How Accountability Impacts High School Math and English Departments
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Subject Matters: How Accountability Impacts High School Math and English Departments
Dana Holland, Betheny Gross, and Joy Anderson Consortium for Policy Research in Education University of Pennsylvania
A paper prepared for the Annual Conference of the American Association of Educational Research Montreal, Canada April 2005
I. Research Focus High schools are increasingly coming into focus as the objects of federal and state accountability systems. At the recently concluded National Governors’ Association summit, both business and political leaders advocated for restructuring and sustained change for high schools, putting an end to the “culture of educational complacency” as one governor put it (Olson 2005). However, the differentiated organization of high schools presents special challenges to standards-based accountability, which assumes that the school is the unit of improvement (Fuhrman 1999). High schools are large and complex, and whereas teachers in comparatively homogeneous lower grades might see the school as their primary reference group, high school teachers tend to regard themselves foremost as members of subject matter departments (Johnson 1990). These “invisible structures,” as Siskin (1994) has called departments, create strong organizational boundaries within high schools, influencing the professional identity and capacity for action of the teachers within these boundaries. This study examines the overall and differential impact of standards-based accountability on the goals and experiences of teachers in high school math and English departments, subjects drawing the most attention in accountability systems. One of the hallmarks of the new accountability is an exchange of flexibility for results—policy makers determine targets, while teachers, schools, and districts are left to determine the response. The study focuses on how departmental structure figures into high school responses to accountability in different state contexts. It does not link variation in departmental responses to changes in student achievement; it is instead an exploratory investigation of both how departmental structure influences response to accountability
Subject Matters, p 1 and how accountability seems to be influencing departmental structure. In considering how policy interacts with the organizational structure in high schools, we assume that organizational differentiation within high schools and the nature of accountability has the potential to impact teachers in the same school differently. Explanations for these differential responses are therefore argued here to follow from the interactions among the specific characters of departments, the designs of state accountability systems, and more or less inherent features of different subject matters. This work is part of a larger multi-year study of high schools being conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), with funding provided by the Institute for Educational Sciences. This larger study investigates strategies for instructional improvement in American high schools, examining how below-average performing high schools incorporate their states’ accountability goals into their own, identify their challenges, search for improvement strategies, and generally respond to the gap between their current levels of achievement and external expectations.
II. Relevant Theoretical and Empirical Research Importance of Departments in High Schools The “egg crate” model of high schools as places where privacy norms of professional practice prevail (Lortie 1975; Jackson 1968), has been tempered with scholarship showing the mediating influence of departments on teachers’ work and the social organization of the high school (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1999; Johnson 1990; Little 2002; Siskin 1994; McLaughlin and Talbert 2001; Rowan 1990). Although departments show considerable variation in their roles, level of cohesion and responsibility, research has consistently shown that teachers tend to identify their subject-based colleagues as their core professional group with whom they share knowledge, goals, and experiences. Siskin (1994) found departments in one California high school to “comprise different worlds, exhibiting different cultures, and controlling key decisions about resources, professional tasks, and careers.” Although the “collegial focus” of departmental social organization has been found to provide structural and normative capacity for collegial control of instruction (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1999), it is unclear how accountability systems, which impose various levels and kinds of control on curriculum and therefore on instruction, affect collegial curricular activities.
Subject Matters, p 2 Typologies of High School Departments Typologies have been developed to characterize departments by the key dimensions influencing their efficacy as organizational units.1 McLaughlin and Talbert (2001, 62) differentiate between strong and weak departments, defining weak departments as typified by individuated values and beliefs, in contrast to strong departments in which goals and beliefs are held in common. In weak departments, traditional practice predominates, and any innovation that happens occurs in isolation. Strong departments can support either traditional community that enforces socialization to traditional practice, or communities of practice, where organizational learning and collaboration is built into the group’s ethos. In this scheme, strong high school departments can be reactionary or reformist, with capacity to mobilize for resistance or for change in core practices. Siskin (1994, 100) identifies two key dimensions of departments, inclusivity, which indicates how encompassing is the collectivity, and commitment, which indicates how widely goals and purposes are shared. These two dimensions inform a four-part classification: Bundled Bonded Low Commitment High Commitment High Inclusion High Inclusion Fragmented Split Low Commitment High Commitment Low Inclusion Low Inclusion
Bonded departments, which are akin to McLaughlin and Talbert’s professional learning community, are indicated by regular collaboration among department members with efforts communally directed toward reaching departmental goals. In Siskin’s (1994) study of three high schools in two states, California and Michigan, conducted in the early 1990s, bonded departments were rare. Bundled departments, where teachers are part of a cohesive community but hold individual goals and work generally in isolation, were much more commonly represented in Siskin’s sample. In bundled departments, teachers identify with the group and coordinate when necessary, but privacy norms militate
1 It should be noted that although McLaughlin and Talbert’s (2001) and Siskin’s (1994) work is distinct, the empirical material they work with both draw from the same study conducted in Michigan and California in the early 1990’s.
