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Should it say or should it go: how successful superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture in an age of increasing accountability
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Should it say or should it go: how successful superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture in an age of increasing accountability
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Running head: SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
i
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO:
HOW SUCCESSFUL SUPERINTENDENTS BUILD, SHIFT, AND TRANSFORM
DISTRICT CULTURE IN AN AGE OF INCREASING ACCOUNTABILITY
by
Joshua F. Arnold
________________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2013
Copyright 2013 Joshua F. Arnold
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
ii
DEDICATION
To my parents.
They are Mango trees.
And you can’t get lemons from a Mango tree.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Rudy Castruita, my dissertation chair,
for his guidance and commitment to this study. It has been my privilege working with
you. I would also like to thank Dr. Pedro Garcia and Dr. Michael Escalante, members of
my dissertation committee, for their mentorship and support these last three years.
I would like to also acknowledge the invaluable interview contributions of all
superintendents who participated in this study. Your experiences and candor are the
backbone of this research.
Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Claire, my daughter Isabella Juliet, and all
of my family, friends, coworkers, and colleagues who encouraged me on this journey,
and granted me patience and grace every step of the way.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii
LIST OF TABLES vi
LIST OF FIGURES vii
ABSTRACT viii
CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1
Introduction 1
Background of the Problem 2
Statement of the Problem 3
Purpose of the Study 4
Research Questions 5
Significance of the Study 5
Methodology 6
Assumptions 6
Limitations 6
Delimitations 7
Definitions of Terms 7
Organization of the Study 9
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 10
Introduction 10
The Roots of Organizational Culture in Business 11
Theoretical Framework 13
Change Theory 16
Understanding the Organizational Leader 18
The Role of the Leader in Organizational Culture 20
Looking at Organizational Culture in the Context of School Districts 22
Where Are We Now…The Rise of the PLC 25
Summary 29
CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 31
Introduction 31
Research Design 33
Methodology 33
Sample and Population 35
Instrumentation 36
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
v
Data Collection 38
Ethical Considerations 39
Data Analysis 39
CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS 41
Demographic Profile 43
Research Question One 48
Research Question Two 57
Research Question Three 66
Research Question Four 73
Summary 79
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS 81
Summary of Findings 82
Implications for Practice 87
Recommendations for Future Research 88
Conclusion 88
REFERENCES 90
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Superintendent Survey 94
Appendix B: Superintendent Interview Guide 97
Appendix C: Superintendent Recruitment Letter 99
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
vi
LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1: Adaptation & Integration Tasks of Consensus 15
Table 3.1: Data Analysis Plan 40
Table 4.1: Total Number of Student Enrollment 44
Table 4.2: Number of Students Receiving Free & Reduced Lunch in Each
District 45
Table 4.3: Types of School Districts With One High School in Them 45
Table 4.4: Years of Superintendent Experience in Current District 46
Table 4.5: Superintendent Participant Gender 46
Table 4.6: Attainment of Doctorate Degree 46
Table 4.7: Demographics of Interview Participants 47
Table 4.8: Outcomes Superintendents Built Culture to Support, API and AYP 58
Table 4.9: Outcomes Superintendents Built Culture to Support 62
Table 4.10: Percent of Programs Focused on Meeting Particular Accountability
Metrics 68
Table 4.11: Percent of Programs Focused on Meeting Particular Student
Learning Outcomes 71
Table 4.12: Process and Procedures Superintendents Create Culture Around 75
Table 4.13: Hiring and Evaluation Protocols Superintendents Create Culture
Around 77
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vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: The Dennison Model 19
Figure 2.2: Framework for Leadership 24
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viii
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to gain information regarding the manner in which
superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture in an age of increasing
accountability so that the new values and past practices of the organization work in
concert with each other to match the culture of educational accountability sweeping the
nation. Specifically, this study set out to determine: 1) which aspects of a healthy
organizational culture Superintendents are most focused on building during their tenure
as organizational leaders, 2) how superintendents decide what programs and services to
focus on while shifting the cultural values of a district in new directions, 3) in what ways
increasing state and federal accountability standards have transformed the way district's
think about their organization's cultural tendencies, and 4) how Superintendents sustain a
single cultural ethos across an entire school district with new reforms, laws, and budget
constraints changing from year to year. A mixed methods approach, using 51 surveys
and six in-depth interviews, was used in the collection and analysis of the research data.
Data analysis revealed that superintendents who are successful in shifting district culture
communicate clearly, value collaboration, share beliefs throughout the organization, hold
everyone accountable for being mission-aligned, possess a clear vision, focus on
instruction, maintain high expectations for students, value process, and hire extraordinary
people. This study validated the importance and implications for aspiring and/or
transitioning superintendents to understand how culture is a critical component of the
health of any school district. To successfully build, or shift, culture across a large
organization, leaders must be deliberate and intentional in the processes, programs, and
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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protocols they promote. Overall, this study provides a framework of leadership
superintendents can use to build culture, shift values, and improve student learning in
their districts.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
1
CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Introduction
Since 2002, when the Federal Government signed into law the current iteration of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known as No Child Left Behind
(NCLB), the “rules” of the education game have changed. No longer are schools and
districts able to do what they “feel” is good, or right, for kids. Now, there needs to be
hard data and evidence that supports every decision, at every level, made to impact the
student achievement of children going to K-12 public schools in this country.
Because student achievement is such a public and measurable quantity in our
current educational environment, schools and districts have been almost forced to respect
and value reporting mechanisms like California’s Academic Performance Index (API),
and the Federal Government’s version of student achievement output information,
Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). Gone are the days of focusing solely on the processes
within a school or school district. In 2012, accountability is everything, and hardly any
process exists without tangible results attached to it.
With this shift in value, and laser-like focus on outcomes, District Superintendents
have had to realign their organizations’ priorities to meet the realities of state and federal
pressures to perform. Resources, human-being and otherwise, have been assigned to
new-found Departments in school districts – like the “Office of Accountability,” “Data
Department,” and “Program Improvement Division,” for example. Deliberate decisions
like these, to align local programs and services to education’s national climate of
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
2
accountability, suggest that there may be some methodology to designing a healthy and
successful organizational culture within school districts.
Background of the Problem
According to Roland Barth (2002), the work of changing culture in educational
settings requires a self-study on the part of organizational leaders to assess the programs
and services that are necessary versus the ones that are part of a different era – and thus a
different set of priorities, and culture. The problem in studying this, however, is that
there are myriad ways to go about changing culture, and the context (geography,
socioeconomic status, political structures, etc.) of a school district factor heavily into
which methodology for change will be most effective (Fullan, 2001).
Research suggests that culture-changing is difficult, in part, because it requires
innovation (Maaffron, Zraik, Robbins & Yoon, 2005). That is, something new has to be
introduced, and valued, within an organization for change to occur. A commonly
accepted framework for understanding how large-scale change works is Hall and Loucks’
(1978) Concern Based Adoption Model, or CBAM. In this model, 7 “stages” of
awareness are identified as individuals gradually accept and apply a particular innovation,
value, or specific change:
Stage 1: Awareness: participants exhibit little awareness about the innovation
Stage 2: Informational: participants exhibit an awareness of the innovation and a
desire for more information about the innovation
Stage 3: Personal: participants are uncertain about the demands of the
innovation and are concerned about how it will affect their lives
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Stage 4: Management: participants have basically "accepted" the innovation as
useful and are concerned about accurately and effectively utilizing the
innovation
Stage 5: Consequences: participants are concerned about the impact of the
innovation on their clients (i.e., commonly students within education)
and their work in general
Stage 6: Collaboration: participants' concerns are focused on coordination
and cooperation with others regarding the innovation
Stage 7: Refocusing: participants' concerns are focused on improving the
innovation or identifying other uses of the innovation
While frameworks like the CBAM are important for skillful leaders to understand
and apply as they introduce change, close attention to models like these have caused there
to be a gap in the research when it comes to changing culture as a part of educational
reform efforts. Specifically, how do organizational leaders blend new cultural tenets
with old ones?
The challenge for most Superintendents has more to do with the symbiosis of
blending cultural values from different eras in education than the simple introduction of
new programs and accountability standards (Schein, 2004). And thus, our exploration
begins.
Statement of the Problem
The current problem for Superintendents focused on building, shifting, or
transforming the culture within their district is that there lacks a clear framework from
which to draw upon when making large-scale decisions that will affect the course of a
school district’s core values and beliefs forever.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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The leadership of every Superintendent is highly contextual, and as a result it is
difficult to apply one single lens for changing culture that will be successful in any
environment. Many Superintendents rely heavily on personal experience, not research, to
make cultural decisions that impact everyone within the organization. And this behavior
is precisely why, and where, a gap in culture-changing inquiries exists.
School districts are not businesses. And cut-and-pasting any of the hundreds of
cultural philosophies that have been case-studied in New York Times bestsellers over the
last decade is just not feasible when it comes to Superintendents charged with the
responsibility of educating America’s children.
This study will explore the specific choices Superintendents make while building,
shifting, and transforming district culture to respond to increasing state and federal
accountability measures; and, furthermore, determine the replicability of such decision-
making for the purpose of constructing a culture-changing methodology applicable to
school districts across multiple contexts.
Purpose of the Study
The present study will seek to gain information regarding the manner in which
Superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture so that new values and past
practices work in concert with each other to respond to increasing state and federal
accountability measures. A mixed methods study will be conducted in which the
decisions and experiences of district leaders in a variety of settings will be explored via
survey and individual interviews.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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Research Questions
1. Which aspects of a healthy organizational culture are Superintendents most
focused on building during their tenure as organizational leaders?
2. How do Superintendents decide what programs and services to focus on while
shifting the cultural values of a District in new directions?
3. In what ways have increasing state and federal accountability
standards transformed the way District's think about their organization's cultural
tendencies?
4. Once established, how do Superintendents sustain a single cultural ethos across an
entire school district, especially with new reforms, laws, and budget constraints
changing from year to year?
Significance of the Study
School Superintendents are often so immersed in responding to the challenges their
local districts are grappling with, that they have little time to explore the commonalities
in reform efforts that exist amongst district leaders facing potentially similar situations.
This study will determine how successful Superintendents marry longstanding programs
and cultural standards with new demands for data-driven state and federal accountability
measures, and provide a common language and methodology other Superintendents can
base their culture-changing efforts on.
The findings of this study will directly affect the manner in which
Superintendents lead their districts through changes in programs, values, and services to
meet the demands of outside pressures like API, AYP, Race To The Top, and other
accountability mechanisms sure to come in future years. By examining the order,
importance, and timeline for cultural change in other districts, future school leaders will
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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have a blueprint from which to base their decision-making when it comes to shifting
culture and values from one era of education to another.
In short, this research will detail how Superintendents go about implementing and
affecting change.
Methodology
The research design for this study will be mixed methods in nature, and will
consist of interviews and survey responses of Superintendents. Purposeful sampling will
be used to determine case-studied districts, and interviews conducted with the
participants in this study will contain specific questions designed to answer the identified
research questions. An ethnographic perspective will be utilized for the analysis of the
findings.
Assumptions
The results of this study are based on the assumption that all participants were
truthful in their responses to the survey and interview questions. It is also assumed that
the API and AYP data collected from the state and federal government are indicators of
student achievement. Lastly, it is assumed that a Superintendent’s policies and intentions
directly affect the way culture is understood and developed within a school district.
Limitations
This study may be limited by the fact that Superintendents report on their perceived
roles in changing culture within the districts they are charged to lead. Their perception
may be biased as a result of their stated job responsibilities and/or community
expectations.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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Delimitations
One delimitation of this study is its exclusive concern with “successful”
Superintendents in California. That is, an examination into failed attempts at changing
culture was not researched. Another delimitation is that it focuses on shifting culture
towards being able to respond to accountability measures placed on districts by the state
and federal government. Thus, the efforts studied in this research may only apply when
responding to the exact same pressures, and not necessarily other mandates.
Definitions of Terms
1. Academic Performance Index (API): Measures the academic performance and
growth of schools and districts. A score of 800 denotes “proficiency.”
2. Annual Yearly Progress (AYP): Measures the academic performance and growth
of schools and districts from the perspective of the Federal government. A rating
of “Yes” means that schools are on-track for meeting NCLB guidelines in 2014.
3. Build Culture: The process by which “new” programs, services, and values are
introduced into an organization. This does not factor in any old tenets from past
leaders or time periods.
4. Culture: Quite simply… “The way we do things around here.”
5. ESEA: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first authorized by
Congress in 1965, is the federal education policy that governs how federal funds
are spent for the purpose of education. It has been reauthorized eight times, most
recently as No Child Left Behind.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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6. No Child Left Behind (NCLB): The current federal education policy requiring
schools and districts to meet quantifiable goals for student achievement based on
overall performance and for subgroups to ensure that all students achieve state
level standards.
7. Race To The Top: President Obama’s current accountability option for states,
districts, and schools that choose (and gain acceptance) to participate. The
program is managed and led by Secretary Of Education Arne Duncan and is
meant to relieve, or change, some of the pressures that exist as a result of No
Child Left Behind.
8. School District: Local educational agency that operates schools or contracts for
school services in specific geographic areas.
9. Shift Culture: The process by which District leaders marry the practices of past
leadership with the tenets of new cultural values. This assumes that there is a
difference in values regarding the importance of certain programs from one tenure
to another.
10. Successful Superintendents: District leaders that have succeeded in changing
organizational culture so that it values state and federal accountability measures,
as well as the programs and services needed to meet these demands.
11. Transform Culture: The process by which District leaders change culture to
meet specific demands and pressures placed on them by outside forces (state
and federal government, for example). This is an amalgamation of the process
of building and shifting culture, only it is responding to a specific outside reality.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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Organization of the Study
This study is organized into five chapters. Chapter One gives an overview of how
culture changing efforts are critical to a successful superintendency. It also includes the
statement of the problem, the purpose of the study, research questions, significance of the
study, limitations of the study, delimitations of the study, definitions of terms, and an
overview of the entire dissertation. Chapter Two presents a literature review of current
research on organizational change and the manner in which culture is established and
maintained within large organizations. Chapter Three contains the methodology,
instruments used, sample used for the research, and data reporting. Chapter Four reports
the findings of the data as they relate to the research questions guiding this study. And
Chapter Five contains the final summary along with conclusions, future implications, and
recommendations as they relate to current practice and future research.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Introduction
The work of developing culture has its origins in business. For centuries,
companies and organizations that employ large, and even small, groups of people have
had to carefully consider, monitor, and build their climate so that it maximized the efforts
and energies of the workforce. But it was not until the twentieth century that business
started to shift their thinking from “developing a climate,” to “building a sustainable
culture,” (Katz & Kahn, 1978). With this shift came the development of specific practices
and strategies that organizations could use to develop particular aspects of culture – from
uniforms, to start and stop times, to corporation-specific language, culture-shifting started
to become much more intentional than some of the “happy accidents” of the past.
As businesses experimented with culture, the body of research and literature
around how to grow and sustain it became much more robust. Now, there are hundreds
and thousands of books about culture, and examples of its success and failure in multiple
contexts. As the research becomes more accessible, different sectors of industry are
trying out the same practices the business-world has cultivated for years: for example,
doctors and hospitals have specific culture-building tasks they perform; and the culture of
politics has become more intentional than it was just ten or twenty years ago in its
cultural and narrative-building efforts.
