Description
On this paper talk portfolio district reform meets school turnaround.
Portfolio district reform
meets school turnaround
Early implementation findings from the
Los Angeles Public School Choice Initiative
Julie A. Marsh, Katharine O. Strunk and Susan Bush
Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose – Despite the popularity of school “turnaround” and “portfolio district” management as
solutions to low performance, there has been limited research on these strategies. The purpose of this
paper is to address this gap by exploring the strategic case of Los Angeles Unified School District’s Public
School Choice Initiative (PSCI) which combined both of these reforms. It examines how core mechanisms
of change played out in schools and communities during the first two years of implementation.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on a mixed methods study, combining data
from surveys, case studies, leader interviews, observations, and document review. It is guided by a
conceptual framework grounded in research on school turnaround and portfolio districts, along with
the district’s implicit theory of change.
Findings – The paper finds early success in attracting diverse stakeholder participation, supporting plan
development, and ensuring transparency. However, data also indicate difficulty establishing understanding
and buy-in, engaging parents and community, attracting sufficient supply of applicants, maintaining
neutrality and the perception of fairness, and avoiding unintended consequences of competition – all of
which weakened key mechanisms of change.
Research limitations/implications – Data from parent focus groups and school sites may not be
representative of the entire population of parents and schools, and data come from a short period of time.
Practical implications – The paper finds that developing processes and procedures to support
complex reform takes time and identifies roadblocks others may face when implementing school
turnaround and portfolio management. The research suggests districts invest in ways to ensure
neutrality and create a level playing field. It also indicates that leaders should anticipate challenges to
engaging parents and community members, such as language and literacy barriers, and invest in the
development of unbiased, high-quality information and opportunities that include sufficient time and
support to ensure understanding.
Originality/value – This paper begins to fill a gap in research on popular reform strategies for
improving low-performing schools.
Keywords United States of America, Educational administration, Educational innovation,
Accountability, School reform, Governance, Policy, Turnaround, Portfolio district, Low-performing schools
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
School districts throughout the country are facing mounting accountability pressures
to improve student achievement and turn around their lowest performing schools.
More and more schools are failing to make adequate yearly progress targets under the
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
Received 29 April 2012
Revised 28 July 2012
Accepted 5 November 2012
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 51 No. 4, 2013
pp. 498-527
rEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578231311325677
The authors would like to thank members of the AERA-sponsored Intensive Research
Workshop, Thinking Systemically: Improving Districts Under Pressure, Rochester, NY – notably,
Betty Malen and Ken Wong, who offered their invaluable insights and feedback on earlier drafts
of this paper, organizers Kara Finnigan and Alan Daly, and the two anonymous reviewers.
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Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Although waivers to ESEA and
discussions about reauthorization of the policy are changing the specifics of
accountability pressures, it is clear that federal policies will continue to hold districts
accountable for student performance.
Many policy makers are proposing “turnaround” reforms to address the issue of
chronic low performance. In particular, turning around the lowest performing 5 percent
of schools is a priority for the Obama administration (Duncan, 2010). Unlike incremental
school improvement, turnaround reforms expect changes such as replacing the principal
and/or staff and providing increased flexibility from current policies to produce
significant achievement gains in a very short period of time (usually with two to three
years), followed by sustained improvement over the long run[1].
More than 20 major cities are currently implementing another innovative approach
to help low-performing districts improve: the portfolio management model (Hill and
Campbell, 2011). Unlike school-centered turnaround strategies, portfolio reforms treat
the district as a key unit of change, encouraging districts to allow a diverse set of
service providers to operate schools so the district can observe the performance of
various educational approaches and make decisions about the future selection of school
operators. Toward this end, districts take on a new role as “performance optimizer”
and, periodically, remove the lowest performing providers and expand the operations
of higher performing providers based on student outcomes (Bulkley, 2010; Lake and
Hill, 2009). In this way, the portfolio management model sits at the intersection of
several existing district improvement movements including market-based reform,
standards-based reform, and context-aligned differentiation of schools (Bulkley, 2010).
To date, research on the implementation and effects of both turnaround and
portfolio districts remains limited. This paper begins to address this gap by exploring
the strategic case of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)’s Public School
Choice Initiative (PSCI), which combined both of these popular reforms and treated
schools and the district as key units of change. Implemented for the first time in
August 2009, PSCI allowed teams of internal and external stakeholders to compete to
turn around the district’s lowest performing “focus” schools (selected by LAUSD
administrators based on a diverse set of performance indicators) and to operate newly
constructed “relief” schools designated to ease overcrowding (built using funding from
state and local bonds). The district’s theory of change behind PSCI was that, with
intensive supports and appropriate autonomies, a range of school providers would be
able to turn around low-performing schools and increase student achievement. The
ultimate goal of this district reform was to build a diverse portfolio of high-performing
schools tailored to and supported by the local community.
This paper examines the early implementation of the PSCI reform, focussing on the
ways in which the mechanisms of change – including competition, autonomy, parental
engagement, plan development, and capacity building – played out in the earliest days
of the reform. Specific knowledge about implementation is essential for understanding
the mechanisms by which improved outcomes do or do not occur. We ask: How were
the key mechanisms of change outlined in the district’s vision of PSCI enacted? What
were the early successes and challenges? What can be learned from these early lessons
to inform future turnaround and portfolio management efforts? The focus is on the
district and its partners’ real-time efforts to implement the reform and how applicant
teams and other stakeholders experienced the plan development and selection process.
In the remainder of this paper we first summarize the literature guiding our
research, then describe the LAUSD initiative. Next we describe the study’s conceptual
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framework and methods and present answers to the research questions. We conclude
with a set of implications for policy, practice, and research.
Research informing the study of turnaround and portfolio reform
In this section we briefly review three sets of literature guiding our research. First, we
examine the broad literature on school reform, which lays the foundation for newer
district- and school-level reform efforts. Next we review the current landscape of
research regarding the efficacy and implementation of school turnaround and the
portfolio management model.
School effectiveness and reform
In 1966, James Coleman’s Equal Educational Opportunity Survey report found, among
other things, that racial integration had not improved academic achievement in urban
schools and that school resources had little effect on student achievement once controls
for family background were included in the analyses. In response, researchers set
about identifying characteristics correlated with student achievement within the
context of urban schools. This body of research identifying characteristics of “effective
schools” informed several subsequent school improvement efforts (Bliss et al., 1991;
Edmonds, 1979, 1982; Levine, 1990; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Purkey and Smith, 1983).
The identified characteristics, or correlates, include strong instructional leadership,
safe and orderly environment, a clear and focussed mission, a climate of high
expectations for students, and frequent monitoring of student progress, among others.
Building on the Effective Schools work, whole-school reform gained popularity as a
means of improving student outcomes. Beginning in 1978, “School-Wide Programs”
(SWP) allowed schools to use federal Title I funds for whole-school reform and
support, rather than targeted services (the norm prior to this time). The characteristics
of Effective Schools were embedded in this work and, as Turnbull et al. (1990) noted,
Title I coordinators reported that 62 percent of SWP schools in their states
implemented Effective Schools programs as a main feature of their SWP. While SWP
schools made important gains in reducing curricular and instructional fragmentation
common in the provision of Title I services, SWP realized only small gains in student
achievement (Wong and Meyer, 1998).
Building on the recognition that past piecemeal reforms were ineffective, in the late
1980s and early 1990s many non-profit organizations, universities, and educators
nationwide began developing and implementing specific whole-school reform models,
such as the New American Schools and Success for All[2]. From 1998 to 2007 the
federally funded Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program helped scale-up these
efforts by providing schools with funding to purchase services from external whole-
school reform developers (Gross et al., 2009). Selected programs were required to
address the 11 essential elements of a whole-school reform model, several of which
align with the Effective Schools correlates (US Department of Education, 1998). While
broadly implemented, researchers found no early effect of the reform on student
achievement. Studies of CSR effectiveness during the first five years of implementation
showed no student achievement gains in CSR schools over comparison schools (Bifulco
et al., 2005; Orland et al., 2008). A meta-analytic study by Borman et al. (2003), however,
examines evidence around the effectiveness of specific models and suggests that CSR
is more likely to have positive impacts after several years of implementation.
Many studies of whole-school reform have confirmed that high-quality
implementation of externally developed models is key to positive effects on students
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(e.g. Aladjem and Borman, 2006; Berman and McLaughlin, 1978; Crandall et al., 1983;
Datnow et al., 2000; Stringfield et al., 1997). Across studies, several factors were found
to affect the quality of implementation, including: strong instructional leadership from
the principal and support from districts and model developers (Aladjem and Borman,
2006; Berends et al., 2002; Datnow et al., 2003); capacity of teachers to implement the
model, both in terms time and expertise (Berends et al., 2002; Datnow et al., 2003);
strong professional development and training for teachers (Muncey and McQuillan,
1996; Nunnery, 1998); and teacher and administrator buy-in and support for the model
(Berends et al., 2002; Berman and McLaughlin, 1975; Borman et al., 2000; Datnow
and Stringfield, 2000; Nunnery, 1998). Research also indicates that district policies and
context greatly shape the success of school-level implementation. For instance,
researchers found that implementation of the New American Schools model was higher
in districts with stable leadership, leaders who made the reform central to system
improvement, and dedicated resources to support implementation (Berends et al., 2002).
Turnaround reforms
In recent years, the urgency around whole-school improvement efforts has increased.
In response, school turnaround was designed to improve conditions in consistently
underperforming schools within a short-time period (often three years) by changing
staffing, governance, support, and/or instruction (Herman et al., 2008; Villavicencio
and Grayman, 2012). School turnaround encompasses a range of improvement
strategies, from the dramatic (e.g. school closure) to the modest (e.g. adding an external
professional development provider).
To date, little evidence exists regarding the efficacy of school turnaround efforts.
The US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences What Works
“practice guide” on school turnaround (2008) found no empirical studies of requisite
rigor demonstrating intervention effects or identifying factors that lead to successful
school turnaround (Herman et al., 2008), although one recent study finds that
turnaround reforms supported by the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG)
program led to significant improvement in student achievement for students in
California’s lowest-performing schools (Dee, 2012).
The majority of the research on turnaround reforms discusses the implementation
of such reforms. Case study research, for example, provides valuable insight on the
implementation challenges of turnaround and common practices used by schools
(e.g. Bondy et al., 2005; Duke, 2006; Freiberg et al., 1990; Center on Education Policy,
2008; Chenoweth, 2007; Herman et al., 2008; Wang and Manning, 2000). Echoing the
results from the Effective Schools research (Edmonds, 1979; Purkey and Smith, 1983),
Duke (2006) summarized the key characteristics of successful school identified across
multiple studies of school turnaround: prompt assistance to struggling students,
teacher collaboration, data-driven decision making, effective school leadership and
organizational structure, staff development, alignment of instruction with curriculum,
regular assessments, high expectations, parental involvement, and adjustments to
scheduling. Similarly, another report outlined two key lessons for school turnaround
based on the experiences of eight California districts: long-term improvement requires
district-level systematic changes in resource alignment and policy to support school
turnaround, and turnaround efforts must be tailored to the school’s particular
conditions, context, and needs (Knudson et al., 2011).
A few recent studies of the SIG program have described significant variation across
states implementing SIG as well as several implementation challenges for states,
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districts, and schools. Specifically, state education agencies – which must manage the
competitive grant process, provide technical assistance to districts and schools, and
monitor progress – experienced challenges in maintaining adequate staff capacity to
support districts and schools through grant writing and implementation, as well as in
effectively monitoring the progress and activities of districts and external partner
organizations during grant renewal (Center on Education Policy, 2012; Lazarin, 2012;
US Government Accountability Office, 2012). In addition, these studies registered
stakeholder concern over the school’s ability to quickly achieve significant gains in
student performance and the sustainability of interventions upon completion of the
grant (Center on Education Policy, 2012; US Government Accountability Office, 2012).
School reconstitution – one dramatic method of school turnaround mandating
replacement of over 50 percent of staff together with other school improvement strategies
– has garnered attention as a potentially effective method of school turnaround. Past
studies identify serious challenges faced by districts in accessing an adequate supply of
capable and committed staff and providing additional valued resources and support
structures to bolster the capacity of these schools (Fraga et al., 1998; Hess, 2003; Odden
and Archibald, 2000; Rice and Croninger, 2005; Wong et al., 1999). Recent studies of SIG-
funded reconstitution find similar human capital challenges to implementation, such as
finding individuals at the state and local level with the expertise and commitment to carry
out major school improvement efforts (Center on Education Policy, 2012; US Government
Accountability Office, 2012).
Given these common challenges, it is not surprising that research on the
intermediate outcomes of reconstitution is mixed (Rice and Malen, 2010). For example,
one study of six reconstituted schools finds relatively negative near-term outcomes of
school restructuring, including high levels of teacher turnover with experienced
teachers often being replaced by first-year and non-certificated teachers, and only
marginal adjustments in classroom practice (Malen et al., 2002; Malen and Rice, 2004;
Rice and Malen, 2003, 2010).
The implementation findings discussed above suggest that PSCI may be a
particularly promising version of school reform. PSCI includes various methods of
turnaround, from reconstitution to transformation, and incorporates systemic district-
level changes, investment in capacity building, and a context-specific reform in its
design. In addition, PSCI requires applicant teams to highlight how they will foster many
of the elements found to contribute to successful turnaround efforts and identified in
the broader school reform literature, such as data-driven decision making, teacher
collaboration, staff development, curricular alignment, and parental involvement.
Portfolio management
In contrast to school-centered turnaround, another approach to improving district-wide
student performance is portfolio management. Unlike a pure market-based reform, in
which parent and student school choice and exit determines schools’ operational tenure,
the portfolio model allows the district to determine which operators will be added or
removed from the portfolio system (Henig, 2010). Research on the reform’s effects on
schools and students is limited both in quantity and in the ability to draw causal
conclusions about impacts on student outcomes, and has shown mixed results. For
example, studies in New York and Philadelphia yield inconsistent findings on portfolio
reform effects on student achievement across analyses drawing on different assessments
and grade-level groups (Fruchter and McAlister, 2008; Kemple, 2011; Mac Iver and
Mac Iver, 2006). Research on Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 reform has also found mixed
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results; the district saw an increase in elementary and middle school student achievement,
while high school students showed slower progress on measures such as graduation rates,
ACT composite scores, absenteeism, and grade point average (Humphrey and Shields,
2009; Roderick et al., 2006).
Studies of individual districts have demonstrated some of the difficult organizational
changes and challenges resulting from a shift to portfolio management (Bulkley et al.,
2010; Christman et al., 2006; Gyurko and Henig, 2010; Hill, 2011; Levin et al., 2010;
Menefee-Libey, 2010; O’Day et al., 2011). This research emphasizes the importance of
maintaining supply and adequate local capacity to sustain portfolio reforms and notes
difficulties in engaging parents and the community in the reforms. For example Levin et
al.’s (2010) study of the New Orleans portfolio reform noted challenges in providing
parents with adequate information and distrust among parents about decentralization
and the use of external providers. Much of the implementation research also explores
central office restructuring and leadership (Honig and DeArmond, 2010) and redesign of
supports to newly autonomous schools (Nadelstern, 2012; Robinson et al., 2008). Studies
indicate that district central offices occupy a pivotal role in strategic management of the
portfolio and must ensure coordination of services (Levin, 2010). Lake and Hill (2009)
describe the importance of creating new departments for performance management,
ensuring diffusion of the reform to other district departments (e.g. Human Resources
personnel must understand nuanced changes to staffing policies), and maintaining the
precarious role of a neutral manager with no pre-determined operator preference.
As we will discuss in the next section, LAUSD’s PSCI is a hybrid turnaround-
portfolio reform strategy that is intended to incorporate many of the lessons learned
from the extant literature on school reform, school turnaround, and portfolio
management. PSCI serves as an important case study for understanding the
implementation and efficacy of variants of these reforms, especially as this blending
of reforms may serve as a model for other large urban districts striving to improve
student achievement. The next two sections will outline LAUSD’s PSCI and will
highlight reform elements that the district believed would instigate dramatic change
in its low-performing schools.
Background on LAUSD’s PSCI
LAUSD operates 891 schools and authorizes 161 charter schools that serve
approximately 670,000 students, nearly three-quarters of whom qualify for free- or
reduced-price lunch and nearly one-third of whom are English language learners.
English Language Arts scores reveal widespread failure in the system; 32 percent of
third graders score below or far below basic on the California Standards Tests (CST)
and by the seventh grade this increases to 44 percent. Statistics for math achievement
paint a similar picture. Today, 322,000 students attend one of the more than 250 schools
in Program Improvement (PI) Year 3 status or higher. Only 52 percent of students
graduate on time from high school (authors’ calculations).