Subject Matters, p 3 against formal collaboration in curriculum and instruction. In fragmented conditions departments are organized units in name only, where teachers work in isolation, goals are atomized, and individuals are largely left to identify and solve their own problems. Split departments exhibit breaches of one sort or another, with factions of teachers aligned along the lines of age, seniority, race, gender, or some other identity characteristic. Despite their rarity, strong learning communities, which Siskin would call bonded departments, are lauded by McLaughlin and Talbert as being most beneficial to students. They contend that communities of practice minimize the “instructional lottery” for students, in which classroom experiences are determined by the individual proclivities of the teacher to whom a student happens to be assigned, rather than by the concerted effort of a unified, improvement-oriented collective. Notably, scholars in the field of organizational learning have found that communities of practice are associated with innovation in the workplace (Brown and Duguid 1991), confirming McLaughlin and Talbert’s argument that this normative type is associated with capacity to improve. The Consequences of Subject Matter on Departments The focus on departments has been important in redressing tendencies to view the high school as a homogeneous unit akin to elementary schools. However, some argue that departments themselves can be substantively differentiated. While acknowledging the influence of “subject perspectives,” Ball and Lacey (1980) argue against a model of departments that constitute undifferentiated knowledge sub-cultures. In a study of four secondary schools in Britain they found that English departments supported multiple subject paradigms within one department. Subjects, this work implies, support some degree of internal flexibility. But what consequences does this have for curricular activities, and are all high school subjects similar disposed to internal diversity? Stodolsky and Grossman (1995) take up these issues in an investigation of how teachers’ perceptions of the qualities of five different subjects create conceptual contexts for teachers that vary from field to field. In turn, they then examine how key features of these subjects affect curricular coordination and control. They identify five features of subject matter: definition (how clear are the boundaries of a field); scope (the extent a school subject is homogenous or a composite of different fields); sequence (how much prior learning is perceived as prerequisite to later learning); dynamism (how static or dynamic is the subject); and elective or required status of the subject. Based on survey
Subject Matters, p 4 data collected from teachers in 16 schools in Michigan and California in the early 1990s,2 they found, as expected, that math and foreign language teachers see their subjects as significantly more defined, more sequential, and less dynamic than did teachers in English, science or social studies. They also found that the qualities that teachers associate with their subjects have consequences for how they approach their curriculum. While almost all teachers claimed near total control over instruction, the relatively more sequential subjects, most notably math and foreign language, produced greater curricular and content coordination among teachers. Less well-defined subjects, namely English, science, social studies, prompted less consensus among teachers in those areas. Press for coverage (perceived pressure to cover a defined scope and sequence of curriculum) was similarly highest for math and foreign language, and lowest for science and social studies, with English in the middle. This research suggests that features of math and English as subjects have opposite kinds of consequences for the social organization of the high school department. The Policy Environment Research on high school departments usefully highlights the specific organizational conditions in which teachers work. Research on subject matter indicates how content too can introduce curricular constraints and organizational conditions. The policy environment introduces yet another factor that intersects with organizational structure and subject matter conditions to influence teaching and learning in high schools. While the policy context is regularly considered in studies of high school departments, the passage of No Child Left Behind, with its heightened emphasis on state-wide standardized testing and uniform high standards, ushered in a novel task for high schools: preparing all students to achieve at a minimum standard (Siskin 2003). The link between high school departments and present-day accountability contexts has not been fully examined. Previous research suggests how the current push for standards and standardized testing is likely to impact departments as organizational units housing subject matter specialists. Referencing their research as anchored in the standards-setting movement of the 1980s, Archbald and Porter (1994) compared high
2 This study also draws from the same empirical base as McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) and Siskin (1994). As impressive as the cumulative effect of this scholarship has been for understanding the role of high school departments, their reliance on the same data set and therefore same state policy contexts is a limitation of this literature.
Subject Matters, p 5 school teachers’ control over curriculum in two subjects, math and social studies. They found that external tests and curriculum guidelines were viewed as more influential by math than social studies teachers. However, the two groups of teachers did not differ in their perceptions of control over content and pedagogy. Despite stiffer external controls, math teachers’ sense of control over pedagogy (instruction, homework, and student achievement standards) was in fact higher than that of social studies teachers. This suggests the possibility of a department effect, propagating belief in the consonance between district level curricular control and the goals and efforts of department members. Siskin (2003) in a study of high schools and accountability in four states found that high schools in states with weak or moderate accountability showed “dramatic differences” among the schools’ accountability responses in comparison to schools in states where sanctions are stronger and systems have been in place longer. She observed some instances of teacher engagement in substantive and sustained conversation about teaching to the new standards. However, this happened in departments, and very few departments in her sample were organized to prompt or sustain these conversations. Some researchers argue that policy design should take both departments and subject matter in high schools more seriously, building mechanisms into the accountability system to encourage professional interaction. Based on data collected in the early 1990s, McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) conjecture that it was no accident that the strong communities of practice found among the schools in their sample were located in California, where “new standards for teaching and learning were embodied in core subject frameworks, and where teacher professional development initiatives and subject- area networks were growing.” Siskin (1994) predicts that without overt efforts to change curriculum and instruction, “subject-by-subject,” that is within departments, that the impact of standards-based accountability on student achievement in high schools will be negligible.
