“If you have an authoritarian, hierarchical school structure, the teacher becomes the information dispenser in the classroom. If kids are going to collaborate in classrooms, then teachers have to collaborate in decision-making.”
Former New York City principal146
What Students Need
Redesigning a school to reflect the features of successful schools described in this publication is a challenging process that requires the buy-in of the entire school community. Ongoing success of a redesigned school also depends on staff, students, and family members all understanding and supporting the community’s vision. This requires shared decision-making and leadership.
Research indicates that teacher participation in school decision-making is associated with greater retention for teachers and improved academic achievement for students.147 There is also evidence that involvement of families and community members along with faculty also strengthens school climate and outcomes.148 Authentic shared decision-making and leadership at the school level models the collaborative work that effective teachers expect from their students and enables schools to make significant improvements in their practices with the full endorsement and engagement of all members of the school community.
Moreover, at a moment in history when authoritarianism is on the rise, it is important for schools to model effective democratic processes, so young people grow up understanding the value of democracy, even when it is challenging to implement. Educator Deborah Meier reminds educators to remember the larger purpose of public schools:
How can we hope to educate for democracy if children and the adults in their lives never have the opportunity to observe or practice it? And if such an education doesn’t take place in our public schools, then where will it happen?149
Key Practices
Shared Norms and Values
The first key element of an effective shared governance system is the development of communitywide norms and values that guide the work of teachers, parents, and students in making decisions. Working through these values is worth the time it takes to develop a strong consensus about what matters to members of the school community and what the goals for student learning and joint work will be. Students participate in developing and interpreting these norms and can rely on them to shape their daily experiences in school. (See Feature 2: Safe, Inclusive School Climate.) Teachers can use these shared norms and values as touchstones when hiring colleagues, developing evaluation systems, engaging in peer review, making curriculum or professional development decisions, and setting standards for assessing student and teacher work.
These common values provide essential coherence to the educational program, as well as an important form of accountability, because educators, parents, or students can raise concerns when practices do not adhere to the norms.
Shared norms and values, when enacted in the context of collaborative decision-making, are the foundation for relational trust, which studies have found is essential for school improvement. A set of studies on 200 Chicago schools over a period of 7 years found, for example, that collaborative structures and activities were key to nurturing relational trust among teachers as well as between educators, parents, and community members.150 As a part of this research, scholars found that partnerships among teachers, parents, and community members were important in providing the social resources needed to improve school conditions that influence student learning, including the learning climate and ambitious instruction. Chicago schools that were strong in these essential supports were at least 10 times more likely than schools weak in such supports to show substantial gains in both reading and math.
Principals at effective schools are committed to enabling everyone to uphold the community’s values and goals, but they do not try to take on this role alone; they reach out to others with expertise who can take the lead in many areas of the school’s functioning. They follow the advice of community organizer Marshall Ganz, who says that leadership is “accepting responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”151 A principal who knows how to enable others to lead can create the space for teachers, parents, and students to create a common vision for where the school is going, and teachers can then make decisions that lead to student success. The ownership that results from this kind of shared governance is critical if innovations are to last.
Where schoolwide decisions are concerned, many successful schools create faculty committees that interview and hire staff, plan and implement professional development, and manage other functions that cut across teaching teams. These smaller groups of staff work on specific issues, soliciting input from families, students, or community partners where appropriate, and bringing the issues back to the whole staff when policy decisions must be made. This whole-school decision-making gives all staff members the chance to participate in the final decisions and maintains the coherence and unity of purpose in the work of the school. At some schools, committees and work groups have changing memberships to reduce territoriality and create opportunities for people to develop shared perspectives and learn from one another. In addition, all participants in the governance process receive leadership training so that decision-making is collaborative and skillfully executed.
Student involvement in governance is also common at successful schools, including universal participation in setting classroom and school norms and values, as well as representative participation on the kinds of committees previously described. This is especially true for hiring committees, where the presence of students not only leads to more informed decisions but also communicates an important value to prospective teachers. In addition, student groups regularly discuss schoolwide issues of concern and make recommendations; at the secondary school level, their purview is not just dances and assemblies but also substantive teaching and learning decisions. Small learning communities or advisories sometimes elect representatives to schoolwide bodies to create more authentic representation. Through these activities, students develop new skills and learn to be responsible members of a democratic community.
Caregivers also are invited to participate in the governance process, and while many working parents may not have time for committee meetings that are not directly related to their child’s education, it is essential for schools to cultivate parent leaders who can thoughtfully represent diverse parent voices in the decision-making process. Successful secondary schools have parent leaders who participate in school governance, hiring, and other areas, such as staff development and other activities that guide the life of the school.
