The district role in school improvement

Views of the district role in school improvement efforts have evolved over time. In the 1980’s, a surge of interest in “effective schools” and other school-based reform programs often cast districts as either irrelevant or as obstacles to improvement efforts. The dissatisfaction with trying to make improvements one school at a time, however, and the growing attention to developing more systemic approaches to school reform contributed to a resurgence of interest in the district as a key player in producing improvements on a large scale. Subsequently, research elaborated the roles that districts can play in mobilizing key resources and generating physical, human and social capital needed to undertake improvements. However, that research also cautioned that effective resource allocation and policy implementation at the district level depends on how well district personnel understand those policies and reform initiatives and the stability of district personnel, particularly district leadership (Anderson, 2003; Hightower, Knapp, Marsh, & McLaughlin, 2002; Marsh, 2000; Spillane & Thompson, 1997). The resurgence of interest in districts was also reflected in several ambitious wide-scale improvement efforts in Community School District #2 in New York City (Elmore & Birney, 1997), Chicago (Bryk, Sebring, Kerbow, Rollow, & Easton, 1998), and San Diego (Darling-Hammond, Hightower, Husbands, LaFors, Young, & Christopher, 2005; Hightower, 2002; Hess, 2005).