III. Hypotheses and Expectations Based on Previous Research 1) Research on departments suggests that bonded departments, or strong communities of practice, would be most likely to mount a coordinated response to accountability, especially if the goals of accountability have been fully incorporated into the department’s own. Given their strong sense of identity, these departments would likely
Subject Matters, p 6 also hold other goals, and members would likely not present themselves as fully captured by accountability demands. In so far as the accountability system makes the district or school principal into an agent in the implementation of accountability prescriptions, we would expect them to be more of a presence in departmental matters regardless of departmental type.
2) Research on departments suggests the possibility of differential responses to accountability among departments in the same school. Following from argument that departments themselves can be differentiated identity units, we also hypothesize the possibility of differential responses within departments. We expect that the specific design attributes of accountability systems might have different effects on teachers depending on whether or not they are working with courses, grade levels, or students targeted by the accountability system.
3) Research on the relation of subject matter to curricular activities leads us to predict substantial differences between math and English regardless of accountability context. The relatively more defined, sequential, and static features of math as a subject contrast with English. Because of these subject matter features, math teachers exhibit more consensus and coordination around curriculum and more coordination in curricular activities than English teachers. However, in so far as accountability system design and pressure recasts English as focused primarily on language and communication skills, then we expect that English as a subject might take on some of the features that Stodolsky and Grossman (1995) identify for foreign language, which are comparable with math. Where math and English teachers appear to be responding similarly to accountability, it might not be that there is a school level response in operation, but instead that English as a subject has become and been accepted as being more “math-like.” IV. Methodology The larger study from which this paper draws is based on a nested sample of 48 schools in 36 districts in six states, selected to include two weak accountability states (Pennsylvania and Michigan) and four strong accountability states (North Carolina, Florida, New York, and California). Using discussions of the strength of state accountability systems conducted by Goertz and Duffy (2001) and Carnoy and Loeb
Subject Matters, p 7 (2004), a strong accountability state was defined as one that had sanctions in place for schools and students, while a weak accountability state had no sanctions at the local level for either schools or students. The sample for the full study included relatively low performing schools, since they are the primary targets of state accountability policy, and represented a variety of school contexts, in terms of urbanicity, socio-economic status of the community, and diversity of the student body. A stratified random sampling frame was developed using 1999-2000 school achievement and context data out of which eight schools in each state were selected. Fieldwork was carried out during the 2002-03 school year and involved structured interviews with a set of school and district representatives, including formal school and district leaders, curriculum specialists, math, English, and foreign language department heads, and two teachers each from math and English. The larger study included data collected about goals, challenges, decision-making practices, informational search strategies, perceptions about accountability, and improvement efforts underway in the school. Interviews were tape recorded and fully transcribed. For this paper, we conducted school level analysis of data collected for two high accountability states (North Carolina and Florida) and two low state accountability states (Pennsylvania and Michigan). Specifically, we analyzed the goals of math and English departments using the site summaries prepared by researchers conducting the fieldwork for each of the 31 schools we studied in these states.3 Although these data and the analysis are qualitative, we used a data analysis software program, Survey-pro, to aggregate the data and run simple cross-tabulations. For two states, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, we then went back to the original 89 interviews to examine in more detail how and under what conditions high school departments mount organized responses to accountability. Our analysis expressly compares high and low accountability contexts, with awareness of important design variations within these categories, as well as between math and English. The methodology used here has strengths and weaknesses. Our four-state sample included 192 interviews with teachers, and these interviews provided rich information. However, the cross-sectional study design included only one visit to each school, so we were not able to observe departmental organization or to determine how responses to accountability occurred in real time. In addition, we interviewed three teachers each in
3 One of the Florida schools did not have departments and was therefore excluded from this analysis.
Subject Matters, p 8 math and English departments, effectively building up a view of the department from the responses shared by these three teachers. Although our sampling frame called for interviews with teachers working in different grade levels and we were able to triangulate responses, a sub-sample of three teachers clearly better represents small and medium size departments more than large departments and this is a weakness in our design. Pennsylvania and North Carolina were selected for more detailed analysis because of the prominence of accountability-related phenomena—testing and standards—in goals described by teachers in these two states.4 In their respective categories of high and low accountability, high schools in these two states evidenced the most animation about accountability. The following pages provide a short description of the features of the accountability systems in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
4 Since previous research on high school departments draws so strongly from Michigan and California, it additionally seemed reasonable not to select these two states for more detailed analysis.
Subject Matters, p 9 Key Features of North Carolina State Accountability System:
. The ABC’s The North Carolina accountability system, the ABC’s, was developed in 1996. The legislature required the state education department to create and institutionalize a body of state-wide standards for student achievement, a statewide curriculum, and a statewide assessment system, bringing curriculum, instruction, and evaluation into alignment.
. Schools Targeted Schools are directly accountable to the state, and districts often play a supporting role to schools. There are no district level rewards or sanctions.
. Standard Course of Study The statewide standards are called the Standard Course of Study, which sets out both the sequence of courses and outlines the knowledge and skills students should master in each course. Actual curriculum and pacing guides are left up to districts and schools.
