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[Cross-Site Analysis Part 4]Education Reforms and Students At Risk - October 1996
Schools as High-Reliability Organizations
A sense of community in schools, as modeled in varying degrees by the 18 sites visited in our study, provides the necessary foundation for positive change at the campus level. However, we also recognize that the introduction and sustenance of positive change requires district- and state-level supports that are consistent with campus priorities and constant in their emphasis. In developing a framework for examination of these supports, we looked to organizations charged with meeting the daunting criterion of virtually 100 percent failure-free operation.
Air traffic control towers and regional electric power grids are two examples of High-Reliability Organizations (HROs) described by LaPorte and Consolini.23 Roberts also described characteristics of HROs in diverse settings,24 and Stringfield examined the likely educational implications of an "HRO response" to the increasing demands that the education system provide high-quality instructional services to all students.25 In our study of effective programs, we examined each successful case for evidence that curricular and instructional decisions were being made and supported in ways that were consistent with the evolved characteristics of organizations required to operate at high reliability. We found much support for the HRO construct, and, not surprisingly, for its reliance on an established network of quality relations (i. e., community) among all stakeholders on campus. The characteristics of High-Reliability Organizations can be grouped into three categories: mission, management structure and resource management, and professionalism. Findings from this study are explored below in the context of these characteristics.
The mission of a school encompasses a clear understanding of long-term school goals and policies that support reaching those goals. Further, the mission of the school and the district's priorities must be in synch for the program to survive district budget and staffing decisions. Therefore, high district valuation of the program increases the likelihood that the program will operate reliably.
1. The central goals of HROs are clear and widely shared. On board a nuclear aircraft carrier, the primary mission is to launch and land military aircraft. For a water company, it is to provide clean, drinkable water to all people being served. The principal at one of the sites we studied regularly described the school's goals as preparing young people to be highly successful in the world of commerce. The core task of another site was to ensure that all students would be reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade. At a third site, the core task was to provide a high-quality, demanding education program within an organization that provided each student with the maximum opportunity to pass each grade successfully and graduate.
2. A perception held by the public and all of the employees that failure by the organization to achieve its core tasks would be disastrous. We found similar drives permeating the most successful schools and programs in our study. Parents, teachers, and administrators worked on the various reforms as though academic and prosocial success were critical. At some of our less successful sites, staff sometimes assumed high rates of student failure to be "normal" and associated with failings of the students or their home situations. This link between expected and experienced failure is documented by research on teachers' and principals' expectations.26
3. HROs are invariably valued by their supervising organizations. This valuing typically results from the emphasis on long-term reliability over short-term "efficiencies." The program developers with whom we spoke quickly acknowledged that there are whole districts in which their programs could not prosper. Success does not happen in isolation. Rather, successful schools find support from a community of adults working within the school, from the surrounding community, from central administration of a district, from state-level decision makers, and from the program developers themselves. The most successful sites we visited had strong, ongoing connections to program developers. In some cases, the district central administration showed support for the programs by transferring decision making power to the schools, and only intervening when requested (typically, when an arbitrary bureaucratic or fiscal decision at the district or state level threatened the program). In other cases, the superintendent took a more proactive role in identifying and resolving programmatic issues early.
Management Structure and Resource Management
The second set of high-reliability characteristics is management structure and resource management. In a high-reliability organization, the management structure is a flexible hierarchy, governed by standard operating procedures. Further, maintenance and distribution of resources is governed by standard operating procedures.
4. HROs are hierarchically structured, but during times of peak loads, HROs emphasize and honor collegial decision making, regardless of rank. The hierarchical structure provides the backbone of the organization. Clarifying roles and responsibilities helps staff know where to go for specific resources and relegates decision making to the most appropriate, informed staff member. To run a school without such division of labor is like telling a jellyfish to stand tall. The hierarchy must be flexible, however, to allow staff on hand to deal effectively with emergencies across as many traditional boundaries as is necessary to avoid failure, regardless of their role. In more than one school or situation, an inflexible hierarchy interfered with a student's education.
