Constructing a Democratic Foundation for School-Based Reform: The Local Politics of School Autonomy and Internal Governance

Introduction and Overview

This chapter portrays and explores several aspects of our work as external change agents who have been involved in numerous comprehensive, school-based educational reform efforts in the United States. School-based reforms are primarily conceptualized, initiated, and acted on by a particular school community (e.g., administrators and teachers with additional involvement from support staff, parents, community leaders, and, to some degree, students) rather than from other locations of power such as government agencies, corporations, or district administration (e.g., Barth, 1990; Fullan, 1993; Glickman, 1993; Hofenberg & Levin, 1993; Sarason, 1990).

While many think of school reform solely in terms of standards, curriculum, approaches to teaching, and/or discipline techniques, much of what goes on during these efforts is also political (e.g., Anderson, 1996; Dow, 1991; Mirel, 1994; Muncey & McQuillan, 1992). Micropolitics refers to the use of formal and [Page 298]informal power to achieve goals within a given school or district (Blase, 1998).

From this perspective, one aspect of educational reform concerns altering the political relationships and dynamics of power within a given school or district.

Although the school community controls the content and nature of school-based reform, it is not uncommon for external change agents to provide temporary leadership, guidance, and assistance. Fortunately, there is a plethora of scholarship that addresses the processes of this work (e.g., Comer, Haynes, Joyner, & Ben-Avie, 1996; Elmore, 1990; Fullan, 1993; Glickman, 1993; Murphy, 1991) and more important, a small but significant discourse concerning the nature and struggles of these efforts in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe (e.g., Goodman, 1994; Hargreaves, 1994; Hatch, 1998; Korostoff, Beck, & Gibb, 1998; Smyth, 1995; Sulla, 1998). This chapter contributes to this latter body of scholarship by exploring the way we (the Harmony Education Center) and several schools1 during the last dozen years have worked together on comprehensive school-based reform projects. The focus of this particular chapter is on issues related to school autonomy and internal governance. As White (1992) stated, “While nearly everyone concerned about education is talking about school restructuring and the need for school-based management, little is known about how school decentralization actually works, how authority is relocated, and how school decentralization affects teachers” (p. 69). Prior to this exploration, it is important to provide some background of who we are and the nature of our work.

Harmony Education Center and School-Based Reform Work

About 15 years ago, the first author of this chapter conducted an interpretive study of Harmony, an independent school serving children and adolescents (Goodman, 1992). The stated purpose of Harmony School is to create an education that fosters the development of a critical, liberal, social democracy. The term critical is used in the sense that it is unwise to take a given notion of democracy for granted; liberal refers to beliefs in individual freedom, privacy, and opportunity; and social means that, as Dewey (1927) argued, democracy is best viewed as a “way of life” rather than merely a set of political rituals (e.g., voting) and governmental structures (e.g., congress, president). Social democracy emphasizes values such as equity, social justice, and the common good. As the title of this chapter suggests, the primary focus of our work is to bring democratic values, structures, and habits of interaction to schools for the purpose of facilitating meaningful educational reform.

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