The same is true for education. From Higher Education to K-12 public schooling,
building culture at the school or district level has become a science – complete with
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research, data, and years’ worth of observations. School leaders and District
Superintendents are targeted with their culture-building actions and behavior and are
increasingly more deliberate in everything they say, do, and ask others to say and do as
well.
This literature review begins by examining the ways in which organizational
culture was first studied, and laying out a framework for understanding the way culture is
built and sustained. Then, this chapter will focus on the role of The Leader in
maintaining and spreading organizational culture; specifically looking at how to leverage
culture for the purpose of making change. A discussion of the application of this
framework in K-12 public school settings will follow. And the literature review will
conclude with what the most current research applied to schools now suggests.
The purpose of this chapter is to present a coherent framework based on current
research that will guide the entire study. The idea, here, is to stand on the shoulders of
giants, and build on the body of knowledge that currently exists, while specifically
addressing the gaps in the literature that remain in relation to building, shifting, and
transforming culture in an age of increasing accountability in K-12 education.
The Roots of Organizational Culture in Business
Before a discussion of organizational culture can begin, it is important to
distinguish the difference between norms, climate, attitudes, and culture. Norms, climate,
and attitudes are only surface representations of culture (Schein, 2004). Culture is the
deeper, more encompassing shared ethos that binds people together within organizations
and defines the way a group of people do things for and around one another. Because of
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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how difficult culture is to explain, let alone understand, studying it within organizations
has been a difficult task. For years, norms, climate, attitudes, and other observable
manifestations of culture were studied instead – in part, because they were easier to
identify and record. But, once an impetus to study organizational culture came about in
the 1980’s, ethnographers from universities across the country jumped at the chance to
learn how and why businesses were outperforming one another when they sold virtually
the same product.
It was the boom of Japanese businesses in the United States that caused
organizational culture to begin being studied in a real way (Schein, 2004). Pascale and
Athos (1981) at-first hypothesized that the overall difference in societal and
governmental culture was driving the different results Japanese companies were seeing
with their businesses. But after continued observation and analysis, it became clear that
the root of the culture in Japanese businesses came from the businesses themselves.
Moreover, the culture was designed, planned, and implemented by architects and leaders
of the organization over a prolonged period of time.
O’Toole (1979) and Pettigrew (1979) both found that culture within businesses
allow companies to differentiate themselves from one another. They both go on to posit
that it is because organizations can be different-by-design that there is such a wide range
of effectiveness and success among corporations. If culture had nothing to do with
success, every company would do everything “by the book,” and eventually make money
and be successful. It is because of the need for culture to match society’s values, the
organization’s mission and vision, and be applicable to a specific context that such a wide
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range of variance can be seen among companies competing against each other in a certain
sector of the economy.
As more and more investigators and theoreticians examined and published
findings on organizational culture, a shift started occurring in the way businesses
operated and constructed their practices. Where the 1960’s and 1970’s saw a boom in the
implementation of norms across businesses nationwide (Schein, 2004), a more balanced
and descriptive methodology for building sustainable culture emerged in the 1980’s.
Ethnographers like Barley (1983) suggested that leaders and managers find out what is
actually going on within their organization before rushing to implement some strategy or
normative practice they read in a book. As such, corporations took time doing self-
studies to try and understand the values they manifested in their rituals and routines.
Once assessed, organizational leaders could then go about devising a culture that either
matched the belief system already in place or one that slightly shifted values in a
direction that was perhaps more mission-driven and vision-aligned.
Theoretical Framework
With the shift in research focus from norms to culture, it became important to try
and define culture as it applies to organizations. For the purposes of this research paper,
we used the following framework to define culture and guide our investigative endeavors
into the way Superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture:
Schein (2004) writes that,
Culture is what a group learns over a period of time as that group solves its
problems of survival in an external environment and its problems of internal
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integration. Such learning is simultaneously a behavioral, cognitive, and an
emotional process. Extrapolating further from a functionalist anthropological
view, the deepest level of culture will be the cognitive in that the perceptions,
language, and thought processes that a group comes to share will be the ultimate
causal determinant of feelings, attitudes, espoused values, and overt behavior (p.
9).
Hirschhorn (1987) goes somewhat deeper to explain that,
Culture can now be defined as (a) a pattern of basic assumptions, (b) invented,
discovered, or developed by a given group, (c) as it learns to cope with its
problems of external adaptation and internal integration, (d) that has worked well
enough to be considered valid and, therefore (e) is to be taught to new members as
the (f) correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. The
strength and degree of internal consistency of a culture are, therefore, a function
of the stability of the group, the length of time the group has existed, the intensity
of the group's experiences of learning, the mechanisms by which the learning has
taken place (i.e., positive reinforcement or avoidance conditioning), and the
strength and clarity of the assumptions held by the founders and leaders of the
group. Once a group has learned to hold common assumptions, the resulting
automatic patterns of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and behaving provide
meaning, stability, and comfort; the anxiety that results from the inability to
understand or predict events happening around the group is reduced by the shared
learning. The strength and tenacity of culture derive, in part, from this anxiety-
reduction function. One can think of some aspects of culture as being for the
group what defense mechanisms are for the individual (p. 5).
As for a definition defined by actions, Table 2.1 aims to define culture as a
consensus-building effort on the part of all stakeholders to share assumptions and
beliefs.
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Table 2.1: Adaptation & Integration Tasks of Consensus
External Adaptation Tasks Internal Integration Tasks
Developing consensus on:
Developing consensus on:
1. The core mission, functions, and
primary tasks of the organization vis-
à-vis its environments.
2. The specific goals to be pursued by
the organization.
3. The basic means to be used in
accomplishing the goals.
4. The criteria to be used for measuring
results.
5. The remedial or repair strategies if
goals are not achieved.
1. The common language and
conceptual system to be used,
including the basic concepts of time
and space.
2. The group’s boundaries and criteria
for inclusion.
3. The criteria for the allocation of
status, power, and authority.
4. The criteria for intimacy,
friendship, and love in different
work and family settings.
5. The criteria for the allocation of
rewards and punishments.
6. Concepts for managing the
unmanageable – ideology and
religion.
Note: Adopted from Organizational Culture and Leadership (pp.52, 56) by E.H. Schein (1985), San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Whether through words, actions, behaviors, or (shared) feelings, the body of
literature available to researchers suggests that the study of organizational culture has its
origins in the business-world, and started to be defined in the 1980’s. It is the work of
Schein (2004), Hirschhorn (1987), Barley (1983), Pascale (1981), Athos (1981), O’Toole
(1979), Pettigrew (1979), Katz (1978), Kahn (1978), and others that provided the
foundation for Lewin’s (1952) work in social psychology earlier in the century to
experience a rebirth as it got applied to understanding the way culture can shift an
organization – or what is now been coined Change Theory.
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Change Theory
The goal of all the early research on organizational culture in the 1980’s was not
simply to understand culture for the sake of understanding culture. Rather, the natural
progression of research was to understand culture with the intent of being able to harness
that knowledge and use it to affect broad change across large organizations. Thus, it is
through culture that organizations begin an effective process for change, and are able to
shift values, transform beliefs, and build new systems that fit within the organization’s
context and history.
Kurt Lewin (1952) theorized a three-stage model of change that has come to be
known as Change Theory. Essentially, this model observes that the Unfreezing-Change-
Freeze paradigm that it purports is the same process by which prior learning is rejected
and replaced, and new knowledge takes hold. Schein (1999) is the researcher who
applied Change Theory to the study of organizational culture, and redubbed it “cognitive
redefinition.” Regardless of its name, it is the following three steps, rooted in an
understanding of culture, that allow individuals within organizations to actually change
and sustain their new beliefs over the life of the organization’s existence (Wirth, 2004):
Stage 1 – Becoming motivated to change (Unfreezing)
Change requires adding new forces for change or removing some of the
existing factors that are at play in perpetuating behavior. Thus, this phase
of change is built on the theory that human behavior is established by past
observational learning and cultural influences.
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Stage 2 – Changing what needs to be changed (Change)
Once there is sufficient dissatisfaction with the current conditions and a
real desire to make some change exists, it is necessary to identify precisely
what needs to be changed. There are three ways to do this: making words
take on new meanings, having concepts be interpreted within a broader
context, and adjusting the manner in which new information is evaluated.
Stage 3 – Making the change permanent (Freeze)
Refreezing is the final stage of the change process, and is when new
behavior becomes habitual – including developing a new self-concept /
identity, and establishing new interpersonal relationships.
Change, however, is often resisted. And around the same time Schein (1999) was
developing researched-based methods for changing behavior by way of organizational
culture, Kotter and Schlesinger’s (1979) methods for dealing with resistance to change
began gaining credence among leader-practitioners in the world of Corporate America.
They write about six approaches to dealing with resistance to change, and the advantages
and drawbacks to each approach.
When there is a lack of information about change, Kotter & Schlesinger (1979)
advise using education and communication to close the knowledge gap. And where key
stakeholder groups have the power to resist change, Kotter & Schlesinger (1979) suggest
increasing their participation in the change movement and involving them at every level –
though time consuming, they recommend that this will help to get resistors “on your
side.” A different strategy is suggested when the change is being resisted because of fear;
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in these instances, the research says to use the tenets of facilitation and support to quell
the anxieties of stakeholders afraid of what the change will bring. Negotiation and
agreement are the solution where some group feels that they will lose out as a result of
the new change; while the rest of Kotter & Schlesinger’s (1979) methods are slightly
more subversive. For example, they recommend manipulation, co-opting, and coercion
as “last resorts” when organizational leaders are not being effective with other strategies,
or when time is essential and the resources to change minds and shift values are simply
not available.
Change Theory, and the methods to curb resistance efforts, are critical to
maintaining and developing the culture of organizations for the sake of evolving
practices, policies, and belief systems over time. But regardless of the kind of
organization that seeks to build, shift, or transform its culture, it is the work of the leader
that carries the necessary weight to change the way people do things, and ultimately build
consistency throughout the organization over time.
Understanding the Organizational Leader
Before understanding the way leaders impact their organizations, it is first critical
to have a framework from which to understand exactly what it means, and what it takes,
to be a leader. For that, The Dennison Group (2009) provides a widely-accepted model
for leadership traits that worked well for our discussion of School Superintendents.
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Figure 2.1: The Dennison Model
In this model, Involvement and Consistency are the attributes associated with
leaders who look inwardly to solve problems and move large groups of people, while
Adaptability and Mission are the values leaders who look outwardly apply when building
organizational culture and consistency.
There is not necessarily a “right way” to lead (Gerstner, 2002); however, those
whose locus of control is more external than internal seem to be correlated with
organizations that are more successful – by measurement of name recognition and
profitability. Still, it takes a complete leader to guide organizations through times of
success and growth. And not one style will be universally applicable to every type of
situation or context.
This impacted our study of culture in the following way: at the center of this
leadership framework are the “assumptions” and “beliefs” that are at the core of all of a
leader’s actions and behaviors. Those same assumptions and beliefs are also at the core
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of every organization’s culture. The difference, of course, is that they are shared. As
leaders become more effective in their roles as ambassadors and purveyors of culture,
eventually the entire organization goes on to believe, unanimously, the same things.
The Role of the Leader in Organizational Culture
It is, again, Schein (2004) who leads the research about the ways leaders impact
their organization’s culture. It had been hypothesized for many years that there was a
close relationship between organizational culture and organizational leadership. Hanges
et al. (2000) wrote about the similar functions both play in the life of an organization, and
observed what they term “reciprocal influences” on one another – that is to say,
organizational culture impacts organizational leadership in nearly the same way, and to
almost the same degree, that leadership affects culture within an organization.
Furthermore, upper echelon leaders (CEOs, and in our case School Superintendents) are
believed to be the primary influencers and creators of organizational culture (Bennis &
Nanus, 1985). Much like the Dennison (2009) framework for leadership, other
researchers have found clear relationships between the personality characteristics of
leaders and their firm’s structural characteristics. Miller (1986) and Tsui et al. (2006)
found that a CEO’s “performance building behaviors” – their ability to set vision, or be
visible within a company – and “institution building behaviors” – values, and delegation
strategies – lead to the creation of processes within organizations that strengthen its
overall culture.
Schein (2004) asserts that it is the job of the leader to establish, maintain, and
change the content of an organization’s culture. This is precisely the research this paper
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21
aimed to build upon and observe in the context of K-12 education. Schein (2004) and,
earlier, Schneider (1987) suggest that the content of an organization’s culture begins and
ends with the decisions and behaviors of its leader. Schein (2004) writes that
“Organizations do not form spontaneously. Instead they are goal oriented and have a
specific purpose’’ (p. 212). This is the definition of culture – not the outward
manifestations of values and congruence, but the internal assumptions and beliefs that
bind separate members of an organization to one another.
Schneider, et al.’s (1998) research observes that the organization’s goals are
simply an operationalized version of the top leader’s personality in the broadest context.
What this means for upper echelon leaders (the Superintendents we studied, for example)
is that successful and effective cultures are realized when leaders embed their personal
characteristics into their organizations through the goals they set and the people they hire
and train to help achieve those goals. Attracting people to an organization that seek to
achieve the same thing – and, even better, achieve it in the same way – helps for an
organization to have people sprinkled at all levels of leadership and management with
similar personality traits as the leader.
Schein (2004) takes this observation further, and theorizes that CEOs further their
organization’s culture by consciously and unconsciously embedding their own tendencies
and preferences into their organization through the variety of different mechanisms,
processes, and protocols they have available to them: specifically, what leaders pay
attention to, the criteria they use to allocate rewards, and how they make personnel
decisions. Culture is formed as the first cadre of people influenced, hired, and selected
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by the leader interact with one another, and the CEO figures out how to best use all these
moving parts to actualize the single vision they all share for the organization. CEOs,
then, further reinforce their cultural content through “secondary articulation or
reinforcement mechanism” – namely, organizational design, stories, myths, and formal
statements (Giberson et al., 2009). Thus, the content of an organization’s culture is not
random, it is formulated by the CEO’s pivotal strategic and operational decisions, and the
personality traits employed when making these decisions.
Looking at Organizational Culture in the Context of School Districts
A clear gap exists in the literature when we start to apply organizational culture
observations and hypotheses to K-12 settings. The methodology of the research changes
from quantitative to qualitative, and the conclusions made by researchers are less
generalizable than the specific recommendations and frameworks offered by those
studying the business sector. For example, Barth (2002), former founder of The
Principal’s Center at Harvard University, writes to aspiring school leaders, “one can
provide forms of leadership that invite others to join in as observers of the old and
architects and designers of the new” (p. 6). But the discussion ends there, and what those
new forms of leadership are remain undefined. Barth (2002) also explains that, “the
effect must be to transform what we did last September into what we would like to do
next September” (p.6). And while that is great advice for school principals and district
Superintendents, more information is needed in order to understand just exactly how to
achieve these goals and unify vision and ethos across an entire school or district.
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Saphier and King (1985) have created a body of work in education that appears
more aligned with the research done in the 1980’s regarding organizational culture
overall. They write that in schools there are twelve healthy cultural norms that, when
present, effectively aid a school in being able to shift culture swiftly and quickly. They
identify these norms to be collegiality, experimentation, high expectations, trust and
confidence, tangible support, reaching out to the knowledge bases, appreciation and
recognition, caring celebration and humor, involvement in decision making, protection of
what’s important, traditions, and honest and open communication.