PSCI built on decades of past reform efforts in Los Angeles, most notably a series of
systemic reforms seeking to empower local actors and advance student achievement in
the 1990s (Kerchner et al., 2008). These reforms – the Los Angeles Educational Alliance
for Restructuring Now and the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project – shared
many of the same ideas and levers of changes embraced by PSCI, including increased
autonomy and accountability, capacity building, planning, and parent involvement
(Kerchner et al., 2008). However, while LAUSD had increasingly adopted non-
traditional school options for families in the past, including charter schools and
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magnet programs, PSCI’s introduction of competition for the operation of district
facilities represented a dramatic shift in district policy.
Adopted by the LAUSD Board of Education in August 2009, the Public School
Choice resolution established the long-term goal of creating “diverse options for high
quality educational environments, with excellent teaching and learning, for students’
academic success” (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 1). Responding to the “chronic academic
underperformance” of many district schools and the strong interest from parents and
communities to “play a more active role” in “shaping and expanding the educational
options” (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 1), the resolution invited:
[y] operational and instructional plans from internal and external stakeholders, such as
school planning teams, local communities, pilot school operators, labor partners, charters,
and others who are interested in collaborating with the District to operate the District’s new
schools and PI 3 þ schools [y] in an effort to create more schools of choice and educational
options for the District’s students and families (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 2)[3].
The initiative was not intended to be a typical “choice” program in which parents
choose the school their child will attend. Rather, this process provided the community
with the opportunity to participate in developing school plans. The ultimate “choice” in
PSCI was made by the LAUSD Board[4].
Designed for gradual scale-up, PSCI involved annual rounds (or cohorts) of schools
in the process with the intention that all low-performing public schools would be
transformed into high performers. Participating schools were identified by LAUSD
administrators based on PI status, Academic Performance Index level and growth
scores, percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on the CST, and dropout
rates. In each round, teams applying for a PSCI school responded to a detailed Request
for Proposal, submitting lengthy school plans that covered topics from curriculum and
instruction to school organization to professional development and school operations.
In addition, applicants were asked to select one of a set of governance models already
in existence in the district. These models varied in the levels of autonomy schools had
from district and/or union policies and over resource use. Figure 1 outlines the six
governance options available to PSCI applicants and lists them in order of the least to
the most autonomous.
Submitted applications underwent a multi-stage review, which in the first two
rounds included: a panel of internal and external reviewers and a Superintendent’s
Review Panel, parent and community voting, and superintendent recommendations to
the LAUSD Board, which voted on the final set of winning applicants. In February
Traditional
Expanded School-
Based
Management
Model (ESBMM)
Network
Partnership
Pilot
Dependent or
Affiliated Charter
Independent
Charter
• follow federal,
state, and district
guidelines but can
acquire greater
flexibility via
waivers. School
staff may request
a waiver that
exempts site staff
from specified
articles of the
union collective
bargaining
agreement.
• operate with
increased levels
of collaboration
and shared
decision-making
from local school
actors
• promote
partnerships
between public
schools and
external partners
and are run by a
team of internal
and external
stakeholders with
autonomy over
budget,
governance,
curriculum, and
professional
development
• modeled after
Boston’s pilot
schools, which
operate under a
“thin” union
contract and have
autonomy over
budget,
curriculum,
governance,
schedule and
staffing
• some flexibility
around
curriculum,
personnel, and
governance
• Exempt from
most state codes
and district
policies regarding
curriculum,
instruction,
budget, and
personnel
Figure 1.
Governance models
currently operating in
LAUSD
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2010 the Board selected from among 100 school applications for the first cohort of
participating schools (PSCI 1.0), which included 12 low-performing focus and 18 newly
constructed relief schools (Table I). Internal teams were comprised of groups of
teachers seeking increased site-based management, or combinations of teachers,
parents, and/or administrators from the local school community. External teams
included non-profit organizations; charter management organizations (CMOs); and
partnerships between internal and external groups. In this first round of PSCI, the
Board awarded 33 PSCI schools to internal teams, and also selected five teams
proposing charter schools and three non-profit organization plans.
Identified in May 2010 and scheduled to open or reopen in fall of 2011, the second full
cohort (PSCI 2.0) included ten relief and three focus sites. In March 2011, the Board selected
from 48 proposals and approved a range of teams to operate these schools including 17
internal and seven charter teams. In addition, the Board identified two focus schools and
one relief school that did not receive plans of sufficient quality during the PSCI process and
chose to restructure the focus schools and return the relief school to the 3.0 round of PSCI
rather than allow any of the applicants to operate the schools (see Table I).
In August 2010, the district and partners received nearly $5 million dollars in
federal funds through the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) grant competition and $1
million dollars in matching private funds, which are being used to bolster the support
for the development and implementation of school plans and to develop new
accountability processes for schools that are operating PSCI schools. Also, in early
2011, Superintendent Ramon Cortines stepped down and John Deasy took over the
position. Despite these higher level changes, the central office staff in charge of PSCI
has remained mostly consistent over the course of the initiative, as have the partner
organizations brought together to support the district’s implementation efforts under
the i3 grant. Grant partners include Unite-LA, an affiliate organization of the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. Unite-
LA acts as the host organization for the non-profit Los Angeles School Development
Institute (LASDI), which is co-directed by LAUSD, the local teachers’ union (UTLA),
PSCI 1.0 PSCI 1.5 PSCI 2.0 PSCI 2.5
Number of sites 30 2 13 1
(Relief/focus) (18/12) (2/0) (10/3) (0/1)
Number of schools 39 2 27 1
(Relief/focus) (24/12) (2/0) (24/3) (0/1)
Selected teams
Traditional 15 2 3 0
ESBMM 8 0 2 0
Pilot 8 0 12 0
Network partner 3 0 1 0
Affiliated charter 0 0 0 0
Independent charter 5 0 7 0
Unknown (restructure) 0 0 2 1
Notes: The number of schools may be larger than the number of sites because campuses, particularly
high schools, were broken into smaller schools.
a
Due to an accelerated construction schedule and
further analysis of school data, two additional relief schools were added to PSCI in February 2010
comprising PSCI 1.5 and one additional focus school was added for PSCI 2.5. Throughout the paper,
we count 1.0 and 1.5 schools together as the 1.0 cohort and 2.0 and 2.5 schools as the 2.0 cohort
Table I.
Number of schools in PSCI
1.0-2.0 and selected
governance models
a
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and the local administrators’ union (AALA) and offers technical assistance and
consulting to internal design teams.
Conceptual framework
Our study design, data collection, and analysis were guided by a conceptual
framework grounded in the research on school turnaround and portfolio districts, as
well as the district’s implicit “theory of change” that we deduced from our interviews
and review of documents (Figure 2). The district’s theory of change, illustrated in
Figure 2, highlighted six key levers of change that, if implemented, were expected to
lead to dramatic improvements in student performance. First, rigorous screening of
school plans was intended to ensure high-quality school designs. Second, competition
among a diverse set of applicant teams was believed to motivate applicants to
enhance the quality of these plans and increase the potential for innovation. Third,
granting school operators autonomy over key domains such as staffing, budget,
governance, and curriculum and instruction was expected to foster the development
of schools that met district needs, were responsive to local contexts and student
needs, and were staffed with committed personnel who shared the schools’ goals and
priorities (e.g. Chubb and Moe, 1990; Edmonds, 1979).
Fourth, district oversight and accountability mechanisms were intended to motivate
PSCI school staff to perform their best. By requiring schools to establish and achieve
the goals outlined in their proposals, the district encouraged staff to continually assess
and improve their performance. Through strong oversight and accountability the
district could stay informed of PSCI schools’ progress, intervene quickly with
struggling schools and, if necessary, return schools to the PSCI process. Fifth, technical
assistance and support from the district and its partners were expected to build
applicant teams’ capacity for developing and implementing high-quality plans. Finally,
community and parent involvement in the selection, development, and implementation
of school plans was intended to provide additional pressures and supports.
PSC portfolio
Environment
Established by
District and Partners
Identification of PSC
schools
Facilitation of
Stakeholder
Involvement
Provision of Support
and Oversight
- planning
- application
- review
- selection
- implementation
Accountability and
Monitoring
Diffusion Activities
- Identification and
Codification of
best practices
- Dissemination
PSC School Application
Process
Applicant Team Formation
(external vs internal)
Selection of School Type
(focus vs relief)
Development of Plan
Selection of School Model
(charter, Network Partner,
ESBMM, Pilot, traditional)
Review Process
- Engagement with
community
- Interviews
Rigorous screening
of plans
Competition for
selection
Autonomy to
respond to local
contexts and needs
Oversight and
accountability
Capacity building
Increased pressure
and contribution
from parents and
community
High-Quality psc
schools
- Strong leadership and
governance
- Rigorous curriculum
and instruction
- Supportive school
climate
- Effective use of data
and assessments
- High-quality PD
- Strong community
involvement
- Performance
management
- Sound financial
practices
- Innovative and diverse
schools and practices
Positive
Outcomes for
Staff
Positive
Outcomes
for
Students
Positive
Outcomes for
Parents and
Community
Non-PSC Schools
- Adoption of best practices
- Pressure to improve school quality and outcomes
- “Relief” effects on feeders schools
District, Community, School Classroom Context
Understanding and commitment; capacity; motivation; leadership; politics; other accountability policies and competing interventions;
community, school, staff and student characteristies
Figure 2.
Public school choice
theory of change
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These mechanisms were expected to yield a diverse set of high-quality learning
environments (see Figure 2 for specific characteristics identified by LAUSD) and
ultimately positive student outcomes. Student outcomes could result either directly or
indirectly through effects on teachers and other school staff (e.g. retention of effective
individuals, high job satisfaction) and parents and community members (e.g. high
satisfaction with the school, strong sense of ownership). To the extent that the PSCI’s
effects spill over to non-PSCI schools – via pressure to implement reforms to avoid being
selected into the Initiative in the future, the intentional, or natural spread of successful
school models and ideas, or, in the case of relief schools, the alleviation of overcrowding –
positive student outcomes were expected to translate into higher-quality schools overall.
Finally, it is understood that PSCI was embedded in a broader context that could
influence its implementation and mediate its effects. Local human, physical and social
capital were likely to affect the implementation of the core processes and quality of the
work being done in PSCI schools (Berends et al., 2002; Bryk and Schneider, 2002;
Marsh, 2002; Massell, 1998; Spillane and Thompson, 1997). Local understanding and
commitment to reform, school and district leadership and support, and the alignment of
PSCI with existing policies would influence the extent to which local implementers carry
out the reform (Corcoran et al., 2001; Gamoran et al., 1995; McLaughlin, 1987; Marsh et al.,
2008; Snipes et al., 2002; Togneri and Anderson, 2003). Finally, structural variables, such
as characteristics of community (e.g. political climate), the schools and classrooms (e.g.
size, student-staff ratio), staff (e.g. level of experience), and students (e.g. income level)
would likely mediate the initiative effects on various outcomes (e.g. Bryk et al., 1993;
Coleman et al., 1966; Gamoran, 1987, 1992; Jencks et al., 1972). This paper focusses
primarily on the left two boxes and the levers of change. Although improved student
outcomes is the ultimate goal, it cannot be reached unless the beginning steps of this
process (plan development and selection) are well implemented and the key levers of
change operate as intended. It is from this premise that we begin our inquiry.
Data and methods
The paper draws on results from the first year of a three-year mixed methods study,
with particular focus on the second cohort of schools in 2010-2011 (PSCI 2.0). The
decision to focus on the second cohort was purely pragmatic: the funding and start
date of the study coincided with the second year of the initiative and thus real-time
interviews and observations of the plan development and selection process were only
possible for the second cohort of schools and beyond. Multiple data sources inform our
analyses, including: surveys of participating design teams; school case studies; leader
interviews; observations; and document review.
Surveys
In Spring 2011, we administered web-based surveys to one representative from all 45
PSCI 2.0 participating teams and received completed surveys from 36 teams for a
response rate of 80 percent[5]. The survey asked about the plan writing process (team
members, rationale for participation, support received), content of plans (governance
model/waivers requested and rationale), and perceptions of PSCI (reported
understanding of elements, opinions about process, and goals). Survey respondents
were design team leaders (DTLs) identified from letters of intent submitted to LAUSD
and included a mix of teachers, non-profit or charter school administrators, principals
and school staff, and local district administrators (LAUSD is organized into eight
geographic sub-districts). We conducted descriptive analyses of the survey data and
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also compared responses of respondents from different types of teams (e.g. by
governance model, membership, relief, or focus status). Throughout the paper we
explicitly discuss only statistically significant differences. Given the small sample size
we use the significance threshold of po0.10.
Case studies
Researchers conducted case studies of five PSCI 2.0 schools and the stakeholders
involved in either developing proposals to operate those schools or belonging to the
school community associated with the target schools. We chose schools to represent
variation in school level (elementary, middle, high), type of school (relief or focus), and
geographic location. For each school, we interviewed at least one member from all teams
(n¼11; seven internal and four external teams) submitting applications, conducted
parent focus groups (n¼30 parents total), observed site-specific meetings (n¼27), and
reviewed documents such as print and social media coverage, school plans, and
communications with stakeholders. All data collected were in near equal proportions
across case study schools (e.g. we observed approximately five meetings per school).
Leader interviews, documents, and observations
Documents and interviews with LAUSD central office administrators and district
partners (n ¼19) provided us with information about the PSCI design and theory of
change. To understand the nature of communication and technical assistance we
observed 28 district meetings, including orientation sessions and workshops on school
turnaround and various aspects of the school plan, and collected all relevant
documents, such as agendas, powerpoints, and print and online communication.
Case study and leader interviewnotes and documents were coded along the dimensions
of the conceptual framework and analyzed by individual school and across schools. We
examined the results of all of these analyses to identify cross-school findings and themes.
To enhance the internal validity and accuracy of findings we triangulated data from
multiple sources, comparing interview data to documents and surveys whenever possible.
Study limitations
Three main issues limit the analyses. First, the scope of the initiative is quite large, and
our resources are limited. Therefore, we were limited to a sample of five case study
schools and were unable to gather representative data from all parents involved or
expected to be involved in PSCI. Given these constraints, we acknowledge that our
parent focus group and case study data may not be wholly representative of the entire
population of school and parent participants[6]. Second, we draw on data from a very
short period of time and do not yet have data on the actual implementation of the plans
selected and the effects. However, the intent of this paper is to assess LAUSD and its
partners’ early implementation of the reform and to provide lessons for central offices
embarking on turnaround and portfolio reform initiatives based on the LAUSD
experience. Ongoing data collection will provide further insights into the rollout of
PSCI and its longer-term effects. Third, as with the majority of survey research, our
DTL surveys rely on perceptions (e.g. perceptions of understanding). To address this
limitation we provide data from in-depth interviews to corroborate survey results.
Findings: early successes and challenges
Overall we find evidence of early successes in the implementation of PSCI, but also a
number of challenges that brought into question some of the main assumptions of
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PSCI. We organized these findings below by the contextual condition or lever of change
that each bolsters or weakens.
Local understanding and commitment
As noted in our review of the literature, stakeholder involvement, understanding, and
support are key conditions for successful implementation of any reform initiative
(Bodilly et al., 2004; McLaughlin, 1987; McDermott, 2006; Marsh et al., 2008; Sabatier
and Mazmanian, 1979), particularly school reform. Without this basic support and
understanding, individuals may be less inclined to work toward reform goals and to
implement an initiative with fidelity. This is particularly true for PSCI and its theory of
change: without buy-in and participation, key levers like competition and site-based
autonomy would be difficult to implement. However, stakeholder understanding of and
support for key aspects of PSCI were generally mixed.
Stakeholder understanding. As with policy implementation generally,
understanding is a pre-condition necessary for several of PSCI’s core mechanisms of
change. For example, if autonomy is going to drive change or innovation, stakeholders
must be clear on what autonomies they are gaining when selecting a governance
model. Similarly, if individuals eventually taking over schools are going to be
motivated by accountability mechanisms, they need to understand the accountability
metrics, consequences, and policies. However, our evidence suggests that not all
stakeholders had a clear understanding of PSCI’s core elements.
Although the majority of DTLs reported on surveys that they understood what each
governance model entails (86 percent reported mostly or completely understanding)
and how schools were chosen to participate in PSCI (86 percent), fewer reported
understanding key facets of the initiative, like the role of the Advisory Vote (57 percent)
and how PSCI defines a high-quality plan (57 percent). Moreover, less than half
reported understanding key aspects of accountability, such as how implementation
would be monitored (49 percent reported mostly or completely understanding), how
operators would be held accountable (43 percent) and consequences for PSCI schools
not meeting goals over time (37 percent).
