EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Michael Mintrom

Richard Walley

Rethinking Education Governance in the Twenty-First Century Conference Thomas B. Fordham Institute Center for American Progress December 1, 2011

Abstract: This chapter surveys education governance in six jurisdictions that have enjoyed high average levels of student attainment on standardized international tests over a sustained period. The survey explores how different governing institutions and relationships shape the content of education policy and school operations. The featured jurisdictions are: Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Wide variation exists among governance arrangements in these jurisdictions, so it is possible to assess whether some specific arrangements generate better student outcomes than others. In fact, links between governance and student achievement are weak, suggesting that intermediary factors have far greater influence than governance itself. We claim that governance reforms will serve to promote improved student achievement only when the new governance arrangements make educational effectiveness the central goal. Further, due recognition must be given to the far greater influence of policy and program factors, like teaching quality. We drawn six lessons for governance reformers: (1) Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of leadership, (4) Focus on classroom practices, (5) Address student preparation; and (6) Address teacher preparation.

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EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley1 In the present era, the leaders of national, state, and local governments the world over care deeply about the quality of schooling in their respective jurisdictions. Political leaders, public intellectuals, and business elites have long recognized the importance of education for social cohesion, for the transmission of social values, and for economic advancement. This explains the widespread development in the nineteenth century of systems for universal public education, and the efforts made worldwide in the twentieth century to emulate, expand, and enhance those systems. The present era, then, shares with the past a relentless quest on the part of governments everywhere to ensure that education of suitable quality is made available to as many children and young people as possible. But the present era is also distinct. The most noticeable difference between the past and the present is the urgency and importance that is now attached to ensuring quality education for all. The causes of that difference are twofold, and closely related. First, it is now well understood that knowledge is the fundamental driver of economic advancement (Florida 2004; Helpman 2004). Second, continuous economic advancement predicated on the market system, and the competition engendered by that system, has led to greater integration of local, regional, and national economies with global economic processes (Friedman 2007; Porter 1990). Intensification of economic competition has wiped out much of the stability and predictability that once characterized everyday life in economically advanced democracies. Doing whatever can be done to win back some of that stability and predictability has become a mandate for political leaders everywhere. In a nutshell, that explains why education and, specifically, education governance, is a hot topic globally. It will remain a hot topic for the foreseeable future. Through their combined efforts, the authors of other chapters in this volume have effectively portrayed the range of issues that arise when we consider educational governance. There is little doubt that governing institutions and relationships can have significant influence on the content of education policy and on school operations. So while governance of public schooling in the United States is fraught with complexity and controversy, everything turns on a simple question: Who should control what happens in the classroom? To a large degree, the history of public schooling in the United States is a story of battles for that control. The progressive movement that was in ascendance from 1890 to 1920 placed considerable emphasis on the need to separate
1

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New Zealand Ministry of Education.

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the administration of governmental systems from the control of politicians (Knott and Miller 1987). The idea was that bureaucracies would be staffed by professionals exhibiting neutral competence (Kaufman 1960). In the realm of public education, the progressive movement was responsible for the creation of school boards that served to buffer schools from the direct interventions of politicians in decisions concerning the curriculum, the hiring of staff, and so on (Tyack 1974). Subsequent efforts during the twentieth century to rebalance the control of schools, and give politicians and parents more influence have been thoroughly documented (Ravitch 1983; Clune and Witte 1990). The progressive movement, and the governance arrangements that it successfully locked in place, cast a very long shadow over public schooling in the United States. By designas documented by Tyack and Tobin (1994)much political savvy guided the establishment of the one best system of public schooling, and it was built to last. This is shown by the resilience of the system against wave upon wave of pressures for reform. The creation of education bureaucracies operating at arms length from political influence has made systematic, top-down change extremely difficult. (See Jeffrey Henigs chapter for a review of executive-level efforts to achieve greater control over public schools). In this chapter, we seek to contextualize recent discussions of educational governance in the United States by contrasting developments in this country with those in several other countries. Our comparative study shows that distinctly different governance arrangements are equally capable of producing excellent results, as measured by student performance on standardized international tests. This finding is consistent with recent work by John Hattie (2005, 2009). Through meta-analyses of student outcome data, Hattie has shown that a variety of classroomlevel practices have much stronger impacts on student learning than do differences in class size and other matters that broadly link to school governance. We conclude from this convergence of evidence that education governance can make a significant difference to student outcomes so long as it supports effective practices in schools and classrooms. The chapter is organized in six sections. Part one considers general factors relating to consideration and categorization of governance arrangements across different jurisdictions. Part two considers the comparative performance of our case countries on international standardized testing. We then move to a series of more specific case studies and crossjurisdictional analyses. Part three considers the contrasting cases of high-performers Finland and South Korea. Part four briefly reviews the recent history of governance reforms in the United Kingdom and the resulting effects on student outcomes. Part five considers the governance of schools, their usefulness as units of comparison for performance, and some indicative information on ways in which governance may, through intermediary factors, influence student achievement. Part six presents our lessons for governance reformers: (1) Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of leadership, (4) Focus on 3 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

classroom practices, (5) Address student preparation; and (6) Address teacher preparation. We conclude by considering the implications of these lessons for education governance reform in the United States and elsewhere. Part One: Ways of Thinking about and Comparing Governance In seeking to understand governance struggles in any area of public policy, it is crucial to appreciate the ways that specific actors can effectively undermine, constrain, or veto decisions made by others (Konig, Tsebelis, Debus 2010). In general, the greater the number of people who are given legitimacy to weigh in on decisions, the greater the number of veto points that any given decision must clear. It seems redundant to note that comparing education governance arrangements internationally is complex. The central questions of who makes which decisions on what in what circumstances have a wide variety of permutations and forms that make simple comparisons difficult. The range of factors needing to be governed, and scope of diversity even within jurisdictions, should make us suspicious of simple conclusions. (This point resonates with evidence in Barry Rabes contribution to this volume, where the focus is placed on governance issues in the distinctly different areas of health care and environmental protection.) Figure 1 presents a non-exhaustive matrix of actors and decisions in education governance. Each blank box in the center of the matrix can be thought of as a veto point, offering an opportunity for people to wrestle control in decision-making. The first thing to note about this figure is that placing a check in any box on the matrix does not preclude a check being placed anywhere else. Finances may be managed by a parent committee, approved by a local board, and voted by central government within an existing and possibly quite limiting legislative framework. The multi-dimensional complexity portrayed in Figure 1 continues to reveal itself when considering that simple catch-all terms such as, for example, curriculum are not homogenous. Curriculum can range from prescriptive programs of learning to broad frameworks with a great deal of teacher autonomy; sometimes both alongside each other at different ages or with different subjects. Additionally, it is a feature, particularly of many Anglo-Saxon systems, that dispersion of control across this matrix varies across institutions within a jurisdiction. Long-established private schools, and newer entities such as academies in the UK and charter schools in the US, enjoy a greater degree of autonomy than their rule-constrained counterparts. But the payment of fees or close engagement of parents in school decision-making changes the balance of what one might call soft governancea degree of influence rather than control. Finally, the nature and circumstance of the unit of comparisonthe jurisdictionhas huge implications for thinking about governance. For example, whether a decision or control is delegated in legislation to a Cabinet-level Secretary of Education or a bureaucrat within a Department of Education has implications that are played out in the context of the constitutional 4 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