This research applies specifically to education in that values like high
expectations, appreciation and recognition, and caring celebration and humor can be
directly linked to the interactions with students all stakeholders within a school
community have. This, also, is what makes the education sector so distinctly different
from the business world where much of this research comes from. In education, we serve
students. And though we sometimes try and run our organizations like a business, the
kids make our work different and often require that we make changes to business-world
ideas before applying them directly in our schools.
Michael Fullan (2001) is another organizational culture researcher whose work
fits nicely into the paradigm of K-12 education. Fullan (2001) outlines characteristics
that are evident in successful leaders, and his Framework for Leadership describes
effective leaders as being enthusiastic, energetic, and hopeful. He then posits that there
are five themes of leadership that successful leaders understand – moral purpose,
understanding change, relationships, knowledge building, and coherence making.
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Figure 2.2: Framework for Leadership
Why this works well for understanding school and district culture in an educational
setting is that so much of the work of teachers and students is centered explicitly around
relationships, knowledge building, and coherence making. In fact, those are daily and
fairly routine occurrences inside classrooms. In regards to commitment, something
Fullan (2001) deems necessary to achieve results, the world of education is filled with
teachers who have been “called” to the teaching profession, or feel a social obligation to
improve the lives of others (Farkas et al., 2000). So, the commitment to achieve results –
cultural, educational, or otherwise – is embedded into the profession. This makes the
work of shifting culture extremely leader-reliant in educational organizations (Fullan,
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2001). The work that decision-makers in schools carry forth resonate far and wide when
it comes to making “more good things happen,” and “fewer bad things happen” (Fullan,
2001).
Doug Reeves (2007) as well as Christensen, Marx and Stevenson (2006) are of,
and from, the world of schooling; and their work as research-practitioners comes closest
to closing the gap between the study of organizational culture in schools vs. businesses.
The centerpiece finding of their observations is that each organization has its own set of
“tools” that leaders must employ in order to change structures, values, and belief systems.
Specifically, they write about culture tools, such as rituals and traditions; power tools,
such as threats and coercion; management tools, such as training, procedures, and
measurement systems; and leadership tools, such as role modeling and vision. They go
on to say that it is the choice leaders make in what tools they use – and don’t use – that
set the culture within an organization. This work is different from Schein’s (2004) in that
it is focused on how leaders do what they do, whereas Schein’s research was centered on
what leaders do in regards to replacing/adding cultural content within their organization.
Where We Are Now…The Rise of the PLC
In 2012, the amalgamation of all the research done on organizational culture in
businesses and schools, and the role of the leader in building, shifting, and maintaining
culture, has brought the world of education reform the advent of the Professional
Learning Community (PLC). The underlying assumption with PLCs is that the progress
of schools and schooling is reliant on teachers’ personal and collective capacity to
increase student learning across an entire school (Stoll et al., 2006). This takes a
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collective effort, and developing a PLC from which to connect the culture, mission, and
vision of the school has become a trusted method for ensuring student and teacher
growth. Furthermore, because capacity is made up of skill, motivation, conditions, and
culture, any way of developing it should be collective by nature (Stoll et al., 2006). PLCs
work to bind individuals together and create literal communities of practice that
inherently manifest the cultural values of the entire organization.
The work of Dufour & Eaker (1998), which now defines the modern PLC in
American education, came about as a result of several key pieces of research that added
important language and structure to the work of building organizational culture in
schools, and the role of leaders – the principal or Superintendent, for example – in
executing the work. In particular, Bryk and Schneider (2002) laid groundwork for PLCs
when they identified four dimensions of relational trust that were critical to forming a
learning community. They observed that respect, competence, personal regard for others,
and integrity were integral to having students and teachers come together to form a single
group identity. Specifically, they found that relational trust impacted student learning by
virtue of a student’s willingness to engage in difficult tasks with teachers they trusted
more. They also found that it was incumbent upon the principal to foster trusting
relationships on campus publicly, so as to demonstrate and model the manner in which
teachers and students should engage.
Professional Learning Communities are, in nearly every way, an extension of a
school or district’s cultural ethos. More specifically, an organization must value the
notion of teams and teamwork in order to be effective at working closely together in a
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PLC setting (Sammons, Thomas, & Mortimore, 1997). Getting back to culture, the
research indicates that team-building and teamwork are manifestations of the following
shared assumptions within an organization: we all have a unified commitment to one
another, we are loyal to the team, we identify with the team, we respect the individuality
and differences of our members but remain fully united at the same time (Belbin, 1993).
Organizations that work on instilling these values first seem to have more success
implementing processes and protocols that require these beliefs to exist amongst their
members.
Teamwork appears to be more difficult in Senior Management Teams (SMTs)
because of inherent paradoxes in the structure and mission of these groups. Wallace &
Hall (1994) found that SMTs often work in tension, and are less successful than lower-
level teams because each member is tasked with making an equal contribution, yet there
is a clear leader whose voice and say outrank every other member. While this
observation is important to schools forming PLCs intending to research student
achievement data and modify instruction, it is even more relevant to Superintendents
working on building an entire organization’s culture through the work of their SMT.
This dissertation worked to investigate this precise paradigm, and fill in the gaps about
working in teams when the coach, leader, or Superintendent is an “equal” member of that
body.
So, in fostering the values of Professional Learning Communities district-wide,
there are opportunities and structures Superintendents could consider putting into place in
order to facilitate team interaction, shared inquiry, and common dialogue (Little, 2002).
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In regards to new accountability standards in American education, Little (2002) proposes
a conceptual frame that binds community, development, and improvement, and works as
the final building-block from which this study jumps off:
1. Representation of Practice – how the practice of the community comes to be
known and shared through talk, gestures and material artifacts.
2. Orientation of Practice – whether members working collectively actually can
‘‘ratchet up’’ the quality of practice, and how interaction opens up or closes down
members’ opportunity to learn.
3. Norms of Interaction – how participation and interaction are organized and how
this enables member learning and the reform of practice.
The modality of culture-building evident in these structures is exchange (Fielding et
al., 2005). The commitment to reciprocity amongst members in an organization is what
allows for culture to be built, values to be shared, and eventually language and practice to
be consistent.
Fielding et al. (2005) go on to qualify the idea of exchange by providing a
construct that exists between the “originator” and “receiver” of a new practice. In
regards to practice creation, a key component to the final steps of building organizational
culture, it is the energy and inspiration of every dialogic encounter that motivates the
originator and receiver to continue playing their roles and seek out opportunities for role-
reversal within the organization as new ideas come about and values shift over extended
periods of time.
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Summary
As presented by the literature, there is clear research to support the theoretical
framework that serves as this dissertation’s guide and backbone. Cultures within
organizations will develop; and the research proves that leaders can be intentional about
their culture-building efforts, instead of having culture be the random manifestation of
myriad actions and behaviors.
Schein’s (1999 & 2004) work on culture is the foundation for the theoretical
framework that supports the policies and practices the Superintendents studied in this
research implemented throughout their tenure. And Hirschhorn’s (1987) observations
corroborate the way Superintendents shifted culture when it needed to be done. In
regards to the sustaining of culture, much of that rests on the shoulders of leaders within
the organization. Fullan (2001) writes about the roles of these leaders – in schools and
businesses – to act with a moral purpose, understand change, build relationships, and
increase capacity. The Superintendents we studied needed to do the same thing in order
to maintain the cultural work they built throughout the organization during their years at
the helm.
Where the gap exists in this literature is how the research works when applied to
the following context: the rise of accountability standards in public schools and districts.
If culture can be set, monitored, and maintained, can it also be manufactured…
particularly when the organization does not share the same value that the culture
requires? This is the task of the modern superintendency – not only to manage the job of
student learning in schools, but to manufacture the right kind of culture so that students
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learn as much as state and federal mandates require them to, and in the proper amount of
time too.
This is why the research of Stoll et al. (2006) is so critical to building culture in
organizations within the education sector. Capacity must be built in order to pave the
way for new values amongst members of the organization --- teachers, students, parents,
principals, etc. Efforts to change culture are more than simply replacing old knowledge
with new knowledge; often, the old knowledge sticks around and it is with more capacity,
or room, that the new knowledge gets to lay right on top of it (Stoll et al., 2006).
To keep these new values and knowledge relevant, Belbin (1993) maintains that
members of the organization need to interact with each other. Moreover, Belbin (1993)
writes that they need to be energized and inspired by each other so that the culture is
long-lasting, and eventually becomes engrained.
The following chapter will review the methods used in this study to understand
the way Superintendents build, shift, and transform a district’s culture – and how they
keep tailor language, actions, behaviors, and processes to align with state and federal
accountability standards as they get more and more stringent from year to year.
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CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
Introduction
The previous literature review showed that organizational culture can be carefully
constructed by leaders to maximize the efforts of members within a specific organization.
Beginning with assumptions and beliefs, organizations can align their vision to the core
values that exist throughout its members. Along the way, leaders play an integral part of
culture-building as they model the actions and behaviors they intend others to outwardly
manifest. Once palpable, the work of organizational culture shifts from building to
sustaining and structures and opportunities need to be created to further practice and
continually excite and energize each member. Through teamwork, collaboration, and the
use of a common language to talk about the work, culture within an organization can be
constructed intentionally and work to benefit employees and consumers.
In the case of public schools and school districts, the organization’s culture has a
direct effect on the students being educated. With that in mind, it is arguably more
important for culture to be a planned ethos in school districts, rather than a random
happenstance. The role of the leader, then, in developing a district’s culture is
paramount. It is the Superintendent who communicates the vision, and puts the structures
and supports in place so that beliefs and values can be observed, talked about, and
eventually shared among all. But in today’s era of public education, with accountability
mandates like California’s API system and the federal government’s AYP standard,
Superintendents do not have much latitude in the kind of culture they are expected to
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build. Districts are almost forced to value this kind of accountability, and it is the role of
the Superintendent to make sure that that happens.
This research study’s purpose is to understand how successful Superintendents
build, shift, and transform district culture in a time of increasing accountability. Because
different school districts require different types of efforts to align culture with state and
federal pressures, Superintendents must use a variety of tools to take their organizations
from where they are to where they need to be. Some may build culture that the
organization may lack. Others may need to shift a current culture to a slight variation of
what it currently is. And, still others may need to radically transform a district’s culture
because its beliefs are far from aligning to the values being set upon them by the federal
government. Whichever case it is, this study aims to understand the role Superintendents
play in the creation of their organizational culture; and will do so guided by the following
four research questions:
1. Which aspects of a healthy organizational culture are Superintendents most
focused on building during their tenure as organizational leaders?
2. How do Superintendents decide what programs and services to focus on while
shifting the cultural values of a District in new directions?
3. In what ways have increasing state and federal accountability
standards transformed the way District's think about their organization's cultural
tendencies?
4. Once established, how do Superintendents sustain a single cultural ethos across an
entire school district, especially with new reforms, laws, and budget constraints
changing from year to year?
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The answers to these questions will provide a frame from which future
Superintendents can create and manage their district’s culture to best meet both internal
expectations and external realities. Of course, Superintendents do not go at this work
alone. And through the data collected – surveys and interview responses – this researcher
will be able to learn more about the Senior Management Teams that help facilitate culture
throughout school districts.
Research Design
Cresswell (2009) explains that qualitative research is a way to understand and
explore the themes and relationships we ascribe to individuals, groups, and organizations.
This is far different from quantitative research, which is useful for examining the way
variables interact with each other by way of statistical analysis. Combined, they make for
a comprehensive mixed methods approach that Creswell (2009) supports as greater in
strength than just qualitative or quantitative research alone.
Research question 4 was used to guide the creation of the survey Superintendents
responded to. And research questions 1, 2, and 3 provided the frame for the in-depth
interviews that were conducted. All data was collected, analyzed, and reported using this
mixed methods approach so as to expand the use of this research by education scientists
in the future.
Methodology
The data for this research was collected in two phases as recommended by
Creswell’s (2009) embedded strategy method. First, the quantitative data was collected
from Superintendents via electronic survey. This data focused on the programs,
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processes, and accountability measures Superintendents factually spent their time and
resources on. During the second phase of data collection, qualitative data about the
people and belief systems within the organization was the focus. This data explored the
values and assumptions of the organization as well as those of the Superintendent.
Quantitative methodology. To address research question 4, a quantitative
methodology was used to collect and analyze the data. Because the entire population of
Superintendents is too large a group to study, this researcher designed a survey that could
be generalized to a population from a purposeful sample (Creswell, 2009). The survey
describes, quantitatively, local, state, and federal accountability metrics and programs.
To examine the sustenance of the organization’s cultural focus on these outcomes,
Superintendents responded truthfully to the survey, and statistical procedures were then
used to interpret the findings.
Qualitative methodology. To address research questions 1, 2, and 3, a
qualitative methodology was used to collect and analyze the data. Patton (2001) writes
that effective qualitative studies should be descriptive and strive to understand the
relationship between people, processes, and belief systems. The qualitative portion of
this research achieved this by focusing on the ways Superintendents built their school
district’s culture, and who they empowered and involved in the process at each phase of
the culture’s spreading. Because the survey works to explain an organization’s values at
one particular point in time – like a snapshot – the interview allowed for this researcher to
understand the organization’s culture over a continuum. This helps explain the district’s
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narrative as it relates to the efforts put in to place to build, shift, transform, and sustain a
single cultural ethos.
Sample and Population
The population used for this study was purposeful sampling so as to select
Superintendents with a rich background and experience in leading culture-building efforts
within an organization. The target population was Superintendents with a minimum of
one full year of service in their district, and who oversee at least one high school in their
current setting. Because culture takes time to take hold, this minimum service
requirement allowed for a Superintendent to know more about the effectiveness of their
cultural efforts. Furthermore, secondary education schools in California typically
underperform when compared to elementary schools, and accountability pressures like
AYP are seemingly more stringent in a secondary school setting. To find the targeted
population, this researcher found out how many districts in California contained at least
one high school in it: 417. And, of those 417 school districts, how many had
Superintendents with at least one full year of service in them: 286. To narrow the
sampling, and collect more effective data about organizational culture in a large setting,
this researcher added the criteria that the district must serve at least 3,000 students. This
revealed a sampling of 63 school districts that met all three criteria. Six Superintendents
of the districts surveyed participated in an in-depth interview.
Population subgroup for interview. Since culture is not a clear metric by which
California school districts are measured, this researcher decided to use student
achievement data as the selection barometer for Superintendents interviewed.
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Superintendents selected for an interview were from either one of two contexts: Districts
that have failed to make federal AYP requirements for three, or more, years in a row, or
districts that have succeeded in making federal AYP requirements three, or more, years in
a row. Three Superintendents were selected from each of these two subgroups for an
interview, with the rationale being that the context of each of these types of school
districts would be different, and require separate skills and strategies for new cultural
efforts to take hold.
Instrumentation
The researcher used a combination of quantitative and qualitative instrumentation
to collect and understand data from Superintendents about their districts and the cultural
shifts that have gone occurred in their organizations over the last 1+ years. Through this
conjoint analysis, the qualitative data from the interviews served to measure the scope
and effectiveness of the research literature and survey results.