Our cases similarly indicated weak understanding of several core elements of PSCI.
“PSCI is very confusing for everybody,” said one DTL. “Why is it called Public School
Choice? It is a choice, the choice is the school board choosing which plan that they want
to see implemented at the school site. So, it was created with a misnomer and then that
just has continued.” Others conveyed misunderstandings about various aspects of the
initiative, most notably the autonomy-related mechanisms. Various models include
different levels of autonomy related to staffing (i.e. independent charter schools have
complete staffing autonomy, whereas traditional public schools are bound by the UTLA
and AALA contracts, and other governance models fall in between) and scheduling
(i.e. some models allow for increased school days and work hours, and others required
schools to follow the UTLA contract in full), among other things. Several teams
interviewed were unclear of the types of autonomy granted by each model.
Several factors appeared to contribute to this mixed level of understanding. First,
the short-time frame given to enact the Board resolution – just two months during the
first round of PSCI – and the multiple changes to rules and processes throughout PSCI
1.0 and 2.0 may have played a role. Second, the district and its partners may have
conveyed unclear and inconsistent messages about the initiative. “We haven’t done
a good job at communicating about PSCI,” said former Superintendent Cortines,
“People still see it as takeover rather than improvement and that bothers me.” Third,
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decision-making processes within LAUSD may have also exacerbated confusion.
Although central office administrators within the Innovation and Charter Schools Division
were responsible for day-to-day PSCI implementation, other district leaders – including the
superintendent and Board members – had considerable latitude to make decisions that
greatly altered the initiative and conflicted with prior decisions or rules laid out by
administrators. As a result of the multiple decision makers involved in the processes, local
teams and stakeholders may not have received consistent or clear answers or messages.
As discussed later, the high-stakes nature of PSCI also may have created incentives to
distort information, further contributing to misunderstanding and confusion.
Stakeholder support for PSCI. Consistent with past research (e.g. Berends et al.,
2002; Borman et al., 2000; Datnow and Stringfield, 2000), support for the PSCI goals
and theory of change appears to be another important pre-condition that district
leaders and partners struggled to achieve. On the one hand, DTLs surveyed indicated
fairly strong support for PSCI and key elements of the theory of change. The vast
majority agreed that PSCI would increase high-quality education options in LAUSD
and result in positive student outcomes (81 percent agreed or strongly agreed with
these statements). More than half of DTLs also believed competition created by PSCI
would lead to high-quality schools and outcomes for students (63 percent) and would
motivate other non-PSCI schools to improve (56 percent).
In case study interviews with DTLs, however, respondents’ views appeared to be
more mixed. Some clearly endorsed PSCI and its key elements of change, particularly
the competition lever. “It’s an opportunity for the district to get a lot better very soon,”
said one DTL, “It’s putting pressure on again, even just internal teams, to change the
way they’re doing things [y] which is a great thing.” A DTL from another school,
similarly embraced competition as an effective motivator of change:
So instead of just like “we’ve got to reopen that school, let’s just slap together a proposal
because it’s paperwork,” you get a group of motivated individuals who have to worry about a
different group of motivated individuals producing the best possible plan that they honestly
believe based on [y] research will have the best outcome.
In contrast, other DTLs disagreed with PSCI and its core assumptions. Many
interviewees reported that the competition detracted from a focus on improvement and
would not result in more qualified school operators or school plans. Others
characterized PSCI as “throwing money” at the problem. In addition, our case data
suggest that parents and community members, a key stakeholder group, had weaker
understanding of and support for the initiative.
Parent and community pressure and support
From the initiative’s inception, parent and community engagement was considered a
key lever for change. While parents and students did not directly choose their school of
attendance, parent and community members were engaged and their feedback
solicited to aid the superintendent in his plan selection decision. Consistent with
previous research in portfolio districts (e.g. Bulkley et al., 2010; Levin et al., 2010) and
whole school reform (e.g. Wang et al., 1999), this proved to be a major challenge for the
district and its partners in these initial rounds of PSCI.
Communication and engagement of parents and community members. For parents
and communities to serve as both a source of support for and pressure on PSCI schools,
they must not only participate but also understand the PSCI process, their role, and the
content of options presented by applicant teams. Our data suggest that this did not
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occur as hoped. First, the district and its partners struggled to get parents and
community members to participate in PSCI. Attendance at district-sponsored community
workshops was generally low with an average of 64 parents attending each meeting (out
of school enrollments of 700-3,800) (Beltran et al., 2011). In addition, a report from the
League of Women Voters of Los Angeles (LWVLA) (2011) estimated that less than one
percent of parents of students at the PSCI schools and feeder schools voted in the
Advisory Vote. As Superintendent Deasy acknowledged, this vote tally “is not a reliable
data point and in no way provides an adequate indication of what parents want for their
school” (Deasy, 2011, p. 2).
Our case study data also indicate that parents and community members had weak
levels of understanding about PSCI. For example, in focus groups, parents frequently
reported not understanding the purposes of PSCI and/or conveyed misinformation
about the initiative. One parent in a relief school explained, “They don’t really explain
why people [are] here; why the school has been put in this process.” Many focus group
participants – some of whom had just voted – also admitted to not comprehending the
purpose of the Advisory Vote. When asked why they had come to the school that
evening, one parent said “That’s what I couldn’t understand. What were we voting on?”
At another school, a parent told us “The truth is that I didn’t understand. There are
three plans to vote on. We didn’t choose any. I don’t know if that’ll affect the children or
the others. I don’t know.” Finally, when asked about governance models, most parents
focussed on the difference between charter and traditional schools and admitted to
being unsure of the distinction. “The only thing I know about a charter school is [that
it’s] private,” said one parent.
Language and literacy barriers. Observations and focus group data indicate that
limited English proficiency and low levels of literacy among subsets of parents
contributed to the low levels of understanding and engagement observed and
weakened this as an effective lever of change. Although the district and its partners
invested in translation services at nearly all meetings and translated printed materials,
communication problems persisted. For example, a few parents reported that the
language used in translation at meetings was academic in nature. “Usually we don’t
understand,” one parent commented, “The language is too sophisticated.” Similar
concerns emerged at one voting center we observed, where some parents could not read
the ballots or the executive summaries of the proposed plans due to low levels of
literacy (a staff member read the materials out loud to them).
Quality of information. Some parents reported that information provided at meetings
was too general. “I’m not thrilled with the information that was provided,” said one
parent. “I just think I need more information and that’s why I’m sitting here in this
position not knowing what to do.” Others complained about a lack of un-biased sources
of information. In fact, when asked where they would go for additional information about
PSCI, one parent explained, “I asked the school where my son is enrolled about charter
schools because I’ve heard that it’s better. They couldn’t give me an answer. She told me
that I had to pay a small sum of money to have my son there and they were going to
require that I spend more time in that school.” As discussed later, the competitive
pressures and reported “electioneering” also may have contributed to information
inaccuracies and made it difficult for parents to ascertain the facts.
Structural and technical factors. Some of the structural arrangements of meetings
and voting centers also may have contributed to confusion, limited access, and
mistrust of information. Limited time also greatly affected the nature of
communication and level of understanding. As Superintendent Deasy observed, with
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few parents attending each meeting and often only attending one of a series of
meetings offered, district leaders had very limited time to interact with each individual
parent. He noted, “We found it challenging to go deeper in our conversations, as we
often had a new group of parents at each meeting” (Deasy, 2011, p. 1). Similarly, a
report from the non-profit Families In Schools (FIS) (2011) reported that “there are
insufficient opportunities for parents to learn and comprehend complex information
regarding school performance and school plans in order to make an informed decision”
(Patterson and Cruz, 2011, p. 9).
In summary, the district and its partners struggled with executing the parent and
community engagement strategies, and in particular the Advisory Vote. In fact, many
district leaders and local media condemned the Advisory Vote as a failure (see, e.g.
Daily News, 2011). District leaders similarly recognized that PSCI’s community
engagement efforts did not achieve its goals. As one Board member explained:
A lot of parents were really engaged and involved, but so many were turned off [y] they saw
the politics, they saw the polarization, and they didn’t like what they saw. [y] We heard over
and over again, they didn’t understand the information, they were getting lied to, they felt
manipulated, they didn’t know who to believe.
We return to these issues again in a later section on the unintended consequences of
competition.
Capacity building
Technical assistance and support provided to design teams during the plan writing
process was an essential mechanism of change under the design of PSCI. The initiative
relied on the development of high-quality school plans, written in part by non-
traditional actors who may have been unaccustomed to plan writing. Our data indicate
that LAUSD and partner organization LASDI successfully provided plan development
support, though uneven provision of this support raised questions about the neutrality
of the district and fairness of the process for some teams.
Support for the plan development process. Overall the district made significant
progress towards establishing a wide range of standardized supports and services to
assist teams with plan writing. It served as both direct service-provider and “broker” of
individualized support through the new LASDI collaborative, a role commonly adopted
by central offices implementing portfolio strategies (Bulkley et al., 2010; Gyurko and
Henig, 2010; Honig, 2009). Drawing on i3 grant resources, LASDI provided support via
consultants and workshops, aiming to deliver targeted technical assistance and ongoing
support to applicant teams that included both teacher and administrator representatives.
LAUSD also succeeded in providing direct technical assistance to design teams.
Administrators within the Innovation and Charter School Division, with support from
various other LAUSD departments, delivered a series of workshops and meetings to
build understanding of PSCI and the RFP and develop deeper knowledge about
multiple topics. More than three-quarters of the DTLs reported that they or a member
of their team attended LAUSD and LASDI workshops and meetings, and the majority
of DTLs reported receiving multiple supports and services, as illustrated in Figure 3.
Access to support. Early on, LASDI decided that they would only support teams that
included both administrators and teachers – both of which are represented by the
unions constituting two of the three partners directing LASDI. As one LASDI leader
said, “When a school decides that they want LASDI’s help, the directors go out and sit
down with the principal and teacher teams. They’re very adamant that they meet with
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both teacher leader and principal and if they’re not even willing to sit in a room, we
don’t go out.” This decision excluded teams comprised solely of teachers, as well as
external teams from receiving LASDI support. When interviewed, four of six LASDI-
ineligible teams conveyed strong, negative opinions about the lack of access to these
capacity-building resources. Referring to LASDI, one charter school team member
explained, “We don’t have an equivalent institution for our capacity. [y] We don’t have
[y] another technical assistance piece [y] that the district’s internal applicants are
getting.” Similarly, a DTL from a teacher-only team noted, “Considering that part of
their grant money is to assist teachers in teacher-led reform, it is one of the most
profound examples of hypocrisy I have seen recently.” Several leaders within LAUSD
similarly disagreed with this decision to omit support for teacher-led teams.
“Everybody gets help,” said one leader, “I don’t care if it’s a group of parents, they
should get help.” Survey data further substantiate this perception of unequal access to
services. Overall, LASDI-ineligible teams reported accessing and receiving fewer
services and supports than LASDI-eligible teams. For example, only 40 percent of
LASDI-ineligible teams reported receiving help writing their plans as compared to 76
percent of LASDI-eligible teams. Similarly, only 53 percent of LASDI-ineligible teams
received assistance understanding governance models, compared to 95 percent of
LASDI-eligible teams (see Figure 3).
Local district support for eligible internal teams also varied greatly. Some local
districts provided teams with research materials and example proposals to help with
their development process. Some also paid for external consultants and editing
support. In contrast, other teams reported receiving little to no support from their local
district. In some cases, DTLs believed their local district used their resources to
advance a favored team’s chances of success. “They had already chosen a team,” said
one teacher-team DTL who reported receiving no support from the local district.
Screening of plans and competition for selection
Rigorous screening of plans and competition for selection are key mechanisms of
change in the PSCI design. In fact, the district and partner organization leaders that we
interviewed overwhelmingly emphasized the importance of competition – much more
so than the other levers. In practice, the district saw mixed success in implementing
these two levers of change.
Diversity of design team members. One goal of PSCI was to spur innovation by
including non-traditional actors in the reform process. PSCI succeeded in engaging a
host of actors in the design process. Most notably, teachers were reported to be active
0%
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Help writing
plan
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Did you and/or your team receive any of the following support,
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non-LASDI eligible
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Figure 3.
Support design team
leaders received, by
LASDI eligibility
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players in developing school plans. According to DTL surveys, 89 percent of design
teams included at least one teacher and 42 percent of teams were led by a teacher. Also,
69 percent of DTLs ranked teachers as very highly involved in the plan development
process. The majority of teams also reported involving at least one parent or
community member, one certified personnel other than a teacher, or a non-principal
school administrator. Others also reported including someone from a non-profit, CMO,
or the teachers’ union. On average, six types of stakeholders were involved on each
design team. Past research indicates that many school reforms do not include input
from such stakeholders (McLaughlin and Shields, 1986), making PSCI unique in the
breadth of personnel roles involved in the reform.
Supply of applications. Although teams included many diverse and non-traditional
actors, the supply of teams is an area of concern. The average number of proposals per
school decreased from 2.6 in PSCI 1.0 to 1.8 in PSCI 2.0. Further, the number of schools
receiving only one proposal increased from 11 percent in PSCI 1.0 to 36 percent in PSCI
2.0[7]. These findings weaken the competition lever of change under PSCI and indicate
that PSCI may not provide a true “choice” for that particular community. One potential
factor contributing to the decrease in supply of final applications is that LASDI
consultants on occasion encouraged multiple applicant teams to collaborate and jointly
submit a single proposal (e.g. when they observed teams proposing similar ideas). It is
not clear from our data that these LASDI efforts entirely explain the observed decrease,
but it may have affected these patterns.
Transparency of the process. The initial PSCI resolution called for “a transparent
process for plans to be submitted, reviewed, and evaluated by internal staff and
external stakeholders” (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 5). As intended, LAUSD leaders
consistently shared information about the process with the public. From the outset, the
district posted weekly updates on a designated PSCI web site. For each round of PSCI,
the web site included copies of all letters of intent and final proposal submissions,
along with detailed documentation of the review process, including reviewer comments
and ratings, superintendent recommendations, and Advisory and final Board votes for
each school. Meeting agendas, powerpoint slides, and other informational materials
were also regularly posted on this web site. One i3 partner leader described the level of
transparency as “unheard of” and “profoundly powerful.” This partner noted, however,
that allowing the public “to see the intra-district decision-making process” unfold
weekly also led to “disorientation” and confusion, as discussed earlier.
Neutrality and fairness of review and selection. PSCI and portfolio models more
generally assume that leaders will be neutral about the types of organizations or teams
running schools and select operators based on quality and effectiveness (Hill and
Campbell, 2011). Leaders are expected to support broad participation and competition
so that the most innovative and highest quality ideas and plans emerge. Our data
indicate, however, that not all district leaders and partners adhered to this assumption,
which contributed to widespread perceptions that the process was unfair.
In fact, 69 percent of DTLs survey respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that
the PSCI plan review and selection process was fair to all applicants. In interviews,
teams of all types commonly reported that the district had not created a “level playing
field” and that certain teams had the “upper hand” with greater access to resources and
support. Several internal teams reported that external teams had greater capacity to
write plans due to full-time staff dedicated to grant writing and experience developing
school charters. Conversely, external teams and some teacher-led teams believed that
internal local district-supported teams had greater access to data and parents, and had
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more support from LASDI, local districts, and UTLA. One independent charter DTL
also decried a “double standard” for charter school applicants due to an additional 30-
page supplemental application and a charter and complained about the level of
scrutiny applied to them relative to internal teams.
Within most case schools, almost every design team believed they were at a
disadvantage relative to their competitors. “[T]he process’ was skewed toward the
charter’s favor,” reported one internal team leader. A leader from the external charter
team bidding on this same school similarly explained, “as far as not having a level
playing field, [the local district] made calls constantly out to everyone and they [the
internal team] had free access and we did not.”
There was also the pervasive belief that politics interfered with the process. For
example, six teams (across all five case study schools) mentioned that review panels
and Board members were not adequately trained on how to judge the quality of school
plans and that decisions were not guided by the rubric or an assessment of quality, but
rather by political motivations or personal biases. Several individuals believed that
Board members knew in advance who they were going to select and had strong
preferences for preserving jobs, selecting internal teams, or even specific governance
models. In one case, a Board member endorsed an internal applicant team before
proposals had been submitted. Another DTL reported being pressured by a Board
member to “drop out” of the process so that the preferred internal team could succeed.