arrangements of the jurisdiction itself. Personalities, finely-attuned balances of power, and political horse-trading in spheres completely unrelated to education may have profound influences on the style of governance applied to education. It is also worth noting that decisionmaking in these jurisdictional units tends to be driven more by individual idiosyncrasies that structural commonalities. Even looking across a jurisdiction where school curriculum is set at a national levelsuch as in New Zealandand one with more locally-established curriculasuch as the United Statesdisguises the fact that New Zealand, with a school-age population of around 750,000, is smaller than many of the local decision-making entities in the US. Culturethe finely attuned balance of social norms and expectations that places pressure on individuals and groups to behave in certain waysplays an enormous part in the successful operation of education governance arrangements. Common evidence of the comparatively greater success of parent education governance in high-income or high-SES areas is but one indicator of this (Robinson and Ward 2005). Reducing layers of government control of public schools can greatly reduce veto-points and, hence, contestation of decision-making. It also holds the potential to address concerns about the uneven spread of managerial competencies throughout an education system. This helps explain why, during the past two decades, we have seen mayors, state governors, and presidents seeking to achieve greater control over traditional forms of school governance, always to the detriment of control previously exerted by actors closer to the schools themselves, such as superintendents and boards (Allen and Mintrom 2010; Henig and Rich 2004).

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Figure 1: Actors and decisions in education governance Curriculum Standards and Assessment Enrolment Recruitment Finance Operations Management structure Class size and structure Property maintenance etc

Central government Local government Local governance entities (e.g. school boards) Local or central bureaucracy (e.g. Ministry of Education) School governance entities (e.g. UK governors) Principals / head teachers School middle management Other specialists (e.g. financial) Parents Teachers Students Other interested community parties External specialists

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(e.g. academics) Etc.

The search for simple conclusions relating education governance to student outcomes is unlikely to bear useful fruit. Easy conclusions abound, but those that hold up to rigorous interrogation are few and far between. To further set the scene for this chapter we next consider soft and hard control of schools, and indicate some ways to map veto points in educational governance. The chief difficulty here is one of interpretation of information, and the real life effects of policy settings. The example of school choice in Finland is instructive, and explored in a little more detail later in this chapter. We note a number of seemingly conflicting key facts. School choice in Finland is the most minimal of all jurisdictions under discussion. Official settings can simply be characterized as zero choice; school places are assigned and that is that. Nonetheless, a process exists whereby parents can apply to have this assignation changed, and around a quarter of parents do so. We also note that around 50 percent of Finnish principals report other schools in their locality competing with them for students. So some degree of choice (or de facto choice) exists in Finland, but clearly, the ability of parents to actualize this choice is limited. So how does one characterize the level of choice in this system? This leads to a further challenge, the role of soft governance. In systems as complex as education, one anticipates a wide variety of individual circumstances. Relationships, personalities, incomes, locations, and general predispositions all come into complex play. Frustrating though it might be to those with an appetite for centralized control of schools, in reality a school-level decision on particular testing practices can be as influenced by the principals friendship with a key parent as by central government policy. A simple and common circumstance is practice around enrolment choice. Typically, home location determines eligibility for attendance at a particular school across most jurisdictions. Property prices in those areas reflect the ability to enroll a child in a favored school, and this will often in turn be advertised by realtors. Parents with the necessary wherewithal will make these decisions carefully, years in advance. This is a fascinating user-pays situation, where markets assign prices to education through intermediary products, and provide some parents with one type of choice where none is supposed to exist. Similar behavior is seen in some parents attending particular religious institutions to secure enrolments into faith schools. Another example of the impact of soft governance can be considered by working through Figure 2, which presents our suggested matrix in a case study of New Zealand. We highlight the relevant decision veto points below.

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Figure 2: Actors and decisionsan example from New Zealand Curriculum Standards and Assessment Enrolment Recruitment Finance Operations Management structure Class size and structure Property maintenance etc

Central government Local government Local governance entities (e.g. school boards) Local or central bureaucracy (e.g. Ministry of Education) School governance entities (e.g. UK governors) Principals / head teachers School middle management Other specialists (e.g. financial) Parents Teachers Students Other interested community parties External specialists

X X

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(e.g. academics) etc

The matrix in Figure 2 highlights some key features of the New Zealand system of school governance. Local government and regional governance entities do not exist in New Zealand. Every school is governed by its own board of trustees consisting of parents, teachers, students in secondary schools and other local luminaries, and the school principal. Ostensibly, the board of trustees runs all aspects of school operations with the principal acting in a kind of CEO role, and reporting to the Board. There is a strong theoretical and legislative underpinning to this arrangement. But real life examples of differing arrangements abound. Common forms include instances where the principal has captured the board and runs a benign dictatorship with little meaningful parent input. Another common form involves instances where the board works in direct opposition to the principal in dysfunctional arrangements that tend eventually to be dissolved by central government intervention. Thus, local governance of schools tends to be characterized by levels of expertise, the strength of specific personalities, the historic level of board engagement in decision-making, and the availability of financial resources. Fundamentally, in New Zealand at least, there are as many governance arrangements as there are schools. This should not lead us to abandon our line of enquiry concerning how governance arrangements shape educational outcomes. However, it should lead would-be reformers of governance systems to be alert to the difficulties surrounding efforts to wrestle control of what happens in schools and classrooms. Most importantly, we should avoid applying generalizations to situations that defy simple categorization. Part 2: Contrasting Approaches to Education Governance and Student Performance In this chapter we have chosen to consider six jurisdictions in particular as they share broad comparability, in terms of reasonably well-developed systems of universal public education (albeit with varying levels of private contribution). It is fundamentally more meaningful in terms of culture and concept to compare the US to, for example, Australia or the UK than to Qatar. Nonetheless, one of the recurring themes of this chapter is the caution that must be exercised in comparison and transposition of results and findings. Small differences play out in large ways. As a starting point for considering the impact of governance on student outcomes internationally, we now summarize outcome data from the OECDs Program of International Student Assessment (PISA). The overarching question from examination of this, and other evidence, is whether it demonstrates or infers a link between governance arrangements and student outcomes. The data from this program is relatively comprehensive for all comparator jurisdictions (PIRLS 9 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