Quantitative instrumentation. Rooted in the findings of Carnoy, Elmore, and
Siskin (2003), this researcher created a survey that asked respondents to qualify their
district’s focus and alignment to local, state, and federal accountability standards. The
survey consisted of an adaptation of the alignment framework Carnoy, Elmore, and
Siskin (2003) lay out in their New Accountability handbook. Superintendents marked 0 –
3 on a Likert scale: with “0” indicating that a district was not focused at all on an
accountability metric, and “3” indicating that a district was solely focused on a metric.
Also, the survey was designed in three separate categories to highlight the different
angles of accountability pressures on Superintendents and school districts: one portion of
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the survey focused on accountability outcomes, one portion on accountability processes,
and one portion on local, state, and federal accountability metrics (see Appendix A).
Qualitative instrumentation. The interview was used to collect qualitative data
from Superintendents regarding their efforts to build, shift, and transform culture over
time in their school districts. Patton (2001) writes about the interview’s ability to capture
how those being interviewed see the world, and interact with it. To that end, a set of
interview questions was created to guide the semi-structured approach this researcher
took in conducting the interview protocol. A guide was prepared with questions for each
Superintendent being interviewed. This helped to promote consistency across each
interview, while still allowing for leeway and discretion regarding the direction of the
interview as it was taking place. The researcher was granted permission to ask probing
questions should they be relevant to understanding the depths and complexities of a
Superintendent’s effort to build culture in their school district. The questions were
divided into three separate sections, each corresponding to the three research questions
asked by this study.
The interviews consisted of open and close-ended questions intended to obtain as
much context and specificity as possible in regards to the ways Superintendents went
about instilling organizational culture within their districts (Sandoval, 2003).
Respondents were specifically asked what the beliefs, assumptions, and core values of
themselves and the district are, and how those are in alignment with accountability
standards from within, and outside, of the organization (see Appendix B).
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To add to the validity of the interviews, each question-and-answer session was
conducted either at the district office or through a video conferencing tool to increase the
holistic understanding of the organization’s cultural shifts. Superintendents spent
approximately 45 minutes engaged in answering the interview questions. And interviews
were recorded, while notes were also taken, for efficient coding of the data at a later date
in time.
Data Collection
Data from the survey was collected using Survey Monkey, an online statistical
survey tool. An initial email was sent out to the 63 Superintendents who qualified, based
on the criteria set, for research on their efforts to build and sustain culture in their
organizations (see Appendix C). The email provided background on the research being
conducted, as well as the researcher. One week after the first email, a link to the Survey
Monkey site containing the survey was sent to Superintendents, along with specific
background about the survey. If the survey was not completed after two weeks, a follow-
up / reminder email was sent to Superintendents. Once completed, Superintendents
received thank you cards mailed via the U.S. Postal Service to their offices.
Data from the interviews were collected during the interview times,
approximately 45 minutes in length, and then later transcribed and coded for tabulation.
An email was sent to the three Superintendents who completed the survey that
represented districts with three or more years of meeting AYP requirements, and the three
Superintendents whose districts experienced three or more years of failing to meet AYP
requirements. The researcher then asked each participant to sign and return an informed
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consent form before scheduling each interview. Interviews were digitally recorded with
the permission of participants, and then later transcribed for analysis and coding. All
requests to go “off the record” were granted by this researcher.
Ethical Considerations
This research study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the
University Of Southern California and conducted with written consent from each
participating Superintendent. To ensure the rights of the Superintendents, safeguards
were put into place so that each participant’s anonymity was guaranteed; their rights,
interests, and wishes were of primary consideration when reporting data, and any request
to withdraw from the study at any time was honored.
Data Analysis
The qualitative and quantitative data collected using the survey instrument and
interview protocol were used to address each research question in the following manner:
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Table 3.1: Data Analysis Plan
Research Questions Instruments Analysis of Data
1. What aspects of district culture are super-
intendents most focused on building during Interview Open-ended
their tenure as organizational leaders?
2. How do superintendents decide which
programs and services to change, or shift, Interview Open-ended
so that the cultural values of a district head Survey Sect. 1 Likert Scale
in a mission-aligned direction?
3. How have increasing state and federal
accountability standards transformed the Interview Open-ended
way districts think about their organization’s Survey Sect. 3 Likert Scale
cultural tendencies?
4.Once established, how do superintendents
sustain a single cultural ethos across an entire Interview Open-ended
school district, especially with new reforms, Survey Sect. 1, 2, 3 Likert Scale
laws, and budget constraints changing from
year to year?
Qualitative coding software was used to turn interview transcriptions into more
usable data. This worked to increase the reliability of the data and made the qualitative
perspectives of Superintendents more meaningful for the entire research study. Once
coded, and alongside the findings from the Likert Scale survey, the four research
questions guided the statistical analysis required to make meaning of the data.
Summaries and quotations were used to explain all findings – all of which are included in
the narrative report of Chapter Four.
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CHAPER FOUR: FINDINGS
This chapter presents the findings from an analysis of data collected under the
current study which seeks to investigate the manner in which successful school district
superintendents build, shift, and transform culture in an age of increasing state and
federal accountability. To help create a wide spectrum of data, and further identify
methodologies, strategies, and leadership frameworks that work, superintendents selected
for interviews and qualitative data analysis varied in profile and demography. This
variance, it was believed, would strengthen this researcher’s findings and highlight the
practices, not the individual people, that are successful in shifting district culture.
The quantitative data used for this study were collected using an electronic system
of questionnaires. In total, 63 Superintendents met the purposeful sampling criteria of
serving more than a full year in their district, having a high school within their
boundaries, and serving at least 3,000 students according to their ADA. Of the 63
surveys distributed across the state to these Superintendents, 51 responded, for a
completion rate of 81%. Six Superintendents were then selected from the 51 respondents
to be interviewed based on their district’s Program Improvement profile – three
superintendents led PI districts, while the other three superintendents led districts that
were not in Program Improvement. These interview participants have been referred to as
Superintendents A, B, C, D, E, and F, and no identifiable information about their schools
or districts have been reported anywhere in this study.
This study was conducted by a single researcher from the Rossier School of
Education at the University of Southern California interested in learning about the
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42
strategies and practices superintendents employ while building, shifting, and
transforming district culture in an age of increasing accountability. It was designed to
further the knowledge of successful frameworks for culture-changing in the K-12 setting
and to identify specific strategies future superintendents can use and adopt for their
context and setting. The study examined existing conceptual frameworks on culture-
building from the realms of business and education, and all data were collected between
August 2012 – December 2012. Based on the literature review, the following four
research questions have guided this study, all of the data collection, and the summary and
analysis of these findings:
1. Which aspects of a healthy organizational culture are Superintendents most
focused on building during their tenure as organizational leaders?
2. How do Superintendents decide what programs and services to focus on while
shifting the cultural values of a District in new directions?
3. In what ways have increasing state and federal accountability
standards transformed the way District's think about their organization's cultural
tendencies?
4. Once established, how do Superintendents sustain a single cultural ethos across an
entire school district, especially with new reforms, laws, and budget constraints
changing from year to year?
This chapter will present the results of the survey and in-depth interviews. It will
also provide a demographic profile overview of each Superintendent and the districts they
are stewards of. Finally, it will present findings and identify trends that correspond to
each research question.
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Demographic Profile
This study used both surveys and personal interviews to collect data. The survey
was sent to California superintendents who met the purposeful sampling criteria of
serving one or more years in their district, having a high school within their boundaries,
and serving at least 3,000 students according to their ADA (n=63). The survey was
emailed to superintendents and their executive secretaries. The survey generated a total
of 51 responses (81%) from superintendents. Of the 51 responses, three superintendents
whose districts met AYP over the last three years were selected for personal interviews,
as well as three Superintendents whose districts failed to meet AYP in each of the last
three years. The interviews took place either in person or through a video conference call
when necessary. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded.
Superintendents who participated in survey. Demographic data provides an
overview of the district, setting, and profile each superintendent represented in the study.
All demographic district data were aggregated by the total number of student enrollment
(ADA), type of district context (unified or high school), and urbanicity standard (percent
of students receiving Free & Reduced Lunch). The lowest enrolled district had an ADA
of 3,184 and the largest district represented in this study had an ADA of 53,147. Table
4.1 summarizes district size based on total student enrollment.
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44
Table 4.1: Total Number of Student Enrollment
Average Daily Attendance
Frequency
n=51
Percentage
3,000 – 9,999 29 56.9
10,000 – 19,999 11 21.6
20,000 – 29,999 9 17.6
30,000 – 50,000+ 2 3.9
This study focused on Superintendents leading efforts across multiple settings of
urbanicity. It included urban and suburban school districts as far north as Sacramento
and as far south as Chula Vista. The participating districts were also representative of the
proportion of the different types of districts that met the purposeful sampling criteria set
for this study of having at least one high school within the district’s boundaries. In
California, only unified and high school districts meet this criteria. Table 4.2 shows the
spectrum of student population served by identifying how many students qualified for the
federal government’s Free & Reduced Lunch Program, and Table 4.3 displays the
different types of school districts surveyed compared to the percentage of California
school districts meeting the same criteria based on the 2010-2011 school year.
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
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Table 4.2: Number of Students Receiving Free & Reduced Lunch in Each District
Districts Surveyed California Districts
*
Types Of School
Districts
Frequency
(n=51)
Percentage
Of Students
Receiving
Free/Reduced
Lunch
Frequency
(n=963)
Percentage
Of Students
Receiving
Free/Reduced
Lunch
Urban
(More than 40%
receive Free/Reduced
Lunch)
Suburban / Other
42
9
89.8
29.6
801
162
85.3
31.1
* Based on annual Child Nutrition Programs participation data of California school districts in 2010-2011.
From California Department of Education Food Programs, Data, and Statistics Report, 2011.
Table 4.3: Types of School Districts With One High School in Them
Districts Surveyed California Districts
*
Types Of School
Districts
Frequency
(n=51)
Percentage
Frequency
(n=417)
Percentage
Unified
High School
45
6
88.3
11.7
334
83
80.1
19.9
* Based on number of school districts in 2010-2011. From California Department of Education District
Organization Handbook, 2011.
Demographic data on superintendent participants were disaggregated by years of
experience, gender, and whether or not they possessed a doctorate. There was no
distinction made between an Ed.D. or Ph.D degrees. Table 4.4 depicts each
superintendent’s total years of experience with that title. Most superintendents were
between years three and four of their experience. Table 4.5 provides a comparison of the
superintendent participants in this study and the superintendent participants in the 2010
Decennial Study (Kowalski et al., 2011). 70.6% of this study’s superintendent
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
46
participants were male. Table 4.6 shows that more than half of the superintendent
participants held a doctorate (62.7%), an indication that they received a terminal degree
in leadership at some point, either before or during their tenure as Superintendent.
Table 4.4: Years of Superintendent Experience in Current District
Years Of Superintendent
Experience
Frequency
(n=51)
Percentage
1-2
3-4
5-6
7+
12
27
9
3
23.5
52.9
17.6
6.0
Table 4.5: Superintendent Participant Gender
Superintendents
2010 Decennial Study
Of Superintendents
*
Gender
Frequency
(n=51)
Percentage
Frequency
(n=1867)
Percentage
Male
Female
36
15
70.6
29.4
1417
450
75.9
24.1
* Based on Kowalski et al.’s (2011) American School Superintendents 2010 Decennial Study
Table 4.6: Attainment of Doctorate Degree
Possesses A
Doctorate Degree
Frequency
(n=51)
Percentage
Yes
No
32
19
62.7
37.3
Interview participants. Interview participants were purposefully selected to
represent a diverse spectrum of superintendents leading distinct types of culture-building
efforts in their respective districts (see Table 4.7). Three superintendents from districts
that have met all AYP benchmarks over the last three years were chosen to participate in
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47
interviews, along with three superintendents whose districts have not met AYP over those
same three years. Of this sample, two-thirds (66.6%) were leaders of urban school
districts – defined as having more than 40% of the population of students qualify for Free
& Reduced Lunch. The district sizes that superintendents represented were also diverse;
half of the interview participants were from districts with total populations between 3,000
– 9,999. This nearly mirrored the original sample population’s similar statistic of 56.9%
of superintendents being from smaller-sized districts. In regards to years of experience as
a superintendent, five of the six interview participants (83.3%) had been on the job
between two and four years. Only one superintendent had been on the job longer at the
time of interviewing, and their tenure was six years. Also similar to the broader group of
superintendents targeted for survey, 66.6% of the superintendents interviewed possessed
a doctorate degree. However, research was not done to determine the university and date
each superintendent’s doctorate was complete. As such, different superintendents may
have been trained under different leadership paradigms.
Table 4.7: Demographics of Interview Participants
Name
Met AYP
in Last 3
Years
District
Type
District
Size
Years Of
Experience
Possess A
Doctorate
Superintendent A No Urban 9,348 2 No
Superintendent B
No
Urban
4,816
6
No
Superintendent C
No
Urban
10,260
3
Yes
Superintendent D
Superintendent E
Superintendent F
Yes
Yes
Yes
Suburban
Urban
Suburban
11,319
3,889
20,094
2
4
2
Yes
Yes
Yes
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Research Question One
Research question one asked, Which aspects of a healthy organizational culture
are Superintendents most focused on building during their tenure as organizational
leaders?
Building culture is of tremendous significance in organizations, particularly for
leaders who are tasked to change the course or direction of the organization overall
(Schein, 2004). Questions like, what are our district’s non-negotiables and how will we
keep the main thing The Main Thing steer and drive superintendents to build specific
aspects of culture that are meaningful to the context and purpose of their district’s priority
goals. The data analysis of this research revealed two common and distinct themes that
relate to the cultural tendencies superintendents build while establishing culture in their
respective school districts: 1) clear and open communication at all levels of the
organization, and across varying levels of the organization, and 2) a strong value put on
collaboration and the idea that working together in teams is more powerful than working
alone on any endeavor as it relates to the district’s goals.
Clear and open communication. Survey data in this study revealed the
programs, services, and processes that superintendents focused on while building and
shifting the culture of their school districts to mirror the goals of accountability standards
put upon schools by the state and federal government. Through the interview process,
superintendents were able to create their own language and reveal what tendencies of a
healthy organization they were able to build in their district, as well as why these
tendencies were deemed critical to any worthwhile culture-building effort. Consistent
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across all six superintendents interviewed, clear and open communication at all levels of
the organization, and across varying levels of the organization, was the most important
organizational trait instilled in each superintendent’s school district.
The interviews revealed specific strategies associated with opening up lines of
communication, and also brought out narratives of what can go wrong when
communication is sparse and tight-lipped. According to Superintendent D:
I knew right when I got here that communication, and the way people within the
organization talk, write, and even look at each other was going to be one of my
top priorities during my Entry Plan. Let me rephrase that, or be more specific… I
knew before I arrived that communication would be a key component of any
successful organization-slash-superintendency. But it wasn’t until I arrived that I
realized how critical it would be for this district and my superintendency. Let’s
just say there were some gaps before I got here. Gaps that lead to distrust all
around. I care about open communication. But when I coupled that with the need
to build trust amongst all stakeholder groups in our community, communication
quickly became the most important thing to work on.