Even teams that ended up being selected by the Board expressed these views in our
interviews (which were conducted prior to the final selection). The following DTL
statements taken from our case studies provide a sampling of these sentiments:
It’s coming down to who’s on the Board [y] just the politics of that, I think, are outweighing
the value of the plans that were submitted.
At the end of the day, they want to protect district jobs. You know, if they had the option, they
would be happy to select an in-district plan.
Overall, there was a widespread perception that the PSCI process was unfair and
excessively politicized.
Unintended consequences of competition. The high stakes of the decision to award a
team control over a school – in some cases leading to layoffs of entire staffs to allow for
an external team to take over – heightened the intensity and emotion surrounding the
plan development and selection process, and at times interfered with PSCI’s intended
focus on developing and selecting high-quality school plans. One focus school principal
and DTL commented that, “this process really did a lot to divide the staff and it took a
lot of people’s hope away [y] some of my teachers were saying, ‘I’ve been doing all this
work [as a teacher at a focus school] and what? You’re going to take it away?’”
According to multiple case study respondents, the competition itself also took
valuable time and attention away from designing their school and writing their plan.
“We have to come to consensus ourselves [and decide] ‘What is our goal?’,” said one
internal team leader, “That we have to spend time selling ourselves, pitching it [y]
just makes it all the more difficult.” Many teams invested significant time and material
resources on a variety of strategies to garner support for their plans – resources some
teams would have preferred to devote to plan development. On surveys, more than
three-quarter of DTLs reported that they contacted Board members, local districts, and
teachers to encourage support; contacted parents/community members, mobilized
parents to vote; and hosted community meetings. Some participants were critical of
these activities. “It was supposed to be about collaboration,” explained one internal
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DTL, “But you create this extreme competition between these strong competitors, and
no one wins [y] If we put out a flyer [y] or [y] a door hanger, they’d [the other team]
put out a hanger, a pin, and a button.” One team indicated a willingness to tailor its
plan to garner necessary support and votes, even if changes conflicted with their initial
vision and philosophy of tailoring curricula to local needs. “If they are looking for a
textbook-type of proposal,” explained this DTL, “we will write that to impress the
Board or review team.”
Reports of “electioneering” further illustrate unintended consequences of
competition. A report from FIS documented some of the negative behaviors occurring
during the Advisory Vote in PSCI 2.0, including “23 reports of voter intimidation,
disruption or electioneering at 11 sites” (Patterson and Cruz, 2011, p. 5). Based on these
reports and 140 hours of observation by community volunteers at all 13 voting sites, FIS
concluded that “electioneering continues to be a significant problem despite efforts by
the LAUSD and the LWVLA to thwart such activities” (Patterson and Cruz, 2011, p. 9).
The LWVLAvolunteers also observed incidents of electioneering in the voting line and
noted that some schools encouraged parents to vote by allowing them to substitute
voting for mandatory volunteer hours.
Paradox and conflict within PSCI theory of change. These findings present a paradox
in the enactment of PSCI and conflict among various levers of change. By design, the
initiative embraced the importance of engaging stakeholders, particularly community
members, and viewed this support and pressure as a critical mechanism for enhancing
the quality of school plans and ultimately student learning. In this regard, time spent on
external outreach could be viewed as appropriate, if not essential. Yet, the competition
and high stakes of the final decision may have led participants to behave in ways that
attracted support for their plans at the expense of quality. The widespread perceptions
about fairness and politics also affected buy-in for the initiative and could have even
greater long-term effects on participants’ willingness to invest in the process or focus on
the quality of educational programs presented in school plans.
Conclusions and implications
Our research indicates that the first two years of PSCI had many challenges and some
successes. On the one hand PSCI leaders attracted diverse stakeholder participation
within teams, scaffolded the plan development process with an array of supports from
multiple organizations, and ensured transparency at each stage of the process. On the
other hand, the scale and complexity of PSCI proved to be a formidable undertaking for
district administrators and partners, fraught with challenges that weakened several of
the key mechanisms of change. Most notably, leaders encountered difficulty establishing
understanding and buy-in, communicating with and engaging parents and community
members, attracting sufficient numbers of applicants for all schools, maintaining
neutrality and the perception of fairness, and ensuring that competition did not
interfere with other levers of change.
The district and its partners made efforts to address some of these challenges for
the third round of PSCI. For example, the LAChamber of Commerce planned to provide
consultants and technical assistance to teams currently ineligible for LASDI support,
including teacher – teams and external schools. The Board also replaced the Advisory
Vote with a series of community engagement and feedback meetings in which parents,
community members, and students develop a set of priorities for their school, evaluate
plans against these criteria, and provide their recommendations to the superintendent
and his panel for review. Further, Superintendent Deasy committed to clarifying
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accountability mechanisms and declared that PSCI school progress would be formally
evaluated during the third year of implementation.
Other modifications to the initiative occurred in 2011 following the appointment of
Superintendent Deasy and the election of several new Board members and a new
teachers’ union president. Responding to Board and union pressure, Deasy made
modifications to limit competition in PSCI in exchange for new opportunities for all
schools to obtain autonomies related to district and union policy. Under a new
Memorandum of Understanding, ratified by union members and approved by the
Board in December 2011, external teams of charter operators and non-profits are only
eligible to participate in PSCI if they agree to operate the school using district
employees under the current collective bargaining agreement. In exchange, all district
schools now have the option of adopting a governance model allowing for greater
freedoms in the areas of curriculum and instruction, school scheduling, and staffing
selection. These changes have decreased the emphasis on market-oriented reform
mechanisms in PSCI by greatly bounding the scope of competition and have increased
the importance of autonomy as a strategy for improvement.
In the coming years, it will be important to examine the implementation and effects
of the reform with these policy changes. The will and capacity of district and partner
leaders will be especially tested in PSCI 3.0 as the number of sites participating
increases to 32 (15 relief and 17 focus sites) and as the new modifications are
implemented. Of course, the ultimate test of the efficacy of PSCI lies in the years ahead.
Our ongoing research aims to answer questions about the eventual outcomes of PSCI.
The results of this preliminary research nonetheless have several important
implications for policy makers and practitioners outside of Los Angeles. First, our
findings indicate that when implementing a portfolio model or managing school
turnaround, districts need time to develop a multitude of new policies, processes, and
practices. The misunderstandings and reported confusion our research uncovered
suggest that more planning time may have improved the consistency of central office
messages about the reform initiative. And while transparency is a worthy goal, it may
come at a cost. The tradeoff between access to information and possible inconsistency
has to be factored into the development process of any reform, particularly ones as
complex as PSCI. Added time for planning prior to public dissemination of information
and of the implementation process may avoid some of these communication problems.
Moreover, districts will then need to adapt these policies, processes, and practices to their
specific and often-changing local contexts, which requires complex negotiations with
multiple stakeholders and decision makers. It is important that policies expecting fast
results do not penalize districts for trying innovative and perhaps untested strategies
and modifying them over time. The recent changes to PSCI also illustrate the potential
instability of reforms that result from leadership change and financial distress. It will be
interesting to observe over time whether persistent budgetary crises and leadership
turnover impede other districts’ efforts to sustain portfolio management, which by its
nature threatens key interests of traditional political actors in district reform.
Second, many of the specific challenges encountered in LAUSD also speak to
potential roadblocks for others seeking to implement turnaround and portfolio
reforms. For example, nationally, some have raised questioned about system and city-
wide capacity to take over failing schools. Research indicates that large CMOs did not
“jump” at the opportunity to restart schools under the SIG program (Zehr, 2011). Some
of these CMO operators admitted that the difficulty of improving an existing school
compared to creating a new school that families have chosen to attend lessened the
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appeal of the turnaround option. Our data on the decreasing supply of PSCI
applications affirms that there may be justifiable concerns about the number of
organizations interested, willing, and able to take on the turnaround challenge.
Another area of concern regarding school turnaround is the extent to which the
federal government or other funding agencies should specify school models and
strategies. One recent report, for example, urged the federal government to adopt a
more “customized” approach to turnaround with fewer “prescriptive elements” (e.g. the
requirement to remove the principal in all four federally approved SIG models)
(Knudson et al., 2011). While we do not dispute this recommendation for customization,
our research nevertheless offers a cautionary illustration of the challenges involved in
tailoring school improvement plans to individual communities. PSCI has, in some
cases, exposed deep tensions between various stakeholder groups regarding
educational goals, norms, and expectations.
Moreover, LAUSD’s struggle with PSCI’s community and parent engagement
mechanism demonstrates that it is difficult to obtain input and achieve consensus about
what strategies best fit a particular school community, and shows that the complexity
increases as more stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. Developing
mechanisms that ensure effective parent and community engagement in the design and
implementation of portfolio and turnaround reforms is a lingering challenge that
deserves further attention in research and practice. Districts considering similar reforms
should anticipate potential language and literacy issues and consider investing in the
development of unbiased, high-quality information and engagement opportunities that
include sufficient time and support to ensure understanding[8].
In addition, the Obama administration and other stakeholders have discussed the
increased use of school turnaround as a reform and accountability strategy. Such
legislation might require certain chronically low-performing schools and districts to
undergo prescriptive turnaround reforms. However, our study indicates that it is
important to establish a firmresearch base regarding which specific aspects of turnaround
are likely to work, and under what conditions. The early LAUSD experience shows that it
is not easy to turn around low-performing schools, and that stakeholder support and buy-
in are essential for the successful implementation of such reforms.
Consistent with past research on district reform more generally (e.g. Garda, 2011;
Gittell, 1994; Hess, 1999; Marshall et al., 1985; Shipps et al., 1999; Stone et al., 2001), our
research on PSCI also indicates that the implementation of portfolio and turnaround
reforms is a deeply political undertaking. The threat of losing one’s school or one’s job
(in the case of a charter school taking over) or of gaining more autonomy (in the case of
a school adopting a governance model or waivers from district policies or collective
bargaining provisions) creates high stakes and strong incentives for stakeholders to
mobilize to protect their interests. Leaders planning to adopt such reforms should
anticipate the highly charged nature of such endeavors and invest in ways to ensure
neutrality (e.g. including independent monitoring of the process), counter-act
potentially divisive practices and unintended consequences (e.g. disseminating
unbiased information, countering misinformation, penalizing electioneering), and
create a level playing field (e.g. providing equal access to technical assistance). Our
ongoing research will continue to track the politics of implementation, paying
particular attention to the ways in which the recent adaptations to “depoliticize” PSCI
play out (e.g. amount of time teams spend lobbying, perceptions of fairness).
Clearly, more research on the implementation and eventual efficacy of both school
turnaround and district portfolio reforms is necessary. The complexity of these
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reforms suggests a need for deeper and more theoretically and empirically grounded
analyses of the key mechanisms of change. Our ongoing research takes on this
challenge by examining PSCI reform “levers” independently, including: the role of plan
development and the relationship between plan quality, implementation, and outcomes;
the varying levels of school autonomy and their association with school practices and
outcomes; parent engagement in planning and implementation and its effects on school
outcomes; and the nature and results of technical assistance and capacity building.
As these reform concepts grow in popularity, it will be important to build on the
successes and challenges of other districts implementing portfolio and turnaround
reforms across the country to inform policy decisions at the federal, state, and local
levels. Such a research base is slowly growing (e.g. Bulkley et al., 2010; Christman et al.,
2006; Gyurko and Henig, 2010; Hill, 2011; Levin et al., 2010; Menefee-Libey, 2010; O’Day
et al., 2011). LAUSD’s PSCI provides an excellent opportunity to study how one large
urban school district initially implemented a hybrid portfolio-turnaround reform,
learned from its challenges, and continuously adapted its policies to address the needs
of its students. It remains to be seen if this strategy will be ultimately successful, both
in terms of its continued implementation and its effects on student outcomes.
Notes
1. According to one definition, turnaround “is different from school improvement because it
focuses on the most consistently underperforming schools and involves dramatic,
transformative change” (Calkins et al., 2007, p. 10). Under federal guidelines for SIG
funds, “turnaround” is one of four school improvement models with specific parameters:
replace principal, rehire no more than half of school staff, and grant new principal sufficient
flexibility to implement a comprehensive approach to improve student outcomes (US
Department of Education, 2010). Throughout this paper we refer to turnaround in the
broader conception of dramatic improvement for chronically low-performing schools.
2. There is considerable research on many of these individual models: for example, seven years of
RAND research on the New American Schools model (Berends et al., 2002; Glennan, 1998) and
extensive studies of Success for All (Datnowet al., 2003; Slavin et al., 1994; Stringfield et al., 1997).
3. “PI 3 þ schools” are those that fail to achieve AYP targets for four or more consecutive years. In
California, all Title I funded schools that do not make AYP for two consecutive years or more are
identified for PI – often referred to nationally as “In Need of Improvement” – under ESEA.
4. LAUSD has implemented changes to the intervention in each consecutive cohort of the reform.
We discuss some of these changes in the conclusion. However, the focus of this paper is on the
first and second cohorts of PSCI, and we discuss the intervention as implemented at that time.
5. We received 37 total responses. Since some teams wrote plans for multiple schools, we asked
a different team member to respond for each school. In one case, a team leader responded
based on experience at a site other than the one requested, so we dropped this response from
our analysis. Non-responders did not differ systematically from responders or the overall
population of PSCI 2.0 teams on observable characteristics.
6. We made every effort to ensure participation of multiple sub-groups of stakeholders in our
interviews and focus groups and had interpreters at all parent focus groups.
7. We report the ratios of number of proposals relative to schools rather than sites because
some participating campuses were broken into smaller schools. PSCI required separate
proposals for each school and these proposals were reviewed and voted on by school not site.
8. Our ongoing research will draw on democratic theory (Gutmann and Thompson, 1996;
Pateman, 1970) and extant literature on civic and parent engagement (Bryk et al., 2010;
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Epstein and Dauber, 1991; Furstenberg et al., 1999; Lareau, 1989; Muller, 1993) to examine the
PSCI shift from formal voting to community meetings and its effects on participation and
quality of involvement.
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and Schools, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 77-113.
Muncey, D.E. and McQuillan, P.J. (1996), Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An
Ethnographic Viewof the Coalition of Essential Schools, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Nadelstern, E. (2012), “School support networks as a school and district reform strategy”, a
working paper, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington
Bothell, Seattle, WA.
Nunnery, J. (1998), “Reform ideology and the locus of development problem in educational
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O’Day, J.A., Bitter, C.S. and Gomez, L.M. (Eds), Education Reform in New York City:
Ambitious Change in the Nation’s Most Complex School System, Harvard Education Press,
Cambridge, MA, pp. 1-16.
Odden, A. and Archibald, S. (2000), A Case Study of Resource Reallocation To Implement a Whole
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Orland, M., Connolly, B., Fong, T., Sosenko, L.D. and Tushnet, N.C. Yin, R.K. Burt, J.M. Warner, E.
(2008), Evaluation of the Comprehensive School Reform Program Implementation and
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Outcomes: Third-Year Report, US Department of Education, Washington, DC, available at:
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Patterson, K.Y. and Cruz, O.E. (2011), A Report on the Public School Choice 2.0 Advisory Vote
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Purkey, S.C. and Smith, M.S. (1983), “Effective schools: a review”, The Elementary School Journal,
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Rice, J.K. and Croninger, R.C. (2005), “Resource generation, reallocation, or depletion: an analysis
of the impact of reconstitution on school capacity”, Leadership and Policy in Schools, Vol. 4
No. 2, pp. 73-104.
Rice, J.K. and Malen, B. (2003), “The human costs of education reform: the case of school
reconstitution”, Educational Administration Quarterly, Vol. 39 No. 5, pp. 635-666.
Rice, J.K. and Malen, B. (2010), School Reconstitution as an Education Reform Strategy: A
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Robinson, M.A., Kannapel, P., Gujarati, J., Williams, H. and Oettinger, A. (2008), A Formative
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Shipps, D., Kahne, J. and Smylie, M.A. (1999), “The politics of urban school reform: legitimacy,
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pp. 518-545.
Slavin, R.E., Ross, S.M. and Casey, J.P. (1994), Final Report: 1993-94 Success for All Program in
Memphis, Tennessee, University of Memphis Center for Research in Educational Policy,
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US Department of Education (2010), Guidance on fiscal year 2010 School Improvement Grants
under section 1003(G) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, US
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Further reading
Malen, B. and Rice, J.K. (2009), “School reconstitution and school improvement: theory and
evidence”, in Sykes, G., Schneider, B. and Plank, D.N. (Eds), Handbook of Education Policy
Research, Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 464-477.
About the authors
Julie A. Marsh, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Education Policy at the Rossier School of
Education at the University of Southern California. She specializes in research on K-12 policy.