and TIMMS, two other significant international assessment programmes, do not feature comparable data from all comparator jurisdictions). PISA is a series of standardized tests in mathematics, reading and science administered to 15-year-olds in a wide range of jurisdictions. It began in 2000, and four assessments have taken place, the most recent being in 2009. Figure 3 contains three graphs showing mean country scores for our six comparator jurisdictions in reading, mathematics and science from 2000 through 2009. Figure 3: Time Series of PISA Results Across Six Jurisdictions, 2000-2009 a) Reading

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b) Mathematics

c) Science

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The results presented in Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c have two notable features. First, the means themselves have small standard errors (usually somewhere between two and five points), so differences are both substantively and statistically significant. Second, all our jurisdictions appear to perform reasonably well; only the United States and the United Kingdom drop a little below the OECD mean in some years and subjects. With the possible exception of the science and mathematics scores for the United States, none of these jurisdictions perform inadequately, at least in this study. There is no evidence of a crisis in student outcomes. Nonetheless, if keeping ahead of the rest of the world in education matters for economic competitivenessand evidence increasingly suggests that it doesthen there is good reason to avoid complacency and to look for lessons to learn from other jurisdictions that are producing equivalent, or slightly better, education outcomes. The jurisdictions under study seem to fall into three distinct groups. The US and UK hover around the OECD mean in most years and scores, although the UK appeared to suffer a serious degradation in performance between 2000 and 2006 (no data are available for the UK from 2003). There is a mid-high performance group of jurisdictions that appear relatively stable, although falling slightly over time in reading and math: New Zealand, Australia, Canada. Finally, both Finland and Korea are notable for their consistently high but slightly unstable scores over time.

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One factor that seems to merit consideration is the congruence across the three sets of results. It is not the case, for example, that students from Finland seem to be tremendously good at science but suffer in terms of literacy. They just appear to be equally good at everything. Equally, the dip and then rise of US performance is common across all three sets of data.2 There are two possible conclusions to be drawn here. Firstly, something exogenousabout the administration of the test, for exampleproduces such consistent results across areas that do not need to be consistent. But PISA is a carefully designed study with a large sample size (countries need to assess at least 4,000 students to participate). The other possible conclusion is that there is indeed something common about the learning experience of many students participating in the study. Possibly, the education systemand the governance settings of that systemare factors that exert a broad and diffuse influence. Figure 4 offers an attempt to compare PISA data to quantified measures of governance. It considers reading, mathematics and science scores against three quantified governance measures from PISA 2009. These are: An index of school responsibility for resource allocation An indicator of school choice, as measured by the percentage of principals reporting one or more schools in the local area competing for students An index of school responsibility for curriculum and assessment There are important caveats that come with these measures. They have been chosen from PISA as they are clear and quantifiable. However, taken on their own, they can seem counterintuitive, and disagree with our assessments of country education systems elsewhere in this paper. For example, Finlands relatively low score on curriculum responsibility reflects the role of local boards of education as opposed to school-level decisions; but as noted elsewhere, these are small and extremely local entities, and in practice teachers enjoy a great deal of autonomy over these matters. In comparison, New Zealand reports a high degree of curriculum autonomy despite a nationally legislated curriculum and a highly prevalent (although not compulsory) nationally administered senior secondary qualification. This may be because the New Zealand curriculum is a relatively non-prescriptive learning framework, which deliberately grants autonomy to teachers while providing overall national consistency. Similarly, a high percentage of Korean principals report competitor schools, despite the Korean system offering virtually no parent choice. This may be more of a reflection of the
The only counterfactual here is Korea, whose performance in reading seemed to peak in 2006, but at the expense of science.
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perception of principals than actual parent discretion. This is but one indication of the influence of culture and local circumstance, which can create distinct gaps between intent and outcome, or between technical description and actual experience. The results are interesting, as much for what they do not tell us as what they do. Simple categorizations, and even key indicators and indices, do not tell a good story about governance. Links to educational outcomes remain opaque. We must constantly be wary of the allure of simple heuristics. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the only observable relationship here is a tendency for higher-scoring jurisdictions to prefer national or regional resource allocation over school-level. In itself, a counterintuitive finding, and one not supported when the results of all PISA jurisdictions are taken into account. The same data for all jurisdictions participating in PISA show, if anything, a slight relationship in the opposite direction.

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Figure 4: Relating Student Outcomes to Education Governance Arrangements Index of school responsibility for resource allocation (OECD mean = 0, positive values indicate greater balance of school responsibility over regional and national bodies) Reading (national average points) percent of principals reporting Index of school responsibility one or more schools in the same for curriculum and assessment local area competing for students (OECD mean = 0, positive values indicate greater balance of school responsibility over regional and national bodies)

Mathematics (national average points)

Science (national average points)