. End of Course Exams At the high school level, ten courses include statewide multiple choice end of course (EOC) exams. EOC’s count for 25% of students course grade and aggregate EOC scores are used by the state to assess overall school achievement. The state’s primary indicator of achievement, EOCs are given in English I, Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physical Science, Physics, US History, ELP (Economic, Legal, and Political Systems)
. Competency Test Students must pass the 8th grade Competency Test to graduate from high school. This test includes both reading and math and is retaken multiple times if necessary.
. Comprehensive Test A 10th grade comprehensive reading and math test has been introduced to comply with NCLB but since it is not linked to the ABC’s and does figure into the EOC’s or students’ grades, there is not much consideration given to it by schools or students.
. Rewards and Sanctions Publicly reported scores include the EOC’s, as well as drop-out rates, college prep track completion, etc. Schools are given a yearly designation, which is the basis of monetary bonuses for teachers in schools reaching or exceeding adequate yearly progress (AYP). Sanctions for schools not reaching AYP after two years include mandatory assistance teams. However, there are far more schools qualifying to receive sanctioned support than the state has capacity to follow through on the intervention.
. Diploma Pathways Before entering high school, student select one of four diploma pathways. Each pathway includes specific course requirements that must be fulfilled to earn a high school diploma in that pathway.
Subject Matters, p 10 Key Features of Pennsylvania State Accountability System:
. Benchmarks State provides standards in the form of benchmarks that students should be able to meet at end of 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grades, but does not provide a standardized curriculum of pacing schedule.
. District Targeted District is therefore given a lot of discretion in ensuring that the schedule is followed and assessing whether students are progressing to achieve the benchmarks.
. PSSA State monitoring of student progress at the high school level occurs for math and reading in grade 11 and writing in grades 9 and 11. The tests are called the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA).
. Rewards and Sanctions Other than the aggregate public reporting of PSSA scores, districts have little formal accountability to the state. Performance rewards from the state, in the form of cash payments for improvement, are given at the school level, while sanctions are meted out at the district level. Sanctions are imposed on districts in which at least 50% of students district-wide score below basic on the PSSA. Sanctions are not placed on poorly performing schools in districts with satisfactory overall performance. Sanctions are in the form of support through the intervention of a state appointed Academic Advisory Team. After several years of intervention without improvements, the district may be taken over by the state. The state has very rarely exercised this power, however.
. Curriculum Pennsylvania modified their graduation requirements in 2003 for students to complete and pass a district-mandated K-12 course list, complete a final project, and score in the proficient or advanced categories on the Grade 11 PSSA. However course content varies and local districts have the freedom to pass students who take exams deemed equivalent to the standard state assessment, add to the required course list and define the parameters of the final project. As a result, there is significant variability in both curriculum and instruction.
. Changes With passage of No Child Left Behind, Pennsylvania is in the process of modifying its state accountability policy to report additional student achievement data and identify schools, and not just districts, that do not meet the standards.
V. Findings Salience of Accountability Our first stage of analysis examined whether accountability had penetrated the goals for math and English departments in the four states. While a variety of goals were cited, we determined what was the most prominent goal according to frequency and emphasis. We found a great deal of reference to accountability, in teachers’ goals; however, teachers in math departments were twice as likely to prioritize accountability over other goals than were teachers in English departments. Accountability-oriented
Subject Matters, p 11 goals, pertaining foremost to testing but also to standards, were most prominent in 52% (n=16) of the math departments and 26% (n=8) of the English departments. English teachers mentioned testing and performance related goals nearly as often as math teachers, but did not give them comparable emphasis or singular importance. We expected the relative strength of the accountability system to be reflected in department goals, with testing and standards-related goals figuring more prominently in both math and English departments in states with strong accountability systems, and less prominently in states with weak ones. To some extent this was born out, but only for math, not English (see Tables 1 and 2). In addition, there was a surprising level of prominence given to accountability goals in Pennsylvania, in both math and English departments, despite the weakness of the state system:
State Math: Overall FL MI NC PA Most prominent goal Testing/standards 51.6% 71.4% 12.5% 100% 37.5% (n=16) (n=5) (n=1) (n=8) (n=3) General academic 41.9% 28.6% 87.5% 50% 0 (n=13) (n=2) (n=7) (n=4) Affective/other 3.2% 12.5% 0 0 0 (n=1) (n=1) Table 1. Most prominent math department goal by state.
State English: Overall FL MI NC PA Most prominent goal Testing/standards 25.8% 28.6% 25.5% 25% 37.5% (n=8) (n=2) (n=2) (n=2) (n=3) General academic 67.7% 71.4% 75% 75% 50% (n=21) (n=5) (n=6) (n=6) (n=4) Affective/other 9.7% 14.3% 12.5% 0 0 (n=3) (n=1) (n=1) Table 2. Most prominent English department goal by state.
