers' work: schools are not simply organizations engineered to deliver academic instruction to students, as measured by test scores; schools and teachers also play a large part in the social and behavioral development of our children. As a result, both views overlook the power of implicit social controls in schools that are virtually invisible to outsiders but keenly felt by insiders. Given these blind spots, this book demonstrates that reforms from either camp begin with inaccurate premises about how schools work and so are bound not only to fail, but to exacerbate the problems they propose to solve.

1

INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT the work of teachers in American schools. Unlike most research on schooling, it is not, however, primarily concerned with education itself, nor even with the teacher’s role in the learning process. My concern is with the character of teaching as a job, teachers as workers, and schools as workplaces. I begin with the simple but often overlooked fact that teachers, in addition to being mentors, instructors, and surrogate parents, are also employees in organizations. My objective is to reexamine the character of these organizations and the implications for those working within. The route by which I came to writing this book was circuitous, and my own biography bears brief mention here because it plays an important role in the genesis of this research and in the viewpoint that I adopt.

Early in my career I taught secondary school, first in western Canada and subsequently in the eastern United States, in both public and private schools. At the time I was especially struck by how different my Canadian and American teaching experiences were. There were numerous reasons for this, but most simply put, I found teaching in Canada to be far superior as a job. Two contrasts, in particular, stood out for me.

The first concerned the degree of conflict in the schools. The American schools in which I taught, both private and public, were extraordinarily adversarial places in which to work. The schools often felt like battlegrounds, and indeed, we teachers described our work as “life in the trenches.” Student misbehavior and verbal abuse directed at teachers was an everyday fact of life. And I was surprised by the degree of distrust, disrespect, and dislike directed toward teachers not simply by students but also by parents and administrators. I quickly became aware that these conditions reflected the widespread public image of school teaching in the United States. The level of respect accorded teachers in Canada and the United States seemed markedly different. In the United States, even among teachers themselves, I found a pervasive sense of disparagement for teachers and the teaching occupation. I would often hear that teachers did not work very hard, were not very smart, were overpaid, and had easy jobs because of their long summer vacations. On a regular basis I read news reports and commentaries blaming teachers or their unions for a host of societal ills—teenage delinquency, the breakdown of morals, the poor achievement of American students compared with those in other countries, the decline in American economic competitiveness, the persistence of sexism and racism, and so on. We teachers called it “teacher bashing,” and it seemed to be an acceptable national pastime.

A second contrast that stood out for me was how differently schools in the United States and Canada were run and, more specifically, who ran them. I found that teachers in the American schools had far less input into how their schools operated and what their jobs were to be. This was true for a range of issues. For instance, even though my background was in sociology and history, I found myself required each year to teach any number of subjects—algebra, economics, civics, special education—many of which I had little knowledge of or interest in. I quickly found that teachers had little control over what they were assigned to teach. School principals reserved such decisions for themselves, often to the great frustration of the faculty, who had to live with, and often were blamed for, the consequences.

Certainly, many of us who enter teaching do so knowing that it has, in most cases, never been a highly paid or highly prestigious occupation. But I was taken aback by the lack of understanding or regard for the teaching job. It seemed completely counterproductive to me that many intrinsic rewards, such as the satisfaction of making an impact, of imparting one’s knowledge, of working in a supportive and positive environment, and of having input into the way things operate, were lacking.

I began to wonder if my experiences were typical. The small number of schools in which I had taught were not stereotypically “tough.” All were in small-town, rural, or suburban settings. I wondered what teachers’ jobs might be like in other schools and elsewhere in the United States. Were they also characterized by low levels of teacher input into the operation of the school, and if so, why? How much control and influence do American teachers as a whole have over their work, and in what areas of their jobs are they most constrained? In what types of schools do teachers have the greatest say? In turn, I wondered if there was any connection between the degree of teacher input into how schools function and how well they function. In particular, I wondered if there were significant differences in the degree of conflict and strife in schools, and if these might be connected to the way schools are organized and run. It was these questions that eventually led to this book.

As I began to explore what has been written about the organization and operation of schools and the character of the teaching occupation, I became aware that my personal questions have also long been of great public interest. Indeed, I found them to be a source of heated controversy and debate in several distinct realms: educational research, educational policy and reform, and popular opinion. These topics were also, I came to believe, the source of a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding.

I wish to illuminate the extent to which teachers’ individual troubles in the workplace are neither unique nor isolated, but are really public issues, invisibly but indelibly shaped by the larger societal and organizational contexts in which they lie. By closely examining these contexts, I hope to further our understanding of the problems and issues involved—a way of looking that the famous sociologist C. Wright Mills called using the “sociological imagination.”

