| Lora Cohen-Vogel
Vanderbilt University
School governance at the intersection of public school choice and accountability
FINAL REPORT
As school choice policies continue to gain momentum in the American system of public education, a push for increased accountability by different levels of governments has occurred. In some instances, politicians have begun to pair public school choice and performance-based accountability mechanisms within the same initiative. In this policy context, it is important to understand the organizational consequences of public school choice and accountability for schools. Theoretically, while school choice is supposed to release schools and their potential for innovation and improvement from bureaucratic control, prevailing modes of educational accountability, arising from politically negotiated standards for performance, are rooted in external demands and bureaucratic relationships. In practice, does market control devolve decision-making to the school level? Does performance-based accountability centralize authority? And, will any decentralization spurred on by public school choice be limited by top-down testing requirements, performance standards, and state or district sanctions?
Using 1999-2000 data from the Schools and Staffing Survey, this study produces little evidence to support the claim that public school choice transforms school governance toward ÔclientÕ control and school autonomy and away from bureaucratic norms. Though the study does lend some support to the hypothesis that accountability policies reconstruct governance by locating more decision-making authority with the state, less evidence is indicated for the corollary claim that accountability compromises school-level autonomy and parental participation. While the relationships between public school choice and performance-based accountability and perceptions about stakeholder influence are not as remarkable as theory and prior studies predict, their effects do seem to work in competing directions. Indeed, the negative relationship between charter status and district, school board, and state influence eases somewhat when the schools are subject to performance requirements and rewards.
If some public school choice and accountability plans do send opposing messages about the role external bureaucrats play in schooling decisions, principalsÕ ability to leverage public support and gain political legitimacy may be constrained. Moreover, it may be that, by layering these policies or packaging them together, policymakers are canceling out the very governance change desired by their proponents. The policy implications of this study are two-fold. First, certain public market mechanisms like magnet schools may be the wrong course to take if governance change is the goal. On the other hand, if the relationship between charter status and principal perceptions of stakeholder influence represents a causal effect of charter type on decision-making authority, charter schools may represent a way of altering the modus operandi in public schools.
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