Agency and Voice
Within the frameworks established by shared values and school-level decision-making systems, effective schools place day-to-day decision-making authority as close as possible to the classroom, so decisions are made by those who best know the students and their needs. Just as many businesses today have clear standards and goals but allow work teams to have considerable flexibility as to how they reach those goals, well-structured schools establish academic standards and shared values, then give teaching teams the responsibility of making decisions and hold them accountable for student performance.
Faculty teams can design productive approaches to instruction. For example, at International High School at LaGuardia Community College in New York City, a team of four subject-area teachers (e.g., math, science, English language arts, and social studies) might share a group of 100 students with whom they loop for 2 years. Sometimes this team also includes a dedicated counselor. The educators have the authority to create their own curriculum units and daily schedules, and they have access to a budget to support their work. In exchange, they are collectively responsible for the academic success of their students, as measured through the school’s performance assessment system. This localized decision-making structure allows teachers to respond quickly and flexibly to changes in students’ needs.
Eric Nadelstern, a former principal in New York City who launched this design, believes that there is a direct relationship between how adults in a school relate to one another and how they relate to their students. He explains, “If you have an authoritarian, hierarchical school structure, the teacher becomes the information dispenser in the classroom. If kids are going to collaborate in classrooms, then teachers have to collaborate in decision-making.”152 Students also need to be able to make meaningful decisions. While staff play a critical role in establishing a supportive climate, the culture of a secondary school is at its heart a culture of the young people who make up most of the community. In effective high schools, students have a voice in every classroom, helping to shape the social and academic culture with the guidance and support of their adult mentors. Schools can seek to cultivate meaningful student voice and leadership by engaging students in curriculum design (see “In Practice: Student Voice and Agency in Curriculum Design”). Schools also can hold regular community meetings, either by grade level or within cohorts, where students can build connections, raise issues that matter to them, and work to solve problems facing the community. In addition, schools can offer students leadership opportunities, such as the chance to be peer conflict mediators and student leaders who host visitors or lead new student orientations and are tasked with the job of teaching newcomers about the school’s values and approach to maintaining a safe and inclusive culture. A school’s climate is truly safe and inclusive only when the culture is “owned” by the students themselves.
Traditional secondary schools often have elected student leaders but may lack opportunities for the majority of students to engage in shaping and supporting the school culture. Some districts have begun using tools to explore and assess the scope and depth of student agency and leadership in local secondary schools. For example, in Long Beach Unified School District some professional development opportunities—often cofacilitated by students, practitioners, and community organizers—have featured the Student Voice Continuum tool (see Figure 13), which helps practitioners consider how schools commonly seek to engage youth and the degree to which approaches may empower student agency. The continuum helps practitioners envision how they can shift from top-down approaches to those that more deeply engage students as partners in learning with valuable and necessary expertise. Moreover, it draws important attention to the democratic participation of youth of color to address issues of racial equity within school settings.
Figure 13. Student Voice Continuum
Note: The Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a 3-year plan that districts develop in collaboration with their constituents. The LCAP describes district goals, priorities, and expenditures and articulates how they work to support student success.
Source: Adapted from González, R. (2019). The spectrum of community engagement to ownership. Movement Strategy Center.
Equity design teams established at Long Beach Unified secondary schools gather administrators, parents, students, and educators to identify site-based equity dilemmas. To do this, they collectively gather and analyze “street data”—stories and observations from families and students—that inform school leaders and educators about the student experience at their school and proposed changes to address these needs. Design teams like these create a culture of collaboration in decision-making spaces and facilitate the authentic exchange of perspectives and expertise between youth and adults. Moreover, they can be made more inclusive and participatory through processes that support rotating membership and by ensuring that students from varied racial and ethnic backgrounds and with varied levels of academic performance—and their families—are represented, as well as students with particular educational needs (see “In Practice: Space for Student Advocacy”).153
Not only do these opportunities for students create a more positive school climate, but they are essential for young people’s growth and development. In too many secondary schools, young people are only asked to follow directions and are never expected to help shape the school experience or make decisions. Adolescents’ opportunities for agency enable them to learn and grow into healthy adults. Research also suggests that choice and agency in secondary school classrooms helps maintain engagement in academics.154
When a secondary school undertakes a school redesign effort, an important starting point is a robust needs assessment that is driven by families, including parents or guardians and the students themselves. This offers an opportunity to reinvent the school into a more humane and inclusive environment where all young people can thrive. While educators have expertise about teaching, families and students are the experts on their hopes and dreams and should be the ultimate drivers of the school’s vision and values.
Social Justice Humanitas: A Democratic Approach to Schooling
Additional Resources
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This excerpt from Shane Safir’s book The Listening Leader provides a framework for how school principals can effectively lead school change through shared governance.
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