To obtain another indicator of the salience of accountability we sought to determine how much pressure was associated with the state system, specifically in terms of pressure to change curriculum and instruction. We coded “low pressure” if there was no spontaneous mention of testing or standards outside of direct probing, and no
Subject Matters, p 12 indication of changes in curriculum or instruction attributed to the accountability system. “High pressure” was indicated by a clearly articulated sense of the centrality of testing and/or standards that led to substantial changes in curriculum and instruction. “Moderate pressure” was located between these two extremes. We looked at the individual teacher interviews from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, expecting a lower perception of pressure among Pennsylvania teachers than North Carolina. Findings showed an opposite pattern, however, with relatively higher pressure reported in Pennsylvania than North Carolina (Table 3):
State Perceived Overall Accountability Pressure NC (n=47) PA (n=42) 5 Low 37% 46.8% 26.2% (n=33) (n=22) (n=11) Moderate 22.5% 21.3% 23.8% (n=20) (n=10) (n=10) High 40.4% 31.9% 50.0% (n=36) (n=15) (n=21) Table 3. Perceived accountability pressure among teachers in math and English departments in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
While perceptions of pressure varied between the states, differences in perceptions of pressure between math and English teachers within each state were also notable. In Pennsylvania, teachers’ perceptions of accountability pressure showed the same distribution between math and English teachers, while in North Carolina, math teachers felt more pressure than English teachers. Two things are surprising about these data. First, teachers in English departments in North Carolina, despite the state’s high accountability status, appear remarkably un- pressured by accountability concerns. Secondly, teachers in both math and English departments in Pennsylvania seem surprisingly focused on accountability-related concerns. These differences appear to be, at least in part, due to the design of the accountability system in each state. In North Carolina, there are three EOCs under the purview of high school math departments, Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry. By contrast, there is only one EOC for English: English I. English departments in North
5 At some rural schools we only interviewed two teachers in each department, making the sample smaller than specified in the design.
Subject Matters, p 13 Carolina have responsibility for the English I EOC score, but not necessarily for the 10th grade comprehensive test. According to the department head in Lexington High School in North Carolina,6 while the comprehensive test was previously an essay based on world literature, and therefore associated with English, it is now “more of a writing test, and is not necessarily an English test.” Math teachers in North Carolina sometimes referred to their goals not in generic terms of “the EOCs,” but in terms of students scoring “level 3 or level 4,” proficiency or above. In contrast, English teachers in North Carolina, particularly in high capacity Maple High School, expressed comparatively more opposition to the prominence of state testing, by claiming that while their goals were for students to “meet high standards,” they were “not the EOCs.” Why did accountability loom as large as it did for both math and English teachers in Pennsylvania? Our measure of pressure expressly reflected activity relating to curriculum and instruction. Therefore, much of the “pressure” teachers in Pennsylvania described indicated current and ongoing curricular activities to better align content and pacing with the PSSA. In keeping with the design of the Pennsylvania system, district education offices were very often referenced as prompting or requiring action at the departmental or subject matter level. Without a uniform state curriculum, most of the district offices in our Pennsylvania sample have initiated some curricular response to accountability, including curriculum mapping, curriculum adoption, textbook adoption, course development, pacing guide development, etc. Drawing on the same data set used in this study, Weinbaum (2004) confirms the relatively high level of district level intervention in Pennsylvania, where the accountability system leaves considerable room for local variation with the result that responses are unpredictable and idiosyncratic. For nearly all of the schools in our Pennsylvania sample, the current level of district intervention in high school curriculum and instruction was novel. However, for one school, Striver High School, this was not the case. Instead the district office introduced standards-based instruction into math and English years ago, effectively laying the groundwork for organized departmental responses to accountability today. This case will be more fully described in the final part of this section. Which elements of the design of the accountability systems in North Carolina and Pennsylvania captured teachers’ attention? In both systems, the performance of
6 School and district names are pseudonyms.
Subject Matters, p 14 education units—schools in North Carolina and districts in Pennsylvania—are formally compared to themselves over time. However, since school level scores are published in local newspapers, schools can informally and very publicly be compared with each other. This distortion of the original intention of test scores was equally if not more compelling to teachers in both North Carolina and Pennsylvania than was a school or district’s relative growth over time. In North Carolina, where school districts are synonymous with counties and typically include a number of high schools, teachers often characterized their schools’ performance relative to other high schools in the county: “…The last few years we’ve been in last place in the county.” “…We were a ‘bottom’ school locally…” “…We are low, lowest in the county…”
In contrast, Maple High School, which is one of the highest performing schools in its county, enjoys “a lot of good publicity” from the local newspaper, for which faculty felt fortunate. Pennsylvania has on the whole smaller local education agencies than North Carolina, and a number of the high schools in our Pennsylvania sample were the only ones in their districts. Salient comparisons were both local and statewide, with some teachers expressing fear of their school “falling into the category” with high-profile low- performing urban jurisdictions in the state. In addition, in Pennsylvania several teachers expressed real fear that “the state will take over the school,” while in North Carolina formal sanctions did not appear very worrisome. Organizational Form of Departments Drawing on Siskin’s (1994) typology of departments, we coded how teachers in Pennsylvania and North Carolina characterized departmental interaction around curriculum and instruction. Siskin’s “split” department type was excluded since it did not accord well with a characterization of departmental form based on a curriculum and instruction focus. We found more hybrid than ideal types, with department members often describing, for example, some fragmentation combined with inclusive collegiality, or particularistic goals in departments with considerable collaboration. This finding leads us to present the distribution in terms of tendencies toward fragmentation or bonding, rather than ideal types. Notably, the pattern of departmental structures diverged considerably in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, with North Carolina showing a strong tendency toward bundled departments and Pennsylvania showing a bimodal distribution
Subject Matters, p 15 between fragmentation and bonding. Both state distributions show considerably more bonding in math than English departments, and more fragmentation in English than math departments (see Table 4).