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Frustratingly, this analysis does not clarify the nature of governance factors that influence student achievement. However, more can be learned from PISA by examining the impact of the longest-standing alternative governance arrangementprivate education (see Figure 5). Public, universal education for the vast majority of jurisdictions is a relatively recent phenomenon, with a current lifespan of no more than 150 years. Private education has been the predominant form of education for a much greater period of human history, but, for the ages of five to around fifteen in most developed economies, has been usurped by publicly-funded education over the last 100 years. The notion of private education is subject to as many subtleties as education governance, but it is safe to assume that across most jurisdictions, this is a form of education paid for by the consumer or their families. As a broad generalization, the direct purchase relationship comes with greater institutional autonomy, and greater accountability to the purchaser. Often private schools benefit from higher levels of income than their public counterparts, and enjoy better facilities, and sometimes are able to offer higher rates of teacher pay. Due to the purchase relationship, and the wide availability of a free-of-charge alternative in most jurisdictions, private schools tend to be populated by students from wealthier backgrounds. The PISA 2009 results contain much cogent information about the effect of private schooling. Most importantly, across the participant countries, a thirty-point reading score difference, in the favour of private schools, exists between students attending private and public schools (OECD, 2010). This is approximately equivalent to two-thirds of the difference between the lowest- and highest-performing comparator jurisdictions in 2009 (the UK and Korea). However, this mean difference between public and private schooling outcomes narrows to negligibly few points when controlled for socio-economic status (OECD 2011). The OECD suggests a small number of factors of private schooling that account for the remainder of this point difference. These include choice of curriculum, better disciplinary climates and better resourcing. Across our comparator jurisdictions, the picture is one of highly interesting variance. The two highest-performing jurisdictions, Finland and Korea, show a small but relatively stable advantage in private schooling. The UK and U.S. results are different and quite extraordinary, however. In the lowest-scoring comparator jurisdictions, private schooling makes a huge difference, but after controlling for SES, the difference is negative. An awkward implication that could be drawn is that those private school students would have been better off in a public school (and their parents could have saved a great deal of money). But maybe, more sensibly, what these results tell us are something about the relative success of public school 16 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

institutions in different jurisdictions in eliminating the disparities between students that accrue from SES differentials. These are fascinating and complex results that deserve further investigation. In summary, achievement data tell us that this set of alternative governance arrangements do impact student achievement. However, they do so in a very small (and sometimes negative) way when the much more influential factor of socio-economic status is taken into account. Figure 5: Difference in Mean Reading Scores Between Students Attending Private and Public Schools

Part 3: The Contrasting Cases of Finland and South Korea Of all the jurisdictions under comparison, it is Finland and South Korea that tend to attract most comment. Both countries perform consistently well in international evaluations, particularly PISA; South Korea and Finland ranked second and third in the world respectively on reading scores in 2009. Both also achieved top five placings in Science and Mathematics. Within reading scores, they formed a group of three countries with Hong-Kong China whose scores were not statistically significantly different. Fundamentally, their performance is comparable. It is worth considering these results more closely. One further indicator of system performance is spread of results. PISA divides the tested student population into reading levels ranging from one (the lowest) to six. Both jurisdictions show comparatively few children reading at low levels and 17 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

comparatively greater numbers of children reading at higher levels. But whereas Finland has more than twice the average percentage of students performing at the highest level in reading, South Korea comes in only just above the OECD average. Finland also enjoys a relatively small spread of scores, implying it experiences consistent success as well as better chances of, on at least one measure, excellence. The characteristics of the systems in these jurisdictions contain interesting similarities as well as differences. PISA in 2009 contained some categorised features of education systems that it is worth exploring. Both jurisdictions offer little parent choice Both South Korea and Finland offer low or nonexistent levels of parent choice of school. In South Korea, children are randomly assigned to both public and private schools. In Finland, few private schools exist, and all are comprehensive, that is, granted little or no leeway over student selection. An interesting adjunct to this is that, in both jurisdictions, private schools are funded by the state. Nonetheless, we must return to earlier caveats about this information; a high percentage of principals in Korea report local competition for enrolments, a fact which may indicate a high level of academic competition between institutions despite a low level of choice. Both jurisdictions are somewhat decentralised Through the pressure of successive waves of population growth, South Korea devolved greater degrees of responsibility to municipal authorities, consisting of sixteen provincial offices and 182 local boards. These entities take care of budget and general administration tasks. The majority of control of schools in Finland sits with municipalities, of which there are 336. However, we should be cautious of simple comparisons. The school-age population of South Korea is approximately 7.5m, compared to approximately 800,000 for Finland. This makes the smallest South Korean administrative entity approximately twenty times the size of one in Finland. These entities have quite different spans of control. There also appears to be a subtle but important distinction between the drivers of this decentralization. The Finnish system emphasises localalmost village-levelcontrol of schooling. The historical drivers of Korean decentralization are more around efficiency; simply that the system grew too large to be efficiently managed centrally. One interpretation of this latter driver is that when examining the decentralised Korean system, we are simply viewing a centralised system with distributed administrative functions. Attitudes to assessment practices add further weight to this interpretation. Both countries treat curriculum and assessment very differently The Finnish education system is characterised by something that would be all but an anathema to many western economieszero state testing until the final secondary level assessment, and 18 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

indeed very little official testing, period. In contrast, and in common with many developed Asian economies, South Korea tests often and for many purposes, with tests occurring as early as elementary school. Much effort is expended studying for the all-important CSAT university entry exams, but with many (albeit non-standard) staging posts along the way. The curriculum comparison is also revealing. Both jurisdictions ostensibly implement a national curriculum document. But the on-the-ground approach could not be more different. The South Korean national curriculum appears to be adhered to strongly, with centrally mandated subjects and textbooks. This assessment should be qualified by reference to recent moves to decentralise some aspects of the Korean curriculum to a school and teacher level (Kim, 2005). Nonetheless, our qualitative assessment is a high degree of curriculum homogeneity, mostly enforced by the high-stakes rule of the centrally-administered CSAT (Lee 2010; Suen and Wu 2006). In contrast, the Finnish curriculum is implemented almost entirely at a municipality level, with individual teachers enjoying a high degree of autonomy over curriculum subjects and choice of texts. This point is worth exploring further. The OECD notes a positive relationship between low school transfer rates (the rate at which students are moved to different schools, most often due to behavioural or other academic difficulties) and autonomy in setting curriculum and assessment practices. In fact, autonomy over curriculum across the OECD seems to be a key and important setting correlated with improved reading scores. When considering the percentage of variation between countries in reading performance accounted for by school system features, PISA 2009 found that a difference of around 23 percent was attributable to autonomy for curriculum and assessment. A difference of around 1 percent was attributable to responsibility for resource allocation. Teachers enjoy high professional standing, but there are differences Finland in particular is often noted as having a carefully selected teaching workforce, qualified to Masters level. South Korean teachers complete a four year programme of tertiary study, but this does not make them much different to most other developed economies. Equally, teacher pay in Finland is only slightly higher than the OECD average, whereas South Korean teachers are paid at a level second only to Luxembourgoise educators (who are generally cited as a high outlier in teacher pay discussions). What both countries do appear to have in common is a culture of respect for the profession of teaching. This cultural x-factor is often cited as a missing component in a number of mid-ranking education systems; that teachers are not placed on a par with doctors or lawyers in the social hierarchy. Both jurisdictions place high value on pre-primary education