5. HROs extend formal, logical decision analysis, based on standard operating procedures, as far as extant knowledge allows. This is not at all a celebration of bureaucracy for its own sake. Rather, it is an effort to standardize best proven practice in some areas so as to focus human attention on performing nonstandard tasks well. Standard operating procedures eliminate time-consuming decisions in routine situations and are critical in any smoothly operating organization. Running a school without such rules is akin to driving a car without automation: you may be able to get it to run, but you have no time to steer the machine while you are focusing on firing each spark plug and oiling each gear. The curricular frameworks that are used to guide mathematics instruction at two California sites in our study declared that some things must be universal. Such decisions helped shape the considerable next level of decisions that had to be made by professional staff. Importantly, the frameworks provided a level of assurance to each teacher that each year's incoming students would share a common body of knowledge. Such assurance allows a teacher to cover additional material more rapidly or in greater depth. We have found that similar standard curricular and organizational supports can be supplied by well-known national programs, such as Core Knowledge and Success for All.
6. HROs prize vigilance against lapses and flexibility towards rules. Since lapses cannot always be avoided, HROs must prevent them from cascading into larger problems. A child not learning to read by third grade, for example, creates a series of further, complex problems around his ability to use text and around his self-concept. He often generates severe instruction/management problems for upper grade teachers. What might have been a small problem if treated early in school can become a series of major problems. Some of our sites were especially vigilant when it came to early student failures as a result of the instructional programs they had adopted (e. g., Reading Recovery). In other sites, interdisciplinary teams that met on a frequent basis often worked to detect students' problems early, to seek solutions, and to support each student until he or she was able to handle current assignments.
7. In HROs, key equipment is available and maintained in the highest working order. The vocational-technical equipment in some schools we studied was unusually well-maintained. One principal explained that vocational programs are useless unless students are trained to use the most current equipment available. Most of the schools maintained basic classroom equipment, and some provided additional video equipment for special projects.
8. HROs build powerful data bases on dimensions highly relevant to the organization's ability to achieve its core goals. The "4 R's" of these data bases include the following: rich data (triangulation on key dimensions), relevance to core goals, available in real time (i. e., now), and regularly cross-checked by multiple concerned groups. In programs using teacher teams, teachers tended to develop a rich oral history of individual children's skills, needs, and backgrounds. Some program structures, such as the Mental Health Team in School L's Comer program, provide a site for collecting and acting upon information about student needs across the school. The School B program developed thick, year-long "folders" containing all of each student's work. However, most programs did not develop mechanisms for conveying information to teachers in the next grade or to other support personnel.
9. In HROs, fiscal priorities are such that short-term efficiency takes a back seat to very high reliability. A long-term vision is central to the mission of a high-reliability school. School focus on high reliability is evident in attempts to retain funding for programs and policies with long-term effects despite immediate budget or political issues. Stable, long-term funding helped several schools overcome short-term fiscal crises to maintain program integrity.
Professionalism is critical to the smooth functioning of high-reliability schools.
10. HROs rely on professional judgment, regardless of the person's position or rank. To this end, HROs stress intensive recruitment and ongoing training, take performance evaluation seriously, and engage in mutual monitoring (administrators and line staff) without counterproductive loss of overall autonomy and confidence. To meet the criterion of zero catastrophic errors, organizations must be able to rely on the professional decision making of staff. Like high reliability noneducational organizations, the exemplary sites we visited had two universal features: they recruited with unusual energy and care, and they participated in unusual levels of ongoing staff development.
At the same time, it should be noted again that each of these sites experienced an unusually high rate of staff turnover during initial implementation years. As one principal stated, this program "makes it very obvious what is and is not happening in the classrooms." As part of its yearly routine, the leadership team at one of our sites participates in an average of two weeks per year of intensive training, one week of which is shared with the entire school staff. The staff of another site arranged an elaborate series of staff development exercises each year, some conducted by program developers, some by local university faculty, and the remainder planned and led by "senior" faculty at the site. Established evaluation processes facilitate review and revision of operating rules as needed; evaluation and mutual monitoring were manifest in a variety of forms at the sites we visited. Staff at several schools took advantage of informal "sidewalk meetings" to discuss issues with their principals. At one school, parents capitalized on comprehensive student folders to review class objectives and activities.
23. LaPorte, T. & Consolini, P. (1991). Working in practice but not in theory: Theoretical challenges of "high reliability organizations." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 1( 1), 19-48.
24. Roberts, C. (1990). Some characteristics of high reliability organizations. Organizational Science, 1( 2), 1-17; Roberts, C. (ed.) (1993). New challenges to understanding organizations. New York: Macmillan.
25.Stringfield, S. (1995). Attempts to enhance students' learning: A search for valid programs and highly reliable implementation techniques. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 1( 6), 67-96.
26.Edmonds, R. R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37( 10), 15-24.
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