For Superintendent D’s context and situation, a clear and open line of
communication served a duel purpose. Not only did it create transparency, it built a
necessary trust that needed to be repaired as part of their tenure. Barth (2002) comments
on the benefits of open communication in culture, and observes how trust facilitates one’s
willingness to communicate. Superintendent D later commented on the need to “make
communication easier for everyone.” In the past, because of distrust, communication was
“scary” and difficult. Since they’ve arrived, and become much more accessible and
communicative to everybody, Superintendent D has begun to change the culture of their
district by addressing and shifting some previous tendencies.
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50
The ability to be clear in one’s communication was critical to Superintendent A’s
effort to establish culture in their district as well. Superintendent A recalled a story about
looking at the notes of one their Board Members during the final interview process to be
superintendent and remembering the words “he’s extremely articulate” circled in the
center of the page:
I knew from that point forward that whatever “style” of communication I was
putting forth during the interview, I needed to mirror that in all of my interactions
with Board Members, Executive Cabinet, teachers, parents, students, community
members, and local business people. So I thought about it. What was I doing in
the interviews that was so “great?” I figured it was just that I was very clear, and
answered questions from multiple angles – kinda’ proving that I had put a lot of
thought into my answer. I do the same thing now. Even more so in what I write
than when I speak. But when I speak too.
Half, or 50%, of the superintendents interviewed talked about the clarity of
communication, and how it was important to be able to communicate directly and
succinctly. Superintendent A qualified their value on clear communication by explaining
its ability to involve others in the decision-making process:
By being clear up-front and right away, we’ve been able to make others feel as if
their voice is being heard and that they are a part of the decisions we make. Even
when we don’t agree. Muddy communications that no one understands are seen
as top-down. Like the superintendent didn’t even care enough about whoever’s
reading this to make sure it makes sense. I see myself as a servant leader. So
when this office communicates out to employees or to the public, it’s a two-way
street and I want to know their feedback and what they’re thinking.
Five of the six superintendents interviewed (83.3%) used the phrase “two-way
street” at some point in their response to the first portion of the Interview Guide. This is
telling because it helps to define exactly what open and clear communication means for
the leaders and organizations that value it. “Information goes out and it also comes back
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51
in. It goes up and down,” says Superintendent C. “I’m not the only one doing the
talking. I listen, actively listen, just as much I speak in most situations,” observes
Superintendent D. Superintendent F had the most in-depth understanding of a “two-way
street:
It’s like walking down the street, the way I see it. And there’s a number of ways
that it can all play out. You can simply walk past everybody you see, and just do
your job, and get to wherever you’re going. You can stop and say “Hi” to
everyone, no matter what. Even before they look up or notice you. Just “Hey!”
Real short-like. Just to acknowledge folks. (I wouldn’t recommend that, it’s very
one-way, and in my opinion very annoying.) Or you can carry yourself and your
administration in such a way that people walking down the street want to say “Hi”
to you. That’s what I think a real two-way street is. Not just a back and forth. A
willingness to engage. There’s a lot that it takes to get there.
For each superintendent, they were concerned about more than just their own
modality of communication when it came to the valuing clear communications as key
tent of their organizations’ culture. They cared about establishing meaningful forums and
opportunities where teachers, students, parents, and more could communicate with the
district (Kowalski et. al, 2011). Three superintendents talked about “Task Forces.” Four
superintendents (66.6%) used the term “coalition-building.” And every superintendent
(100%) spent time during the first parts of their administration making modifications to
the manner in which the organization communicated with itself and to others. Two
superintendents (33.3%), in fact, said that improving communication is something that
they are constantly working on in their administration, even now when many of their
organization’s cultural tendencies are aligned to the overall mission and vision of the
district.
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To obtain a more specific definition of communication, in regards to its specific
mode in each school district, this researcher asked the superintendents interviewed to
qualify the kinds of communications they used most frequently, and to talk about why
they chose this modality for communicating the most:
I’m a big email person. It’s actually something we just negotiated into our CBA
with the teacher’s union. It now says something like “checking and responding to
email in a timely fashion is part of one’s professional responsibility.” That’s a big
win for furthering the culture of our district. (Supt A)
Overwhelmingly, each superintendent (100%) mentioned email as a primary
mode of communication. And they talked about it with pride – proud that they were
good writers and communicators to others:
I’m not so sure the modern superintendent can just be a good talker anymore. I
mean, with email, there’s so much writing. Everyday. I can remember back
when secretaries used to write the bulk of the communications that came out of
this office. Now, that would be unheard of. Our Board would be livid if I did
that. The expectation is that Superintendents communicate, and that they be held
accountable for their communications. (Supt E)
One thing not mentioned by any of the superintendents was the use of social
media as a communication and culture-building tool within their school district. No
mention of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or other social sharing sites and tools was
brought up by any of the superintendents selected for interview. Superintendent A,
however, did mention blogging as a key component of their leadership paradigm, and
something that worked to establish culture within their organization:
I blog a lot. It’s something I went to a workshop on through ACSA and knew
right away that I had to implement here. The blogs I write are public, for all
stakeholders to see. And they’re strategic in that I only blog about issues that are
pressing, and try and put both a professional and personal spin on things. I don’t
blog about the weather, for example. It’s not something people want to read
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
53
about. My last blog was about the changing of student schedules, and what the
back-end of Master Scheduling looks like.
Willing to embrace technology as a tool in building culture, especially with
respect to communication, four of the six superintendents interviewed (66.6%) spoke of
Student Information Systems like School Loop, Aeries, and PowerSchool as valuable
tools that helped teachers communicate with parents:
We just switched over to Aeries, and that’s going to have a huge impact on our
culture, and the way we communicate. The biggest thing it will do is make
communication from the school to the home occur faster – partly because it’s just
so much easier. That’s a cultural step in the right direction for us. It makes us
more responsive to student and family needs. That rolls over into our core values
of being “caring” and “nurturing.” It’s all culture. Everything we do. Every
decision we make. (Supt F)
Yet, the impetus to share the value of clear and open communication as a
paramount cultural trait of the district for each superintendent seemed to come more from
the stories and lore of past superintendents who were poor communicators than from
anything else:
I’ve been an Assistant Superintendent in a few places now, and I’ve seen what
poor communication can do to a career, let alone a district. I’ve seen supes use
the word “my” a lot in their speaking, and watched people’s ego impact their
overall affect. The question I had to ask myself when establishing culture was,
“Why shouldn’t we make communicating the most important thing everyone here
does?” The risk to do otherwise is far too great. For our employees, as well as
our kids and families. (Supt C)
This was not the only narrative related to this researcher about what can go wrong
when communication is undervalued. All six superintendents interviewed (100%) shared
a story that stuck with them about a leader or organization that was too insular and not
communicative enough, and ultimately ended up being unsuccessful.
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54
Collaboration and teamwork. Data collected from interviews also revealed that
cultures that encouraged collaboration and opportunities to work in diverse teams were
favored and championed by superintendents. This is in-line with the literature in that
specific to organizations like schools, professional practice is best furthered when it is
done with colleagues who are all working towards the same common goal (Spahier &
King, 1985). To this end, the superintendents interviewed talk about processes and
opportunities for collaboration that they created that were not available to the district
prior to their administration. These mostly included the creation of steering documents,
and gathering specific stakeholders from diverse perspectives to help be a part of their co-
creation.
Collaboration as a cultural tenet was instilled in Superintendent E’s district
through an opportunity to change the way the district’s Strategic Plan was created:
In the past, the district’s Strategic Plan was something that came out of the
Superintendent’s Office every two to three years. It was made either by
Executive Cabinet or the Superintendent themselves. Nobody really had a hand
in what its contents were. Now, we’ve put together a collaborative process to
create our Strategic Plan. Self-selected teachers, principals, and administrators
come together over a series of days during the second semester to put together the
document, and we use it to guide all of our big-picture decision making
throughout the year.
This modality of culture-building, in which leaders change the process by which
something has always been done, was lauded by interview participants to be the most
effective way to build culture. “We get to the same point we were getting to anyway, just
better,” Superintendent B said. “I look for opportunities like these because there’s less
‘newness’ to it than with other things. People are sometimes scared of ‘newness,”
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
55
Superintendent F commented. The literature supports changes in process that result in
the changing of results (Schneider, 1987), but the superintendents selected for interviews
were talking about something different: a change in process that begets the same result.
As a culture-building strategy, superintendents saw this as an opportune way to start,
even though it deviates slightly from the literature.
The creation of a Task Force was something that superintendents mentioned as
being important to cultural efforts to strengthen and improve communication, as well as
foster collaboration. Superintendents noted that Task Forces are “current,” “now,” and
address “immediate community concerns.” Superintendent D liked Task Forces for a
number of reasons:
They’re just such a great way to show the community you care enough to do
something about an issue, and that you’re nimble enough to do it right away. It’s
been a key component of our culture here because the very nature of a Task Force
is to be collaborative. For example, we’ve started a Violence Prevention Task
Force that is coming up with contingencies and redundancies for situations like
having a shooter on campus. On the Task Force are “experts” like police officers
and a fire chief, as well as folks that lend perspective to the same situation like
parents, students, and teachers. We’ve used Task Forces a lot in this
superintendency.
One form of collaboration mentioned in the literature (Saphier & King, 1985) and
by superintendents as being effective was the use of teamwork. Four of the six
superintendents interviewed (66.6%) talked specifically about their effort to create teams
within their districts that never existed before. Superintendents talked about the creation
of teams as not only culture building, but paradigm shifting as well:
So, there were teams of Principals and Assistant Principals before I got here, for
sure. And they were pretty effective. Who am I to say otherwise? But they
worked like this: Assistant Principals with the same job responsibilities would
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56
meet twice a month to listen and share ideas on doing the same things they’ve
been doing in their jobs for years. That didn’t make sense to me. And it wasn’t
the culture I wanted to establish – that you’re pigeon-holed in your specific
administrative title forever. So we changed the teams. Now, Assistant Principals
meet with other Assistant Principals who have different jobs, like the AP of
Guidance will be on a team with the AP of Activities from another school and the
AP of Curriculum from a different school. This way, we’re sending the message
that all Assistant Principals are really Principals in training. They share and learn
about each other’s responsibilities, and are getting better prepared for their next
step in the district. (Supt F)
Changes to teams, like the one Superintendent F talks about, are very culturally
significant. Superintendent F went on to talk about this change in Assistant Principal
teaming as a difficult decision in the beginning, largely because there was nothing
particularly wrong or ineffective about the practice to begin with. “It wasn’t aligned to
the culture we’re trying to build here,” Superintendent F said, “And because of that I had
to make the difficult decision of re-structuring the teams.”
Summary of results: research question one. The results of research question
one support current literature from the realms of business and education on the way in
which leaders build culture within their organizations. Communication and collaboration
are tenets of healthy cultures, and superintendents look for opportunities in which these
values can work towards furthering the district’s mission, vision, and goals. As a
superintendent’s time in the organization increases, the culture built around
communicating and collaborating serves as the fulcrum for bolder, more intense, district
reforms as it relates to student achievement.
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Research Question Two
Research question two asked, How do superintendents decide which programs
and services to change, or shift, so that the cultural values of a district head in a mission
aligned direction?
Shifting culture in a new direction is one of the most difficult tasks that leaders
take on during their administration. For superintendents in charge of establishing the
climate and culture of their school districts, the task of culture-shifting is made more
difficult because of the many stakeholder groups vying to shape the organization in a way
that best meets their needs (Fullan, 2001). Superintendents, then, have to rely on a kind
of Litmus Test while allocating resources and priority to the various programs and
services the district runs and manages. The data analysis from this study revealed that
there are three components to evaluating a program or service offered by the district that
superintendents use to determine its cultural relevancy going forward: 1) it must resonate
with a core belief shared by everyone in the organization, 2) the program or service has to
be aligned closely with the mission of the district, and 3) the vision or future of the
program must be clear to all. An organization’s values – what they spend their time,
money, and people on – reflects their culture; and the superintendents surveyed care
deeply about the programs they focused on, and were more than willing to scale back on
services that did not meet their evaluation criteria.
Shared beliefs. Survey participants were asked to respond to a Likert Scale about
the degree to which their district focused on specific outcomes. The choice options that
were given (meeting API growth targets for school, exceeding API growth targets for
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
58
schools, meeting most AYP criteria, meeting all AYP criteria, meeting Safe Harbor
provisions for AYP objectives, decrease in FBB and BB scores on CST subject tests,
growth in proficiency in CST subject areas, 10
th
grade pass rates of CAHSEE first-time
test-takers, overall CAHSEE results, 100% high school graduation rate, 100% A-G
eligibility, EAP pass rates for CSU institutions, scoring above 550 on each section of the
SAT, winning a California Distinguished School award) mirrored outcomes that relate to
DuFour and Eaker’s (1998) recommendations for Professional Learning Community
focus topics. Superintendents ranked the four outcomes having to do with API and AYP
the highest (see Table 4.8) by indicating that 66.7% of them were “heavily” or “solely”
focused on meeting API targets in the current year, and 39.3% were “heavily” or “solely”
focused on exceeding API targets. For AYP, the focus was slightly less, with 64.7% of
Superintendents indicating that were “heavily” or solely” focused on meeting AYP
criteria in their schools.
Table 4.8: Outcomes Superintendents Built Culture to Support, API and AYP
Outcome
Heavily
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
Solely
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
Meeting API
Target
24 47.1 10 19.6
Exceeding API
Target
19
37.3
1
2.0
Meeting Most
AYP Criteria
4
7.8
0
0
Meeting All
AYP Criteria
30
58.8
3
5.9
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The interviews brought out several rationales for these superintendents’ focus on
API and AYP standards. Specifically, the need for outcomes to be based on a shared
belief was cited by five of the six superintendents interviewed (83.3%). Superintendent
D noted:
We get behind API scores because they’re rooted in two things we believe in
across the board in our district. Number one, that standards make sense and are
good for kids. Way better than what we used to have, for sure. And two, that all
students should be at least proficient in any core subject area they study. That
belief is part of our culture, and it’s in our bones. That’s why we focus on it.
Internal pressures, like one’s beliefs, do not change or go away like external
pressures have the potential do (The Dennison Group, 2009). The literature supports
superintendents who took the approach of taking ownership of their district’s student
achievement outcomes. By having an internal locus of control, superintendents projected
that the pressure to be better comes from within – not without – and that the answers to
any organizational issues could be found from within too.
Other superintendents added to the notion of shared beliefs by distinguishing the
difference between priorities that “feel good” and priorities that “are good for kids.”
Superintendent F observed:
This isn’t a knock on our district, or anyone else, but sometimes people just like
to feel good about the things they’re doing. Focusing on API when 70% of your
students are Basic or below isn’t a real “feel-good” thing to do day in and day out.
And worse, if that’s your focus, and you don’t meet the goals you set out… what
then?
DuFour and Eaker (1998) support this qualification by proposing that Professional
Learning Communities focus on student achievement results rather than lesson planning,
for example. Districts that focus on results have established a culture of high
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expectations that allow teachers and administrators to take a hard look at difficult data
and work together on a shared solution to increase achievement for students.