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PISA data paint something of a counterintuitive picture of pre-primary education. Whereas most comparator jurisdictions show significant upward differences in reading scores for children that attended pre-primary education, these differences are so small as to be statistically insignificant for Korea and Finland. This could easily be interpreted as pre-primary education adding little to the overall experience, but could just as easily be seen as a factor of education systems with high consistency of performance and high levels of access to pre-primary educationapproaching universal. A related feature of the systems is that, in both jurisdictions, children do not begin formal elementary education until a comparatively late ageseven in Finland, and between six and seven in South Korea. Overall, there is not a great deal to suggest that governance makes a strong difference to educational outcomes for children, at least for the international education communitys star performers. But there are nonetheless features here which are worth exploring further. In sum, if you want to be Finland or South Korea, it would seem to be the case that you should: First and foremost, adopt policies that value good teachers. Devolve funding and administration to a local level, but possibly keep decision-making out of the schools themselves. Adopt enrolment policies that offer little or no parent choice. Emphasize pre-primary education. Although not exemplified by South Korea, it would also seem to make sense looking at broader data to devolve responsibility for curriculum and assessment to a local level. The overarching message that comes through this examination of high-fliers is much the same as from many other places. Teaching matterspedagogy, curriculum, resources, and assessment. Good governance must support these items as a priority. Part 4: Governance Experiments in the United Kingdom The UK experience of shifts in the locus of control of public schools has a history of over twenty years. (For a more detailed discussion, see Michael Barbers chapter in this volume.) Early in this experience, activities focused on removing a layer of controlthe local education authorityand replacing it with parent governing committees. Later experiments have varied different types of control, with mixed but interesting results. Grant Maintained Schools

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The operation and funding of public schools had been under the control of local education authorities for around eighty years until reforms in 1988 brought about the potential for devolution of power to individual schools by becoming grant maintained. By a vote of parents, powers previously held by the local education authority could be devolved to a board of governors, with corresponding devolution of some funding, and the ability to apply to central government for further funding streams. Boards of governors became owners of the schools property, and employers of school staff (The National Archives, 1999). Grant maintained schools were also able to apply some selection criteria to students. Interestingly, at the same time as the UK government sought to shift the locus of control of schools to smaller, devolved parent entities, the same 1988 reforms brought about the National Curriculum in the UK, which standardized subjects and learning goals across all public schooling in the UK (private schools retained the ability to establish their own curriculum). The ability, for the first time, to compare schools on a like for like basis, with standardized testing at seven, eleven, and fourteen, and national qualifications at sixteen and eighteen, was a move towards centralization possibly far greater than the devolution of grant maintained status. At their peak, 3 percent of primary schools and 19 percent of secondary schools were grant maintained. The lower figure for primary schools may be reflective of a minimum size limit of 300 pupils for application for grant maintained status (The National Archives, 1999). Grant maintained schools were abolished in 1998, as one of the first acts of the incoming centreleft Labour government, and property and staffing control reverted to local education authorities. Over the preceding period some researchers noted academic performance improving in grantmaintained schools faster than those which remained under local authority control; but, in a pattern that is already familiar, were able to attribute most, if not all, of this performance differential to changing makeup of student populations as higher-SES families became attracted to grant-maintained schools (Levacic and Hardman, 1999). One might surmise that the modicum of selection power attributable to grant maintained schools also played some part here. What are we to conclude from this? Maybe only that the macro results seem unsurprising. Aspects of the education system that have a direct impact on student achievement remained largely untouched, orwith the National Curriculumbrought under greater state control. Whatever small impacts may theoretically accrue from shifting the locus of staff control and some measure of accountability, are lost in the noise of the broader reforms that accompanied the National Curriculum. Academies The early years of the new century saw a new innovation in UK school governance. Academies were completely new schools, intended to replace one or more failing schools in mostly 21 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

deprived, inner-city areas of the UK. A key setting was that academies were to have a sponsor or group of sponsors; individuals or organisations who were to make a financial contribution to the construction of the school, and have a hand in running them. This concept is very different to a number of other governance reforms. At its core, it does not seek to reduce or enhance state control, parent choice or decision-making, and from the outset seeks to apply reform to the points where it is considered most necessary; failing schools in poor communities. What it does seek to do is increase the influence of actors external to the education system since the philanthropic initiatives of the industrial revolution. Academies are directly accountable to the Department for Education, without the intervening layer of a local education authority. Another intriguing element of the policy was that academies are wholly owned by company-type entities (companies limited by guarantee with charitable status). A relatively careful study of the comparative impacts of academy status on student achievement has noted, after taking into account a large number of control variables (including pupil SES and test scores on intake), a statistically significant impact on test scores for early academies (those established before around 2007), but an insignificant impact for later adopters (possibly due to establishment phase effects) (Machin and Vernoit, 2011). The study also notes a significant effect of becoming an academy is an increase in the quality of student intake, as measured by age-11 test scores, and a corresponding decrease in the quality of intake at neighbouring schools. This in itself is not an insignificant point. Based on a meta-analysis of international research findings, Hattie (2005: 401) notes an effect size of 0.50 of peers on student outcomes. This effect size suggests that the presence of more able peers may positively influence less able peers. A strong story forms from the UK evidence, but apparently a story of variable impact. The removal, insertion, and removal of a layer of control, devolution of authority, involvement of altruistic private sector sponsors and construction of entirely new physical facilities to house brand new schools does not seem to impact negatively on student achievement, but positive impacts are variable, and tend to accrue to students from more advantaged backgrounds. SES as a predictor of achievement comes to the fore once again. In fact, matching evidence from factors known to improve student achievement with the range of commentary on academies, the most telling, but frustratingly underexplored, indicator is from the National Audit Office in 2007 most academies have high quality leadership and governance and have improved teaching and learning, drawing on the benefits of their new environments (National Audit Office, 2007). It appears that the quality of leadership of governance mechanisms rather than the design of those mechanisms has the greatest impact on student achievement. Maybe academies have managed to source higher-quality governance from business, NGOs and charities, and this has enabled some improvement in student achievement. But this enabling must have been mediated by practices in teaching and learning that followed on from that good leadership. 22 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