Her research blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science. Specifically, her
work examines the implementation and effects of accountability policies, including studies of
pay-for-performance, the No Child Left Behind Act, and student promotion and retention
policies, and of policies designed to improve instruction, including studies of literacy coaches.
Her research has also focused on the role of school districts as central actors in educational
reform and the use of data to guide decision making. Julie A. Marsh is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Katharine O. Strunk, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy at the Rossier School
of Education, and by courtesy, at the Price School of Public Policy, at the University of Southern
California. Her research falls into two overarching categories related to K-12 education policy
and reform: teacher labor markets and education governance. Specifically, her work on teacher
labor markets focuses on questions concerning the determinants of teacher attrition, the
retention and recruitment of high-quality teachers, and the impact of teachers’ unions and their
collectively bargained contracts on district- and school-level processes. Her research on
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education governance explores the relationship between teachers’ unions and school boards, and
the varied impacts of accountability policies and their associated interventions.
Susan Bush serves as a Project Manager at the USC Rossier School of Education’s Center on
Educational Governance, where she works on the evaluation of the Investing in Innovation (i3)
grant activities to support LAUSD’s Public School Choice Initiative. While completing a Master’s
degree in education policy, organization, and leadership studies, She previously served as a
research assistant on the California Alternative Education Research Project at the John W.
Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University.
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
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doc_914483224.pdf
On this paper talk portfolio district reform meets school turnaround.
Portfolio district reform
meets school turnaround
Early implementation findings from the
Los Angeles Public School Choice Initiative
Julie A. Marsh, Katharine O. Strunk and Susan Bush
Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose – Despite the popularity of school “turnaround” and “portfolio district” management as
solutions to low performance, there has been limited research on these strategies. The purpose of this
paper is to address this gap by exploring the strategic case of Los Angeles Unified School District’s Public
School Choice Initiative (PSCI) which combined both of these reforms. It examines how core mechanisms
of change played out in schools and communities during the first two years of implementation.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on a mixed methods study, combining data
from surveys, case studies, leader interviews, observations, and document review. It is guided by a
conceptual framework grounded in research on school turnaround and portfolio districts, along with
the district’s implicit theory of change.
Findings – The paper finds early success in attracting diverse stakeholder participation, supporting plan
development, and ensuring transparency. However, data also indicate difficulty establishing understanding
and buy-in, engaging parents and community, attracting sufficient supply of applicants, maintaining
neutrality and the perception of fairness, and avoiding unintended consequences of competition – all of
which weakened key mechanisms of change.
Research limitations/implications – Data from parent focus groups and school sites may not be
representative of the entire population of parents and schools, and data come from a short period of time.
Practical implications – The paper finds that developing processes and procedures to support
complex reform takes time and identifies roadblocks others may face when implementing school
turnaround and portfolio management. The research suggests districts invest in ways to ensure
neutrality and create a level playing field. It also indicates that leaders should anticipate challenges to
engaging parents and community members, such as language and literacy barriers, and invest in the
development of unbiased, high-quality information and opportunities that include sufficient time and
support to ensure understanding.
Originality/value – This paper begins to fill a gap in research on popular reform strategies for
improving low-performing schools.
Keywords United States of America, Educational administration, Educational innovation,
Accountability, School reform, Governance, Policy, Turnaround, Portfolio district, Low-performing schools
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
School districts throughout the country are facing mounting accountability pressures
to improve student achievement and turn around their lowest performing schools.
More and more schools are failing to make adequate yearly progress targets under the
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
Received 29 April 2012
Revised 28 July 2012
Accepted 5 November 2012
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 51 No. 4, 2013
pp. 498-527
rEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578231311325677
The authors would like to thank members of the AERA-sponsored Intensive Research
Workshop, Thinking Systemically: Improving Districts Under Pressure, Rochester, NY – notably,
Betty Malen and Ken Wong, who offered their invaluable insights and feedback on earlier drafts
of this paper, organizers Kara Finnigan and Alan Daly, and the two anonymous reviewers.
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Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Although waivers to ESEA and
discussions about reauthorization of the policy are changing the specifics of
accountability pressures, it is clear that federal policies will continue to hold districts
accountable for student performance.
Many policy makers are proposing “turnaround” reforms to address the issue of
chronic low performance. In particular, turning around the lowest performing 5 percent
of schools is a priority for the Obama administration (Duncan, 2010). Unlike incremental
school improvement, turnaround reforms expect changes such as replacing the principal
and/or staff and providing increased flexibility from current policies to produce
significant achievement gains in a very short period of time (usually with two to three
years), followed by sustained improvement over the long run[1].
More than 20 major cities are currently implementing another innovative approach
to help low-performing districts improve: the portfolio management model (Hill and
Campbell, 2011). Unlike school-centered turnaround strategies, portfolio reforms treat
the district as a key unit of change, encouraging districts to allow a diverse set of
service providers to operate schools so the district can observe the performance of
various educational approaches and make decisions about the future selection of school
operators. Toward this end, districts take on a new role as “performance optimizer”
and, periodically, remove the lowest performing providers and expand the operations
of higher performing providers based on student outcomes (Bulkley, 2010; Lake and
Hill, 2009). In this way, the portfolio management model sits at the intersection of
several existing district improvement movements including market-based reform,
standards-based reform, and context-aligned differentiation of schools (Bulkley, 2010).
To date, research on the implementation and effects of both turnaround and
portfolio districts remains limited. This paper begins to address this gap by exploring
the strategic case of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)’s Public School
Choice Initiative (PSCI), which combined both of these popular reforms and treated
schools and the district as key units of change. Implemented for the first time in
August 2009, PSCI allowed teams of internal and external stakeholders to compete to
turn around the district’s lowest performing “focus” schools (selected by LAUSD
administrators based on a diverse set of performance indicators) and to operate newly
constructed “relief” schools designated to ease overcrowding (built using funding from
state and local bonds). The district’s theory of change behind PSCI was that, with
intensive supports and appropriate autonomies, a range of school providers would be
able to turn around low-performing schools and increase student achievement. The
ultimate goal of this district reform was to build a diverse portfolio of high-performing
schools tailored to and supported by the local community.
This paper examines the early implementation of the PSCI reform, focussing on the
ways in which the mechanisms of change – including competition, autonomy, parental
engagement, plan development, and capacity building – played out in the earliest days
of the reform. Specific knowledge about implementation is essential for understanding
the mechanisms by which improved outcomes do or do not occur. We ask: How were
the key mechanisms of change outlined in the district’s vision of PSCI enacted? What
were the early successes and challenges? What can be learned from these early lessons
to inform future turnaround and portfolio management efforts? The focus is on the
district and its partners’ real-time efforts to implement the reform and how applicant
teams and other stakeholders experienced the plan development and selection process.
In the remainder of this paper we first summarize the literature guiding our
research, then describe the LAUSD initiative. Next we describe the study’s conceptual
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framework and methods and present answers to the research questions. We conclude
with a set of implications for policy, practice, and research.
Research informing the study of turnaround and portfolio reform
In this section we briefly review three sets of literature guiding our research. First, we
examine the broad literature on school reform, which lays the foundation for newer
district- and school-level reform efforts. Next we review the current landscape of
research regarding the efficacy and implementation of school turnaround and the
portfolio management model.
School effectiveness and reform
In 1966, James Coleman’s Equal Educational Opportunity Survey report found, among
other things, that racial integration had not improved academic achievement in urban
schools and that school resources had little effect on student achievement once controls
for family background were included in the analyses. In response, researchers set
about identifying characteristics correlated with student achievement within the
context of urban schools. This body of research identifying characteristics of “effective
schools” informed several subsequent school improvement efforts (Bliss et al., 1991;
Edmonds, 1979, 1982; Levine, 1990; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Purkey and Smith, 1983).
The identified characteristics, or correlates, include strong instructional leadership,
safe and orderly environment, a clear and focussed mission, a climate of high
expectations for students, and frequent monitoring of student progress, among others.
Building on the Effective Schools work, whole-school reform gained popularity as a
means of improving student outcomes. Beginning in 1978, “School-Wide Programs”
(SWP) allowed schools to use federal Title I funds for whole-school reform and
support, rather than targeted services (the norm prior to this time). The characteristics
of Effective Schools were embedded in this work and, as Turnbull et al. (1990) noted,
Title I coordinators reported that 62 percent of SWP schools in their states
implemented Effective Schools programs as a main feature of their SWP. While SWP
schools made important gains in reducing curricular and instructional fragmentation
common in the provision of Title I services, SWP realized only small gains in student
achievement (Wong and Meyer, 1998).
Building on the recognition that past piecemeal reforms were ineffective, in the late
1980s and early 1990s many non-profit organizations, universities, and educators
nationwide began developing and implementing specific whole-school reform models,
such as the New American Schools and Success for All[2]. From 1998 to 2007 the
federally funded Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program helped scale-up these
efforts by providing schools with funding to purchase services from external whole-
school reform developers (Gross et al., 2009). Selected programs were required to
address the 11 essential elements of a whole-school reform model, several of which
align with the Effective Schools correlates (US Department of Education, 1998). While
broadly implemented, researchers found no early effect of the reform on student
achievement. Studies of CSR effectiveness during the first five years of implementation
showed no student achievement gains in CSR schools over comparison schools (Bifulco
et al., 2005; Orland et al., 2008). A meta-analytic study by Borman et al. (2003), however,
examines evidence around the effectiveness of specific models and suggests that CSR
is more likely to have positive impacts after several years of implementation.
Many studies of whole-school reform have confirmed that high-quality
implementation of externally developed models is key to positive effects on students
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(e.g. Aladjem and Borman, 2006; Berman and McLaughlin, 1978; Crandall et al., 1983;
Datnow et al., 2000; Stringfield et al., 1997). Across studies, several factors were found
to affect the quality of implementation, including: strong instructional leadership from
the principal and support from districts and model developers (Aladjem and Borman,
2006; Berends et al., 2002; Datnow et al., 2003); capacity of teachers to implement the
model, both in terms time and expertise (Berends et al., 2002; Datnow et al., 2003);
strong professional development and training for teachers (Muncey and McQuillan,
1996; Nunnery, 1998); and teacher and administrator buy-in and support for the model
(Berends et al., 2002; Berman and McLaughlin, 1975; Borman et al., 2000; Datnow
and Stringfield, 2000; Nunnery, 1998). Research also indicates that district policies and
context greatly shape the success of school-level implementation. For instance,
researchers found that implementation of the New American Schools model was higher
in districts with stable leadership, leaders who made the reform central to system
improvement, and dedicated resources to support implementation (Berends et al., 2002).
Turnaround reforms
In recent years, the urgency around whole-school improvement efforts has increased.
In response, school turnaround was designed to improve conditions in consistently
underperforming schools within a short-time period (often three years) by changing
staffing, governance, support, and/or instruction (Herman et al., 2008; Villavicencio
and Grayman, 2012). School turnaround encompasses a range of improvement
strategies, from the dramatic (e.g. school closure) to the modest (e.g. adding an external
professional development provider).
To date, little evidence exists regarding the efficacy of school turnaround efforts.
The US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences What Works
“practice guide” on school turnaround (2008) found no empirical studies of requisite
rigor demonstrating intervention effects or identifying factors that lead to successful
school turnaround (Herman et al., 2008), although one recent study finds that
turnaround reforms supported by the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG)
program led to significant improvement in student achievement for students in
California’s lowest-performing schools (Dee, 2012).
The majority of the research on turnaround reforms discusses the implementation
of such reforms. Case study research, for example, provides valuable insight on the
implementation challenges of turnaround and common practices used by schools
(e.g. Bondy et al., 2005; Duke, 2006; Freiberg et al., 1990; Center on Education Policy,
2008; Chenoweth, 2007; Herman et al., 2008; Wang and Manning, 2000). Echoing the
results from the Effective Schools research (Edmonds, 1979; Purkey and Smith, 1983),
Duke (2006) summarized the key characteristics of successful school identified across
multiple studies of school turnaround: prompt assistance to struggling students,
teacher collaboration, data-driven decision making, effective school leadership and
organizational structure, staff development, alignment of instruction with curriculum,
regular assessments, high expectations, parental involvement, and adjustments to
scheduling. Similarly, another report outlined two key lessons for school turnaround
based on the experiences of eight California districts: long-term improvement requires
district-level systematic changes in resource alignment and policy to support school
turnaround, and turnaround efforts must be tailored to the school’s particular
conditions, context, and needs (Knudson et al., 2011).
A few recent studies of the SIG program have described significant variation across
states implementing SIG as well as several implementation challenges for states,
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districts, and schools. Specifically, state education agencies – which must manage the
competitive grant process, provide technical assistance to districts and schools, and
monitor progress – experienced challenges in maintaining adequate staff capacity to
support districts and schools through grant writing and implementation, as well as in
effectively monitoring the progress and activities of districts and external partner
organizations during grant renewal (Center on Education Policy, 2012; Lazarin, 2012;
US Government Accountability Office, 2012). In addition, these studies registered
stakeholder concern over the school’s ability to quickly achieve significant gains in
student performance and the sustainability of interventions upon completion of the
grant (Center on Education Policy, 2012; US Government Accountability Office, 2012).
School reconstitution – one dramatic method of school turnaround mandating
replacement of over 50 percent of staff together with other school improvement strategies
– has garnered attention as a potentially effective method of school turnaround. Past
studies identify serious challenges faced by districts in accessing an adequate supply of
capable and committed staff and providing additional valued resources and support
structures to bolster the capacity of these schools (Fraga et al., 1998; Hess, 2003; Odden
and Archibald, 2000; Rice and Croninger, 2005; Wong et al., 1999). Recent studies of SIG-
funded reconstitution find similar human capital challenges to implementation, such as
finding individuals at the state and local level with the expertise and commitment to carry
out major school improvement efforts (Center on Education Policy, 2012; US Government
Accountability Office, 2012).
Given these common challenges, it is not surprising that research on the
intermediate outcomes of reconstitution is mixed (Rice and Malen, 2010). For example,
one study of six reconstituted schools finds relatively negative near-term outcomes of
school restructuring, including high levels of teacher turnover with experienced
teachers often being replaced by first-year and non-certificated teachers, and only
marginal adjustments in classroom practice (Malen et al., 2002; Malen and Rice, 2004;
Rice and Malen, 2003, 2010).
The implementation findings discussed above suggest that PSCI may be a
particularly promising version of school reform. PSCI includes various methods of
turnaround, from reconstitution to transformation, and incorporates systemic district-
level changes, investment in capacity building, and a context-specific reform in its
design. In addition, PSCI requires applicant teams to highlight how they will foster many
of the elements found to contribute to successful turnaround efforts and identified in
the broader school reform literature, such as data-driven decision making, teacher
collaboration, staff development, curricular alignment, and parental involvement.
Portfolio management
In contrast to school-centered turnaround, another approach to improving district-wide
student performance is portfolio management. Unlike a pure market-based reform, in
which parent and student school choice and exit determines schools’ operational tenure,
the portfolio model allows the district to determine which operators will be added or
removed from the portfolio system (Henig, 2010). Research on the reform’s effects on
schools and students is limited both in quantity and in the ability to draw causal
conclusions about impacts on student outcomes, and has shown mixed results. For
example, studies in New York and Philadelphia yield inconsistent findings on portfolio
reform effects on student achievement across analyses drawing on different assessments
and grade-level groups (Fruchter and McAlister, 2008; Kemple, 2011; Mac Iver and
Mac Iver, 2006). Research on Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 reform has also found mixed
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results; the district saw an increase in elementary and middle school student achievement,
while high school students showed slower progress on measures such as graduation rates,
ACT composite scores, absenteeism, and grade point average (Humphrey and Shields,
2009; Roderick et al., 2006).
Studies of individual districts have demonstrated some of the difficult organizational
changes and challenges resulting from a shift to portfolio management (Bulkley et al.,
2010; Christman et al., 2006; Gyurko and Henig, 2010; Hill, 2011; Levin et al., 2010;
Menefee-Libey, 2010; O’Day et al., 2011). This research emphasizes the importance of
maintaining supply and adequate local capacity to sustain portfolio reforms and notes
difficulties in engaging parents and the community in the reforms. For example Levin et
al.’s (2010) study of the New Orleans portfolio reform noted challenges in providing
parents with adequate information and distrust among parents about decentralization
and the use of external providers. Much of the implementation research also explores
central office restructuring and leadership (Honig and DeArmond, 2010) and redesign of
supports to newly autonomous schools (Nadelstern, 2012; Robinson et al., 2008). Studies
indicate that district central offices occupy a pivotal role in strategic management of the
portfolio and must ensure coordination of services (Levin, 2010). Lake and Hill (2009)
describe the importance of creating new departments for performance management,
ensuring diffusion of the reform to other district departments (e.g. Human Resources
personnel must understand nuanced changes to staffing policies), and maintaining the
precarious role of a neutral manager with no pre-determined operator preference.