Local accountability was also a factor in shifting culture and rallying a school
district behind a shared belief. Half of the superintendents interviewed (50%) talked
about California’s Similar Schools Report that comes attached with every API Report
from year to year. They used the data from that report as a rallying point at the beginning
of the year to talk about student achievement in comparison with other local schools. All
the superintendents who used the Similar School Report as a cultural tool say it worked:
Ahhh, that was my favorite thing so far this year. We had some big gains last
year, and when we got back from Summer I was able to put the names of some
schools and districts in our area that we’re always compared to, and show that we
surpassed them in API. It was all in good fun, but it really worked to motivate
people. Part of our culture respects athletics, and competition is somewhere
embedded in that. We’re competitive with the schools and districts in our area,
and we’re proud of that. Being on top also felt very, very good. And I think it
will only motivate us to work harder to stay on top. (Supt A)
Sharing the beliefs behind the programs school districts put forth is part of
creating the necessary culture to support student growth (Fullan, 2001). The data from
surveys and interviews show that superintendents shifted the culture of their
organizations more towards focusing on API than AYP, and that the closer the
accountability is, geographically, to a school district, the more it factors into a
superintendent’s decision to focus or move away from it.
Mission-aligned. As part of the Likert Scale questionnaire that superintendents
were given, participants were asked to respond about the degree to which their district
built culture to support specific college-going outcomes for students (100% high school
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graduation rate, 100% A-G eligibility, EAP pass rates for CSU institutions, scoring above
550 on each section of the SAT). These metrics were included by the researcher to
garner whether there was a difference in the focus of superintendents to build culture
around state and federal accountability systems versus community expectations for
students. Superintendents ranked the four outcomes having to do with college-going
expectations the lowest of all programs surveyed (see Table 4.9). Of the 51
superintendents surveyed, 74.5% were either “not” or “somewhat” focused on having
100% of their district’s students graduate from high school. 36 superintendents (70.6%)
were “not” or “somewhat” focused on having 100% of their high school students meet
the University of California’s A-G course guidelines. 78.4% of superintendents
participating in the survey indicated that improving upon their district’s Early
Assessment Program pass rate for the California State University system was “not a focus
at all” for their district. In regards to the SAT, a standardized test required for admission
to many universities across the country, 88.3% of superintendents surveyed indicated that
they were “not” or “somewhat” focused on building a culture around students achieving a
550, or above, on each section of the exam.
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Table 4.9: Outcomes Superintendents Built Culture to Support
Outcome
Not A
Focus At
All
(n=51)
Percentage
Somewhat
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
100% Graduation
Rate (High School)
11 21.6 27 52.9
100% A-G
Eligibility
3
5.9
33
64.7
(CSU) – EAP
Pass Rates
40
78.4
4
7.8
550+ On Each
Section of the SAT
39
76.5
6
11.8
The interviews brought out a distinction between superintendents from urban
contexts and those from suburban districts in building culture to support endeavors that
are not necessarily aligned to the mission of the district: like students going to a four-
year college right after high school. Superintendent D remarked:
Our community is our number one stakeholder in this district. We serve them.
And if they want all of their children to be UC-eligible upon graduation, which is
a great idea and good for kids all around, our job is to get it for them… Now, I’m
not saying API and all that isn’t important, but we’re fortunate to be in a place
where API doesn’t have to be the number one thing we go after.
The suburban superintendents interviewed all qualified their context when talking
about A-G eligibility for students and college entrance exams, like the EAP for the CSU
system and the SAT for a majority of colleges in America. Statements like “we’re
fortunate to be where we are,” (Supt D) and “we can only do this because of how
supportive this community is of its schools,” (Supt F) speak to the ability for suburban
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superintendents to build culture around values that fall outside the mission of the district.
Superintendent F also commented:
The mission of our district is to “maximize learning for every student… in a
caring and inclusive atmosphere.” Going straight to a 4-year university after high
school isn’t exactly a part of our mission. But it’s certainly what our parents
want. And so the difficult part is to justify doing something that’s not mission-
critical, particularly at such a scaled-back economic juncture. If we were in
Program Improvement, I imagine things would be different.
Urban superintendents devalued programs supporting college access in their
districts, with 74.3% of them responding to the survey that students scoring above 550 on
each section of the SAT was “not a focus at all” for their organization:
As much as we would like to focus on SAT’s and things like that, the fact is we’re
working hard to foster literacy in our children, and build proficiency across every
subject area. We also offer a robust course load of vocational programs geared
towards preparing students for careers after high school. Lots of our Juniors and
Seniors have jobs and are working already. (Supt C)
This difference in culture may be supported by the context and demography of the
districts superintendents are responsible for leading. If a program is outside of the scope
of the mission, no matter how much it may benefit certain stakeholders within the
organization, the data suggests that a majority of urban superintendents will not make
efforts to build culture to support it:
There are “have to’s” and “want to’s.” And we execute on them in that precise
order. Once we’ve done everything we have to do, and done it to the best of our
ability – hit our CST goals, API expectations, benchmark assessments, things like
that – then we go about our wish list of “want to’s.” That’s the kind of culture
I’m proud to support here. (Supt B)
Clear vision. One component of shifting culture in school districts that became
clear to this researcher through the Likert Scale questionnaire and one-on-one interviews
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was the need for programs to have a clear vision for everyone in the district. This
became evident when 96.1% percent of superintendents surveyed reported that they were
“somewhat focused” or “heavily focused” on achieving, or increasing, their Newsweek or
U.S. News & World Report high school ranking. The desire to build culture to support
programs that factor into these rankings was consistent across superintendents serving
students of separate contexts, with 70.6% of urban superintendents “heavily focused” on
this goal in comparison to 77.8% of suburban superintendents. Interviews brought out a
deeper understanding of this finding as superintendents talked about the clarity of the
rankings and the important perspective it provides.
Superintendents from districts that have failed to meet AYP over the last three
years were interested in high school rankings because of the pressure it relinquished from
focusing on API, AYP, and standardized test scores. Superintendent A valued the
perspective ranking systems put in place by the media provided:
We’re extremely interested in our high school ranking. And not just from U.S.
News and such, but we have local newspapers that rank the county’s schools from
year to year. Those rankings take things into consideration that our district and
community are proud of that AYP, for example, doesn’t. One thing we’ve
worked hard on is increasing access to AP classes for our students. Our schools
that are Bronze Medal winners have done that very well.
The strategy of valuing rankings as a part of shifting culture is supported by
Lewin’s (1952) research on Change Theory. As urban superintendents work to shift
culture and perceptions in their organizations and surrounding community, validation
from rankings outside of the public accountability paradigm work to support their efforts.
Superintendent B talked about a similar strategy in regards to clarity:
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65
We’re getting to this nexus with NCLB, Common Core, and all these ranking
systems out there where nobody knows what anything means anymore. Schools
can be failing in one system and lauded in the next. To answer your question, we
care about the rankings that see things the way we see them. That care about the
things in schools we care about. Not just test scores.
Superintendents from districts that have consistently met AYP over the last three
years were equally interested in school rankings, but for different reasons than
superintendents from districts that have not met AYP in the last three years.
Superintendent C spoke about the clarity and vision rankings provide:
I like the Newsweek ranking system because it’s extremely clear how schools are
ranked. The results are also clear. It’s a rank, so you know how many are ahead
of you. It’s not like the state system which is a value or number. Your district
could have an 850 API and you could think that’s great until you asked around
and found out you had the lowest API in the county. Rankings make it clear from
the moment they’re published.
This perspective provided a distinction to the culture-shifting efforts of
superintendents in different settings. While the same program and service may be valued
by districts failing to meet AYP year to year and those who have never not cleared that
benchmark, the strategy behind the culture built to support a program may serve a
completely different purpose, and be rooted in a separate rationale depending on the
context.
Summary of results: research question two. The results of research question
two reveal the need for cultural shifts in school districts to be focused on programs that
exemplify shared beliefs throughout the organization, are mission-aligned, and represent
a clear vision of what the organization currently is and what direction it is headed in.
Culture is also shifted in very specific ways by superintendents so that it applies directly
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66
to the setting of their school district. This is done with great strategy and deliberation as
changing community interests put pressure on culture, and state and federal
accountability systems remain a constant barometer.
Research Question Three
Research question three asked, How have increasing state and federal
accountability standards transformed the way districts think about their organization’s
cultural tendencies?
As much as culture is built from within by the stakeholders and leaders of an
organization, the reality of outside influences and pressures can do much to influence
culture as well (Schein, 2004). The modern superintendent knows about these outside
influences as state and federal accountability standards have changed and grown in scope
and sanction over the last ten years. The result has had a trickle-down effect on all forms
of schooling, and districts have shifted their cultures to better respond to the system they
are currently being evaluated under. The data analysis from this study showed that there
are two tendencies of schooling that have been influenced the most as a result of
increased accountability: 1) the focus on instructional methodology has grown as
teaching strategies now play a larger part in the overall success of schools and school
districts, and 2) student learning outcomes have become more culturally important as
proficiency and access to rigor are more measurable than ever. Survey and interview
data both indicate that these tendencies of school culture – teaching and learning – have
risen in tandem throughout district culture across geography and student population
served.
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Instructional methodology. The superintendents who participated in the
research survey were asked to respond to a Likert Scale about what percent of their
programs focused on local, state, and federal accountability metrics and standards. The
choice options that were given spanned multiple stakeholder groups and included the
interests of School Board members, parents, teachers, as well as the State Of California
and federal government (see Table 4.10). Superintendents ranked “standards-based
curriculum and instruction” as the most focused on accountability standard surveyed,
with 96% of superintendents gearing at least half of their district’s programs to meet this
guideline. “100% first-time CAHSEE proficiency rate” was reported by 50.1% of
superintendents to be the focus of “50%-75%” of their district’s programs and resources,
with 66.6% of superintendents from urban settings indicating that “more than 75%” of
their district’s programs were focused on increasing the rate that first-time CAHSEE test
takers scored proficient (above 380) or higher. The “Program Improvement” sanction
was another accountability standard that superintendents built culture to avoid; 49% of
superintendents surveyed reported that at least half of their district’s programs were
focused on “staying/getting out of Program Improvement status.”
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Table 4.10: Percent of Programs Focused on Meeting Particular Accountability Metrics
Accountability Metric
Between
50% -75%
(n=51)
Percentage
More than
75%
(n=51)
Percentage
Standards-based
Curriculum And
Instruction
12 23.5 37 72.5
100% First-time
CAHSEE Proficiency
Rate
26
50.1
6
11.8
Staying/Getting Out
of Program
Improvement Status
22
43.1
3
5.9
The interviews shed light on the survey data by providing the language of
instructional methodology from which findings can be grouped under. The word
“instruction” was used during the third phase of the interview protocol a total 163 times
by all superintendents put together. To put that in perspective, other than personal
pronouns and articles, the word “instruction” was used 53 times more than the second
most used word, “teaching.” Superintendent E explained how standards have impacted
the culture of teaching:
There’s been a huge shift in our district culture to talk more and more about
instruction and how we teach, not just what we teach. That shift has been a direct
result of No Child Left Behind. Before, we spent a lot of time developing
curriculum committees and having philosophical debates about “academic
freedom” and other issues related to curriculum. Now, we focus heavily on how
we teach and if it is effective. Our professional developments are about
instruction, and we use PLC time to share practices and collaborate.
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69
One factor contributing to superintendents re-focusing their district culture on
teaching is the standards movement of the early 2000’s. Superintendent C remembered
the culture of their district before standards:
Well, we used to have department meetings at the high school about what
textbook we should use. We would spend weeks arguing over content to include,
or not include. And we were always working on “vertical alignment.”
Cultures like this have morphed into conversations about teaching methodologies
and instructional practice taking place in the lunchroom. Superintendent F said:
The culture of our district is one where it’s safe to ask tough questions about
instruction. “Am I doing that right?” “Was this strategy effective?” “Who of my
colleagues is really good at this?” We ask those all the time. We have teachers
with new roles and additional responsibilities on campus like Teacher Leader and
Instructional Coach. We didn’t have that 5 years ago, but with our culture
supportive of innovative instruction, we can do that now.
The interviews showed that superintendents chose to elevate teaching in their
cultural values because of the direct impact it had on accountability metrics like first-time
CAHSEE proficiency rates. Superintendent B noted that the connection between
teaching and accountability was stark:
We have CAHSEE Prep classes for 10
th
graders who we’ve identified as being in
need of intervention ahead of the exam. We don’t believe that the class or
curriculum, in and of itself, can boost proficiency. We think that our most skilled
teachers need to deliver the content so that we can maximize learning for our
students with the greatest need. That, too, is a shift from where things were in
education several years ago.
The threat of Program Improvement, and the sanctions that come along with it, is
also something that has influenced the culture-building efforts of superintendents. As
NCLB approaches 2014, the superintendents interviewed talked about the way the policy
sanctions have impacted teaching culture in their districts:
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There’s a buzzword out there that’s not bad called “Best First Instruction.” When
it comes down to it, all the interventions we provide, RTI, prep classes after
school like Princeton Review, all that, it wouldn’t be necessary if we improved on
delivering the best instruction the first time around. I went to a conference in
Sacramento a few weeks ago that said the way to get out of Program
Improvement is by focusing on instructional practice. I agree. And that’s what
we’re doing. (Supt C)
Student learning outcomes. Survey results from superintendents revealed a
strong value placed on student learning outcomes as part of district culture (see Table
4.11). 42.1% of superintendents who responded to the Likert Scale questionnaire noted
that that at least half of their district’s programs were geared toward meeting “parent and
community expectations” for students’ learning goals. Superintendents from smaller-
sized districts (less than 10,000 students) were markedly more focused on this cultural
tenet than superintendents leading culture in larger-sized districts, with 65.5% of small
district superintendents indicating that more than half of their organization’s programs
are focused on meeting the expectations of parents and community members. Reaching
“100% CST proficiency” for all students was slightly more prioritized in district culture
when compared to “parent and community expectations” according to the results of the
survey, with 47% of superintendents aligning their programs to meet the 100% proficient
benchmark. Here, superintendents from suburban school districts found this outcome of
more importance than superintendents from urban settings according to the survey, with
88.9% of suburban superintendents gearing at least half of their district’s programs
towards reaching this goal.
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Table 4.11: Percent of Programs Focused on Meeting Particular Student Learning
Outcomes
Student Learning
Outcome
Between
50% -75%
(n=51)
Percentage
More than
75%
(n=51)
Percentage
Parent & Community
Expectations
18 35.3 3 5.9
100% CST
Proficiency
22
43.1
2
3.9
Interviews with superintendents revealed one particular aspect of “parent and
community” expectations that each district was addressing: access to rigorous
curriculum. Superintendent D recalled the following story:
One of the high schools in our districts is what’s known as an “AP Honor Roll”
school. That means they’ve managed to increase access to AP classes while also
maintaining or increasing their pass rates on AP exams. This distinction is really
a testament to our parent community, who’ve indicated to counselors and even to
me that they want their children to be able to take whatever AP class they feel
they can handle. We’ve taken that expectation to heart, and provided the
necessary supports and instruction to meet this expectation. It’s been 3 years now
that we’ve increased access like this.
Superintendent D also talked about the challenge of balancing community
expectations for access to AP classes with teacher expectations of rigor. They spoke
about a “push and pull” that existed between each stakeholder group, and the need to
“balance” the culture of the district so that no one interest group took priority.