Part 5: Successes and failures in schools; relationships between governance and achievement Another way of considering the inter-relationship between education governance and achievement is to consider the success, or maybe even more usefully, failure, of schools. The notion of the school as an entity that is a crucial element in any intervention logic recurs in conversations about education governance. More or less competition could be cited as good or bad for education; but written into the terms of the debate is the idea that it is competition between schools. Governance by parent committees is most often governance of schools. Is there much evidence that this is actually a useful node of analysis? In fact, much evidence on academic achievement focuses on the primacy of what happens in the classroom (and, indeed, on the much more influential parent, family and socio-economic factors). PISA 2009 again tells us that the greatest variation in performance is within, rather than between, individual institutions and jurisdictions. In short, there is more difference between the worst and best students in any country than between the average scores of the worst and best countries. Similarly, there is more difference between the worst and best student in any school than between the worst and best schools. There is a strong empirical basis to the assertion made regularly in many of our comparator jurisdictions that, despite middling rankings and sometimes huge disparities, our best students are amongst the best in the world. In fact, this is not only true but potentially so true as to be fairly pointless. The best Kyrgyzstan students are amongst the best in the world, but unfortunately around a quarter of the others appear to lack basic functional literacy at age fifteen (OECD, 2010). Nonetheless, there is considerable literature relying on schools as the unit of analysis, and a substantial body of thought backing up the idea that a school can be successful or failing. Accepting for the moment that this is a useful concept, and conceding that the PISA data suggest that schools as institutions hold sway over around 45 percent of the variance in student achievement, what does this mean for governance? Or to consider a different propositiona lot is to be gained across the 30 percent variance in achievement that occurs between schools. What role might governance have there? Australia, in a similar way to federal companions Canada and the U.S., has delegated the bulk of education policymaking to its component jurisdictions. Nonetheless, Australian schooling has shown some general trends overall, not least a significant rise in the number of private schools, with those entities accounting for around a third of enrolments. As well as private and government schools, there is a proportion of Catholic schoolsessentially private schools run by religiously affiliated trusts or boards.

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An analysis of the effectiveness of Australian schools in 2004 went some way to confirming the hypothesis that the institution as a whole can in some way be responsible for the results of individuals, despite those individuals experiencing different teachers and teaching. After controlling for social intake, size, location, sector and achievement on intake, the authors found a wide variation, both above and below an expected level of performance. This was particularly noticeable at the lower levels of scores; some school scores show several standard deviations both above and below the mean. (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, and Teese, 2004). However, the links through to governance in this study were diffuse. Overall, around 90 percent of variation in performance was ascribed to factors other than the school as an entity. Of the remaining 10 percent, only small effects were noticeable for differences between Catholic, Government and Independent schools. Parent choicea matter, it appears, of high public policy value in Australiaseems at a macro level to be adding little to individual school performance. We might hypothesize much better results from private schools in a system where choice is so prevalent. This tends not to be the case. (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, and Teese, 2004) Studies of the relationship between governance and failing schools tend to tell a different story. There is actually a large body of work both on the subject of what makes a good school good, and how to rescue a failing school. We do not propose to investigate it in depth here. Rather, it is noteworthy that the bulk of advice on the matter deals with leadership and governance as a central theme (Robinson 2011). The UKs National Audit Office, relating well-trodden advice in turn from OFSTED and similar entities, establishes a framework of common problems for poorly-performing schools. These areineffective leadership, weak governance, poor standards of teaching, lack of external support, and challenging circumstances. (National Audit Office, 2006) In 2006, it noted about 4 percent of primary and 23 percent of secondary schools could be described as poorly performing. To explore one aspect in a little more depth, the 2006 report noted the crucial role of governors (volunteer parent governing committees) in challenging head teachers and senior teaching staff in failing schools. It appears that an accountability role is important. The centrality of leadership, and the role of the principal as a direction-setting change manager, is also acknowledged. But the idea seems to have been most effectively expressed by the Iowa Lighthouse inquiry into school board behaviour in districts with extreme differences in outcomes (the study compared a small number of very good boards to a small number of very bad boards). Effectiveness here was linked to what must seem obvious best practice. Not only was there a focus on good governance, but this took the form of explicit recognition of the interface between governance and teaching (The Iowa Association of School Boards, 2001).

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New Zealands Education Review Office also notes leadership as a key factor of successful schools, but says little about governance. Its five point framework for successful schools is A focus on the learner Leadership in an inclusive culture Effective teaching Engagement with parents and communities Coherent policies and practice in a cycle of continuous self review (ERO, 2011). Four key points emerge from this discussion that align with messages throughout the chapter. Schools have an impact, but not as much as teachers Governance has an impact on schools, but only a diffuse impact on learners A purposive approach to governance that seeks to make specific links between governance practice and student outcomes is more likely to have a positive impact on student outcomes Although not properly investigated or explored, it is possible to hypothesise that strong or innovative governance measures are most useful when rescuing failing institutions, but have less impact on the high performers. However, a failure of governance often leads to a failure of the institution. Part 6: Lesson Drawing Based on the forgoing survey and discussion of educational governance and student outcomes across six jurisdictions, we now draw lessons for governance reformers. Lesson 1: Avoid costly political battles Transforming education systems requires massive political will that must be sustained over many years. The history of educational reform is littered with examples of failed efforts. Largely, this is because the grammar of schooling has been well-established, and has resulted in a variety of somewhat arbitrary aspects of school systems being treated as essential elements (Tyack and Tobin 1994). Reform efforts that have worked have tended to add new components to school systems, usually leaving other aspects in place. The resulting incrementalism, or tinkering around the edges, has meant that many features of schooling appear the same today as they did a century ago (Tyack and Cuban 1995). Significantly, this kind of system-level resistance to 25 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