As we will discuss in the next section, LAUSD’s PSCI is a hybrid turnaround-
portfolio reform strategy that is intended to incorporate many of the lessons learned
from the extant literature on school reform, school turnaround, and portfolio
management. PSCI serves as an important case study for understanding the
implementation and efficacy of variants of these reforms, especially as this blending
of reforms may serve as a model for other large urban districts striving to improve
student achievement. The next two sections will outline LAUSD’s PSCI and will
highlight reform elements that the district believed would instigate dramatic change
in its low-performing schools.
Background on LAUSD’s PSCI
LAUSD operates 891 schools and authorizes 161 charter schools that serve
approximately 670,000 students, nearly three-quarters of whom qualify for free- or
reduced-price lunch and nearly one-third of whom are English language learners.
English Language Arts scores reveal widespread failure in the system; 32 percent of
third graders score below or far below basic on the California Standards Tests (CST)
and by the seventh grade this increases to 44 percent. Statistics for math achievement
paint a similar picture. Today, 322,000 students attend one of the more than 250 schools
in Program Improvement (PI) Year 3 status or higher. Only 52 percent of students
graduate on time from high school (authors’ calculations).
PSCI built on decades of past reform efforts in Los Angeles, most notably a series of
systemic reforms seeking to empower local actors and advance student achievement in
the 1990s (Kerchner et al., 2008). These reforms – the Los Angeles Educational Alliance
for Restructuring Now and the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project – shared
many of the same ideas and levers of changes embraced by PSCI, including increased
autonomy and accountability, capacity building, planning, and parent involvement
(Kerchner et al., 2008). However, while LAUSD had increasingly adopted non-
traditional school options for families in the past, including charter schools and
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magnet programs, PSCI’s introduction of competition for the operation of district
facilities represented a dramatic shift in district policy.
Adopted by the LAUSD Board of Education in August 2009, the Public School
Choice resolution established the long-term goal of creating “diverse options for high
quality educational environments, with excellent teaching and learning, for students’
academic success” (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 1). Responding to the “chronic academic
underperformance” of many district schools and the strong interest from parents and
communities to “play a more active role” in “shaping and expanding the educational
options” (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 1), the resolution invited:
[y] operational and instructional plans from internal and external stakeholders, such as
school planning teams, local communities, pilot school operators, labor partners, charters,
and others who are interested in collaborating with the District to operate the District’s new
schools and PI 3 þ schools [y] in an effort to create more schools of choice and educational
options for the District’s students and families (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 2)[3].
The initiative was not intended to be a typical “choice” program in which parents
choose the school their child will attend. Rather, this process provided the community
with the opportunity to participate in developing school plans. The ultimate “choice” in
PSCI was made by the LAUSD Board[4].
Designed for gradual scale-up, PSCI involved annual rounds (or cohorts) of schools
in the process with the intention that all low-performing public schools would be
transformed into high performers. Participating schools were identified by LAUSD
administrators based on PI status, Academic Performance Index level and growth
scores, percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on the CST, and dropout
rates. In each round, teams applying for a PSCI school responded to a detailed Request
for Proposal, submitting lengthy school plans that covered topics from curriculum and
instruction to school organization to professional development and school operations.
In addition, applicants were asked to select one of a set of governance models already
in existence in the district. These models varied in the levels of autonomy schools had
from district and/or union policies and over resource use. Figure 1 outlines the six
governance options available to PSCI applicants and lists them in order of the least to
the most autonomous.
Submitted applications underwent a multi-stage review, which in the first two
rounds included: a panel of internal and external reviewers and a Superintendent’s
Review Panel, parent and community voting, and superintendent recommendations to
the LAUSD Board, which voted on the final set of winning applicants. In February
Traditional
Expanded School-
Based
Management
Model (ESBMM)
Network
Partnership
Pilot
Dependent or
Affiliated Charter
Independent
Charter
• follow federal,
state, and district
guidelines but can
acquire greater
flexibility via
waivers. School
staff may request
a waiver that
exempts site staff
from specified
articles of the
union collective
bargaining
agreement.
• operate with
increased levels
of collaboration
and shared
decision-making
from local school
actors
• promote
partnerships
between public
schools and
external partners
and are run by a
team of internal
and external
stakeholders with
autonomy over
budget,
governance,
curriculum, and
professional
development
• modeled after
Boston’s pilot
schools, which
operate under a
“thin” union
contract and have
autonomy over
budget,
curriculum,
governance,
schedule and
staffing
• some flexibility
around
curriculum,
personnel, and
governance
• Exempt from
most state codes
and district
policies regarding
curriculum,
instruction,
budget, and
personnel
Figure 1.
Governance models
currently operating in
LAUSD
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2010 the Board selected from among 100 school applications for the first cohort of
participating schools (PSCI 1.0), which included 12 low-performing focus and 18 newly
constructed relief schools (Table I). Internal teams were comprised of groups of
teachers seeking increased site-based management, or combinations of teachers,
parents, and/or administrators from the local school community. External teams
included non-profit organizations; charter management organizations (CMOs); and
partnerships between internal and external groups. In this first round of PSCI, the
Board awarded 33 PSCI schools to internal teams, and also selected five teams
proposing charter schools and three non-profit organization plans.
Identified in May 2010 and scheduled to open or reopen in fall of 2011, the second full
cohort (PSCI 2.0) included ten relief and three focus sites. In March 2011, the Board selected
from 48 proposals and approved a range of teams to operate these schools including 17
internal and seven charter teams. In addition, the Board identified two focus schools and
one relief school that did not receive plans of sufficient quality during the PSCI process and
chose to restructure the focus schools and return the relief school to the 3.0 round of PSCI
rather than allow any of the applicants to operate the schools (see Table I).
In August 2010, the district and partners received nearly $5 million dollars in
federal funds through the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) grant competition and $1
million dollars in matching private funds, which are being used to bolster the support
for the development and implementation of school plans and to develop new
accountability processes for schools that are operating PSCI schools. Also, in early
2011, Superintendent Ramon Cortines stepped down and John Deasy took over the
position. Despite these higher level changes, the central office staff in charge of PSCI
has remained mostly consistent over the course of the initiative, as have the partner
organizations brought together to support the district’s implementation efforts under
the i3 grant. Grant partners include Unite-LA, an affiliate organization of the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. Unite-
LA acts as the host organization for the non-profit Los Angeles School Development
Institute (LASDI), which is co-directed by LAUSD, the local teachers’ union (UTLA),
PSCI 1.0 PSCI 1.5 PSCI 2.0 PSCI 2.5
Number of sites 30 2 13 1
(Relief/focus) (18/12) (2/0) (10/3) (0/1)
Number of schools 39 2 27 1
(Relief/focus) (24/12) (2/0) (24/3) (0/1)
Selected teams
Traditional 15 2 3 0
ESBMM 8 0 2 0
Pilot 8 0 12 0
Network partner 3 0 1 0
Affiliated charter 0 0 0 0
Independent charter 5 0 7 0
Unknown (restructure) 0 0 2 1
Notes: The number of schools may be larger than the number of sites because campuses, particularly
high schools, were broken into smaller schools.
a
Due to an accelerated construction schedule and
further analysis of school data, two additional relief schools were added to PSCI in February 2010
comprising PSCI 1.5 and one additional focus school was added for PSCI 2.5. Throughout the paper,
we count 1.0 and 1.5 schools together as the 1.0 cohort and 2.0 and 2.5 schools as the 2.0 cohort
Table I.
Number of schools in PSCI
1.0-2.0 and selected
governance models
a
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and the local administrators’ union (AALA) and offers technical assistance and
consulting to internal design teams.
Conceptual framework
Our study design, data collection, and analysis were guided by a conceptual
framework grounded in the research on school turnaround and portfolio districts, as
well as the district’s implicit “theory of change” that we deduced from our interviews
and review of documents (Figure 2). The district’s theory of change, illustrated in
Figure 2, highlighted six key levers of change that, if implemented, were expected to
lead to dramatic improvements in student performance. First, rigorous screening of
school plans was intended to ensure high-quality school designs. Second, competition
among a diverse set of applicant teams was believed to motivate applicants to
enhance the quality of these plans and increase the potential for innovation. Third,
granting school operators autonomy over key domains such as staffing, budget,
governance, and curriculum and instruction was expected to foster the development
of schools that met district needs, were responsive to local contexts and student
needs, and were staffed with committed personnel who shared the schools’ goals and
priorities (e.g. Chubb and Moe, 1990; Edmonds, 1979).
Fourth, district oversight and accountability mechanisms were intended to motivate
PSCI school staff to perform their best. By requiring schools to establish and achieve
the goals outlined in their proposals, the district encouraged staff to continually assess
and improve their performance. Through strong oversight and accountability the
district could stay informed of PSCI schools’ progress, intervene quickly with
struggling schools and, if necessary, return schools to the PSCI process. Fifth, technical
assistance and support from the district and its partners were expected to build
applicant teams’ capacity for developing and implementing high-quality plans. Finally,
community and parent involvement in the selection, development, and implementation
of school plans was intended to provide additional pressures and supports.
PSC portfolio
Environment
Established by
District and Partners
Identification of PSC
schools
Facilitation of
Stakeholder
Involvement
Provision of Support
and Oversight
- planning
- application
- review
- selection
- implementation
Accountability and
Monitoring
Diffusion Activities
- Identification and
Codification of
best practices
- Dissemination
PSC School Application
Process
Applicant Team Formation
(external vs internal)
Selection of School Type
(focus vs relief)
Development of Plan
Selection of School Model
(charter, Network Partner,
ESBMM, Pilot, traditional)
Review Process
- Engagement with
community
- Interviews
Rigorous screening
of plans
Competition for
selection
Autonomy to
respond to local
contexts and needs
Oversight and
accountability
Capacity building
Increased pressure
and contribution
from parents and
community
High-Quality psc
schools
- Strong leadership and
governance
- Rigorous curriculum
and instruction
- Supportive school
climate
- Effective use of data
and assessments
- High-quality PD
- Strong community
involvement
- Performance
management
- Sound financial
practices
- Innovative and diverse
schools and practices
Positive
Outcomes for
Staff
Positive
Outcomes
for
Students
Positive
Outcomes for
Parents and
Community
Non-PSC Schools
- Adoption of best practices
- Pressure to improve school quality and outcomes
- “Relief” effects on feeders schools
District, Community, School Classroom Context
Understanding and commitment; capacity; motivation; leadership; politics; other accountability policies and competing interventions;
community, school, staff and student characteristies
Figure 2.
Public school choice
theory of change
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These mechanisms were expected to yield a diverse set of high-quality learning
environments (see Figure 2 for specific characteristics identified by LAUSD) and
ultimately positive student outcomes. Student outcomes could result either directly or
indirectly through effects on teachers and other school staff (e.g. retention of effective
individuals, high job satisfaction) and parents and community members (e.g. high
satisfaction with the school, strong sense of ownership). To the extent that the PSCI’s
effects spill over to non-PSCI schools – via pressure to implement reforms to avoid being
selected into the Initiative in the future, the intentional, or natural spread of successful
school models and ideas, or, in the case of relief schools, the alleviation of overcrowding –
positive student outcomes were expected to translate into higher-quality schools overall.
Finally, it is understood that PSCI was embedded in a broader context that could
influence its implementation and mediate its effects. Local human, physical and social
capital were likely to affect the implementation of the core processes and quality of the
work being done in PSCI schools (Berends et al., 2002; Bryk and Schneider, 2002;
Marsh, 2002; Massell, 1998; Spillane and Thompson, 1997). Local understanding and
commitment to reform, school and district leadership and support, and the alignment of
PSCI with existing policies would influence the extent to which local implementers carry
out the reform (Corcoran et al., 2001; Gamoran et al., 1995; McLaughlin, 1987; Marsh et al.,
2008; Snipes et al., 2002; Togneri and Anderson, 2003). Finally, structural variables, such
as characteristics of community (e.g. political climate), the schools and classrooms (e.g.
size, student-staff ratio), staff (e.g. level of experience), and students (e.g. income level)
would likely mediate the initiative effects on various outcomes (e.g. Bryk et al., 1993;
Coleman et al., 1966; Gamoran, 1987, 1992; Jencks et al., 1972). This paper focusses
primarily on the left two boxes and the levers of change. Although improved student
outcomes is the ultimate goal, it cannot be reached unless the beginning steps of this
process (plan development and selection) are well implemented and the key levers of
change operate as intended. It is from this premise that we begin our inquiry.
Data and methods
The paper draws on results from the first year of a three-year mixed methods study,
with particular focus on the second cohort of schools in 2010-2011 (PSCI 2.0). The
decision to focus on the second cohort was purely pragmatic: the funding and start
date of the study coincided with the second year of the initiative and thus real-time
interviews and observations of the plan development and selection process were only
possible for the second cohort of schools and beyond. Multiple data sources inform our
analyses, including: surveys of participating design teams; school case studies; leader
interviews; observations; and document review.
Surveys
In Spring 2011, we administered web-based surveys to one representative from all 45
PSCI 2.0 participating teams and received completed surveys from 36 teams for a
response rate of 80 percent[5]. The survey asked about the plan writing process (team
members, rationale for participation, support received), content of plans (governance
model/waivers requested and rationale), and perceptions of PSCI (reported
understanding of elements, opinions about process, and goals). Survey respondents
were design team leaders (DTLs) identified from letters of intent submitted to LAUSD
and included a mix of teachers, non-profit or charter school administrators, principals
and school staff, and local district administrators (LAUSD is organized into eight
geographic sub-districts). We conducted descriptive analyses of the survey data and
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also compared responses of respondents from different types of teams (e.g. by
governance model, membership, relief, or focus status). Throughout the paper we
explicitly discuss only statistically significant differences. Given the small sample size
we use the significance threshold of po0.10.
Case studies
Researchers conducted case studies of five PSCI 2.0 schools and the stakeholders
involved in either developing proposals to operate those schools or belonging to the
school community associated with the target schools. We chose schools to represent
variation in school level (elementary, middle, high), type of school (relief or focus), and
geographic location. For each school, we interviewed at least one member from all teams
(n¼11; seven internal and four external teams) submitting applications, conducted
parent focus groups (n¼30 parents total), observed site-specific meetings (n¼27), and
reviewed documents such as print and social media coverage, school plans, and
communications with stakeholders. All data collected were in near equal proportions
across case study schools (e.g. we observed approximately five meetings per school).
Leader interviews, documents, and observations
Documents and interviews with LAUSD central office administrators and district
partners (n ¼19) provided us with information about the PSCI design and theory of
change. To understand the nature of communication and technical assistance we
observed 28 district meetings, including orientation sessions and workshops on school
turnaround and various aspects of the school plan, and collected all relevant
documents, such as agendas, powerpoints, and print and online communication.
Case study and leader interviewnotes and documents were coded along the dimensions
of the conceptual framework and analyzed by individual school and across schools. We
examined the results of all of these analyses to identify cross-school findings and themes.
To enhance the internal validity and accuracy of findings we triangulated data from
multiple sources, comparing interview data to documents and surveys whenever possible.
Study limitations
Three main issues limit the analyses. First, the scope of the initiative is quite large, and
our resources are limited. Therefore, we were limited to a sample of five case study
schools and were unable to gather representative data from all parents involved or
expected to be involved in PSCI. Given these constraints, we acknowledge that our
parent focus group and case study data may not be wholly representative of the entire
population of school and parent participants[6]. Second, we draw on data from a very
short period of time and do not yet have data on the actual implementation of the plans
selected and the effects. However, the intent of this paper is to assess LAUSD and its
partners’ early implementation of the reform and to provide lessons for central offices
embarking on turnaround and portfolio reform initiatives based on the LAUSD
experience. Ongoing data collection will provide further insights into the rollout of
PSCI and its longer-term effects. Third, as with the majority of survey research, our
DTL surveys rely on perceptions (e.g. perceptions of understanding). To address this
limitation we provide data from in-depth interviews to corroborate survey results.
Findings: early successes and challenges
Overall we find evidence of early successes in the implementation of PSCI, but also a
number of challenges that brought into question some of the main assumptions of
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PSCI. We organized these findings below by the contextual condition or lever of change
that each bolsters or weakens.