A somewhat different phenomenon was taking place in Superintendent F’s district
that required the organization to focus on “parent and community expectations” when it
came to access and rigor:
We’re currently going through a cultural phase that’s similar to what the
documentary film “Race To Nowhere” is about. We have parents and students
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72
that have come to Board Meetings over the last year requesting some level of
restriction to AP access for students. As a district, we’re investigating the
residual effects on stress and student health that ultra-rigorous courseloads can
cause. That’s not to say we won’t have AP classes, we will. But we’re
considering a method of balancing rigor with the joys of being a teenager. Since
we’re talking about culture, that’s something that’s important to us… just being a
kid.
The impetus to build culture can come from different angles, and it is up to the
leaders of school districts to recognize from which direction accountability pressures are
coming from. A value like “rigor,” can evoke emotional responses in a variety of ways.
Superintendents, then, are left to sort through the emotions of their constituency, and
devise cultures that support expectations and long-term goals.
A student learning outcome mentioned specifically by five of the six (83.3%)
superintendents interviewed was student proficiency in core subject areas as measured by
the CST. Accountability has impacted culture, according to Superintendent A, by
changing the way districts think and talk about learning:
It’s not just enough for teachers to teach anymore. Or even for good teachers to
teach well. It’s about learning. Are the students learning? I can walk into a
classroom and see somebody doing all the right things as a teacher, but if students
are not learning, there’s something more that needs to be done. For our older
guard of teachers, that logic is something that’s new to them. It can be frustrating.
The relationship between teaching and learning will likely always be a part of the
cultures in schools and school districts; however, it seems that accountability standards
are changing the way we think about these two cornerstones of education.
Superintendents are defining teaching and learning in different ways across different
districts:
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I think we used to define it in my old district like this: if you teach, then the
students will learn. Here, we’re trying to define it differently: just because you
taught it, doesn’t mean the students learned it. That opens up the door to
structured interventions and innovative ways to further educate students – like
Khan Academy, self-paced learning, FLIP classrooms – that go beyond just what
the teachers is doing in the classroom. (Supt F)
Dufour and Eaker (1998) support this redefinition, as they propose that the role of
the educator is shifting from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” as we focus more
on learning and less on simply what the teacher is doing.
Summary of results: research question three. The results of research question
three point to a cultural redefinition of teaching and learning taking place in school
districts as a result of the way accountability measures instructional methodologies and
student learning outcomes. From the impact of standards on teaching practice, to the rise
of AP access impacting learning, superintendents are careful to balance new definitions
of teaching with equally new ways to think about what, and how, students learn. The
result has impacted education in that teachers and students are more aware of their roles
and responsibilities now that their surrounding culture has provided language and a
shared understanding of success around them. Superintendents are responsible for
facilitating this redefinition, as it is their vision that impacts the culture.
Research Question Four
Research question four asked, Once established, how do superintendents sustain a
single cultural ethos across an entire school district, especially with new reforms, laws,
and budget constraints changing from year to year?
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Efforts to sustain culture within an organization should be taking place at the
same time culture is being shifted and built to better align with the vision, mission, and
current values of the organization as a whole (Schein, 2004). Superintendents leave
legacies in their district based on the culture that sustains – as programs and services
change year to year depending on myriad factors and, both, outside and inside influences.
The goal of the successful district leader is to build “a way of doing things around here”
so that no matter the accountability system or reform effort, the organization will be able
to respond swiftly and appropriately, and shift cultural tenets correspondingly to match
the pressure (Barth, 2002). An analysis of the data from this study showed that there are
two aspects of sustaining culture in school districts that superintendents focus on
developing in their leadership capacity: 1) the processes and procedures by which change
takes place should mirror the core values of the district, and 2) the people districts hire
and evaluate to execute the mission of the organization need to share a belief in the
cultural tenets of the school district.
Process and procedure. Survey data from superintendents revealed a focus on
district processes as a way to sustain culture long-term (see Table 4.12). 100% of
respondents were “somewhat” or “heavily” focused on implementing district-wide
Benchmark Assessments in their organization – a data point that is further strengthened
in the interviews of purposefully selected superintendents. Further strengthening the role
process plays in cultural sustainability, 100% of superintendent respondents also
indicated that district-wide Curriculum Maps were “somewhat” or “heavily” focused on
in their district. 51.3% of superintendents with less than five years of experience were
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“heavily” focused on this goal, while only 16.7% of superintendents with more than five
years of experience reported being “heavily” focused on using Curriculum Maps
throughout their district. This data underscores the way in which superintendents allocate
time developing processes and procedures to sustain culture, along with the requisite
programs and services the district ongoingly provides.
Table 4.12: Process and Procedures Superintendents Create Culture Around
Outcome
Somewhat
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
Heavily
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
District-wide
Benchmark
Assessments
17 33.3 34 66.7
District-wide
Curriculum Maps
29
56.9
22
43.1
During interviews with superintendents, the sustainability of culture was talked
about in terms of process and procedure. Superintendent D said:
Guaranteed… school reforms will change. Something new will always be coming
down the pipe. For me, if the processes are solid, it will be easy to shift what the
end product is. It’s like an assembly line. Doesn’t matter if you’re makin’
burgers or cars, it’s the assembly line that allows it to happen. Process is the
assembly line of culture.
The literature supports this assertion as well, as Reeves (2007) and Christensen,
Marx, and Stevenson (2006) all write about the need for procedures to mirror the cultural
tenets of the organization. If the procedures that take place in a district are fluid,
effective, and people believe in them, then producing different outputs to respond to new
accountability standards will be easier than starting up a set of entirely new processes.
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To further explore what the values are that line up with particular district
processes, this researcher asked superintendents specifically about the importance of
Curriculum Maps for teachers. Superintendent A provided a rich response:
Curriculum Maps serve two purposes for us culturally: function and process. The
function part is clear, they align teachers and classes to one another. But the
process is where the values of our community come in to play. We care about
teamwork, collaboration, and shared decision making, and we care about it at all
levels of the organization, right? So the process of making the Curriculum Maps
is what’s truly important. The time teachers spend together collaborating and
devising a shared course of action. We know we’ll have to change these from
time to time – especially with Common Core now – but we’ll be very capable of
doing that because we’ve done it before.
Evaluating and hiring. Superintendents who responded to the Likert Scale
survey questions related to sustaining culture indicated that the people within the
organization are critical to having cultural changes stick and remain over the course of
time (see Table 4.13). To that end, 98.3% of all superintendents surveyed were
“somewhat” or “heavily” focused on clear and transparent hiring protocols in their
districts – with 88.9% of suburban superintendents reporting that they were “heavily”
focused on this process of finding good people to steward the mission and culture of the
district. A more meaningful evaluation instrument for teachers and principals was also a
process that was reported on by superintendents. 27.5% of participating superintendents
were “somewhat” or “heavily” focused on adding meaning to their teacher evaluation
instrument by adding student achievement as one of its components, and 45.1% of
superintendents indicated that they were focused on the process of evaluating school
principals in the future by including student achievement as a part of the holistic
procedure.
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Table 4.13: Hiring and Evaluation Protocols Superintendents Create Culture Around
Outcome
Somewhat
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
Heavily
Focused
(n=51)
Percentage
Clear and
Transparent Hiring
Protocols
21 41.2 24 47.1
Teacher Evaluations
That Include Student
Achievement
Principal Evaluations
That Include Student
Achievement
13
18
25.5
35.3
1
5
2.0
9.8
Superintendents from school districts that had met AYP in the last three years
focused their interview responses on the importance of hiring “good people” to sustain
culture shifts over time. Superintendent F compared it to coaching in the NFL:
I’m a bit of a football [person], but I like this analogy. In the NFL, head coaches
get fired all the time, and new ones get hired right away. When that happens, it’s not just
the coach who gets fired, it’s usually almost everybody that came with him. The firing is
about changing culture, and the only way to do that is to bring in a new coach and let
them bring in their own people who already believe what they believe. The stronger that
belief is, the easier the culture becomes to spread. Eventually sustain. Public schools
work differently in structure than NFL teams do, but the way to change culture is the
same: through hiring, and at opportune times, bring in people that believe what you want
your organization to believe. As those people hit a critical mass over time, the culture
will change. And it will last, too!
Superintendents from school districts that have failed to meet AYP over the last
three years talked more about teacher and principal evaluations, and the need to be able to
remove people from the organization that did not exemplify its cultural values. Though
superintendents never used the word “fire” in speaking about the process of removing
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
78
underperforming employees from the organization, it was clear that the term “evaluation”
was a euphemism for being let go. Superintendent A phrased it like this:
Evaluation is critical. It’s actually such a big issue that we’re very strategic in not
being overly focused on it. We kinda’ want it to evolve naturally with our
culture, rather than through forced negotiations. In this community, the
evaluation process is indicative of our culture. We can’t be afraid to give honest
feedback as part of the improvement process, and take a close look at beginning
teachers to see if they perform how our district expects them to perform, and if
they care about what we care about. They’re gonna’ be the ones to keep the
culture. It’s who you hire, but it’s also who stays in your district for the long-
haul, and what you did along the way to evaluate them meaningfully…
Summary of results: research question four. The results of research question
four round out the data reported on building, shifting, and transforming culture in school
districts by providing a framework for understanding the way culture is sustained once it
is established. Superintendents were aligned with the literature in their practices of
focusing on process, procedure, hiring, and evaluation. Along with the systems that are
built within school districts, superintendents indicated that the people who are a part of
each system are critical to sustaining culture. People within the organization, at every
level, should share beliefs, and superintendents see it as their job to set up mechanisms to
strengthen and evaluate those beliefs at different points in time throughout one’s
employment. Whether superintendents sign off on every hire, read each teacher
evaluation, or implement district-wide initiatives like Benchmark Assessments and
Curriculum Maps, each procedure within a school district speaks to its cultural values.
The more understood and regarded the process becomes, the more culture is able to sink
deeper into each individual who shares in the mission and vision of the organization. As
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this process repeats itself over time, culture is sustained across changes in accountability
systems, reform efforts, and even superintendents.
Summary
This chapter examined the results of survey data and interviews to identify the
strategies and practices superintendents employ while building, shifting, and
transforming culture in their school districts during a time in education where public
accountability is greater than ever. Data analysis for research question one revealed two
tenets of culture superintendents build ongoingly as organizational leaders. The first was
an emphasis on clear and open communication, as it helps to build culture and trust
across all levels of the organization. The second was a fostering of collaboration and the
creation of opportunities to work in teams – both meant to demonstrate the core value of
togetherness that acts as the conduit for culture to spread.
Data analysis for research question two exposed three important components to
evaluating the programs districts offer in regards to their cultural relevancy. The first
was that every endeavor a district engages in should resonate with a core belief shared by
everyone in the organization. Second, the programs and services districts put forth must
be aligned closely with the mission of the organization overall. And lastly, a clear vision
for the future of a program needs to be understood by all.
The results of the data collected for research question three indicated two cultural
tendencies of schooling that have been influenced as a result of increased accountability.
The first of these was instructional methodology, as the effectiveness of teachers now
plays a larger role in the overall success of schools and districts. The second was student
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learning outcomes – an aspect of culture that has become more important as metrics to
account for rigor, proficiency, and access are now more public than ever.
An analysis of the data from research question four specified two ways
superintendents worked to sustain culture over long periods of time. Firstly, they focused
on the processes and procedures the organization uses to get work done. Secondly, they
prioritized the people within the organization, and the way they are hired and evaluated,
as a way of ensuring the beliefs of the district are shared and the culture that has been
created can live on.
Overall, superintendents were intentional about their efforts to lead, manage, and
sustain culture in their school districts. They balanced internal expectations with outside
accountability pressures to create cultures that are relevant and responsive to the demands
of multiple stakeholder groups. The strategies they employed, and the reasoning, logic,
and language behind them, should be considered requisite factors for success in any
leadership context.
The findings presented in this study were based on multiple data sources, which
served to strengthen their validity. The summary, conclusions, and implications of this
study are presented in Chapter 5.
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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The work of changing culture in educational settings is continuous (Barth, 2002).
It requires a self-study on the part of organizational leaders to assess the programs and
services that are necessary versus the ones that are part of a different era. To develop a
strategy, or “way,” to go about doing this has proven difficult for educational scientists
over the years as context, geography, socioeconomic status, and political structures factor
differently into affecting change in schools and districts across the country (Fullan,
2001.)
Previous research has suggested that culture-changing is difficult, in part, because
it requires innovation (Maaffron, Zraik, Robbins & Yoon, 2005). The challenge for most
Superintendents has been deciding what new ideas they can bring into their organizations
while still honoring the cultural values and traditions that have existed for generation
after generation of reform (Schein, 2004).
The purpose of this study was to identify the strategies and practices
superintendents employ while building, shifting, and transforming district culture in an
age of increasing accountability. The study examined existing conceptual frameworks on
culture-building from the realms of business (Schein, 2004) and education (Fullan, 2001)
to help identify practices future superintendents can use and adopt for their context and
setting. The following four research questions provided the foundation and focus for this
study:
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1. Which aspects of a healthy organizational culture are Superintendents most
focused on building during their tenure as organizational leaders?
2. How do Superintendents decide what programs and services to focus on while
shifting the cultural values of a District in new directions?
3. In what ways have increasing state and federal accountability
standards transformed the way District's think about their organization's cultural
tendencies?
4. Once established, how do Superintendents sustain a single cultural ethos across an
entire school district, especially with new reforms, laws, and budget constraints
changing from year to year?
Chapters one through four provided an overview of the study, comprehensive
review of the literature on current effective culture-changing research, the methodology
and design of the study, and the findings from surveys and interviews. This chapter
summarizes the findings and provides recommendations for future research.
Summary of Findings
The following nine themes emerged from the analysis of data from surveys and
interviews with superintendents: 1) clear and open communication at all levels of the
organization is critical, 2) a strong value of collaboration permeated through school
districts that successfully shifted culture, 3) shared core beliefs enable culture to evolve,
4) all new programs or services introduced to the organization have to be aligned closely
with the mission of the district, 5) the vision or future of a program must be clear in order
for it to be sustained, 6) a focus on instructional methodology has grown in most districts
who are shifting culture in the Age of Common Core, 7) student learning outcomes have
become more culturally important as proficiency and access to rigor are more measurable
than ever, 8) the processes and procedures by which change takes place should mirror the
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core values of a district, and 9) the people districts hire and evaluate to execute the
mission of the organization need to share a belief in the cultural tenets of the school
district.
Research question one. Research question one sought to identify which aspects
of a healthy organizational culture Superintendents focused on building during their
tenure as organizational leaders. The results from data analysis revealed that a focus on
communication and collaboration are consistent with the research literature.
Superintendents cared about establishing meaningful forums and opportunities
where teachers, students, and parents could communicate with the district (Kowalski et
al., 2011). A focus on creating “Task Forces” to respond to the most current issues
within the organization was something that Superintendents saw as crucial to sustaining
and building culture. Every superintendent (100%) spent time during the beginning of
their administration making changes to the way the organization communicated with
itself and to others. Some Superintendents (33.3%) are even still working to improve
communication after years of consistent leadership and a growing understanding of the
overall mission and vision of the district. As such, districts interested in shifting culture
are recommended to start with examining their communication protocols first.
Opportunities to collaborate and work in teams were also something that
Superintendents identified as being critical to building culture in their organizations.