change is not unique to the field of education. Incrementalism has long been recognized as a predominate change dynamic in various areas of government activity and in corporations (Cyert and March 1963, Lindblom 1959, Simon 1947; Wildavsky 1964). Getting beyond incrementalism typically involves high levels of coordinated activity led by policy entrepreneurs (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Mintrom 2000). In light of this, effective change efforts often involve engagement in local level experimentation, creation of whole new organizational entities working alongside traditional forms, and efforts to build networks and political coalitions. When considering education reforms, we suggest that efforts should be made to avoid costly political battles. These can readily suck time and energy away from the focus of change itself. In practice, this suggestion implies that creating coalitions of willing change agents and working around the edges of traditional systems are likely to be the most fruitful ways forward. When sufficient evidence is assembled to support arguments for change, and when prefigurative forms of change have had a chance to flourish, the likelihood of securing major change will increase. While teachers unions might be considered a powerful brake on reform, it is also worth considering ways of presenting reform efforts that will not immediately buy a major fight. In fact, a number of actions that would appear to promote the achievement of valued education outcomes also involve raising the status of teaching as a profession. Distasteful as some might find it, first exhausting those options is probably more effective than going directly into battle with the education establishment. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in governance arrangements are likely to generate valued education outcomes without provoking major political battles? Lesson 2: Use appropriate diagnostic tools Systems of public education, to be judged as providing adequate return on investment, must produce outcomes of high value to society. Agreement about what outcomes are most valued can be illusive in pluralistic societies that exhibit diversity and multiculturalism. Yet, even in societies exuding social and cultural homogeneity, conceptions of valued outcomes are subject to on-going, incremental change. In the present age, continuous economic transformation is forcing debate about what matters most in education (Florida 2004, Hirsch 2006, Murnane and Levy 1996, Robinson 2009). Kenneth Strike (1998: 211) has proposed that states and nations should hold schools and students accountable using a high, but narrow bar. For example, all young people, and all societies, benefit when high standards are set regarding the attainment of basic literacy and numeracy. According to Strike, government should not, in the name of pluralism, tolerate either student failure or school failure on these narrow measures. Meanwhile, holding schools and students accountable for performance only in basic literacy and numeracy, leaves considerable scope for school leaders and communities to decide what curricular elements matter most to them, and how they should be taught. From a governance perspective, test results represent vital indicators of system performance. Testing programs generate the information 26 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

required to diagnose how well an education system is performing. Aside from giving a picture of overall system performance, diagnostic tools are most useful when they can identify areas of the system that are not performing well. We advocate use of appropriate diagnostic tools, such as measures of student gain scores, because they can greatly assist in the allocation of resources across a public school system. Implementation of sound testing systems should therefore precede more comprehensive changes in education governance. Governance reforms and related efforts to achieve greater control over public schools make sense only when clear evidence exists that schools are performing poorly. No priority should be given to governance reforms affecting schools currently producing good outcomes. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements are likely to generate better information on education outcomes and assist in prioritizing areas for reform efforts? Lesson 3: Recognise the power of leadership Discussions of education governance typically circle around big questions of structural design and control. While there is certainly value in exploring ways to achieve better structural design, we should not neglect the power of leadership to make things happen in change-resistant environments. For example, Richard E. Neustadt (1960) made a classic argument that, given the separation of powers in the United States system of government, the most important power of presidents was the power to persuade. Subsequent studies of United States presidents in power and presidents in the making (see, e.g. Wilson 1999; Caro 2002) illustrate how peoples ability to span structural boundaries and master the rules of the game are crucial to achieving significant change in a system that routinely stymies change efforts. Studies of agenda setting and policy entrepreneurship (Kingdon 1984; Mintrom 2000) further confirm how effective leadership efforts can make change happen, seemingly against the odds. This suggests that, for people interested in securing better education outcomes, finding ways to effectively empower locallyled change processes can be productive. Such efforts, carefully orchestrated, offer the promise of creating new coalitions that could ultimately support ambitious efforts to better align governance structures with the pursuit of valued educational outcomes. Some recent studies of leadership in schools have explicitly explored how the practices of people in leadership positions, such as school principals, can produce gains in student learning. These studies recognize that classroom interactions are central to the production of valued educational outcomes. For example, Richard Elmore (2004: 57) has proposed that [l]eadership is the guidance and direction of instructional improvement. This is a deliberately deromanticized, focused, and instrumental definition. Such a focused definition resonates with notions of leadership as the promotion of creative problemsolving within collectivities (Heifetz 1994; Weick 2001). Based upon a meta-analysis of prior research, Viviane Robinson, Margie Hohepa, and Claire Lloyd (2009) identified five schoollevel leadership practices that impact positively on student outcomes. These were: establishing goals and expectations, effectively organising resources for the attainment of valued goals, 27 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

planning and evaluating teaching and the curriculum, promoting and participating in teacher professional development, and ensuring an orderly and supportive environment (see also Robinson 2011). Among these, the practice that appeared to have the most impact on student outcomes was promotion and participation in teacher learning and development. These findings support arguments that value can be gained from efforts to distribute leadership throughout schools. Such efforts empower teachers and promote learning conversations among stakeholders (Lambert 2003; Robinson 2008; Spillane 2006). Effective school leaders also tend to build inclusive relations with members of the broader school community. When managed carefully, such efforts can scaffold student learning (Reihl 2000; Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd 2009). Insights from such research on the power of leadership have led to the development of programmes in New Zealand and elsewhere that train school principals to serve as effective leaders. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements are likely to support school leadership that contributes to better education outcomes? Lesson 4: Focus on classroom practices In the context of discussions of education governance, placing a focus on classroom practices may seem misplaced. Yet, we have shown that valued education outcomes can be broadly generated by national school systems displaying almost polar-opposite governance mechanisms (i.e., Finland and South Korea). The focus on the classroom leads us to consider what elements of a governance system matterand which dontfor promoting improvements in student learning. Fundamentally, education outcomes are the products of the interactions that occur between teachers and students. Anecdotally, most people who have attained success in their lives can recount turning points that occurred through their engagement with specific teachers or mentors (Ericsson, Prietula, Cokely 2007; Gardner 1993; Robinson 2009). More formally, systematic observations of teachers in classrooms confirm that appropriate application of specific practices can have profound effects on student learning. Consider, for example, the giving of feedback to students. When carefully managed, and given in a constructive fashion, feedback can strongly support progress in student learning (Hattie and Timperley 2007). Indeed, a metaanalysis of evidence reveals that an array of classroom practices, appropriately applied, can have much more influence on student learning than politically-charged factors such as class sizes and the financial resources available to a school (Hattie 2005; 2009). Richard Elmores classic discussion of backward mapping (1979) and his more recent considerations of school reform (2004) confirm the importance of elevating classroom practices in discussions of education governance. Governance reformers should ask: What changes to current governance arrangements are likely to have the most impact on improving classroom practices? Lesson 5: Attend to student preparation