The Debate over the Control of Teachers’ Work

Concern over the issue of who controls the work of teachers and who runs schools is neither new nor surprising. Elementary and secondary schooling are mandatory, and it is into the custody of teachers that children are legally placed for a significant portion of their lives. The quality of teachers and teaching are undoubtedly among the most important factors shaping the learning of students. Teachers are also expensive; the largest single component of the cost of education is teacher compensation.

Schooling is, moreover, important not simply because it instructs children in the “three R’s” and passes on essential academic skills and knowledge. Schools are one of the major institutions for the socialization of the young. Teachers do not just teach subjects, they teach values and behavior, and they teach them to children—our children. The job of teachers is to help make socialized adults of unsocialized youngsters; schools and teachers quite literally help pass on our society’s way of life and culture to the next generation. Schools’ role as surrogate parent—in loco parentis—is not new. Aristotle was among the first to point out that the purpose of schooling is to develop not simply the intellect but also the morals, behavior, and character of the young.¹ Poll after poll has shown that the public overwhelmingly believes one of the most important goals of schools is and should be to shape conduct, instill motivation, develop character, and impart values. It is this expectation, and the apparent failure of teachers and schools to adequately fulfill it, that lies behind so much of the “teacher bashing” mentioned earlier. To the public, well-behaved children and youth are among the most important outcomes of schooling.² Indeed in recent years, with numerous highly publicized episodes of violence in schools, issues such as student discipline, lack of respect for teachers, and improper behavior in classrooms have become even more pressing concerns. The task of deciding which behavior and values are proper and best for the young is neither trivial, neutral, nor value free. Hence, it is no surprise that those who actually do this work—teachers—and how they go about it are matters of intense concern. And it is precisely because schooling is so crucial that there has always been much controversy over who controls what teachers do.

Two opposing views dominate thought and policy on this subject. The first view, popular among a large number of education reformers, policymakers, researchers, and members of the public, holds that schools are far too loose, too disorganized, and lack appropriate control, especially in regard to their primary activity—the work of teachers with children and youth. These critics argue that school systems are marked by low standards, a lack of coherence and control, poor management, and little effort to ensure accountability. The predictable result, they hold, is poor performance on the part of teachers and students. In short, this viewpoint—which I call the school disorganization perspective—finds schools to be the epitome of inefficient and ineffective bureaucracy.³

For many of those who subscribe to this view, the obvious antidote to the ills of the education system is to increase the centralized control of schools and to hold teachers more accountable. Their objective has been to “tighten the ship” in one manner or another, through increased teacher training and retraining requirements; standardized curricula and instructional programs; teacher licensing examinations; performance standards; more school and teacher evaluations; merit pay programs; and, more recently, state and national education goals, standards, and testing.⁴

Over the past several decades this viewpoint has drawn a great deal of theoretical and empirical support from the interdisciplinary field of organization theory and from social scientists who study organizations, occupations, and work in general. To analysts in these fields of research, schools are an interesting anomaly—an odd case. From this viewpoint schools are unusual because, while they appear to look like other large, complex organizations, such as banks, agencies, corporations, and plants, they do not act like them. In particular, they do not seem to have the degree of control and coordination that such organizations are supposed to have. Schools have all the outward characteristics of other complex organizations, such as a formal hierarchy, a specialized division of labor, and a formal structure of rules and regulations, but in actuality, according to these organizational analysts, schools exert very little control over their employees and work processes. Because of this seemingly contradictory behavior, organization theorists have adopted a colorful vocabulary to identify such settings. Educational organizations, they hold, are extreme examples of “loosely coupled systems” and “organized anarchies.” In this view, schools are oddly debureaucratized bureaucracies and, paradoxically, disorganized organizations—a situation, they conclude, that is often satisfying and of benefit to the staff involved, but also a source of inefficient and ineffective organizational performance.⁵

There is, however, a second and antithetical view of the educational system that is also popular, but among a different group of education reformers, policymakers, researchers, and members of the public. Schools are not too decentralized, this view holds, but exactly the opposite. These critics argue that school systems are marked by too much centralized control and too much bureaucracy. The predictable result, they hold, is poor performance on the part of staff and students. In short, this alternative viewpoint finds the school system to be the epitome of top-down, undemocratic bureaucracy.