Departmental North Carolina Pennsylvania Structure Overall Math English Math English Some fragmenting 39.3% 9.1% 43.4% 42.9% 66.7% (n=33) (n=2) (n=10) (n=9) (n=12) Bundled 32.1% 54.5% 52.2% 4.8% 11.1% (n=27) (n=12) (n=12) (n=1) (n=2) Some Bonding 28.5% 36.3% 4.3% 52.4% 22.2% (n=24) (n=8) (n=1) (n=11) (n=4) Table 4. Departmental structure by state and subject. Consistent with previous research, few instances of bonded departments were apparent and bonding—that is, commonly held goals and collaborative work patterns— was rare in English departments. Even in instances in which some goals were shared at the department level and the department was an effective locus for collaboration among teachers, curricular and instructional activities were often carried out in sub-departmental groupings. Striver High School in Pennsylvania, for example, was unique in our sample for having substantial bonding in both its English and math departments. However, both departments were characterized as organizationally “segmented,” with teachers who teach the same courses and grade levels working collaboratively to support each other and improve the program. Faculty at Striver, a number of whom were graduates of the school, occasionally invoked familial metaphors to characterize their school, and English teachers in particular were committed to “keeping the department legacy going.” Despite this strong departmental identification, activities around curriculum and instruction more regularly involved planning, coordination, problem-solving, and sharing within sub- departmental work groups than within the department as a whole. The size of the departments, with over 20 members each, could have been a factor contributing to sub- group differentiation. How much has accountability contributed to segmentation within departments like those at Striver High School is an open question, although our findings suggest that accountability systems do create differentiating conditions for high school departments in
Subject Matters, p 16 at least two ways. First, the design of accountability systems creates differential impact for different grade levels and courses. In Pennsylvania, algebra teachers, regardless of the associated grade, and 11th grade English teachers, were more pressured by the system than others in their departments. Without course rotation, which was a clear policy in only one math and one English department in our sample, teachers are differentially affected by accountability since the burden is not collectivized. In North Carolina, this differential targeting by the accountability system appears to have frequently prompted more interaction among teachers associated with tested subjects. Ninth grade English teachers at Lincoln and Lexington High Schools, for example, were characterized as more collaborative than tenth grade teachers. In many North Carolina high schools, at least some teachers in math and English departments are talking more than in the past, and are talking about the EOC’s and the SCOS. This is not to say that accountability prescriptions can automatically create bonding out of fragmented organizational conditions. For example, in one North Carolina high school that had received intervention from an assistance team due to low performance, Southern High School, fragmentation continued to prevail despite the fact that teachers were “supposed to be working together now.” The second differentiating influence of accountability affected English departments more so than math departments, particularly in Pennsylvania, and appeared directly related to the nature of English as a subject. The current wave of accountability emphasizes state-wide testing aligned with state-wide standards, benchmarks, and in the case of North Carolina, state-wide curriculum. In most English departments in Pennsylvania the standards-based approach to instruction had not been adopted prior to the introduction of the PSSA, and therefore the now heightened emphasis on standards and testing appears to have precipitated or accentuated generational divisions among teachers, specifically “traditional” ones and those “going with the trend” as one English teacher at Lakewood High School put it. At Striver High School in Pennsylvania, where there are a substantial number of teachers who had long tenures at the school, the English department chair anticipated this issue in claiming that the veteran teachers in her department “rise to any challenge” and “adjust in any way they have to.” It is possible that factors contributing to bonding in a department, and the corollary continuous improvement outlook that it encourages, lessen the consequences of these philosophical
Subject Matters, p 17 rifts. Also, based on the lack of inter-generational tension described for English departments in North Carolina, it appears that a uniform curriculum provided by a centralized educational authority (the state or district) reduces opportunity for or adjudicates between these rifts even in the absence of bonding in a department. Departmental and Subject Matter Responses to Accountability In this final section of results, we examine how English and math departments in the two states responded to accountability, and how these responses appear to be constrained by the design of accountability systems and by the nature of the subject matter. We argue that accountability design provides particular latitude for action, or “flexibility” in the parlance of NCLB, within the constraints of subject matter and organizational form. In North Carolina, curricular activities are largely precluded from possible actions that departments might take to improve performance, since the state provides the SCOS. Apart from the widespread adoption of test preparation and the introduction of a new reading program at Southern High School introduced by the state assistance team, intensification was the most common collective strategy of improvement in North Carolina. Among North Carolina math teachers, “working harder” was a consistent refrain. Several attributed low EOC math scores at their school in the past to “lazy teachers,” who “didn’t care.” The “ladder-like” quality of math as a subject, as one teacher at Grant High School characterized it, seemed to promote intensification as a way to increase performance. The math chair at Legacy High School, where the department is partially bonded, saw accountability as positive in directing teachers to “work and work together,” by which he meant to ensure that students are prepared for the next course in the sequence: “ It’s making everyone work where before we had some teachers that were here just for the paycheck. We had teachers that really weren’t doing what they were supposed to. We all have to work because if I don’t teach them Algebra I, then how do you expect them to do Geometry? Then how do you expect them to do Algebra II? We all have to work together and that’s what we’re doing here, we’re all working together.”