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The value students gain at any step in their education depends greatly on what they bring to it. This raises several matters for consideration. On a somewhat negative note, we need to be sensitive to the limits of what schools can do when working with students. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence confirming that specific attributes of family and social settings affect individual educational outcomes (Cuban 2003; Jencks and Phillips 1998). However, we verge upon despair when these deficits are viewed as fixed and teachers treat them as insurmountable barriers to student success. Deficit thinking assumes that factors like family poverty, instability in housing and family relations, learning disabilities, and parents limited educational attainment present obstacles to student learning (Garca and Guerra 2004; Valencia 1997). But too much focus on student deficits can become an excuse for teachers to assume that any efforts to promote learning will be a lost cause (Timperley 2005). Emerging evidence on effective teaching strategies and the results of school efforts to engage families and communities as partners in student learning suggest many deficits can be turned around (Sheldon and Epstein 2005; Van Voorhis 2003). Schools and teachers need to figure out what they can do, and to employ teaching practices that add value to students, even in the face of troubles that are beyond the control of individual teacher and schools. Longitudinal studies of students who experienced high-quality early childhood education, and those that did not, clearly demonstrate the positive impact of early interventions that improve student preparation for subsequent schooling. The most powerful evidence to date has been summarized by James Heckman (2006). The clear message here is that investments in high-quality early education serve to promote student performance in subsequent years of schooling and well beyond. Additionally, evidence from the OCEDs PISA studies confirm the pattern that education outcomes for students at age 15 are positively influenced by their previous exposure to pre-school educational programmes. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements are likely to help give students strong foundational experiences in life that will enhance their ability to make the most of their subsequent educational opportunities? Lesson 6: Attend to teacher preparation After investigating characteristics of top-performing national school systems, Michael Barber and Mona Mourshed (2007) concluded that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction. Our discussion of the education systems in Finland and South Korea support these observations. Strong empirical evidence offers further confirmation. For example, analyses of longitudinal data from the Tennessee Valued-Added Assessment System offer clear evidence of the powerful effects that good teachers can have on student outcomes. S. Paul Wright, Sandra P. Horn, and William L. Sanders (1997) reported that effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all achievement levels, regardless of the amount of heterogeneity in their classrooms. In contrast, if the teacher is ineffective, students will achieve inadequate progress academically, regardless of 29 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

how similar or different they are regarding their academic achievement. These researchers concluded that serial exposure to effective teachers can have dramatic effects on student outcomes. These findings suggest the importance of using diagnostic tools that allow for the identification within schools of failing teachers, and focusing efforts on ways to either improve their performance or remove them from teaching. This is different from placing a focus on schools as failing organizations. Building on findings of this kind, Linda Darling-Hammond (2000) used state-level evidence from multiple states in the United States to demonstrate gains in student performance that flow from enhancements in teacher preparation. Darling-Hammond noted that although the states that have aggressively pursued investments in teacher knowledge and skills have equal or higher levels of student poverty than nearby states that pursued other, distinctively different reform strategies, their students subsequently achieved at higher levels. Even though all of the states in her study had increased teacher salaries during the previous decade, only those that insisted on higher standards for teacher education and licensing realized gains that were not realized by states that maintained or lowered their standards for entering teaching. Following from this research, Linda Darling-Hammond and Gary Sykes (2003) proposed that the achievement of highly qualified teachers in the United States would require a national teacher supply policy. (See also Darling-Hammond and Bransford 2005.) Significantly, our assessment of education systems in a collection of other countries has indicated that setting high standards for entry into teacher training is a vital ingredient for enhancing education outcomes. Indeed, education governance arrangements that establish high standards for the selection and qualification of teachers could do a lot to promote student achievement. But a focus on the initial preparation of teachers should not lead us to neglect the potential contribution of on-going professional development of teachers. For example, Helen Timperley and Vivianne Robinson (2001) have documented how professional development can transform teachers from adopting deficit thinking to becoming more reflective about how their own practices can change student performance. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements are likely to systematically improve the quality of teaching where it is likely to have the most significant effects on education outcomes? Conclusion This chapter has surveyed education governance models from six jurisdictions that have enjoyed high average levels of student attainment on standardized international tests over a sustained period. Wide variation exists among governance arrangements in these jurisdictions, so it has been possible for us to assess whether some specific governance arrangements tend to generate better student outcomes than others. We have suggested that links between governance and student achievement are weak, but that intermediary factors have far greater influence than governance itself. We explored this point through discussion of specific governance innovations in these jurisdictions. Through our discussion, we drew six lessons for governance reformers: (1) 30 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of leadership, (4) Focus on classroom practices, (5) Attend to student preparation; and (6) Attend to teacher preparation. Political leaders everywhere face strong incentives to achieve greater returns on public investments in education. Given this, it is tempting for many to seek radical changes in governance arrangements, with the intention of gaining greater control over what happens in schools and in classrooms. While we can certainly see the merits in pursuing governance reforms, we also recognize that such actions often create major political battles that deflect attention from the core business of improving student outcomes. For this reason, we suggest that would-be reformers should seek to achieve changes by both working with people in the current system and by looking for ways to introduce changes that challenge the hegemony of traditional schooling arrangements. With respect to working the inside track, a lot could be gained by improving the information that administrators have regarding student performance, by getting teachers to focus on outcomes for students, and by ensuring that students are appropriately prepared for each level of education. Changes along these lines could be achieved through efforts that recognize teachers as professionals and that involve getting resources to the places where they can make significant differences to student outcomes. Evidence on major reform efforts suggests that when political leaders take the risk of tying their reputations to achievement of specific changes, those changes can happen rapidly (Barber 2008; Fullan 2011; Osborne 1988). Of course, major risks accompany such a strategy. But if public leaders are not prepared to stake their fortunes on creating major system improvements, then it is unlikely that anyone else will. With respect to working outside the present system, we suggest that efforts to promote experimentation in schooling can do a lot to inform practices within traditional schooling systems. However, in such cases, effort must be made to ensure that experiments are effectively evaluated and that knowledge of their effects is adequately disseminated to others who could use it.

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