No Best Way: The Case for Differentiated Schooling

School districts should not make decisions for everyone but should offer a variety of programs chosen for their conceptual strength and evidence of effectiveness, Mr. Brandt maintains. EDUCATION is so critically important that people will always have different opinions about it, but today's bitter battles are debilitating and unnecessary. I believe some forms of schooling are better than others, but I don't expect everyone to agree with me. In fact, I wouldn't want all schools to do things my way, because that would inevitably foreclose other possibilities. What I favor instead is intentional differentiation of schooling. The Edmonton Example An example of such differentiation is the Edmonton, Alberta, school system, which began experimenting with site-based budgeting in the 1970s and in the last decade expanded the concept by offering a variety of school programs along with extensive parent choice.1 The role of the governing board and administration in such a system is to monitor the effectiveness of existing schools, each of which has distinctive goals, and to develop new schools in response to need and parent demand. Political and economic circumstances in Canada may be slightly different from those in the United States, but that does not prevent other school systems in North America from doing what Edmonton does. In fact, a commission convened in 1999 by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) recommended that American schools adopt Edmonton's model of school governance.2 I was encouraged by the ECS report, but so far I've seen little change in response to it, which suggests that most policy makers do not favor diversification. Some of them may have tried site-based management as a reform strategy in the 1980s but lost confidence when it didn't raise student achievement.3 Parental choice doesn't necessarily raise achievement either. And though some versions of choice continue to attract support, choice inevitably raises the issue of equity.4 In my view, American education's short-lived affair with site-based management was doomed by confusion with participatory management, which may also be desirable but is not the same. Ironically, in the name of site-based management, some states and districts required schools to use externally imposed decision-making structures. Naturally, it had little positive effect. Edmonton makes principals responsible for the management of their schools and expects them to determine how best to involve others. Equity clearly is an important consideration because differentiated schooling is by definition not completely equal. With appropriate safeguards, however, diversification can be fairer than superficial uniformity. In Edmonton, for example, a committee of principals makes annual adjustments in the formula by which resources are allocated to schools (taking into consideration such factors as students' special needs and school size). Then, in consultation with members of their school communities, individual principals decide how to use available resources most effectively, including what types of staff members to hire and even what services to buy from the central office. But What About Test Scores? One of the factors that currently restricts diversification is preoccupation with accountability, narrowly defined. Student achievement on standardized tests has become the single most important factor by which government officials evaluate policy initiatives.5 If higher scores are the only measure of success, diversification is probably not an appropriate strategy. The obvious reason is that, while some programs stress traditional academic achievement, others have different priorities. A school for the performing arts or a school devoted to building character or citizenship may have acceptable, but not exceptional, test results. Many charter schools face this same dilemma: regardless of their special mission, they are judged on how well they teach conventional content. …

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