However, this intensification approach—just working harder—met with a mixed response among English teachers in North Carolina, depending on perceptions of the quality and effort of English instruction at the school in the past. Bell High School
Subject Matters, p 18 recently assigned three “hard working veteran teachers” to the EOC English course, English I, and has seen improvements. However, the English chair at Grant High School believed that although accountability may be good for a weak teacher, “it’s bad for a good teacher,” in “limiting” their creativity and therefore responsiveness to students. While the intensification response was not contingent on the organizational form of the department, a more structural response to accountability in North Carolina did appear to be contingent on the degree of bonding and the capacity to mobilize department members toward a common purpose. Three math departments in North Carolina focused on student placement as an issue. At Lexington High School a math teacher described his biggest challenge as having too many students in classes “who are really not suited to go on to the next level,” but who are supposed to advance because of requirements in their chosen diploma pathway. In this fragmented department, full of “lone rangers” who do not like “following the pack,” all this teacher could do was to try to intensify his assistance to students and persuade failing ones to switch pathways. In contrast, in Ivy High School, math teachers in the highly bonded department collectively recognized student placement as both a problem and an area over which they still have “some control.” Interestingly, the department chair invoked the power of “the state” in rationalizing the department’s response: “There are so many situations that we cannot control that we felt [student placement] was one thing that we could…Our children and our parents in this community have a tendency to feel that they have the right to be in any class, and they do have that right as long as they meet the criteria, but it’s not always the best thing for them….Every child in the high school is recommended by the department for a math class, and we recommend it through the Guidance Department. If they do not sign up for the class that we have recommended, if they want to take a more advanced class, maybe an honors level class or a more advanced class than we recommend, then they must get a waiver form signed that says basically: ‘you were recommended for Class X and have chosen to try Class Y, and therefore should understand that you may not receive the kind of grade you’d like because that was not the State’s recommendation.’”
The Ivy math department’s success in gaining more control over student placement in its courses required ensuring that the Guidance Department, which oversees students’ progression through their chosen diploma pathway, “understood what our concerns are.” Similarly, Grant High School’s math department, which is somewhat bonded, also
Subject Matters, p 19 focused on student placement as a response to ensuring high EOC scores, collectively settling on a “C or better rule” for students to achieve in a course before being allowed into the next higher level math course. Responses to accountability among the math and English departments in our Pennsylvania sample were both more active and more variable than in North Carolina, which while not predictable from the weakness of the Pennsylvania accountability system is however predictable from the system’s broader latitude for action and inclusion of curriculum as a locus of activity. In a number of Pennsylvania districts, curriculum mapping is underway, pacing guides are being developed, and curriculum is being revised either by or with the oversight of the district office. It is notable that in Striver High School, which had the most bonded math and English departments in our sample, major work on the curriculum had been prompted by PSSA scores. If scores do not improve, Striver teachers will focus on improving the curriculum, instead of either on teachers working harder or student placement, as occurred in North Carolina. Among math departments in Pennsylvania, accountability consistently led to concern over curricular coverage, and to a lesser extent, writing in math. In Ivy and Orthodox High Schools, where the math departments had a mix of bonding and bundling, math departments rearranged math content sequence to make sure material on the PSSA was covered before the test. This tweaking approach to improvement contrasts with the most bonded math department in our sample, Striver High School, where a new integrated math curriculum was selected to address coverage issues and also because of its emphasis on word problems. Notably, while Striver High School’s district office made the initial broad decision to change to integrated math, program selection and implementation was left to the department. Other district offices in Pennsylvania have not relied on departmental organization in this way. Forrest County in fact “took away department meetings,” as one teacher put it, replacing them with district-organized professional development sessions. The PSSA includes word problems that require written responses from students, necessitating “math writing,” according to a teacher at Mountain View High School, that “teaches [students] English in math class” as a resistant veteran of Forest Pines characterized it. While the PSSA has therefore to some extent introduced English into the math curriculum by students to explain their answers in writing, it has similarly