Local understanding and commitment
As noted in our review of the literature, stakeholder involvement, understanding, and
support are key conditions for successful implementation of any reform initiative
(Bodilly et al., 2004; McLaughlin, 1987; McDermott, 2006; Marsh et al., 2008; Sabatier
and Mazmanian, 1979), particularly school reform. Without this basic support and
understanding, individuals may be less inclined to work toward reform goals and to
implement an initiative with fidelity. This is particularly true for PSCI and its theory of
change: without buy-in and participation, key levers like competition and site-based
autonomy would be difficult to implement. However, stakeholder understanding of and
support for key aspects of PSCI were generally mixed.
Stakeholder understanding. As with policy implementation generally,
understanding is a pre-condition necessary for several of PSCI’s core mechanisms of
change. For example, if autonomy is going to drive change or innovation, stakeholders
must be clear on what autonomies they are gaining when selecting a governance
model. Similarly, if individuals eventually taking over schools are going to be
motivated by accountability mechanisms, they need to understand the accountability
metrics, consequences, and policies. However, our evidence suggests that not all
stakeholders had a clear understanding of PSCI’s core elements.
Although the majority of DTLs reported on surveys that they understood what each
governance model entails (86 percent reported mostly or completely understanding)
and how schools were chosen to participate in PSCI (86 percent), fewer reported
understanding key facets of the initiative, like the role of the Advisory Vote (57 percent)
and how PSCI defines a high-quality plan (57 percent). Moreover, less than half
reported understanding key aspects of accountability, such as how implementation
would be monitored (49 percent reported mostly or completely understanding), how
operators would be held accountable (43 percent) and consequences for PSCI schools
not meeting goals over time (37 percent).
Our cases similarly indicated weak understanding of several core elements of PSCI.
“PSCI is very confusing for everybody,” said one DTL. “Why is it called Public School
Choice? It is a choice, the choice is the school board choosing which plan that they want
to see implemented at the school site. So, it was created with a misnomer and then that
just has continued.” Others conveyed misunderstandings about various aspects of the
initiative, most notably the autonomy-related mechanisms. Various models include
different levels of autonomy related to staffing (i.e. independent charter schools have
complete staffing autonomy, whereas traditional public schools are bound by the UTLA
and AALA contracts, and other governance models fall in between) and scheduling
(i.e. some models allow for increased school days and work hours, and others required
schools to follow the UTLA contract in full), among other things. Several teams
interviewed were unclear of the types of autonomy granted by each model.
Several factors appeared to contribute to this mixed level of understanding. First,
the short-time frame given to enact the Board resolution – just two months during the
first round of PSCI – and the multiple changes to rules and processes throughout PSCI
1.0 and 2.0 may have played a role. Second, the district and its partners may have
conveyed unclear and inconsistent messages about the initiative. “We haven’t done
a good job at communicating about PSCI,” said former Superintendent Cortines,
“People still see it as takeover rather than improvement and that bothers me.” Third,
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decision-making processes within LAUSD may have also exacerbated confusion.
Although central office administrators within the Innovation and Charter Schools Division
were responsible for day-to-day PSCI implementation, other district leaders – including the
superintendent and Board members – had considerable latitude to make decisions that
greatly altered the initiative and conflicted with prior decisions or rules laid out by
administrators. As a result of the multiple decision makers involved in the processes, local
teams and stakeholders may not have received consistent or clear answers or messages.
As discussed later, the high-stakes nature of PSCI also may have created incentives to
distort information, further contributing to misunderstanding and confusion.
Stakeholder support for PSCI. Consistent with past research (e.g. Berends et al.,
2002; Borman et al., 2000; Datnow and Stringfield, 2000), support for the PSCI goals
and theory of change appears to be another important pre-condition that district
leaders and partners struggled to achieve. On the one hand, DTLs surveyed indicated
fairly strong support for PSCI and key elements of the theory of change. The vast
majority agreed that PSCI would increase high-quality education options in LAUSD
and result in positive student outcomes (81 percent agreed or strongly agreed with
these statements). More than half of DTLs also believed competition created by PSCI
would lead to high-quality schools and outcomes for students (63 percent) and would
motivate other non-PSCI schools to improve (56 percent).
In case study interviews with DTLs, however, respondents’ views appeared to be
more mixed. Some clearly endorsed PSCI and its key elements of change, particularly
the competition lever. “It’s an opportunity for the district to get a lot better very soon,”
said one DTL, “It’s putting pressure on again, even just internal teams, to change the
way they’re doing things [y] which is a great thing.” A DTL from another school,
similarly embraced competition as an effective motivator of change:
So instead of just like “we’ve got to reopen that school, let’s just slap together a proposal
because it’s paperwork,” you get a group of motivated individuals who have to worry about a
different group of motivated individuals producing the best possible plan that they honestly
believe based on [y] research will have the best outcome.
In contrast, other DTLs disagreed with PSCI and its core assumptions. Many
interviewees reported that the competition detracted from a focus on improvement and
would not result in more qualified school operators or school plans. Others
characterized PSCI as “throwing money” at the problem. In addition, our case data
suggest that parents and community members, a key stakeholder group, had weaker
understanding of and support for the initiative.
Parent and community pressure and support
From the initiative’s inception, parent and community engagement was considered a
key lever for change. While parents and students did not directly choose their school of
attendance, parent and community members were engaged and their feedback
solicited to aid the superintendent in his plan selection decision. Consistent with
previous research in portfolio districts (e.g. Bulkley et al., 2010; Levin et al., 2010) and
whole school reform (e.g. Wang et al., 1999), this proved to be a major challenge for the
district and its partners in these initial rounds of PSCI.
Communication and engagement of parents and community members. For parents
and communities to serve as both a source of support for and pressure on PSCI schools,
they must not only participate but also understand the PSCI process, their role, and the
content of options presented by applicant teams. Our data suggest that this did not
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occur as hoped. First, the district and its partners struggled to get parents and
community members to participate in PSCI. Attendance at district-sponsored community
workshops was generally low with an average of 64 parents attending each meeting (out
of school enrollments of 700-3,800) (Beltran et al., 2011). In addition, a report from the
League of Women Voters of Los Angeles (LWVLA) (2011) estimated that less than one
percent of parents of students at the PSCI schools and feeder schools voted in the
Advisory Vote. As Superintendent Deasy acknowledged, this vote tally “is not a reliable
data point and in no way provides an adequate indication of what parents want for their
school” (Deasy, 2011, p. 2).
Our case study data also indicate that parents and community members had weak
levels of understanding about PSCI. For example, in focus groups, parents frequently
reported not understanding the purposes of PSCI and/or conveyed misinformation
about the initiative. One parent in a relief school explained, “They don’t really explain
why people [are] here; why the school has been put in this process.” Many focus group
participants – some of whom had just voted – also admitted to not comprehending the
purpose of the Advisory Vote. When asked why they had come to the school that
evening, one parent said “That’s what I couldn’t understand. What were we voting on?”
At another school, a parent told us “The truth is that I didn’t understand. There are
three plans to vote on. We didn’t choose any. I don’t know if that’ll affect the children or
the others. I don’t know.” Finally, when asked about governance models, most parents
focussed on the difference between charter and traditional schools and admitted to
being unsure of the distinction. “The only thing I know about a charter school is [that
it’s] private,” said one parent.
Language and literacy barriers. Observations and focus group data indicate that
limited English proficiency and low levels of literacy among subsets of parents
contributed to the low levels of understanding and engagement observed and
weakened this as an effective lever of change. Although the district and its partners
invested in translation services at nearly all meetings and translated printed materials,
communication problems persisted. For example, a few parents reported that the
language used in translation at meetings was academic in nature. “Usually we don’t
understand,” one parent commented, “The language is too sophisticated.” Similar
concerns emerged at one voting center we observed, where some parents could not read
the ballots or the executive summaries of the proposed plans due to low levels of
literacy (a staff member read the materials out loud to them).
Quality of information. Some parents reported that information provided at meetings
was too general. “I’m not thrilled with the information that was provided,” said one
parent. “I just think I need more information and that’s why I’m sitting here in this
position not knowing what to do.” Others complained about a lack of un-biased sources
of information. In fact, when asked where they would go for additional information about
PSCI, one parent explained, “I asked the school where my son is enrolled about charter
schools because I’ve heard that it’s better. They couldn’t give me an answer. She told me
that I had to pay a small sum of money to have my son there and they were going to
require that I spend more time in that school.” As discussed later, the competitive
pressures and reported “electioneering” also may have contributed to information
inaccuracies and made it difficult for parents to ascertain the facts.
Structural and technical factors. Some of the structural arrangements of meetings
and voting centers also may have contributed to confusion, limited access, and
mistrust of information. Limited time also greatly affected the nature of
communication and level of understanding. As Superintendent Deasy observed, with
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few parents attending each meeting and often only attending one of a series of
meetings offered, district leaders had very limited time to interact with each individual
parent. He noted, “We found it challenging to go deeper in our conversations, as we
often had a new group of parents at each meeting” (Deasy, 2011, p. 1). Similarly, a
report from the non-profit Families In Schools (FIS) (2011) reported that “there are
insufficient opportunities for parents to learn and comprehend complex information
regarding school performance and school plans in order to make an informed decision”
(Patterson and Cruz, 2011, p. 9).
In summary, the district and its partners struggled with executing the parent and
community engagement strategies, and in particular the Advisory Vote. In fact, many
district leaders and local media condemned the Advisory Vote as a failure (see, e.g.
Daily News, 2011). District leaders similarly recognized that PSCI’s community
engagement efforts did not achieve its goals. As one Board member explained:
A lot of parents were really engaged and involved, but so many were turned off [y] they saw
the politics, they saw the polarization, and they didn’t like what they saw. [y] We heard over
and over again, they didn’t understand the information, they were getting lied to, they felt
manipulated, they didn’t know who to believe.
We return to these issues again in a later section on the unintended consequences of
competition.
Capacity building
Technical assistance and support provided to design teams during the plan writing
process was an essential mechanism of change under the design of PSCI. The initiative
relied on the development of high-quality school plans, written in part by non-
traditional actors who may have been unaccustomed to plan writing. Our data indicate
that LAUSD and partner organization LASDI successfully provided plan development
support, though uneven provision of this support raised questions about the neutrality
of the district and fairness of the process for some teams.
Support for the plan development process. Overall the district made significant
progress towards establishing a wide range of standardized supports and services to
assist teams with plan writing. It served as both direct service-provider and “broker” of
individualized support through the new LASDI collaborative, a role commonly adopted
by central offices implementing portfolio strategies (Bulkley et al., 2010; Gyurko and
Henig, 2010; Honig, 2009). Drawing on i3 grant resources, LASDI provided support via
consultants and workshops, aiming to deliver targeted technical assistance and ongoing
support to applicant teams that included both teacher and administrator representatives.
LAUSD also succeeded in providing direct technical assistance to design teams.
Administrators within the Innovation and Charter School Division, with support from
various other LAUSD departments, delivered a series of workshops and meetings to
build understanding of PSCI and the RFP and develop deeper knowledge about
multiple topics. More than three-quarters of the DTLs reported that they or a member
of their team attended LAUSD and LASDI workshops and meetings, and the majority
of DTLs reported receiving multiple supports and services, as illustrated in Figure 3.
Access to support. Early on, LASDI decided that they would only support teams that
included both administrators and teachers – both of which are represented by the
unions constituting two of the three partners directing LASDI. As one LASDI leader
said, “When a school decides that they want LASDI’s help, the directors go out and sit
down with the principal and teacher teams. They’re very adamant that they meet with
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both teacher leader and principal and if they’re not even willing to sit in a room, we
don’t go out.” This decision excluded teams comprised solely of teachers, as well as
external teams from receiving LASDI support. When interviewed, four of six LASDI-
ineligible teams conveyed strong, negative opinions about the lack of access to these
capacity-building resources. Referring to LASDI, one charter school team member
explained, “We don’t have an equivalent institution for our capacity. [y] We don’t have
[y] another technical assistance piece [y] that the district’s internal applicants are
getting.” Similarly, a DTL from a teacher-only team noted, “Considering that part of
their grant money is to assist teachers in teacher-led reform, it is one of the most
profound examples of hypocrisy I have seen recently.” Several leaders within LAUSD
similarly disagreed with this decision to omit support for teacher-led teams.
“Everybody gets help,” said one leader, “I don’t care if it’s a group of parents, they
should get help.” Survey data further substantiate this perception of unequal access to
services. Overall, LASDI-ineligible teams reported accessing and receiving fewer
services and supports than LASDI-eligible teams. For example, only 40 percent of
LASDI-ineligible teams reported receiving help writing their plans as compared to 76
percent of LASDI-eligible teams. Similarly, only 53 percent of LASDI-ineligible teams
received assistance understanding governance models, compared to 95 percent of
LASDI-eligible teams (see Figure 3).
Local district support for eligible internal teams also varied greatly. Some local
districts provided teams with research materials and example proposals to help with
their development process. Some also paid for external consultants and editing
support. In contrast, other teams reported receiving little to no support from their local
district. In some cases, DTLs believed their local district used their resources to
advance a favored team’s chances of success. “They had already chosen a team,” said
one teacher-team DTL who reported receiving no support from the local district.
Screening of plans and competition for selection
Rigorous screening of plans and competition for selection are key mechanisms of
change in the PSCI design. In fact, the district and partner organization leaders that we
interviewed overwhelmingly emphasized the importance of competition – much more
so than the other levers. In practice, the district saw mixed success in implementing
these two levers of change.
Diversity of design team members. One goal of PSCI was to spur innovation by
including non-traditional actors in the reform process. PSCI succeeded in engaging a
host of actors in the design process. Most notably, teachers were reported to be active
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
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90%
100%
Help writing
plan
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plan
Help
understanding
governance
models
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to guide
program
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community
engagement
Did you and/or your team receive any of the following support,
assistance, or services
non-LASDI eligible
LASDI eligible
Figure 3.
Support design team
leaders received, by
LASDI eligibility
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players in developing school plans. According to DTL surveys, 89 percent of design
teams included at least one teacher and 42 percent of teams were led by a teacher. Also,
69 percent of DTLs ranked teachers as very highly involved in the plan development
process. The majority of teams also reported involving at least one parent or
community member, one certified personnel other than a teacher, or a non-principal
school administrator. Others also reported including someone from a non-profit, CMO,
or the teachers’ union. On average, six types of stakeholders were involved on each
design team. Past research indicates that many school reforms do not include input
from such stakeholders (McLaughlin and Shields, 1986), making PSCI unique in the
breadth of personnel roles involved in the reform.
Supply of applications. Although teams included many diverse and non-traditional
actors, the supply of teams is an area of concern. The average number of proposals per
school decreased from 2.6 in PSCI 1.0 to 1.8 in PSCI 2.0. Further, the number of schools
receiving only one proposal increased from 11 percent in PSCI 1.0 to 36 percent in PSCI
2.0[7]. These findings weaken the competition lever of change under PSCI and indicate
that PSCI may not provide a true “choice” for that particular community. One potential
factor contributing to the decrease in supply of final applications is that LASDI
consultants on occasion encouraged multiple applicant teams to collaborate and jointly
submit a single proposal (e.g. when they observed teams proposing similar ideas). It is
not clear from our data that these LASDI efforts entirely explain the observed decrease,
but it may have affected these patterns.
Transparency of the process. The initial PSCI resolution called for “a transparent
process for plans to be submitted, reviewed, and evaluated by internal staff and
external stakeholders” (Flores Aguilar, 2009, p. 5). As intended, LAUSD leaders
consistently shared information about the process with the public. From the outset, the
district posted weekly updates on a designated PSCI web site. For each round of PSCI,
the web site included copies of all letters of intent and final proposal submissions,
along with detailed documentation of the review process, including reviewer comments
and ratings, superintendent recommendations, and Advisory and final Board votes for
each school. Meeting agendas, powerpoint slides, and other informational materials
were also regularly posted on this web site. One i3 partner leader described the level of
transparency as “unheard of” and “profoundly powerful.” This partner noted, however,
that allowing the public “to see the intra-district decision-making process” unfold
weekly also led to “disorientation” and confusion, as discussed earlier.
Neutrality and fairness of review and selection. PSCI and portfolio models more
generally assume that leaders will be neutral about the types of organizations or teams
running schools and select operators based on quality and effectiveness (Hill and
Campbell, 2011). Leaders are expected to support broad participation and competition
so that the most innovative and highest quality ideas and plans emerge. Our data
indicate, however, that not all district leaders and partners adhered to this assumption,
which contributed to widespread perceptions that the process was unfair.
In fact, 69 percent of DTLs survey respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that
the PSCI plan review and selection process was fair to all applicants. In interviews,
teams of all types commonly reported that the district had not created a “level playing
field” and that certain teams had the “upper hand” with greater access to resources and
support. Several internal teams reported that external teams had greater capacity to
write plans due to full-time staff dedicated to grant writing and experience developing
school charters. Conversely, external teams and some teacher-led teams believed that
internal local district-supported teams had greater access to data and parents, and had
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more support from LASDI, local districts, and UTLA. One independent charter DTL
also decried a “double standard” for charter school applicants due to an additional 30-
page supplemental application and a charter and complained about the level of
scrutiny applied to them relative to internal teams.