There are multiple versions of this antibureaucracy, anticentralization viewpoint that differ according to which groups are deemed to be most disempowered. One version focuses on communities, families, and parents and makes the argument that local constituencies do not have adequate input into their children’s and community’s schools.⁶ A second version of the antibureaucracy viewpoint focuses on teachers and their working conditions. The central problem in this view is that factorylike schools unduly deprofessionalize, disempower, and “demotivate” teachers—a situation that is dissatisfying to teachers and a source of school inefficiency and ineffectiveness. In short, to these critics teachers have very little control over their own work in schools. Not surprisingly, in this version of the antibureaucracy view, the obvious antidote to the ills of the educational system is to decentralize schools by increasing the power, autonomy, and professionalization of teachers. Of the many variants of antibureaucracy, anticentralization thinking, it is with this latter version that I am primarily concerned. I will refer to it as the teacher disempowerment perspective.⁷

Like the disorganization perspective, the teacher disempowerment perspective also draws extensive theoretical and empirical support from the interdisciplinary field of organization theory and from those who study organizations, occupations, and work. A long tradition of applied research in this field has illuminated the ways in which overly centralized organizational structures have a negative impact on employees and has advocated enhanced employee participation in workplace decision making.⁸

Neither this debate nor these two contrary viewpoints are new to educational theory or educational policy. Educational philosophies and reforms, it is often noted, run in cycles.⁹ Since the advent of the American public school system, important and fundamental issues, such as who controls the work of teachers, have periodically surfaced as subjects of intense concern—and intense disagreement. However, in recent years this tension seems to have become the center of both increasing debate and decreasing consensus. Indeed, in the decade since I began this research, conflict over control and accountability in schools has become, if anything, even more prominent. These issues are the crux of many of the most significant education reforms of our day—school choice, education vouchers, charter schools, school restructuring, the standards movement, teacher and student testing, teacher professionalization, and so on.

At the heart of these reforms are questions concerning the degree to which schools in general—and teachers in particular—are and should be controlled and held accountable. At issue is how much say teachers have over what they do with youngsters and how much they should have. The school disorganization view holds that teachers are not adequately controlled. The teacher disempowerment view finds teachers to be overly controlled. Both perspectives appear to make a great deal of sense. Both have lead to extensive research. Both have fostered a wide range of reform and policy initiatives. Both are widely known and embraced by the public. But both cannot, it would seem, be correct.

The Research

It is the tension between these two views that provides the backdrop for my research. This book undertakes a close reexamination of the organizational structure of schools and the character and conditions of the teaching job. I have made use of theory and methods drawn from the field of organization theory and from the larger study of organizations, occupations, and work, and my objective is to address the school-control debate, to reconcile these two antithetical views, and to provide an alternative explanation for the anomalous and contradictory character of educational organizations.

In this book I address three sets of questions:

1. Are schools centralized or decentralized? Are schools top-down, highly centralized organizations or are they more participatory and decentralized workplaces? Are teachers’ levels of input and autonomy equivalent to that of autonomous professionals or more akin to that of low-level employees? Does the control exercised by teachers over their work vary across key tasks within schools? Moreover, does the control exercised by teachers over their work vary from school to school? Are some schools more centralized or decentralized than others?
2. Do schools have the means to control the work of teachers and hold teachers accountable? Are schools places where, behind the closed doors of their classrooms, teachers largely do what they want, with few rules, little supervision, and even less accountability? Or are schools highly rule-bound, factorylike workplaces with much oversight and supervision of the work of teachers and compelling means of enforcement? What are the methods, if any, by which schools coordinate and control the work of teachers?
3. Does school centralization or decentralization matter? What difference does the amount of centralization or decentralization in schools make for how well schools function? Does increasing the amount of influence exercised by teachers in schools have a positive or a negative impact on life inside schools? Do highly centralized schools perform better or worse than highly decentralized schools? Is the “good” school decentralized, centralized, or does it not matter?

At the inception of this research I found myself, given my own experience as a teacher, to be sympathetic to the teacher disempowerment viewpoint—that schools are overly centralized and teachers lack sufficient autonomy. And indeed I still am personally sympathetic to the arguments and reforms promoted by that perspective. Nevertheless, as a taxpayer and a parent of school-age children, I have also found myself sympathetic to the view that schools and teachers need coordination, control, oversight, and accountability.

As I will argue, a close examination of schools reveals important limitations to each view’s portrait of the organizational character and conditions of schools. This is not surprising. Teaching children and youth is an unusual occupation, and schooling is an unusual “industry.” They comprise an unusual combination of “clients,” “technologies,” and “products,” and they are—understandably enough—not well understood. My objective, however, is not to suggest that we discard either of the above viewpoints; instead, we must build on their insights and strengths. Both of the views of control in schools are partly true, but neither goes far enough. The disorganization perspective is correct: accountability and control are very important, and many schools are, indeed, disorganized and inefficient. But this is true in a different and more consequential manner than many have so far conceived. Likewise, the dise...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Debate Over Control
• 3. Teachers and Decision Making in Schools
• 4. Rules for Teachers
• 5. The Teacher in the Middle
• 6. The Effects of Teacher Control
• 7. Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index