Through interviews, superintendents concurred that professional practice is best furthered
when it is done with colleagues who are all working towards the same common goal
(Spahier & King, 1985). Specifically, Superintendents used processes like the creation of
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steering documents (a Strategic Plan, for example) to foster collaboration and gather
specific stakeholders from diverse perspectives to help be a part of a co-created vision.
Without collaboration, building culture will inevitably prove too isolating, and thus
unsustainable.
Research question two. Research question two delved deeper in its attempt to
pinpoint how superintendents decide what programs and services to focus on while
shifting the cultural values of their district in new directions. Sharing beliefs was
paramount for creating any kind of cultural shift, and superintendents cited belief-sharing
just as often as the literature (The Dennison Group, 2009) as a key factor in reforming
actions and behaviors. It all starts with the leader, as this researcher found out. By
having an internal locus of control, superintendents projected to others a willingness to be
better that came from within. This translated into others in the school district believing
that the answers to any organizational issues could be found from within, too. This
strategy is recommended for visible leaders whose actions are often made public. For a
more private superintendent, someone on Executive Cabinet demonstrating an internal
locus of control in public speeches and meetings may be a better-suited tactic for sharing
beliefs.
High expectations for adhering to the mission of the organization were also
important when shifting a school district’s culture through the programs and services that
it offers. Districts that focused on results established a culture of high expectations that
allow teachers and administrators to work together on shared solutions for students. This
was particularly evident in suburban superintendents, though the research did not point to
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any clear conclusion as to why there may have been a difference in expectations across
community contexts.
One other aspect of the literature that was supported through this study was how
Lewin’s (1952) research on Change Theory deemed it important for organizations to
focus on perception and evaluation when viewed from the outside. Superintendents
supported this research by valuing rankings outside of the public accountability paradigm
like Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and others to drum up support for the
efforts of all stakeholders in the district community. The ongoing use of outsider
perception is recommended for future superintendents interested in shifting culture when
internal metrics may not highlight the direction the organization wants to go in.
Research question three. Research question three analyzed the ways increasing
state and federal accountability standards have transformed how district's think about
their organization's cultural tendencies. Superintendents shed light on the survey data by
providing specific examples of how their districts are tweaking and proliferating their
own instructional methodologies so that they best addresses the needs of the students they
serve. The shift from curriculum to instruction being the most critical factor in a child’s
success has impacted schools in that a common language for instructional delivery
practices are starting to come about. Superintendents care less about what is taught, and
more about how it is taught in this Age of Increasing Accountability as Common Core is
fast approaching. This precise shift in focusing on instruction more than curriculum is
what will be needed from superintendents as state and federal accountability metrics
change over the years.
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Dufour and Eaker (1998) support the redefinition of teaching and learning that
many superintendents are now promoting in their school districts. Specifically, the shift
from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” is one that has been brought about as a
result of the changed understanding nationwide in the role of the teacher. When the
pendulum swings like this, it is critical that superintendents stay current on educational
trends, and create a strong enough culture to evolve and adapt to the change. This
research suggests that that is exactly what superintendents are doing, as accountability
metrics get better and better at reporting each and every data set imaginable when it
comes to student learning.
Research question four. Research question four examined how Superintendents
sustain a single cultural ethos across an entire school district, especially when new
reforms, laws, and budget constraints change from year to year. The literature supports
the need for an organization’s procedures to mirror its culture with Reeves (2007) and
Christensen, Marx, and Stevenson (2006) all writing about how organizational protocols
represent organizational tenets and philosophies. Superintendents from both suburban
and urban contexts sustain their organization’s culture by aligning them with the way
procedures are executed within their school district. Specifically, they promote processes
that are fluid, effective, and that people believe in – this way, producing new outputs
becomes a matter of function rather than belief. This will have to be the way, moving
forward, that superintendents sustain culture. Otherwise, their efforts may be short-lived
and their stakeholders could operate with competing values than the ones necessary to be
successful.
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Superintendents were also aligned with the literature in their practices of focusing
on process, procedure, hiring, and evaluation. Superintendents indicated that human
beings are the most important part of sustaining culture. People within the organization
are recommended to share beliefs, and superintendents are charged with the responsibility
to strengthen and evaluate those beliefs at different points throughout one’s career. The
more people inherently value what the organization values, the more culture will be able
to sink deeper into each individual throughout the organization. This is how culture is
sustained. As superintendents continue this work in the 21
st
Century, the framework for
sustenance will rest on the hiring and evaluation of a district’s employees.
Implications for Practice
Analysis of the findings of this study validated the importance and implications
for aspiring and/or transitioning superintendents to understand how district leaders build,
shift, and transform organizational culture in an age of increasing accountability. A
successful superintendency is made possible by sustaining culture within the organization
even as the world around shifts and changes the manner in which schools are evaluated.
Strategies that have been found to be successful include: communicating clearly, valuing
collaboration, sharing beliefs, being mission-aligned, having a clear vision, focusing on
instruction, maintaining high expectations for students, valuing process, and hiring good
people.
This study also provided insight for university program developers interested in
creating a strong superintendent preparation program. It was found that superintendents
regarded their formal training to be crucial in their efforts to be deliberate and thoughtful
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about changing culture. While informal training (like practicums, or on-the-job
shadowing) is still very important to a successful tenure as superintendent, university
program developers may want to add components of culture-building research and
language to courses of study so that superintendents have a common base from which to
build.
Recommendations for Future Research
The following recommendations for future research are based on the overall
findings from the study:
Future research should replicate this study, comparing superintendents
categorized by the number of superintendencies they have held prior to their
current tenure.
Future research should seek to identify specific interpersonal skills
superintendents possess that have led to their ability to successfully change and
sustain organizational culture.
Future research should replicate this study with a larger sample of interview
participants.
Future research should further examine the sustainability of culture and look at a
superintendent’s impact over a number of years after they have left the
organization.
Future research should explore the importance of feedback to the superintendent
from trusted colleagues (like Executive Cabinet) as part of the change process
during times of cultural shifts.
Conclusion
As Common Core State Standards begin rolling out in schools and districts across
the country in 2014, and educational organizations nationwide begin piloting the policies
and practices of a changed assessment and accountability system, superintendents
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everywhere will need to shift some aspects of their district’s culture to respond to the
educational reform efforts taking place around them. If not, the risk of a cultural
mismatch between what is going on inside a school district with what is happening at the
state and federal level could lead to a shortened superintendency in which the opportunity
to put forth the strategies recommended by this research do not exist.
The findings of this study indicate that the success of a superintendent can be
enhanced by establishing a culture that is aligned with the values embedded in the
accountability and assessment metrics that gage student success. Combined with the
practices leaders in the business world use to sustain culture within their organizations,
superintendents will be able to utilize the strategies put forth by this study in building,
shifting, and transforming their district’s culture to better meet the needs of students and
continue doing meaningful work on behalf of children for years to come.
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APPENDIX A: SUPERINTENDENT SURVEY
Superintendent Survey
Section I
Please indicate the degree to which your school district is focused on creating a culture
that supports each of the following outcomes:
Not A
Focus At
All
Somewhat
Focused On
This Goal
Heavily
Focused On
This Goal
Solely
Focused on
This Goal
Meeting API Growth Targets For Schools
Exceeding API Growth Targets For Schools
Meeting most AYP criteria
Meeting all AYP criteria
Meeting “Safe Harbor” provisions for AYP
objectives
Decrease in “FBB” and “BB” scores on CST
subject tests
Growth in Proficiency in CST subject areas
10
th
grade pass rates of CAHSEE first-time
test-takers
Overall CAHSEE results
100% High School Graduation
100% A-G Eligibility
(CSU) EAP Pass Rates
550+ On Each Section Of The SAT
California Distinguished School Awards
National Blue Ribbon Awards
Newsweek / US News & World Report
Rankings
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Section II
Please indicate the degree to which this school district is focused on creating a culture
that supports each of the following procedures:
Not A Focus
At All
Somewhat
Focused On
This Process
Heavily
Focused On
This Process
Solely
Focused on
This Process
A teacher evaluation instrument that
includes student achievement as an
indicator of success
A principal evaluation instrument that
includes student achievement as an
indicator of success
A system of merit pay for teachers
and/or principals
A clear and transparent hiring protocol
for classified, certificated, and
management personnel
Parent engagement opportunities
An easy-to-use / easy-to-access Student
Information System for teachers,
students, and families
Relevant and useful school websites
District-wide Benchmark Assessments
District-wide Curriculum Maps and
Scope & Sequence documents
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Section III
What percent of the district’s programs are focused on meeting the following local, State,
and Federal accountability metrics & standards:
Less Than
25%
Between
25% – 50%
Between
50% – 75%
More than
75%
AYP criteria for schools and districts
API Growth Targets
School Board expectations
Parent & Community expectations
100% Student Proficiency in CST subjects
by 2014
100% first-time CAHSEE Proficiency rate
(score of 380) for all student subgroups
Standards-based curriculum and instruction
for students
Staying/getting out of Program Improvement
status
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APPENDIX B: SUPERINTENDENT INTERVIEW GUIDE
Superintendent Interview Guide
Research Questions Interview Questions
1. What aspects of District
culture are Superintendents
most focused on building
during their tenure as
organizational leaders?
- Can you describe your view of the role Superintendents play in
building culture within an organization?
- More specifically, is it a top-down process? A bottom-up one?
A variation of the two? Or something completely different in
your opinion?
- How do you determine --- both, upon entry into a new school district,
and at any other time during your Superintendency --- which aspects of
the organization are healthy, and which ones need more attention paid
to them?
- How much of your focus is on building a culture of results-oriented
education? For example, high regard for things like API scores, CST
results, National Blue Ribbon Awards, California Distinguished
Schools, Newsweek Rankings, etc…
- How much of your focus is on building a culture of process-oriented
education within this school district? For example, things like teacher
evaluation instruments, hiring practices, school websites, customer
service, and overall student/parent experience…
- Can you describe a specific program or service that you’ve brought to
this district, that is totally new, and its impact on the overall culture of
the organization?
- In your opinion, what is the most important value, or ethic, you’d like
all members of this school district to share, and believe in? Why?
- If I asked one of the principals in this district the same thing,
what might their response be?
- What about if I asked a student?
2. How do Superintendents
decide what programs and
services to change, or shift, so
that the cultural values of a
District head in a mission-
aligned direction?
- What happens if it becomes clear that a program, or cultural tenet of
the district (like a process), has strayed away from the mission or vision
of the organization?
- How do you determine when to change/alter an existing program or
service vs. when to get rid of it entirely?
- What role do politics play in making either one of these
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determinations?
- Is there a limit to how many programs and services you can make
changes to in a fixed amount of time?
- Will stakeholders perceive you differently as you change
things more and more? Is this a healthy perception?
- Which one of these cultural tenets is more important to you, and this
organization: scope, or impact? And why?
- Would you describe a program that existed before your arrival in this
district, and how you’ve worked to modify it so that it matches the
current culture of your Superintendency?
3. How have increasing state
and federal accountability
standards transformed the
way District's think about their
organization's cultural
tendencies?
- How important is meeting API and AYP in this district?
- Can a program or service be successful if it does not directly
impact either one of these accountability measures?
- When thinking about the introduction of Common Core State
Standards in 2014, what does this district need to do in order to be
prepared for new curriculum, testing, and accountability standards?
- Culturally, what are the beliefs students and staff need to
share in order to meet the expectations the State of California
and the Federal Government have for this district?
Before you arrived in this district, what programs existed that focused
on meeting A-G requirements, and eventual college completion?
- What programs now exist that have those goals as their stated
purpose?
- Is this district in Program Improvement status? If so, how has that
impacted the culture of the district?
- If not, how has that impacted the overall culture of the
district?
- Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you would like to share?
SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO
99
APPENDIX C: SUPERINTENDENT RECRUITMENT LETTER
Dear Superintendent,
You have been invited to participate in a graduate research study conducted by Joshua
Arnold, principal of Los Alamitos High School in the Los Alamitos Unified School
District, and doctoral student from the Rossier School of Education’s Ed.D. Program at
the University of Southern California.
This study is focused on understanding how successful Superintendents build, shift, and
transform district culture in a time of increasing accountability. This study will build
upon the research regarding organizational culture in schools and businesses, and further
examine the role of the leader in sustaining an organization’s cultural efforts. The
findings may have direct implications for current and future Superintendents as they work
to build culture in an age where accountability mandates change constantly, and involve
multiple stakeholder groups.
If you agree to participate in this research study, the approximate time required to
complete the survey will be 15-20 minutes. Along with the consent form, you may also
indicate whether or not you would be interested in participating in a face-to-face
interview. The interview would be 30-45 minutes in length and will be scheduled to
accommodate your preference of time and location.
Your participation in the study is voluntary and you have the right to withdraw at any
time without penalty. Any data collected will be destroyed per your request. All
information obtained in connection with this study will be confidential and the data will
be reported in aggregate so that your responses cannot be linked back to you. There are
no perceived risks to participants.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding participation in this study, please contact
Joshua Arnold or Dr. Rudy Castruita at the University of Southern California. Thank you
very much for your time and assistance.
Sincerely,
Joshua Arnold, Principal Investigator
USC Ed.D. Student
jfarnold@usc.edu
Dr. Rudy Castruita, Faculty Supervisor
Professor, USC Rossier School of Education, rcastrui@usc.edu
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to gain information regarding the manner in which superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture in an age of increasing accountability so that the new values and past practices of the organization work in concert with each other to match the culture of educational accountability sweeping the nation. Specifically, this study set out to determine: 1) which aspects of a healthy organizational culture Superintendents are most focused on building during their tenure as organizational leaders, 2) how superintendents decide what programs and services to focus on while shifting the cultural values of a district in new directions, 3) in what ways increasing state and federal accountability standards have transformed the way district's think about their organization's cultural tendencies, and 4) how Superintendents sustain a single cultural ethos across an entire school district with new reforms, laws, and budget constraints changing from year to year. A mixed methods approach, using 51 surveys and six in-depth interviews, was used in the collection and analysis of the research data. Data analysis revealed that superintendents who are successful in shifting district culture communicate clearly, value collaboration, share beliefs throughout the organization, hold everyone accountable for being mission-aligned, possess a clear vision, focus on instruction, maintain high expectations for students, value process, and hire extraordinary people. This study validated the importance and implications for aspiring and/or transitioning superintendents to understand how culture is a critical component of the health of any school district. To successfully build, or shift, culture across a large organization, leaders must be deliberate and intentional in the processes, programs, and protocols they promote. Overall, this study provides a framework of leadership superintendents can use to build culture, shift values, and improve student learning in their districts.
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Arnold, Joshua F.
(author)
Core Title
Should it say or should it go: how successful superintendents build, shift, and transform district culture in an age of increasing accountability
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Publication Date
03/29/2013
Defense Date
02/25/2013
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
accountability,culture,OAI-PMH Harvest,superintendent,transform
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Castruita, Rudy Max (
committee chair
), Escalante, Michael F. (
committee member
), García, Pedro Enrique (
committee member
)
Creator Email
jfarnold@usc.edu,josharnold@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-228206
Unique identifier
UC11293636
Identifier
usctheses-c3-228206 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-ArnoldJosh-1492-0.pdf
Dmrecord
228206
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Arnold, Joshua F.
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
accountability
transform