Robert L. Crowson

The quest for a new hierarchy in education: from loose coupling back to tight?

Building on and reconsidering previous research on organizational models of education, the authors argue that while many administrators in education are still trying to manage ambiguous, and occasionally “anarchic” organizations effectively, the ambivalences of both loose and tight structures are today better understood than 25 years ago. In a development paralleling the evolution of organizational thinking in corporate management which no longer posits a “one‐best‐system hierarchy”, developments in education theory and practice point to the emergence of hybrid models of organization that capture the advantages of centralization and coordination produced by hierarchy while attempting to harness the advantages of more decentralized organizational structures.

The Local School District Superintendency: A Puzzling Administrative Role

Surprisingly, the local school district superintendency is one of the least thoroughly researched roles in educational administration. This article reviews a number of puzzling aspects of the superintendency (as reflected in the extant literature) and calls for added inquiry into the organizational context of this key administrative position.

The New Role of Community Development in Educational Reform

One co-authors (Crowson) participant during a mid-1970s ethnographic study of Chicago principals engaged in regular coffee-and-donut visits to the homes of his elementary school pupils. During a midmorning hour every few weeks, the principal would join a half dozen adults in the apartment of a host parent to chat without agenda about the school, pupils and teachers, and the community. All the home visits were just a few minutes walk from the rear door of the school, for this K-6 elementary was on the grounds of and served two units comprising Chicagos infamous Robert Taylor Homes (a now-demolished, high-rise public housing project on the south side of the city). The author joined the principal on two of these home visits, enjoying coffee and delicious, just-baked pastries served with a best-dishes formality, in what was obviously a very important social occasion for the families

Administrative Control in Large-City School Systems: An Investigation in Chicago

Big-city school systems have been described as rigid, ponderous, hierarchical bureaucracies. They have also been called loosely coupled systems virtually out of control. Which are they-tight or loose? A study of Chicago principals reveals that the system does indeed exert powerful hierarchical control, but it does so not through a muscular apparatus of directives but rather through a not-so-subtle enforcement of loyalties, values, and unspoken expectations.

Transition Leadership in a Shifting Policy Environment

While transformational leadership has received much attention in recent years, the purpose of this article is to explicate the concept of transition leadership and its centrality to understanding policy implementation and school change through a case study of one district and its school principals, transitioning from court-ordered desegregation to unitary status. The article begins with a discussion of the concept of transition leadership and then examines school principals’ transitional leadership, that is, the process of helping to guide an organization’s response to a very significant change in citywide policy. Data reported in this article are based on a series of open-ended, in-depth interviews with a sample of the district’s elementary and middle school principals. Analyses suggest that transition leadership entails an unmaking of past policy while simultaneously remaking new policies and a heavy reliance on establishing a social fabric and sense of community. The conclusion calls for added attention to the balancing of continuity and change that may be necessary to the leadership of a policy transition.

Community empowerment and the public schools: Can educational professionalism survive?

Cases of very close, participatory ties between school and community are still rare enough to be newsworthy. However, educators and those who train them seldom quarrel today with the notion that active parental participation, close school-community connections, a family-oriented outreach into the community, and even some added services to families (e.g., parenting education, family counseling) are vital ingredients of modemday pedagogy. School-community relations has finally come of age as a key component of responsible professionalism in education-a movement influenced heavily by the considerable respect accorded the work of such figures as Comer (1980), Comer, Haynes, Joyner, and Ben-Avie (1996), Coleman (1994), Epstein (1988, 1990), Dryfoos (1994), and Goodlad (1987). Lay-professional tensions continue to surface in many of the studies of community-relations experimentation (see Cibulka & Kritek, 1996). However, by no means do the tensions of today appear to be as threatening to either parent or professional as that implied in the strong tradition of separation (between home and school) which has long been a key myth of

New Roles for Community Services in Educational Reform

The relationship between community and school reform is experienced from two perspectives: the coordinated professional services model, and the community development or employment model. The chapter compares the strengths and weaknesses of each model with the intent of gaining new insights into the community context of improved urban schooling

The Superintendency and School Effectiveness: An Organizational Hierarchy Perspective

ABSTRACT The extant literature provides little clarity in an understanding of the chief executive officers (CEO) impact on school effectiveness. From ah exploratory study of suburban school superintendents near the city of Chicago, indications are that CEO influences upon the school‐site may evolve out of normative relationships with the surrounding community, the dynamics of governing board‐superintendent relationships, the risk‐constrained nature of the superintendency, and the superintendents unique relationship with building principals. A conclusion is that administrator effects upon the schools are best conceived as a “balanced system” of both centralized and decentralized controls.

Chapter 7: The Changing Conception and Practice of Public School Administration

One of the great paradoxes of American public education is how little, and yet how much, our schools have changed over the past two decades of unprecedented ferment, turbulence, and systematic efforts at reform. In many of their most obvious features, schools have scarcely changed at all. Indeed, American public schools have become notorious for their ability to resist change and innovation (Hawley, 1975). In most schools, the methods and character of instruction, the organization of schooling, and, in many respects, the curriculum itself are little different in appearance than they were many years ago (Cuban, 1979). And the public schools seem no more effective now than before the federaland state-funded reform efforts of the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, many infer from declining achievement test scores that the schools have become less effective. Yet, despite all of this, there have been remarkable changes in American public education. The extraordinary pressures placed on the schools over the past two decades, in behalf of greater equity, equality, effectiveness, and efficiency—and the performance problems of schools that these pressures have brought to light—have led to a number of far-reaching changes: a virtual revolution in authority relations in schools; a sense of crisis about the normative order of schools; a serious decline in public confidence in, and support for, the schools; and substantial changes in how schools are

Reexamining Relations and a Sense of Place Between Schools and Their Constituents: Editors' Introduction

Amid much discussion of added choice in public education (e.g., via vouchers, charters, magnets, and even the home), there is simultaneously a renewed fascination with a return to neighborhood schooling. To be sure, there are some antibusing sentiments and a retreat from court-ordered desegregation to be found in the back-to-the-neighborhoods movement. However, there is also a solid rejuvenation of interest in school–community and school–family relations, a trend that Driscoll and Kerchner (1999) labeled as “restoring a sense of place” (p. 394) to public schooling. By no means does this topic lose any of its interest, furthermore, because of a new Presidential effort to encourage a greater involvement of faith communities in neighborhood schooling.