Subject Matters, p 20 introduced features associated with math and foreign language into the English curriculum. By promoting a version of English that is relatively more defined, less dynamic, and more sequential (Stodolsky and Grossman 1995) accountability in Pennsylvania has, at least in part, restructured English. Some English teachers downplayed the influence of accountability by arguing that its focus on reading and writing skills is inherent in the “inner make-up of the English teacher,” and consistent with “issues we’ve always been addressing.” There was, however, some indication of a narrowing of the parameters of English as a subject matter in comparison to the multiple possible paradigmatic versions of English that Ball and Lacey (1980) found teachers can embrace. English teachers in Pennsylvania were more likely to talk about “literacy” than literature, and more about “skills” and “strategies” than creativity. At Ivy High School, a district-led curriculum-mapping effort in English is, according to one teacher, “based on the skills, skills that we need to teach them.” Literature-oriented instruction had not been totally displaced, but, especially in courses for lower level students and 9th graders, a skills and literacy focus was seen as an important complement to literature and an effective means to teach the standards. Importantly, a shift in thinking about English as skill development moves English closer to being a subject where curriculum coverage and possibly sequence matters. An English teacher at Ivy High School, for example, explained how students are placed into a PSSA-inspired course for 10th graders according to their proficiency level scores on a supplementary district test, which then allows teachers to “zone in on the specific skills that they are lacking.” Conclusion Our findings show that accountability design sets at least some of the parameters within which high school departments respond by structuring the kinds of actions that are possible. Archbald and Porter (1994) foresee two possible models of the department emerging in response to centralized curriculum control at the state or district level. In the first, higher department influence emerges to coordinate information sharing, problem discussion, and coverage coordination. In the second, lower departmental influence emerges because control policies replace some of the roles and decisions departments would otherwise assume. Consistent with Archbald and Porter’s first model, we found that bonded departments, although very rare in our sample, were able to identify accountability-related problems and take collective action to enhance their performance
Subject Matters, p 21 within the parameters of action enabled by central education authorities. Somewhat inconsistent with Archbald and Porter’s second model, however, we found that in some fragmented and bundled departments, centrally determined curricular activities prompted teachers to interact more around curriculum and instruction, at least to those within their department who shared the same courses or grade levels. In contexts where departments were organizationally very weak, accountability could therefore prompt more inclusivity and mobilization around collective goals but not necessarily involving the entire department. Generally, regardless of department type, we found that most coordination and collaboration occurred not with generic subject matter colleagues but within departmental sub-groupings with colleagues who shared courses and grade levels, and were therefore similarly affected by accountability. Our findings also indicate that subject matter itself can be redefined by accountability design. Specifically, in Pennsylvania, emphasis on language and communication skills in English has promoted an English paradigm with features somewhat akin to those identified for math and foreign language, specifically in being relatively defined, sequential, and static. This has not, however, led to an increase in department-wide coordination since in most departments, not all teachers are similarly affected by accountability. It appears likely therefore that in the context of standards- based accountability, it is not just the invisible structure of the subject matter department that differentiates high school teachers, but how different grade levels and courses, and therefore teachers, within a department are implicated in the accountability system.
Subject Matters, p 22 References:
Archbald, D.A. and Porter, A.C. (1994) Curriculum Control and Teachers’ Perceptions of Autonomy and Satisfaction, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 16(1):21- 39.
Ball, S.J. and Lacey, C. (1980) Subject Disciplines as the Opportunity for Group Action: A Measured Critique of Subject Sub-Cultures. In P. Woods (Ed.), Teacher Strategies: Explorations in the Sociology of the School. London: Croom Helm.
Bidwell, C.E. and Yasumoto, J.Y. (1999) The Collegial Focus: Teaching Fields, Collegial Relationships, and Instructional Practice in American High Schools, Sociology of Education, 72:234-256.
Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. (1991) Organizational Learning and Communities-of- Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation. Organization Science, 2(1): 58-80.
Carnoy, M., & Loeb, S. (2004) Does external accountability affect student outcomes? A cross-state analysis. In S. H. Fuhrman & R. F. Elmore (Eds.), Redesigning accountability systems for education, pp. 189-219. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Fuhrman, S.H. (1999) The New Accountability. CPRE Policy Brief, RB-27-January 1999. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Goertz, M. E., & Duffy, M. C. (2001) Assessment and Accountability Systems in the 50 States: 1999-2000. Philadelphia, PA: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Jackson, P. (1968) Life in Classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Johnson, S.M. (1990) The Primacy and Potential of High School Departments. In M. McLaughlin, J.Talbert, and N. Bascia (Eds.) The Context of Teaching in Secondary Schools: Teacher Realities. New York: Teachers College Press.
Little, J.W. (2002) Professional Community and the Problem of High School Reform, International Journal of Educational Research, 37: 693-714.
Lortie, D. (1969) School Teacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McLaughlin, M., & Talbert, J. (2001) Professional communities and the work of high school teaching. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.
Olson, L. (2005) Summit Fuels Push to Improve High Schools, Education Week, March 9. Downloaded March 13th from: www.edweek.org/we/articles/2005/03/09/26summit.h24.html.
Subject Matters, p 23 Rowan, B. (1990) Commitment and Control: Alternative Strategies for the Organizational Design of Schools, Review of Research in Education, 16: 353-389.
Siskin, L. S. (2003) When an irresistible force meets an immovable object: Core lessons about high schools and accountability. In M. Carnoy, R. Elmore, and L. S. Siskin (Eds.), The New Accountability: High Schools and high-stakes testing, pp. 175-194. New York, NY: Rutledge Falmer Press.
Siskin, L.S. (1994) Realms of Knowledge: Academic Departments in Secondary Schools. Washington, DC: The Falmer Press.
Stodolsky, S.S. and Grossman, P.L. (1995) The Impact of Subject Matter on Curricular Activity: An Analysis of Five Academic Subjects, American Educational Research Journal, 32(2):227-249.
Subject Matters, p 24