Within most case schools, almost every design team believed they were at a
disadvantage relative to their competitors. “[T]he process’ was skewed toward the
charter’s favor,” reported one internal team leader. A leader from the external charter
team bidding on this same school similarly explained, “as far as not having a level
playing field, [the local district] made calls constantly out to everyone and they [the
internal team] had free access and we did not.”
There was also the pervasive belief that politics interfered with the process. For
example, six teams (across all five case study schools) mentioned that review panels
and Board members were not adequately trained on how to judge the quality of school
plans and that decisions were not guided by the rubric or an assessment of quality, but
rather by political motivations or personal biases. Several individuals believed that
Board members knew in advance who they were going to select and had strong
preferences for preserving jobs, selecting internal teams, or even specific governance
models. In one case, a Board member endorsed an internal applicant team before
proposals had been submitted. Another DTL reported being pressured by a Board
member to “drop out” of the process so that the preferred internal team could succeed.
Even teams that ended up being selected by the Board expressed these views in our
interviews (which were conducted prior to the final selection). The following DTL
statements taken from our case studies provide a sampling of these sentiments:
It’s coming down to who’s on the Board [y] just the politics of that, I think, are outweighing
the value of the plans that were submitted.
At the end of the day, they want to protect district jobs. You know, if they had the option, they
would be happy to select an in-district plan.
Overall, there was a widespread perception that the PSCI process was unfair and
excessively politicized.
Unintended consequences of competition. The high stakes of the decision to award a
team control over a school – in some cases leading to layoffs of entire staffs to allow for
an external team to take over – heightened the intensity and emotion surrounding the
plan development and selection process, and at times interfered with PSCI’s intended
focus on developing and selecting high-quality school plans. One focus school principal
and DTL commented that, “this process really did a lot to divide the staff and it took a
lot of people’s hope away [y] some of my teachers were saying, ‘I’ve been doing all this
work [as a teacher at a focus school] and what? You’re going to take it away?’”
According to multiple case study respondents, the competition itself also took
valuable time and attention away from designing their school and writing their plan.
“We have to come to consensus ourselves [and decide] ‘What is our goal?’,” said one
internal team leader, “That we have to spend time selling ourselves, pitching it [y]
just makes it all the more difficult.” Many teams invested significant time and material
resources on a variety of strategies to garner support for their plans – resources some
teams would have preferred to devote to plan development. On surveys, more than
three-quarter of DTLs reported that they contacted Board members, local districts, and
teachers to encourage support; contacted parents/community members, mobilized
parents to vote; and hosted community meetings. Some participants were critical of
these activities. “It was supposed to be about collaboration,” explained one internal
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DTL, “But you create this extreme competition between these strong competitors, and
no one wins [y] If we put out a flyer [y] or [y] a door hanger, they’d [the other team]
put out a hanger, a pin, and a button.” One team indicated a willingness to tailor its
plan to garner necessary support and votes, even if changes conflicted with their initial
vision and philosophy of tailoring curricula to local needs. “If they are looking for a
textbook-type of proposal,” explained this DTL, “we will write that to impress the
Board or review team.”
Reports of “electioneering” further illustrate unintended consequences of
competition. A report from FIS documented some of the negative behaviors occurring
during the Advisory Vote in PSCI 2.0, including “23 reports of voter intimidation,
disruption or electioneering at 11 sites” (Patterson and Cruz, 2011, p. 5). Based on these
reports and 140 hours of observation by community volunteers at all 13 voting sites, FIS
concluded that “electioneering continues to be a significant problem despite efforts by
the LAUSD and the LWVLA to thwart such activities” (Patterson and Cruz, 2011, p. 9).
The LWVLAvolunteers also observed incidents of electioneering in the voting line and
noted that some schools encouraged parents to vote by allowing them to substitute
voting for mandatory volunteer hours.
Paradox and conflict within PSCI theory of change. These findings present a paradox
in the enactment of PSCI and conflict among various levers of change. By design, the
initiative embraced the importance of engaging stakeholders, particularly community
members, and viewed this support and pressure as a critical mechanism for enhancing
the quality of school plans and ultimately student learning. In this regard, time spent on
external outreach could be viewed as appropriate, if not essential. Yet, the competition
and high stakes of the final decision may have led participants to behave in ways that
attracted support for their plans at the expense of quality. The widespread perceptions
about fairness and politics also affected buy-in for the initiative and could have even
greater long-term effects on participants’ willingness to invest in the process or focus on
the quality of educational programs presented in school plans.
Conclusions and implications
Our research indicates that the first two years of PSCI had many challenges and some
successes. On the one hand PSCI leaders attracted diverse stakeholder participation
within teams, scaffolded the plan development process with an array of supports from
multiple organizations, and ensured transparency at each stage of the process. On the
other hand, the scale and complexity of PSCI proved to be a formidable undertaking for
district administrators and partners, fraught with challenges that weakened several of
the key mechanisms of change. Most notably, leaders encountered difficulty establishing
understanding and buy-in, communicating with and engaging parents and community
members, attracting sufficient numbers of applicants for all schools, maintaining
neutrality and the perception of fairness, and ensuring that competition did not
interfere with other levers of change.
The district and its partners made efforts to address some of these challenges for
the third round of PSCI. For example, the LAChamber of Commerce planned to provide
consultants and technical assistance to teams currently ineligible for LASDI support,
including teacher – teams and external schools. The Board also replaced the Advisory
Vote with a series of community engagement and feedback meetings in which parents,
community members, and students develop a set of priorities for their school, evaluate
plans against these criteria, and provide their recommendations to the superintendent
and his panel for review. Further, Superintendent Deasy committed to clarifying
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accountability mechanisms and declared that PSCI school progress would be formally
evaluated during the third year of implementation.
Other modifications to the initiative occurred in 2011 following the appointment of
Superintendent Deasy and the election of several new Board members and a new
teachers’ union president. Responding to Board and union pressure, Deasy made
modifications to limit competition in PSCI in exchange for new opportunities for all
schools to obtain autonomies related to district and union policy. Under a new
Memorandum of Understanding, ratified by union members and approved by the
Board in December 2011, external teams of charter operators and non-profits are only
eligible to participate in PSCI if they agree to operate the school using district
employees under the current collective bargaining agreement. In exchange, all district
schools now have the option of adopting a governance model allowing for greater
freedoms in the areas of curriculum and instruction, school scheduling, and staffing
selection. These changes have decreased the emphasis on market-oriented reform
mechanisms in PSCI by greatly bounding the scope of competition and have increased
the importance of autonomy as a strategy for improvement.
In the coming years, it will be important to examine the implementation and effects
of the reform with these policy changes. The will and capacity of district and partner
leaders will be especially tested in PSCI 3.0 as the number of sites participating
increases to 32 (15 relief and 17 focus sites) and as the new modifications are
implemented. Of course, the ultimate test of the efficacy of PSCI lies in the years ahead.
Our ongoing research aims to answer questions about the eventual outcomes of PSCI.
The results of this preliminary research nonetheless have several important
implications for policy makers and practitioners outside of Los Angeles. First, our
findings indicate that when implementing a portfolio model or managing school
turnaround, districts need time to develop a multitude of new policies, processes, and
practices. The misunderstandings and reported confusion our research uncovered
suggest that more planning time may have improved the consistency of central office
messages about the reform initiative. And while transparency is a worthy goal, it may
come at a cost. The tradeoff between access to information and possible inconsistency
has to be factored into the development process of any reform, particularly ones as
complex as PSCI. Added time for planning prior to public dissemination of information
and of the implementation process may avoid some of these communication problems.
Moreover, districts will then need to adapt these policies, processes, and practices to their
specific and often-changing local contexts, which requires complex negotiations with
multiple stakeholders and decision makers. It is important that policies expecting fast
results do not penalize districts for trying innovative and perhaps untested strategies
and modifying them over time. The recent changes to PSCI also illustrate the potential
instability of reforms that result from leadership change and financial distress. It will be
interesting to observe over time whether persistent budgetary crises and leadership
turnover impede other districts’ efforts to sustain portfolio management, which by its
nature threatens key interests of traditional political actors in district reform.
Second, many of the specific challenges encountered in LAUSD also speak to
potential roadblocks for others seeking to implement turnaround and portfolio
reforms. For example, nationally, some have raised questioned about system and city-
wide capacity to take over failing schools. Research indicates that large CMOs did not
“jump” at the opportunity to restart schools under the SIG program (Zehr, 2011). Some
of these CMO operators admitted that the difficulty of improving an existing school
compared to creating a new school that families have chosen to attend lessened the
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appeal of the turnaround option. Our data on the decreasing supply of PSCI
applications affirms that there may be justifiable concerns about the number of
organizations interested, willing, and able to take on the turnaround challenge.
Another area of concern regarding school turnaround is the extent to which the
federal government or other funding agencies should specify school models and
strategies. One recent report, for example, urged the federal government to adopt a
more “customized” approach to turnaround with fewer “prescriptive elements” (e.g. the
requirement to remove the principal in all four federally approved SIG models)
(Knudson et al., 2011). While we do not dispute this recommendation for customization,
our research nevertheless offers a cautionary illustration of the challenges involved in
tailoring school improvement plans to individual communities. PSCI has, in some
cases, exposed deep tensions between various stakeholder groups regarding
educational goals, norms, and expectations.
Moreover, LAUSD’s struggle with PSCI’s community and parent engagement
mechanism demonstrates that it is difficult to obtain input and achieve consensus about
what strategies best fit a particular school community, and shows that the complexity
increases as more stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. Developing
mechanisms that ensure effective parent and community engagement in the design and
implementation of portfolio and turnaround reforms is a lingering challenge that
deserves further attention in research and practice. Districts considering similar reforms
should anticipate potential language and literacy issues and consider investing in the
development of unbiased, high-quality information and engagement opportunities that
include sufficient time and support to ensure understanding[8].
In addition, the Obama administration and other stakeholders have discussed the
increased use of school turnaround as a reform and accountability strategy. Such
legislation might require certain chronically low-performing schools and districts to
undergo prescriptive turnaround reforms. However, our study indicates that it is
important to establish a firmresearch base regarding which specific aspects of turnaround
are likely to work, and under what conditions. The early LAUSD experience shows that it
is not easy to turn around low-performing schools, and that stakeholder support and buy-
in are essential for the successful implementation of such reforms.
Consistent with past research on district reform more generally (e.g. Garda, 2011;
Gittell, 1994; Hess, 1999; Marshall et al., 1985; Shipps et al., 1999; Stone et al., 2001), our
research on PSCI also indicates that the implementation of portfolio and turnaround
reforms is a deeply political undertaking. The threat of losing one’s school or one’s job
(in the case of a charter school taking over) or of gaining more autonomy (in the case of
a school adopting a governance model or waivers from district policies or collective
bargaining provisions) creates high stakes and strong incentives for stakeholders to
mobilize to protect their interests. Leaders planning to adopt such reforms should
anticipate the highly charged nature of such endeavors and invest in ways to ensure
neutrality (e.g. including independent monitoring of the process), counter-act
potentially divisive practices and unintended consequences (e.g. disseminating
unbiased information, countering misinformation, penalizing electioneering), and
create a level playing field (e.g. providing equal access to technical assistance). Our
ongoing research will continue to track the politics of implementation, paying
particular attention to the ways in which the recent adaptations to “depoliticize” PSCI
play out (e.g. amount of time teams spend lobbying, perceptions of fairness).
Clearly, more research on the implementation and eventual efficacy of both school
turnaround and district portfolio reforms is necessary. The complexity of these
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reforms suggests a need for deeper and more theoretically and empirically grounded
analyses of the key mechanisms of change. Our ongoing research takes on this
challenge by examining PSCI reform “levers” independently, including: the role of plan
development and the relationship between plan quality, implementation, and outcomes;
the varying levels of school autonomy and their association with school practices and
outcomes; parent engagement in planning and implementation and its effects on school
outcomes; and the nature and results of technical assistance and capacity building.
As these reform concepts grow in popularity, it will be important to build on the
successes and challenges of other districts implementing portfolio and turnaround
reforms across the country to inform policy decisions at the federal, state, and local
levels. Such a research base is slowly growing (e.g. Bulkley et al., 2010; Christman et al.,
2006; Gyurko and Henig, 2010; Hill, 2011; Levin et al., 2010; Menefee-Libey, 2010; O’Day
et al., 2011). LAUSD’s PSCI provides an excellent opportunity to study how one large
urban school district initially implemented a hybrid portfolio-turnaround reform,
learned from its challenges, and continuously adapted its policies to address the needs
of its students. It remains to be seen if this strategy will be ultimately successful, both
in terms of its continued implementation and its effects on student outcomes.
Notes
1. According to one definition, turnaround “is different from school improvement because it
focuses on the most consistently underperforming schools and involves dramatic,
transformative change” (Calkins et al., 2007, p. 10). Under federal guidelines for SIG
funds, “turnaround” is one of four school improvement models with specific parameters:
replace principal, rehire no more than half of school staff, and grant new principal sufficient
flexibility to implement a comprehensive approach to improve student outcomes (US
Department of Education, 2010). Throughout this paper we refer to turnaround in the
broader conception of dramatic improvement for chronically low-performing schools.
2. There is considerable research on many of these individual models: for example, seven years of
RAND research on the New American Schools model (Berends et al., 2002; Glennan, 1998) and
extensive studies of Success for All (Datnowet al., 2003; Slavin et al., 1994; Stringfield et al., 1997).
3. “PI 3 þ schools” are those that fail to achieve AYP targets for four or more consecutive years. In
California, all Title I funded schools that do not make AYP for two consecutive years or more are
identified for PI – often referred to nationally as “In Need of Improvement” – under ESEA.
4. LAUSD has implemented changes to the intervention in each consecutive cohort of the reform.
We discuss some of these changes in the conclusion. However, the focus of this paper is on the
first and second cohorts of PSCI, and we discuss the intervention as implemented at that time.
5. We received 37 total responses. Since some teams wrote plans for multiple schools, we asked
a different team member to respond for each school. In one case, a team leader responded
based on experience at a site other than the one requested, so we dropped this response from
our analysis. Non-responders did not differ systematically from responders or the overall
population of PSCI 2.0 teams on observable characteristics.
6. We made every effort to ensure participation of multiple sub-groups of stakeholders in our
interviews and focus groups and had interpreters at all parent focus groups.
7. We report the ratios of number of proposals relative to schools rather than sites because
some participating campuses were broken into smaller schools. PSCI required separate
proposals for each school and these proposals were reviewed and voted on by school not site.
8. Our ongoing research will draw on democratic theory (Gutmann and Thompson, 1996;
Pateman, 1970) and extant literature on civic and parent engagement (Bryk et al., 2010;
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Epstein and Dauber, 1991; Furstenberg et al., 1999; Lareau, 1989; Muller, 1993) to examine the
PSCI shift from formal voting to community meetings and its effects on participation and
quality of involvement.
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About the authors
Julie A. Marsh, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Education Policy at the Rossier School of
Education at the University of Southern California. She specializes in research on K-12 policy.
Her research blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science. Specifically, her
work examines the implementation and effects of accountability policies, including studies of
pay-for-performance, the No Child Left Behind Act, and student promotion and retention
policies, and of policies designed to improve instruction, including studies of literacy coaches.
Her research has also focused on the role of school districts as central actors in educational
reform and the use of data to guide decision making. Julie A. Marsh is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Katharine O. Strunk, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy at the Rossier School
of Education, and by courtesy, at the Price School of Public Policy, at the University of Southern
California. Her research falls into two overarching categories related to K-12 education policy
and reform: teacher labor markets and education governance. Specifically, her work on teacher
labor markets focuses on questions concerning the determinants of teacher attrition, the
retention and recruitment of high-quality teachers, and the impact of teachers’ unions and their
collectively bargained contracts on district- and school-level processes. Her research on
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education governance explores the relationship between teachers’ unions and school boards, and
the varied impacts of accountability policies and their associated interventions.
Susan Bush serves as a Project Manager at the USC Rossier School of Education’s Center on
Educational Governance, where she works on the evaluation of the Investing in Innovation (i3)
grant activities to support LAUSD’s Public School Choice Initiative. While completing a Master’s
degree in education policy, organization, and leadership studies, She previously served as a
research assistant on the California Alternative Education Research Project at the John W.
Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University.
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
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